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More "Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. "Asticot, come ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... come intermediate between incised and lacerated. They are greater in depth than in length, being caused by sword or rapier thrusts. They cause little haemorrhage externally, but death may be due to internal haemorrhage. They may be complicated by (1) the introduction of septic material adhering to the instrument; (2) the entrance of foreign bodies which lodge ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... personage traversed the hall with a hard and sounding step as measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor, he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical fashion ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was treated with a callous, yet polite indifference, which, to one whose heart was as tender as her judgment was weak, was more painful perhaps than absolute ill-usage. Sir Philip was a voluptuary, that is, a completely selfish egotist, whose disposition and character resembled the rapier he wore, polished, keen, and brilliant, but inflexible and unpitying. As he observed carefully all the usual forms towards his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of the world; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Paul, I found credible and charming, and thanked heaven for her sake that Paul married his Princess. It is indeed a romance gone wrong. Perhaps it is a more difficult thing plausibly and readily to sustain one's fancy in a modern setting, with modern folk, than in the fair realm of Tushery with rapier-wielding demigods. Yet I think that the dead HARLAND and the living HOPE (himself no mean Tusher) might have brought off their Paul. As a matter of fact, so I believe could Mr. LOCKE; that is just the pity of it. I merely record the fact that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... governor, but had merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... anger, Brian forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into the Dark ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... which the Italian ignored; so, studying the subject, he himself invented a sword which, while lacking the stoutness of the German weapon, retained some of its stability, and was almost as easily handled as the Italian rapier, without the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis another prince ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were required; and he was in Canada looking round and negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in him—so common in the men of his race—of the dry shrewdness of the financier with a kind of headlong courtesy ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sagacious mouth, the upper lip slightly covering the under one at the corners, he at once arrests your attention, and your eye unconsciously follows him as he makes his way through the crowd, with a friendly word for this man and an elegant rapier-thrust for that. His predominant mood, however, is a cheerful good-nature; his wit and irony belong rather to the diplomatist than to the man. There is no sounder or more prudent head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of honour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described as eating, is one of ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... as were the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable occasion, and can afford to leave saying what were my impressions of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... never seen a rapier, and now Julian Wemyss needed all his skill to stand up to a dazzling swiftness of attack, which together with length of arm and three extra inches of height might well make his pupil no mean adversary when the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... light gleam along the blade, and parried the thrust with the stiletto. A fierce, but unequal combat ensued. Antonio fought exposed to the full glare of the light, while his antagonist was in shadow: his stiletto, too, was but a poor defence against a rapier. He saw that nothing would save him but closing with his adversary, and getting within his weapon: he rushed furiously upon him, and gave him a severe blow with the stiletto; but received a wound in return from the shortened sword. At the same moment, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that Pascal had inaugurated in his Lettres Provinciales: clarity, simplicity and wit—these supreme qualities it possesses in an unequalled degree. But these qualities, pushed to an extreme, have also their disadvantages. Voltaire's style is narrow; it is like a rapier—all point; with such neatness, such lightness, the sweeping blade of Pascal has become an impossibility. Compared to the measured march of Bossuet's sentences, Voltaire's sprightly periods remind one almost of a pirouette. But ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... once fought a Frenchman at Margate, The weapons a rapier, a backsword, and target; Brisk Monsieur advanced as fast as he could, But all his fine pushes were caught in the wood; While Sawney with backsword did slash him and nick him, While t'other, enraged that he could not once prick him, Cried, "Sirrah, you rascal, you son of a ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... he had leased to Sir Henry Glenham, Knight. {201a} He further leaves to her, as executrix, "10 pounds to be good and to my poor sister Margarette." To his brother Simon he bequeaths "the best apparrell of my bodie, with riding furniture, and my baie gelding, rapier, dagger, and pistol," and further bequests. The testator was son of Christopher Ayscough, of Bliborough, and married, apparently without issue, Margaret, daughter of Symon ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... statesman took me in from the top of my panache to the rowel of my spur, with a glance that played over me like a rapier point. ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... didn't get half the fun out of it that a party of country yaps will extract from a candy-pulling or a husking-bee. The Pompadours and DuBarrys didn't know how. Louis XVth went around by himself in droves, stiff and uncomfortable as a Presbyterian Sunday-school, wishing every time his rapier galled his kibes or tangled his royal legs that he had remained comfortably dead in that dog-hole at St. Denis. There was entirely too much formality for fun. The next time New York's toad-eaters give a bal-masque they should disguise themselves as American sovereigns and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... always using threats which he had no intention of carrying out. Buelow is equally fond of using promises which he is as little disposed to fulfil. Bismarck was always showing the mailed fist. Buelow prefers to show the velvet glove. Bismarck wielded the sword of the berserker. Buelow prefers the rapier of the fencer. Bismarck was stern, irascible, uncontrolled, titanic, and his whole career was one long and hard struggle against bitter enemies. Buelow was ever amiable, courteous, smiling, suave, patient, elusive. He managed equally to ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... if he had met her father in the corridor, coming to her after the supper, he would have been unarmed. Her father, on the contrary, being on actual duty, wore the sword of his rank, like any other officer of the guards, and the King wore a rapier as a part of his ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... the display of a subject than praise, which is always rather bromidic. The amusing person catches foibles and exploits them, and it is easy to forget that wit flashes all too irresistibly at the expense of other people's feelings, and the brilliant tongue is all too often sharpened to rapier point. Admiration for the quickness of a spoken quip, somewhat mitigates its cruelty. The exuberance of the retailer of verbal gossip eliminates the implication of scandals but both quip and gossip become deadly poison ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... common, though not a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier. You and he are the judges of the world, but ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to leave. When he pursued it, it fled slowly, as if with intent to entice him in pursuit from the spot; but when he turned towards the thicket, it immediately followed. Peter was armed with a pistol and rapier; but his pistol and powder had been rendered useless by swimming the river, and he had nothing to depend on but his rapier. The creature at first was afraid of the pistol, and kept aloof; but seeing no fire issue from it, it came nigher and nigher, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... seemed to consist in talking to each of the other. "Just hear her! She converses as she fences—one bright flash, and you're skewered against the wall—no parryings possible!" She faced Sylvia again: "Why, my dear, in answer to your rapier-like question, I must simply confess that this morning, being much struck with Jerry's being struck with you, I went over to the registrar's office and looked you up. I know that you passed supremely well ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to recall them, but assert the truth with the point of my rapier. If you are not as great a coward, as you are a villain, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... duplicates striding and mincing and bounding by, each moving like an animated note of interrogation! They were long, and medium, and short. There were women of a thinness beyond comparison, sheathed in skirts as featly as a rapier in a scabbard. There were women of a monumental, a mighty fatness, who billowed and rolled in multitudinous, stormy garments. There were slow eyes that drooped on one heavily as a hand, and quick ones that stabbed and withdrew, and glanced again appealingly, and slid ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... and I understand these things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting him a personal slight and declared that he "would be hanged if it wasn't a rapier!" The consequence was a fight which transformed the place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and re-echoing ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... conquering knight, trampling his enemy under foot in the lists, crowned by Justice with laurel, and preceded by Fame, sounding his praises. The other figure presents a duellist, in his shirt, as was then the fashion (see the following ballad), with his bloody rapier in his hand: the slaughtered combatant is seen in the distance, and the victor is pursued by the Furies. Nevertheless, the wise will make some scruple, whether, if the warriors were to change equipments, they might not also exchange their emblematic attendants. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... ragged individuals to meet in Cato Street are not far off, they are not on the other side of the river, in the Borough, for example, in some garret or obscure cellar. The very first to confront the Guards and runners are Thistlewood and Ings; Thistlewood whips his long thin rapier through Smithers' lungs, and Ings makes a dash at Fitzclarence with his butcher's knife. Oh, there was something in those fellows!—honesty and courage!—but can as much be said for the inciters of the troubles of '32. No; they egged on poor ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... considerable. It is true that modern science has devised new and appalling weapons. The invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first came into use, and a man-at-arms of great prowess could be killed from behind a ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... sarcasm or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse—of those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Charles-Norton stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his head. He was as at the bottom of the sea—a warm and quiet summer sea. Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the red ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps somewhat too stiff to be graceful. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... rapier blade he wore, Bent in its flattened sheath; The coat the shrieking woman tore ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... table, and pick out the best grapes in an old-fashioned centre-piece. On the last fatal day, however, Lady Dauntrey's nerves had been rasped by the loss of her fifth cook. When the marmoset was taken suddenly and desperately ill in the bread plate, Eve flew into a rage, and high words passed like rapier flashes between her and Miss Wardropp. Dodo attributed her pet's seizure to the fact that Dauntrey fruit was unfit even for a monkey's consumption, and Eve informed the whole company that Dodo was a disgusting Australian pig. This was the last insult. Dodo shrilly "gave notice," while the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... still keeping his hand on his young colleague's shoulder, and Sir Robert rose and prayed leave to say a few words in reference to the—he seemed to pause for a word—the remarkable utterance which had fallen from the Premier. Sir Robert's rapier flashed to and fro, now in grave indignation, now in satirical jest, and, at the end, he rose almost to eloquence in bidding the Premier remember the responsibility such words, spoken by such ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... is omnipresent, and takes several forms. A grandiloquence that sways uneasily between rodomontade and mere verbiage, a rotundity of diction, a choice of subjects which can only be described as sanguinolent, the use of the bludgeon where others would prefer a rapier. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... hand of paralysis on his nerves. He looked at the rapier, then at Beauvais, dazed and incapable of movement. It had been ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... came to be much more than a restoration!—but they could not restore the colour to her hair nor the lightness to her heart. She looked at mankind from a cynical altitude of worldly wisdom; her wit grew keen and swift as d'Artagnan's rapier; her bon-mots had a way of passing into proverbs, or of being stolen by more distinguished contemporaries. She took her revenge upon society as completely as she could, yet without bitterness. Indeed, it is probable that, could she have ordered her life anew, she would not ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... before his capture he had fallen upon another child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... back she cometh, and on her hip that bejewelled Spanish rapier that had once been part of Black Bartlemy's treasure (as hath been told) and which (having my own stout cut-and-thrust) I had not troubled to bring ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... temples. The clear-cut features were impressive, both in outline and in expression, and the eye was as the eye of the eagle, so keenly penetrating and far-seeing that many had shrunk before its gaze as before the sharp thrust of a rapier. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... house of cards she set up a barrier, which he saw as a veil over her eyes. Not once had he a glimpse of their depths. There was only the surface gleam of sunbeams and sometimes of rapier-points, merry but significant. She frequently rode out to the pass and occasionally, when his day's work was done, he would ride to the foot of the range to meet her, and as they came back he often sang, but never whistled. Indeed, he had ceased ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... That's your aristocratic rapier thrust. You aristocrats are very hard people underneath your manners. Ye love to lay a body out. But I've ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... unwilling suitor. There was also, hanging about, a certain De Brissac, who in the event of the countess's death or imprisonment would succeed to her estates. So off we go, cut and thrust, sword, cloak and rapier, all to the right jingle of tushery, till the last chapter, in which King Louis relents and does what kings (of France especially) always do in the last chapters of historical romances. Really it seems sometimes as though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... (1609-1642) was one of the most brilliant wits of the court of Charles I, who wrote poetry as he exercised a horse or fought a duel, because it was considered a gentleman's accomplishment in those days. His poems, "struck from his wild life like sparks from his rapier," are utterly trivial, and, even in his best known "Ballad Upon a Wedding," rarely rise above mere doggerel. It is only the romance of his life—his rich, brilliant, careless youth, and his poverty and suicide in Paris, whither he fled because ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... is the way of intensity, that focuses all its impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash of lightning. Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supreme and dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty. Their power, in some one single direction, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to you that you see the gleam of a snowy plume and the shine of a straight rapier striking home through cuirass and doublet, whilst on the stones the dead body falls, and high above over the lamp-iron, where the torch is flaring, a casement uncloses, and a woman's voice murmurs, with a cruel little laugh, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... discussed above were canvassed at all thoroughly was Champion v. Ames,[495] involving the act of 1895 "for the suppression of lotteries."[496] An earlier act excluding lottery tickets from the mails had been upheld in the earlier case of In re Rapier,[497] on the proposition that Congress clearly had the power to see that the very facilities furnished by it were not put to bad uses. But in the case of commerce the facilities are not ordinarily furnished by the National Government, and the right to engage in foreign and interstate commerce comes ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... madness for your thumb-long parade dagger to cross blades with my good sword," laughed Malfalconnet. "Ere you drew your rapier, I think your lust for murder would have fled. So let us leave our blades in their sheaths and permit my curiosity, to ask just one more question: What consideration induces you, Sir Knight, to constrain yourself to discreet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they might for the time: and heaving their planks overboard, took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver: JOHN DRAKE took the rapier, and made a gauntlet of his pillow, RICHARD ALLEN the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace, called Eion. ROBERT took the caliver and so boarded. But they found the frigate armed round ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... whiche will be nothynge abasshed to cast aside this grey friers coate, and to take vpon mee to be a souldiour, or your capitaine. And euen with that woorde he caste of his vpper coate; and vnderneth he was a playne souldiour, arraied in a skarlet cloke, and a long rapier hangeyng by his side. And in this warlyke apparell, in the personage of a Capitan, he stode and preached halfe an houre. Being sente for of the Cardinals with whom he was familiar, hee was asked what was the pretence of that new example. ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, An' draws a roosty rapier— He swoor, by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he would from that time forth Relinquish her ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... ill at ease. He shifted from side to side as if M. Godin's glance had pierced him like a rapier, and he were trying vainly to wriggle off of it. He seemed unable to disengage himself and at length replied in ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should know I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long straight blade, like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous weapon, and with a blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was ready to thrust and parry against the world. I called upon my foes. No enemy appeared, and by the light of two candles, with a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the foreshadowings ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a professional among the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices and little games of them that dwell thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he appears such an abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the innocent and guileless gypsies, little suspecting that a rye lies perdu in his ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found old moth-eaten garments, all in rags and tatters, or Peter would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword—not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French rapier—which had never left its scabbard till it lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but no gold-headed ones, and shoebuckles of various pattern and material, but not silver nor set with precious stones. Here was a large box full of shoes with high heels and peaked toes. Here, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a six weeks' trip to the B. C. Coast scouting for new nut trees and selling nut tree nursery stock. The outstanding discovery of the trip is the Rapier walnut tree. This young giant was planted 24 years ago by Mr. Rapier on Texada Isl. I estimate this tree to be 60 to 70 feet in height, the measured spread is 60 feet one way and 70 at widest point, and other measurements as follows: from ground to first limbs there is 8 feet of straight ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... not bear it; and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that court.—In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes. Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the fencing-master assassinated; for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Massachusetts, Mr. Eustis, in attendance upon the Commencement exercises, at Harvard College, dressed much in the fashion of half a century earlier; namely, coat and waistcoat with broad flaps, small-clothes, ruffles at his bosom and wrists, a cocked hat of the old style, and a steel-hilted rapier at his side. Ten years afterwards, one of the best governors the Commonwealth has ever had, Mr. Lincoln, who served the State in this capacity for nine several terms, wore also a distinguishing costume, but ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Zingalee gipsies, where a band of these wild sons of Hagar were creating a perfect furor by the shrillness and discord of their voices. Never was such terrific music inflicted upon mortal ears. It went through and through you, quivering and vibrating like a rapier; but the common classes of Russians delight in it above all earthly sounds. They deem it the very finest kind of music. It is only the dilettante who have visited Paris who profess to hold it ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... curved in mockery through the air. He replaced it on his head, drew his rapier, with quick turns of his wrist swished the supple blade through the air till it sang, then flashed it out at me like the tongue of an adder, and said, "Sit you still, Farmer Wheatman, sit you still. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Colonel Bludyer, as he wiped his rapier on the grass. "If he ever gets over it, he won't forget that "plongeant" thrust in tierce. I never knew it fail, Thornton—never, with a man under thirty." So the Colonel put his coat on, and drove off to breakfast; while Sir Hugh took charge of Ned ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... founded and justified by success; still we must require him to remember that he only travels on forbidden tracks, where the God of War may surprise him; that he ought always to keep his eye on the enemy, in order that he may not have to defend himself with a dress rapier if the enemy takes up a ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... single combat there is found also a qualitative modification, whence we have three systems: (a) boxing and wrestling; (b) fencing with sticks; and (c) rapier and broad-sword fencing. In the first, which was cultivated to its highest point among the Greeks, direct immediateness rules. In the boxing of the English, a sailor-like propensity of this nation, fist-fighting ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, takes from the bottom drawer of the peddling-box the evil-working dictionary, and places therein a grammar. This touch of delicacy, this ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to swell; and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore,[454-20] That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them That yet looks on me, or would know me.—Ariel, Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell:— [Exit ARIEL. I will discase me,[454-21] and myself present As I was sometime Milan:[454-22]—quickly, spirit; Thou shalt ere long ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... returned, Mr. M—— gratified my curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... seated himself in an armchair by the fireplace and threw one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said. "That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always my ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... rides his hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... full sum that stood against him in the rental-book. Weel, away he trots to the Castle, to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword, that had a hundred-weight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communing so often tauld ower, that I almost think I was there mysell, though I couldna ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... absolutely terror-stricken, and then suddenly inflamed with ungovernable fury. He dropped his cane on the ground, drew his rapier, and, without wasting a thought on ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... long poniard which he always carried about him; and not imagining that his adversary had any arms he threw himself upon Candide: but our honest Westphalian had received a handsome sword from the old woman along with the suit of clothes. He drew his rapier, despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelite stone dead upon ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... and city apprentices had got reckless, and the duels, no death following, ceased to be sublime. About fifty years ago, serious men took to fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away. Holles, in Sherwood, as we saw, fought with rapier, and he soon spoiled Markham. Rapier and dagger especially; that is a more silent duel, but a terribly serious one! Perhaps the reader will like to take a view of one such serious duel in those days, and therewith close this ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I. 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... rowed toward the Plymouth Adventure and there were enough of them to carry her by boarding. In addition to this, she was directly under the guns of Blackbeard's powerful ship. One valorous young gentleman passenger whipped out a rapier and swore to perish with his face to the foe, but Captain Wellsby kicked him into the cabin and fastened the scuttle. This ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the stranger, Father Jose beheld him gravely draw his pocket-handkerchief from the basket-hilt of his rapier, and apply ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... holds good when it comes to actual physical fighting. If a French gentleman were to call me out, I daresay I should go to the encounter twirling my moustache, bowing down to the ground, all smiles and compliments; and that I should select my rapier with a pleasant kind of feeling, like that experienced by the satirist about to write a brilliant article while picking out a pen with a suitable nib. On the other hand, if a murderous brute with truculent eyes and gnashing teeth attempts to disembowel me with a butcher's knife, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the blade and drove it home just behind the glossy black shoulder. Night shuddered and lay still. The knife had sunken deep, and Constans had to exert all his strength to withdraw it. The bare point of a rapier touched him meaningly on the arm; he stood up and faced ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants of the press stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France.—Poh! All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a part of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... will go coin it from Noll's ruby nose," and would ride away singing, and in a fortnight the poor gentleman would surely be slain. And, as for your worst kind of cavalier, when I did gently remind him, he would swear and draw his rapier and make a fearful pass near my belly—that I was glad to see him depart with a skinful of mine own wine unpaid for. Moreover, Master Will, an he were handsome and a moon-raker, my wife, that is now at rest, would ever take his part, and cry shame on me for a cuckoldy villain to teaze ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... departure Roger's father presented Harry and Roger each with a splendid new rapier, the blades of which were made of the best Toledo steel, of so fine a temper that it was possible, without injury to the weapon, to bend the point round until it met the hilt, the blade springing back, when released, to its original position and shape. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... military cadence, as the florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the man follow to gather the blossoms, he pushed ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... lord, as raging as the sea: Whenas he came, I first bespake him faire, But then he throwes and tosses me about, As one forgetting that I was his mother: At last I call'd for help: and as I cried, Corambis Call'd, which Hamlet no sooner heard, but whips me Out his rapier, and cries, a Rat, a Rat, and in his rage The good olde man he killes. King Why this his madnesse will vndoe our state. Lordes goe to him, inquire the body out. Gil. We will my Lord. Exeunt Lordes. King Gertred, your ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... arrears, and my gudesire for the full sum that stood against him in the rental-book. Weel, away he trots to the castle to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking-rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hunderweight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communings so often tauld ower that I almost think I was there mysell, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion had no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an impostor because it had cunningly hidden in it the conclusion that was being attempted to be proved. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... of man who would confound sharp practises of the crafty; or "call the bluff" of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion's heart; or fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... touch of makeup about them; that their old-time manners, even to the quaint bows they both gave the master of ceremonies, as they entered the royal chamber, were their very own, part of their daily equipment, and that nothing in the gorgeous banquet hall, from the jewelled rapier belted to Oliver's side, and which had once graced the collection of a prince, down to the priceless bit of satsuma set out on the table and now stuffed full of cigarettes (the bit could be traced back to the Ming dynasty), were any more veritable ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... front of him and placed a small white chip on the ground, called him to "attention", ordered him to place his eyes on that chip, and told him if he removed them from it before I gave the command "rest", I would run him through with my rapier. ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... silk velvet of a bright purple colour; while boots of buff leather, armed with long glancing spurs, encased his feet. A hat of vicuna cloth, with its trimming of gold lace, completed a costume half-military, half-civilian. To strengthen its military character a rapier in a leathern sheath hung from his waist-belt, and a carbine, suspended in front, rested against the pommel of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... with indignation, offered to stake fifteen hundred pistoles, and mount the stage against him. The duke with some reluctance consented, and on the day fixed the combatants appeared: their weapon seems to have been single rapier, which was then newly introduced in Italy. The prize-fighter advanced with great violence and fierceness, and Crichton contended himself calmly to ward his passes, and suffered him to exhaust his vigour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... as she listened to the merry badinage of this group of educated city dwellers and, although it was something new to her, her quick mind soon realized that Philip was a most entertaining conversationalist, with a wit like a rapier which flashed and touched, but never hurt, and that Donald, in his slower way, possessed a dry humor which she had not suspected. At the end of that time a telephone call came for Donald which sent him forth, pretending to grumble over the lack of consideration of modern children, who insisted ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... that sector during all the time we were in the line. Sometimes we met individual German sentries and quick, quiet and accurate work was necessary to avoid detection and probable capture. I found that a French bayonet, the rapier shape, was a very satisfactory weapon at such times. Trench knives have been invented since and may be an improvement. After leaving me that night Captain Congreve came upon a party of eighty-two Germans, ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... her fair, strong man! Such a serpent love is this,— Bitter wormwood in her kiss! When she strikes, be nerved and ready; Keep your gaze both bright and steady, Chance no rapier-play, but hotly press the quarrel she began! Fight ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... that we shall soon agree! For now your fancies to expel, Here, as a youth of high degree, I come in gold-lac'd scarlet vest, And stiff-silk mantle richly dress'd, A cock's gay feather for a plume, A long and pointed rapier, too; And briefly I would counsel you To don at once the same costume, And, free from trammels, speed away, That what life is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... here to purchase old swords, the greater part of which are mere rubbish, and never made at Toledo, yet for such they will give a large price, whilst they would grudge two dollars for this jewel, which was made but yesterday"; thereupon putting into my hand a middle-sized rapier. "Your worship," said they, "seems to have a strong arm, prove its temper against the stone wall;— thrust boldly and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... around his left, and attacked Tressilian with a vigour which, for a moment, seemed to give him the advantage of the combat. But this advantage lasted not long. Tressilian added to a spirit determined on revenge a hand and eye admirably well adapted to the use of the rapier; so that Varney, finding himself hard pressed in his turn, endeavoured to avail himself of his superior strength by closing with his adversary. For this purpose, he hazarded the receiving one of Tressilian's passes in his ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... SIDO. Noble Leon Is proof against the gentle passion, lady, And will ere long, my rapier for a gage, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... Cavalier. He wabbles like a ship in distress, in the wild effort to keep his feet untangled from his rapier. I'll wager he's a wealthy plumber on week-days. Observe Anne of Austria! What arms! I'll lay odds that her great-grandmother took in washing. There's Romeo, now, with a pair of legs like an old apple ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... always receptive of the romantic, might readily and forgivably have pictured villas, maids in durance vile, and sword-thrusts under the moonlight. But the waiter, who had served his time in one or another of the foreign armies, knew that no foil or rapier could have made such a scar; more probably the saber. For the Italian officer on horseback is the maddest of all men, and in the spirit of play courts hazards that another man might ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... sovereign triumph. The result had justified that careless and insolent confidence in himself and in fortune, which was the most prominent feature in the character of the man, who, both bravo and gamester, had played against the world with his rapier in one hand and cogged dice in the other. Violante, once in a vessel filled by his own men, was irretrievably in his power. Even her father must feel grateful to learn that the captive of Peschiera had saved name and repute in becoming Peschiera's wife. Even the pride ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw them at the same moment, and were equally taken by surprise. The foremost of the two, a sturdy, weather-beaten man, with a square, stern face and a look of power, laid his hand on his cutlass—he wore a broad blade in place of the usual rapier. The other, whom every line of his shaven face, as well as his dress, proclaimed a priest—and perhaps more than a priest—crossed himself, and muttered something to his companion. Then he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... irresistible deity assumes such a fierce shape. Assuming again the form of the sword, the bow, the mace, the dart, the trident, the mallet, the arrow, the thick and short club, the battle-axe, the discus, the noose, the heavy bludgeon, the rapier, the lance, and in fact of every kind of weapon that exists on earth, Chastisement moves in the world. Indeed, Chastisement moves on earth, piercing and cutting and afflicting and lopping off and dividing and striking and slaying and rushing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... spear-handle. Along one end of this he laid the handle of his knife; and with thongs, which he had already cut out of the strap of his bullet-pouch, he spliced the knife and pole together. This gave him a formidable weapon—for the knife was a "bowie," and had a long blade, with a point like a rapier. He was not slow in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... there darted flashes of light, like rapier thrusts, words that looked and stabbed, heroic laughter. Gradually an impression emerged from his first reading, perhaps through the biased scheme of the selections. Voluntarily or involuntarily the German editors had selected ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Lowrie by striking his mighty heavy weapon from his hand; but this victory was of no account in the general action when Harry's rapier went spinning over his head, and he went down on his back before the vigorous fencing of Yaspard. He was on his feet, however, in time to witness the final roll over of Bill and Gibbie. They had reached the water's edge, ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth Relinquish her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue. But ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... the unicorn plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler like the swift, relentless thrusting of a rapier. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... cheerless room; on the picture of the Duchess Hedwig, untouched by tragedy or grief; on the heavy, paneled old doors through which, once on a time, Prince Hubert had made his joyous exits into a world that had so early cast him out; on his swords, crossed over the fireplace; his light rapier, his heavy cavalry saber; on the bright head of his little son, around whom already so many plots ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Killemalivo aristocracy the favourite weapons were the duelling pistol and the "florette," or rapier. The "pelado," or lower orders, preferred the "lingua de vaca," which means literally "cow's tongue," a nasty-looking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... English factory, where, though my arrival was very unexpected, I was received with every mark of attention and civility. The select committee, at this time, consisted of Mr Fitzhugh, the president, Mr Bevan and Mr Rapier. They immediately gave me an account of such stores as the India ships were able to afford us; and though I have not the smallest doubt, that the commanders were desirous of assisting us with every thing they could spare, consistently with a regard to their own safety, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Workers, protected, encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to 'live by the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... convince; but to converse in a private assembly is a different affair, and rare are the characters who can be endured if they exceed a whisper to their neighbours. But though mild and silent, be ever ready with the rapier of repartee, and be ever armed with the breastplate of good temper. You will infallibly gather laurels if you add to these the spear of sarcasm and the shield ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... knew not what I did, But I hastened home with my rapier hid Under my cloak, and the blade was wet. Just open that cabinet there and see The strange ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... same again. It was impossible. She was not meant for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down trees ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... yards away, lights were still burning, against rule, for the hour was late. Glad that there was something I could rail out against, I strode down upon the men, and caught them assembled in Diccon's cabin, dicing for to-morrow's rum. When I had struck out the light with my rapier, and had rated the rogues to their several quarters, I went back through the gathering storm to the brightly-lit, flower-decked room, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... monarch's equestrian figure at Charing Cross, disappear?"—It disappeared about the time of the coronation of Her present Majesty, when some scaffolding was erected about the statue, which afforded great facilities for removing the rapier (for such it was); and I always understood it found its way, by some means or other, to the Museum, so called, of the notoriously frolicsome Captain D——, where, in company with the wand of the Great Wizard of the North, and other well-known ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... appointed. His old body-servant vainly pleaded with his master to take his stout blade instead of the flimsy parade sword the Admiral carried. Muennichhausen advised against it; it would be too heavy, he said. Stahl's weapon was a long fighting rapier, and to this the treacherous second made no objection. Almost at the first thrust he ran the Admiral through. The seconds held his servant while Stahl jumped on his horse and galloped away. Tordenskjold breathed out his dauntless ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... marked-out, breast high upon one of the supporters of the chimney-piece, which happened to be a massive half-nude figure, the shape of a heart—the figure being about four inches in diameter. Apparently satisfied with his work, he drew back a few feet, turned up his right sleeve, and grasping his rapier by the handle, made the thin blade whistle as he waved it through the air and dropped gracefully at once into position, as if prepared to assault or receive an enemy, the enemy being the dark oak, ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... dubb'd with unhatch'd rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... took them as far as Belgium, and then Lieutenant West and I carried them to London. D'Artagnan's share was a bad rapier-wound." ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... into the whirlpool of society, lose that fortune at play, come to Gobseck pretty often. The world will say that I am a Jew, a Tartar, a usurer, a pirate, will say that I have ruined you! I snap my fingers at them! If anybody insults me, I lay my man out; nobody is a surer shot nor handles a rapier better than your servant. And every one knows it. Then, have a friend—if you can find one—and make over your property to him by a fictitious sale. You call that a fidei commissum, don't you?' he ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... nappe, cloth, meant the servant who looked after the napery. The martial sound with which this distinguished name strikes a modern ear is due to historical association, assisted, as I have somewhere read, by its riming with rapier! The water-supply was ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and, seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprung out of the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the ghost saw this he would have turned and fled; but the young nobleman gave him such a blow on the head with his fist that he fell upon the ground with a loud wailing. Summa: ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... oaths and laughter. He addresses himself to ladies with the wagging of his lock, and complements like Euphues or the knights of the Sun; yet his phrase is the worst apparalled thing about him, for it is plain fustian.[ED] His thigh is always well apointed with a rapier, yet peaceable enough, and makes[EE] a wound in nothing but the scabard, yet[EF] rather than point the field, hee'l pull it out in the street. He is weaponed rather in the street, than the highway, for he fears not a thief, but a serjeant. His clothes and himself grow stale ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Science of Defence, in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the exactest Method now ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... twixt the hosts of Greece and Troy, (When Paris and the Spartane King should end 55 The nine yeares warre) held up his brasen launce For signall that both hosts should cease from armes, And heare him speak; so Barrisor (advis'd) Advanc'd his naked rapier twixt both sides, Ript up the quarrell, and compar'd six lives 60 Then laid in ballance with six idle words; Offer'd remission and contrition too, Or else that he and D'Ambois might conclude The others dangers. D'Ambois lik'd the last; But Barrisors friends (being equally ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... volumes? Forty? Fifty? I wish for my part there were a hundred more, and would never tire of him reselling prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a magnificent trio. I think I like d'Artagnan in his own memoirs best. I bought him years and years ago, price fivepence, in a little parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He thereupon raised his club, which was big enough to have knocked down an ox, intending no doubt to have knocked me down with it, as probably he would have done, had I not, in the twinkling of an eye, whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running of him through up to the hilt had he stood his ground, but the sudden and unexpected sight of my bright blade glittering in the dark night, did so amaze and terrify ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... first-rate fight of it, do Messrs. Irving dei Franchi and M. Terriss de Chateau Renaud, until the latter collapses, and "subsequent proceedings interested him no more." As long as the strong right arm of the Corsican Brother can draw a good and shining rapier, he will draw as good and brilliant a house as he did on the first night of this revival. Why ought this piece to go well in the first theatre in Ireland? Why? because it's a great play ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... lyrical elements and makes up for the loss by the cultivation of point. Above all, it becomes the instrument of satire, stinging like a wasp where the satirist pure and simple uses the deadlier weapons of the bludgeon and the rapier. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... before lunch, and at table he did not seem especially devoted to Ellen in her father's jealous eyes. He joked Lottie, and exchanged those passages or repartee with her in which she did not mind using a bludgeon when she had not a rapier at hand; it is doubtful if she was very sensible of the difference. Ellen sat by in passive content, smiling now and then, and Boyne carried on a dignified conversation with Mr. Pogis, whom he had asked to lunch at his table, and who listened with one ear to the vigorous retorts of Lottie in her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a town council held now and then in an ancient wainscoted hall, with painted panels and coats of arms, carved oaken seats black with age, and narrow windows from which men once looked down into the street, wearing trunk hose and rapier. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... frightened. I believe I should have taken an old rapier and a light and gone to look, but for very shame. And besides, there were two thick floors between me and the door, and that itself was set in the heavy wall between the cellar of this wing of the building and that under its main body; so that if it had been opened, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole's cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bosom and a-morn doth moan * The Voice, ah Love, who shows strength weakness grown! His lashes' rapier-blade hath rent my heart; * That keen curved brand my me hath overthrown: That freshest cheek-rose fills me with desire: * Fair fall who plucketh yonder bloom new-blown! Since love befel me for that youth did ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that the rest should stay in their boates, which was granted: neuerthelesse they tooke small heede of these wordes; for on a suddaine they came foorth of the boate, entring the shippe, euery Spaniarde taking him to his Rapier which they brought in the boate, with other weapons, and a drumme wherewith to triumph ouer them. Thus did the Spaniards enter the shippe, plunging in fiercely vpon them, some planting themselues vnder the decke, some entring the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I have it: thanks, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... purple enamel on his left shoulder, draped his left side; falling open on the right, it was caught by another buckle just outside the right knee. The arrangement loosed the right arm, but was a serious hamper to walking, and made it inconvenient to get out the rapier, the handle of which was protrusively suggested through the cloak. A tunic of bright orange color, short in sleeve and skirt, covered his body. Where undraped, tight-fitting hose terminating in red shoes, flashed their elongated black ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... was arranged with all due pomp; odes for the dog were indited by the gross; and at night we all turned out, near a thousand of us, a lantern in one hand and our rapier in the other, and so proceeded through the town, the bells chiming and ringing, till the dog was entombed. Then came a, feed which lasted till broad daylight, when you sent your acknowledgments to the college dons ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and manly he looked in his glittering armour, with the red and yellow sash and the rapier with its large, flashing basket-hilt at his side; yet she said to herself: "Poor, handsome fellow! How many would be proud to lean on your arm! Why do you care for one who can never love you, and to whom you will appear insignificant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Shaw as a Greek girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' contrasted charmingly with her sunny ease. He acted the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy light in his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and his rapier glittering under his short black cloak, which fell apart in the dance, were all perfect. It was a picture long to be remembered, and as long as I could watch these two I had no desire to take part in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... pardon them. A commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Genevieve and the bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... officials, who "walked on the stars," and sometimes snubbed him in public, the rapier of ridicule was too light for his heavy hand, and he took up the sledge-hammer, telling them he was the same man to-day as yesterday, and only his circumstances were different—his daughter being about to become the lady of the first house in the island, and none of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... patrolling the streets, and who came in numbers to the rescue. I think that neither Mr. Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for my interference. He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number. But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask of black ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... citizens in a suit of mean and shabby armour, and, as soon as he has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has come to. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's cafe is now situated, and ran him through with his rapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace of the Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that within the hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house to guard him. In as short space, the Orsini called out three ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... ceaseless shower of riper, fairer fruit. The topic was "Table-Talk, or Conversation;" and the lecture was its own most perfect illustration. It was not a sermon, nor an oration, nor an argument; it was the perfection of talk; the talk of a poet, of a philosopher, of a scholar. Its wit was a rapier, smooth, sharp, incisive, delicate, exquisite. The blade was pure as an icicle. You would have sworn that the hilt was diamond. The criticism was humane, lofty, wise, sparkling; the anecdote so choice and apt, and trickling from ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... when the sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described as eating, is one ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... get up! I have lost my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te gire. Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne, ta pla ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... on his right side, Lusine on his left, and the egg-stealer behind him. He removed the Jail-breaker's rapier from his sheath. The official was ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... sayd: That if their Graces and Greatnesses would giue me leave to play at mine owne Countrey Weapon called the Quarter Staffe, I was then ready there an Oposite, against any Commer.' When a 'hansome and well Spirited Spaniard steps foorth, with his Rapier and Poniard,' Peeke explained that he 'made little account of that One to play with, and should shew ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... have been replaced to-day by others; but nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... times he had watched them or their duplicates striding and mincing and bounding by, each moving like an animated note of interrogation! They were long, and medium, and short. There were women of a thinness beyond comparison, sheathed in skirts as featly as a rapier in a scabbard. There were women of a monumental, a mighty fatness, who billowed and rolled in multitudinous, stormy garments. There were slow eyes that drooped on one heavily as a hand, and quick ones that stabbed and withdrew, and glanced ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the Joey B. who claimed to be "rough and tough and devilish sly;" and Susan Nipper, as swift of tongue as a rapier, and as sharp? Reader, don't you know all these people? For myself, I have jostled against them constantly any time the last twenty years. They are as much part of my life as the people I meet ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... and the sun, or even twiddled your thumbs at him in an indecorous or careless manner—look to it that you be prepared to draw and mayhap to be spitted upon his sword's point, with honor. Sdeath! A gentlemen of courage carries his life lightly at the needle end of his rapier, as that wonderful Japanese, Samsori, used to make the flimsiest feather preside in miraculous equilibration upon the tip of ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... gratified my curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom of prostrate fortunes it had rusted away at last, the scorn of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Revolution" he received an ovation such as few men have ever been accorded. The great Socialist theorist plunged into a keen and forceful attack upon the theories of the Bolsheviki. He was frequently interrupted by angry cries and by impatient questionings, which he answered with rapier-like sentences. He was asked what a "democratic" government should be, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... exhibit itself the other side of the Channel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with the wagging of his lock, and complements like Euphues or the knights of the Sun; yet his phrase is the worst apparalled thing about him, for it is plain fustian.[ED] His thigh is always well apointed with a rapier, yet peaceable enough, and makes[EE] a wound in nothing but the scabard, yet[EF] rather than point the field, hee'l pull it out in the street. He is weaponed rather in the street, than the highway, for he fears not a thief, but a serjeant. His clothes and himself grow stale together, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... The wages of sin is death! And his head is before thee. Heaven hath avenged the innocent blood he hath shed. Last night, in the lusty vigour of a drunken debauch, passing over London Bridge, he encounters another brawl, wherein, having run at the watchmen with his rapier, one blow of the bill which they carried severed thy brother's head from his trunk. The latter was cast over the parapet into the river. The head only remained, which an eye witness, if not a friend, hath sent to thee!" His ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... distrustful of his father's stability in the matter. The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... from an old married couple of servants who had passed their lives with the family. It appears that Paul, with Pauline in his arms, had barely reached the hall of the great house, and was giving orders to close the doors, when Jacques rushed in with a naked rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paul adjured him, by all he held sacred, not to attack him, as his blood was up, and, unarmed as he was, he would do him a mischief. Pauline, too, implored him by a sister's love to desist; but ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... exist to-day will not arise again. Upon this continent it is the time of times for the bold—the wisely bold. This that beckons is no mirage in the West; it is palpable fact. Say that I follow Burr—follow! overtake and pass him! He has a tarnished name and fifty years,—a supple rapier but a shrunken arm. He's daring; but I can be that and more. He plans; I can achieve. I am no dreamer and no braggart when I say that in the West I can play the Corsican. What can I do here? Become, perhaps, Governor of Virginia; wait until Mr. Jefferson is dead, and Mr. Madison is dead, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... first absolutely terror-stricken, and then suddenly inflamed with ungovernable fury. He dropped his cane on the ground, drew his rapier, and, without wasting a thought on his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... sector during all the time we were in the line. Sometimes we met individual German sentries and quick, quiet and accurate work was necessary to avoid detection and probable capture. I found that a French bayonet, the rapier shape, was a very satisfactory weapon at such times. Trench knives have been invented since and may be an improvement. After leaving me that night Captain Congreve came upon a party of eighty-two Germans, commanded by an officer, who had been cut off in one of the craters for several days, without ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... left side; falling open on the right, it was caught by another buckle just outside the right knee. The arrangement loosed the right arm, but was a serious hamper to walking, and made it inconvenient to get out the rapier, the handle of which was protrusively suggested through the cloak. A tunic of bright orange color, short in sleeve and skirt, covered his body. Where undraped, tight-fitting hose terminating in red shoes, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... dashing at them he brought it down on the side of one of their heads with such a swashing blow, that had it not been for his stiff hat the man would never have uttered oath again. As it was, he dropped like a log upon the stones of the yard, while his companion whipped out his rapier and made a vicious thrust; but my father, who was as active as he was strong, sprung aside, and bringing his cudgel down upon the outstretched arm of the officer, cracked it like the stem of a tobacco-pipe. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a sere figure, yet he was extraordinarily full of a polished virility, rapier-like. Howat could see the dark, satirical face shadowed by the elaborate wig, the rigid figure in precise, foppish dress. He heard Winscombe's slightly harsh, dominant voice. His position in England was, he knew, secure, high. Ludowika had been very sensible in marrying ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as a rapier, his face slightly flushed and his glance angry, yet he had the presence of mind to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... to fame, and toss a flower at your feet when all the world and his wife are crowding to hear the new prima donna." He had dropped back into the vein of light, ironical mockery which Diana was learning to recognise as characteristic of the man. It was like the rapier play of a skilled duellist, his weapon flashing hither and thither, parrying every thrust of his opponent, and with consummate ease keeping him ever ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... either. His coat was of sky-blue, slashed across with silver braidings, and with broad silver shoulder-straps on either side. A vest of white calamanca peeped out from beneath it, and knee-breeches of the same disappeared into high polished boots with gilt spurs upon the heels. A silver-hilted rapier and a plumed cap lying upon a settle beside him completed a costume which was a badge of honour to the wearer, for any Frenchman would have recognised it as being that of an officer in the famous Blue Guard of Louis the Fourteenth. A trim, dashing soldier ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sins that ever were, and do as he damned well pleased. An ancient phrase that—damned well. It went clear back to the Elizabethan Age, and Moonson had tried picturing himself as an Elizabethan man with a ruffle at his throat and a rapier in his clasp, brawling lustily in ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, 'You killed her.'" Poor Hutchinson could not see the cat he had killed any more than ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the staff he carried and which served as a sheath, a rapier, upon which in another instant he had thrown himself. There he lay on the ground, bleeding profusely, the point of the blade appearing through his back, when his many friends came running to give him aid. Don Quixote lifted up his head, and they found that he was still breathing. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the genial laugh of Gay At Pope's defiant ire! How Parnell's sallies brought in play The rapier wit of Prior! And how o'er all the banter's shift— The laughter's fall and swell— Upleaped the great guffaw of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... those ragged individuals to meet in Cato Street are not far off, they are not on the other side of the river, in the Borough, for example, in some garret or obscure cellar. The very first to confront the Guards and runners are Thistlewood and Ings; Thistlewood whips his long thin rapier through Smithers' lungs, and Ings makes a dash at Fitzclarence with his butcher's knife. Oh, there was something in those fellows! honesty and courage—but can as much be said for the inciters of the troubles of '32. No; they egged ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... nephew who would do me no small credit. I sent him to perfect his studies at Leyden, but shall I confess it to you? it was to find that no master nor discipline could keep him out of the riotings and quarrels of the worse sort of students. Nay, I found him laid by with a rapier thrust in the side from a duel, for no better cause than biting his thumb at a Scots law student in chapel, his apology being that to sit through a Dutch sermon drove him crazy. 'Tis not that he is not trustworthy. Find employment for the restless ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brief, as it is beautiful. One after one, the snow-peaks passed from the pallor of death to the glow of life. Then, sudden as an inspiration, the full splendour of morning broke, sublime as the eternity from which it came. Rapier-like shafts of light pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley. Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and moss, and rested, like a caress, upon Quita's ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... honour; and Mr. George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole's cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world fancies as I walked the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his person with envy, and on his light rapier with mistrust. In sooth, he was a proper man for stealing a lady's heart, either in hall or bower. Many had been his victims;—many were then in the last extremities of love. But of him it was currently spoken that he had never yet been ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... nimble-witted when he did speak. And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, a poise of the body which ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... When his companions, at Grancey's suggestion, left him alone, he locked the doors and a storm of apprehensions took hold upon him. The situation presented itself in two deadly alternatives, either his annihilation in eternal darkness, or else that his rapier must let out the red life-stream of a man who, hateful though he might be, was but a speaker of the truth. In that case, all would come out and justice have to be settled with, both human and divine. Yes, that ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... growing on it. The stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more.— Oh, yes, DIED,—with a small triangular mark in one breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the night- dews and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... splutter, Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his toy-rapier whets. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... lapidary polishing pebbles,—a pretty art, but not vested with the glories of sculpture, nor the mathematical magnitude of architecture. He does not walk a demigod, but a stiff Anglicised imitator of French paces. He is a symmetrical, but a small invisible personage at rapier practice." Now, clever as this is, it only proves that Addison is not a Shakspeare or Milton. He does not pretend to be either. He is no demigod, but he is a man, a lady-man if you will, but the lovelier on that account. Besides, he was cut off in his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... last, and my young brother and sister, catching the infection, began to whimper and to rub their eyes with their fists. Knowing so much more of my wild purpose than they did, and realizing that I might never return alive, I was the more tried in my resolution not to disgrace with tears the virgin rapier and dagger at my side. But finally I got somehow upon my horse, whose head Blaise Tripault was holding, and threw my last kisses to the family on the steps. I then managed voice enough to say "Good-bye, Blaise," ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... camp? Oho, le champ de bataille; I shall tell you, mademoiselle, I did fight at the bataille de Vittoria, com un diable, like littel devil. I did kill beaucoup d'Anglais. Mai my maitre, le capitain, he did give me a dam tump on my head wis his rapier, and did knock me down from on top of my horse, and make a me ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... the old lord his uncle, who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ordinary ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... throat was dry, and he could feel no more the fresh stirring of the air of the dawning. He would not stop to breathe, he had reached the point in his insensate fury when he could have flung himself upon the rapier's point and felt it cleave his breastbone and start through his back with the joy of hell, if he could have struck the other man deep but once. The thought made him start afresh; he fought like a thousand devils, his point leaping and flashing, and coming down with a crash; he stamped ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not intend to recall them, but assert the truth with the point of my rapier. If you are not as great a coward, as you are a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... to pull open a drawer, when something about the whip he was holding caught his attention. For a second he stared at it, muttering. Then, with a glance at the doorway, he thrust the thing beneath the skirt of his coat and wiped it as it had been a rapier.... ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Edward and the lusty George? And where's that valiant crook-back prodigy, Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York; I stain'd this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point Made issue from the bosom of the boy, And, if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly I should lament thy miserable state. I prithee, grieve to make me merry, York; Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... as it were out of space, and gave him a quick side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to the dak-bungalow," he ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... staff of him that was nearest to me, I said, "Sirrah, deliver your weapon." He thereupon raised his club, which was big enough to have knocked down an ox, intending no doubt to have knocked me down with it, as probably he would have done, had I not, in the twinkling of an eye, whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running of him through up to the hilt had he stood his ground, but the sudden and unexpected sight of my bright blade glittering in the dark night, did so amaze and terrify the man, that, slipping aside, he avoided my thrust, and letting ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... could not escape the look of suffering he had seen on her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... away, and falling on her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and, seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell so badly and cheerlessly ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... activity. His attire consisted of a cloak and doublet of scarlet cloth, very much stained and tarnished, and edged with gold lace, likewise the worse for wear; jack-boots, with huge funnel tops; spurs, with enormous rowels, and a rapier of preposterous length. He wore his own hair, which was swart and woolly, like that of a negro; and had beard and moustaches to match. His hat was fiercely cocked; his gestures swaggering and insolent; and he was perpetually racking his brain to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his anger, Brian forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into the ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he learned had to reach him some other way. His mind ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that court.—In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes. Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the fencing-master assassinated; for which his lordship was capitally tried, condemned, and hanged. Not being a peer of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... respecting diet; to which the young prince replied, "though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, "The one I use as a rapier and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... can imagine a glint of moonlight running up the blade of a rapier, you may know the chill flame of spite and despite that flickered in her eyes then as ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on a short and broad rapier, which he laid aside during the interview,—"I think, my Lord Cardinal, you encourage me to consider that our negotiation stands a fair chance of a prosperous close. Ten thousand florins, and my brother quits Viterbo, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... when Crichton, looking on his sanguinary success with indignation, offered to stake fifteen hundred pistoles, and mount the stage against him. The duke with some reluctance consented, and on the day fixed the combatants appeared: their weapon seems to have been single rapier, which was then newly introduced in Italy. The prize-fighter advanced with great violence and fierceness, and Crichton contended himself calmly to ward his passes, and suffered him to exhaust his vigour by his own fury. Crichton then became ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... funeral procession was arranged with all due pomp; odes for the dog were indited by the gross; and at night we all turned out, near a thousand of us, a lantern in one hand and our rapier in the other, and so proceeded through the town, the bells chiming and ringing, till the dog was entombed. Then came a, feed which lasted till broad daylight, when you sent your acknowledgments to the college dons for their kind sympathy, and ordered the meat to be sold at half-price. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... street, and a sallow-faced man with a slender malacca cane held in his hand as if it were a rapier, came to the door of the room and said something in French, indignant that he should be disturbed. He waved the cane menacingly after Meeker and slammed ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... accosted him suddenly, instinctively sought the hilt of his rapier. He was better skilled in the use of that weapon than was usual, and had no fear that he should be unable to escape from the constables, if not taken at a disadvantage. Still, as that would compel him to fly into the woods, and as it would separate him from Dulcibel, he had been very careful ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... himself in an armchair by the fireplace and threw one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said. "That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always my ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... refuse pit almost 40 feet square was discovered in the "industrial area" near the workshop, ironworking pit, and pottery kilns. Filled with trash from the first half of the 17th century, this pit contained such artifacts as a swepthilt rapier (made about 1600), a cutlass, the breastplate and backpiece of a light suit of armor, a number of utensils of metal, ceramics, and glass, to add to the collection of early 17th-century arts and crafts. Several smaller refuse pits were noted, and it is worth commenting ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries A rat, a rat! And, in this brainish apprehension,[2] kills The unseen ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... into the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... she has done so. France is full of widows and orphans from end to end. Perhaps in proportion to her population she has suffered the most of all. But in carrying out her hellish mission Germany has bled herself white also. Her heavy sword has done its work, but the keen French rapier has not lost its skill. France will stand at last, weak and tottering, with her huge enemy dead at her feet. But it is a fearsome business to see—such a business as the world never looked upon before. It is fearful for the French. It is fearful for the ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appeal could the princely-minded Champion make. It was to tell her that he would bear her away forthwith as his own true bride. And they thus both being agreed, habited as a page in green sarcenet, her buskins of the smoothest kid-skin, and her rapier of Lydian steel, secured over her shoulder by an orange-coloured scarf, and mounted on a gentle palfrey, she quitted the land of Georgia; one of her maidens, habited also in page's guise, attending, whom Niccolo took under his especial care. Thus they ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... Along one end of this he laid the handle of his knife; and with thongs, which he had already cut out of the strap of his bullet-pouch, he spliced the knife and pole together. This gave him a formidable weapon—for the knife was a "bowie," and had a long blade, with a point like a rapier. He was not slow in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... himself at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to be gone about with ceremony. "Ventre St. Gris!" he muttered hoarsely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs of an ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax of a vulgar squabble, To redden your foe's nose, or make him hobble For half a week or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... 1689 that they began to assume or to be characterized by a different designation—we mean that of rapparees; so called, it is said, from the fact of their using the half pike or short rapier; although, for our part, we are inclined to think that they were so termed from the word rapio, to plunder, which strikes us as the most appropriate and obvious. At all events it is enough to say that the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "plain, dacent claes. As for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I would hae waired my siller better gates than that." And he proposed I should buy winter hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... understanding between them, which, correctly interpreted, meant: You and I understand these things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting him a personal slight and declared that he "would be hanged if it wasn't a rapier!" The consequence was a fight which transformed the place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French marquis, but to say, "Parbleu!" draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found, a week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen, and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am rescued,—rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the assumed daughter ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the intensity of it was like a rapier- thrust, down through her fury to the quick of womanly consciousness; she shrank back. "Don't," she said, faintly; "don't—" For one instant she forgot that she hated ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... earnest gentleman like Colonel Winwood the tempting emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he was proud of the impression he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at second hand—a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, and all that—a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... a pistol from under his cloak, and fired full in his face. Had it happened in these days of detonators, Frank's chance had been small; but to get a ponderous wheel-lock under weigh was a longer business, and before the fizzing of the flint had ceased, Frank had struck up the pistol with his rapier, and it exploded harmlessly over his head. The man instantly dashed the weapon in his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... that of his adversary; but with these homebred implements he never failed to repulse the father with something of the power with which a nervous cudgel player would deal with a skilful master of the rapier, setting at nought his passados by the direct and unanswerable arguments of a broken head ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thousand men into bloody graves? That was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Would the struggle frighten and horrify the world? It was possible. But these things were unimportant. The rebellion must be crushed. The sledge-hammer must strike until Lee's keen rapier was shattered. Hammer and rapier were matched against each other—the combat was a l'outrance—the hammer must beat down the rapier, or fall from the grasp of him ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... He was short and slight, and could have slipped through a very narrow space, but Trombin seemed to swell himself out till he filled the bridge from side to side, and kept his hand on the hilt of his rapier. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... wild flowers, the hunchback was clad soberly in black that was well-worn, indeed, and grizzled at the seams, but neatly attended. He sat in the window, reading intently in a little volume, and, again unlike his associates, while he read he nursed between his knees a long and formidable rapier. Those at the table paid him no heed; most of them knew his ways, and he, on his side, seemed to be quite undisturbed in his studies by the noise and clamor of the drinking-party, and to be entirely absorbed in the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... formalities of a first acquaintance, and say, dear Smith;—Dear Smith, I am delighted to have been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession—a bona fide flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon—for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... air want something different. Many a good man has lost his seat from not observing that rule. In the open air pitch out a fact or two—not too many—or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent. No rapier play—it's lost then—but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,—a hemisphere of the world,—which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the walls richly adorned with carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps somewhat too stiff to be graceful. He was evidently a person of note, one ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... talk in the street, between the rival leaders, there is a natural tendency to that sort of wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret. Each mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point, as the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier. And the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city, when I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such polished intercourse; including especially two men whose experience and culture would have been remarkable in any community in the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... guignon—of shadowing and resistless fate—which creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that your villain should always be allowed a certain run for his money—a temporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel the marquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, of the book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anything within those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going (very sensibly) to fly at him. He is altogether too much in appearance and too little in effectuality of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I was astonished at the endurance, strength, and grace of the boys and girls in gymnastics, running, jumping, dancing, and riding. The boys I also saw wrestling, fencing, and shooting. A few passes with the rapier and the sabre with several of the youngsters showed me, to my surprise, that they were not merely my equals, but in many points were superior to me, though you know that I am one of the best fencers in Italy, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... resembled, pretty closely, that which they had led so long on board ship. The soldiers received them with good feeling and camaraderie, and they were soon completely at home with them. They practiced drill, the use of the pike and rapier; taking very great care, in all these exercises, to betray exceeding clumsiness. With the bow, alone, they were able to show how expert ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, after the manner ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... with a short taffeta cloak over, bound at the neck by a monstrous ruff, out of which his face looked like a calf's head from a dish of trimmings. To crown all, a white plume waved in his hat, while the rapier at his waist was caught up jauntily behind him, so that the point and the hilt lay on a level at either hip. His face was both cheerful and weak; and, as he strutted up to where Ludar and I stood, his gait reminded me much of a chanticleer amidst ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... writers is unchequered by any shade of patronage on the one hand, of jealousy or adulation on the other. The elder recognised in the younger an intellect as keen, a spirit as fearless as his own, who in the Eyre controversy had "plunged his rapier to the hilt in the entrails of the Blatant Beast," i.e. Popular Opinion. He admired all Ruskin's books; the Stones of Venice, the most solid structure of the group, he named "Sermons in Stones"; he resented an attack on Sesame ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... eve of their departure Roger's father presented Harry and Roger each with a splendid new rapier, the blades of which were made of the best Toledo steel, of so fine a temper that it was possible, without injury to the weapon, to bend the point round until it met the hilt, the blade springing back, when released, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Defence, in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so vain and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... my house! the man who has abused my hospitality!" cried the haciendado, starting up in astonishment, and seizing a long Toledo rapier that hung by the side of his bed, "Who is the man that has acted so, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... at her straight in the eyes, for they had both risen, the luncheon-bell having rung. She unflinchingly returned the glance, which on both sides was that of two adversaries mentally appraising each other prior to a rapier-bout. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness, and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful. Its movements are as the sword-play of an alert, poised, well-knit, strong-wristed fencer with the rapier, in which the skill impresses one more than the force, while without the force the skill would be valueless, even hurtful, to its possessor. There is a graceful humour with it occasionally, even in his most serious poems adding much to their charm. To illustrate ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... perfect gull indeed. A gull is he who fears a velvet gown, And, when a wench is brave, dares not speak to her; A gull is he which traverseth the town, And is for marriage known a common wooer; A gull is he which, while he proudly wears A silver-hilted rapier by his side, 10 Endures the lie[461] and knocks about the ears, Whilst in his sheath his sleeping sword doth bide; A gull is he which wears good handsome clothes, And stands in presence stroking up his hair, And fills up his unperfect speech ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... charms had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of shipping, much of it the oddest they had ever seen. Instead of the straight, strong masts they were accustomed to, here were those that shot up so tall and slender they seemed to bend over of their own weight, like a young sapling. To these rapier-like masts were fastened sails of quaint square shape and dingy hues, or of sharp triangular form, which they learned afterwards were the lateen sails they had read of, but never seen. The prows of these small vessels were all so oddly curved and shaped, while the figureheads suggested nightmare ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... predecessor in office, the first President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glorious peal of trumpets on his ear Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... into an atmosphere of awe and solemnity, and his tone in speaking of 'rape' and 'torture' gave them an ineffable loathsomeness. It seemed as if so much soul had never been put into a Saxon speech. Keen satire, rasping rebuke, an avalanche of indignation, rapier-like thrusts to the vital fibre of the situation, and withal the invincible cogency of argument against the Turkish Government, gave the oration a primary place amongst the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... mast seemed to collapse into itself as though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... thine; By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest, And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart Where it was forged, with my rapier's point. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... day I would tell about found us just at the edge of the little buttes. Down one of the slopes the growing half light revealed two oryx feeding, magnificent big creatures, with straight rapier horns three feet in length. These were most exciting and desirable, so off my horse I got and began to sneak up on them through the low tufts of grass. They fed quite calmly. I congratulated myself, and slipped nearer. Without even looking in my direction, they trotted away. Somewhat chagrined, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began puffing on it; Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him, waiting like two drawn weapons—a battle ax and a rapier. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... tragedy or grief; on the heavy, paneled old doors through which, once on a time, Prince Hubert had made his joyous exits into a world that had so early cast him out; on his swords, crossed over the fireplace; his light rapier, his heavy cavalry saber; on the bright head of his little son, around whom already so many plots and counterplots ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... came in numbers to the rescue. I think that neither Mr. Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for my interference. He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number. But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued his saunter all alone down the street, the workmen snarling ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... shrewd glance flashing over her, keen and elusive as a rapier. Daisy faced him quite fully and fearlessly. The possibility of a conflict in this quarter had occurred to her before. She would not shirk it, but she was determined that it should be as brief ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... capture he had fallen upon another child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... as he saw the huge dog suddenly turn on its leash and raise itself off the ground to stick out a long rapier-like tongue and lick the girl's cheek before she could move her ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... to him, and was moved to pray by him, and the Lord was entreated and restored him to health. When I was come down the stairs into a lower room and was speaking to the servants, a serving-man of his came raving out of another room, with a naked rapier in his hand, and set it just to my side. I looked steadfastly on him and said "Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt thou do with thy carnal weapon, it is no more to me than a straw." The standers-by were much troubled, and he went away in a rage; but when news came of it to his master, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... evidently the old "T. Gray" trade axes of the southwest. A sword, described as having a long, slender, straight blade, inlaid with a flower pattern of yellow metal along the back, was probably an old Spanish rapier. ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
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