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More "Relic" Quotes from Famous Books



... you will have it that I am poor, do not reject the soul I present to you in this paper, and give me back the crown, which, since it has been touched by your hand, shall remain with me as a hallowed relic as long as ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... himself into other property; and thereupon he thrusts him out again, and so on. It was a fiction invented by the English lawyers to try the right of two parties to the possession of real estate; because they could do it in no other way, and the 4th of July had not freed us from this relic of antiquity. The issue here was, whether Fisk had a better right to the possession of this land, than had Cole; and whatever did not in some way help to enlighten them on that issue, had no business to ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving from the tree-temples of the earliest primitive East when nature-worship prevailed. The English engineers ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... Boniface VIII (or John XXII) just inside the cathedral is, with a bishop in one of the sacristies, the only remnant; while of the second facade, for which Donatello and other early Renaissance sculptors worked, the giant S. John the Evangelist, in the left aisle, is perhaps the most important relic. Other statues in the cathedral were also there, while the central figure—the Madonna with enamel eyes—may be seen in the cathedral museum. Although not great, the group of the Madonna and Child now over the central door of the Duomo ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... the discovery of documents which owed all their existence to his own ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his notion of "fun." Whenever the whim seized him, he would in gravest manner reveal to the Press, or even contrive to bring to the notice of a learned society, some alleged relic in manuscript or in stone which he had deliberately manufactured. His sole aim was to recreate himself with laughter at the perplexity that such unholy pranks aroused. It is one of these Puck-like tricks on Steevens's part that has spread confusion among those of my correspondents, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... with suppliant hands implor'd The gods' protection, and their star ador'd. 'Now, now,' said he, 'my son, no more delay! I yield, I follow where Heav'n shews the way. Keep, O my country gods, our dwelling place, And guard this relic of the Trojan race, This tender child! These omens are your own, And you can yet restore the ruin'd town. At least accomplish what your signs foreshow: I stand resign'd, and am ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... black, greasy Family Bible, evidently a relic of better days. It had probably been hidden under ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... had supposed it was. After a half hour's search she succeeded in finding it. Tears coursed down her cheeks like rain as she removed from the corner of the little box, where it had lain for so many years, this precious relic of a dear father, who in all probability, was buried beneath the ocean. Dashing them hastily away, she started again for Mrs. Carr's. The ice cream was procured on the way, and, just as the clock struck eight, she arrived at the door. One hour has elapsed since she left. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... lowland population was firmly attached to the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... brought out with him from England, thick-soled brown boots, and good leather leggings. An old Norfolk jacket completed the outfit, so far as his outer garb was concerned. And when he had donned an old and somewhat battered, but still serviceable, topi helmet—a relic of more prosperous days—and had fastened round him a leather belt and bandolier combined, filled it with cartridges, and attached to it one of Penryn's revolvers in a leather holster, it would have been rather difficult to recognise in him the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... tenderly than the requirements of ordinary social intercourse call for or allow, the hand of every woman they meet They are not necessarily flirts. Perhaps they never go farther than that clinging hand-pressure. It is a relic of the customs of the days of chivalry—a little more and this man will kiss the hand. Let the lady be beautiful, gracious, the hour dusk, or close on midnight, the room a pretty one, and the environment pleasing, he will ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... going away?" asked Fletcher, catching at the words in anxious haste, yet looking pleased at her desire to keep the relic. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... ever performed his disagreeable duties better than our romancer. Here is a tattered little official document signed by Hawthorne when he was watching over the interests of the country: it certifies his attendance at the unlading of a brig, then lying at Long Wharf in Boston. I keep this precious relic side by side with one of a similar custom-house character, signed ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... excessive indiscretion of some of her visitors, for questions literally rained upon her, and she often grew faint through having to repeat her story so many times. Ladies of high position fell on their knees, kissed her gown, and would have liked to carry a piece of it away as a relic. She also had to defend her chaplet, which in their excitement they all begged her to sell to them for a fabulous amount. One day a certain marchioness endeavoured to secure it by giving her another one which she had brought with her—a chaplet with a golden cross and beads of real pearls. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... mother's, and a brass kettle, which had belonged to her grandmother, and which Mrs. Parker, the lady from western New York, said was the most valuable of all the articles sent. Antiques were sure to sell to relic hunters, and a big price must be put upon them, she told the committee who looked in dismay at the piles of goods as they came pouring in, wondering how they were ever to bring anything like order out of the ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... that the Snuggery was an utterly vicious place. Vice never so much as thought of wearing any disguise here. No glimmer of wit played over the foul substance of the songs that were sung, and hid it in dazzle from too close observation. No relic of youth and freshness, no artfully-assumed innocence and vivacity, concealed the squalid deterioration of the worn-out human counterfeits which stood up to sing, and were coarsely painted and padded to look like fine women. Their fellow performers among the men were such ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... live for thirty-five years,—in the parish of St. Thomas in the East,—that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... not risen from the easy-chair,—a comfortable old family relic which stood opposite the old-fashioned piano. She leaned forward, however, so that the sealskin mantle, which the warmth of the room and the length of her wait had prompted her to throw back, settled down from her shoulders in rich and luxurious folds. She gave him, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... She made also several other pieces of workmanship, which were admired by connoisseurs, more especially a Crucifix made out of a single piece of corneil wood, which she presented to Father de Bray, and which afterwards fell into the hands of Madaine de Maintenon, who valued it as a precious relic. She wrought also three other crucifixes, one very small, which she wore round her neck; another, three feet high, which, she placed in her cell; and a third, six feet high, which she carved out of the wood of a fir-tree, which had been struck down by lightning in the forest, and which she ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... curious relic of Sir Isaac survives in the garden at Cranbury Park, viz. a sun-dial, said to have been calculated by Newton. It is in bronze, in excellent preservation, and the gnomon so perforated as to form the cypher I. C. seen either way. The dial is divided ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... land with the Main Party, and Neale, who will remain with the Ship's Party, turn out at six and rouse the afterguard for the pumps, a daily evolution, and soon an unholy din may be heard coming up from the wardroom. "Rouse and shine, rouse and shine: show a leg, show a leg" (a relic of the old days when seamen took their wives to sea). "Come on, Mr. Nelson, it's seven o'clock. All hands on ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the side; the bones settled to the bottom of the grave, while the skull, if intact, is reached first by excavators and the conclusion drawn at once that it is "on top of the other bones." This error of observation is quite common among relic hunters, and is not ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... the omniscient and watchful providence of God. It is a very ancient symbol, and is supposed by some to be a relic of the primitive sun-worship. Volney says (Les Ruines, p. 186) that in most of the ancient languages of Asia, the eye and the sun are expressed by the same word. Among the Egyptians the eye was the symbol of their supreme god, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... the fact that in front of the house lies a lawn of that weedless turf which is only found in this country in such places as the Arena at Frejus. In the center of the lawn stands a sun dial—grey, green and ancient—a relic of those days when men lived by hours, and not by minutes, as we do to-day. It is all of the old world—of that old, old world of France beside which our British antiquities are, with a few exceptions, youthful. This was the birthplace of Madame de Clericy and of ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... nails, beads, and other trifles, at an easy rate. In one of their canoes we observed the head of a woman lying in state, adorned with feathers and other ornaments. It had the appearance of being alive; but, on examination, we found it dry, being preserved with every feature perfect, and kept as the relic of some deceased relation. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... the 14th day of May, 1796, that he received his license to practice law. The license, written in a bold hand on paper, was signed by judges Peter Lyons, Edmund Winston, and Joseph Jones, and is preserved by his children as a family relic. His first fee was derived from a warrant trying, in which a Mr. Taliaferro, who was his landlord, was a party, and was fifteen shillings, which helped to pay the rent of his office. His first important criminal case was the defence of a man on ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... should be destroyed is, indeed, greatly to be lamented. At one of the late meetings of the Royal Irish Academy a communication was made of the intention of the proprietor of the estate at New Grange to destroy that most gigantic relic of druidical times, which has justly been termed the Irish pyramid, merely because its vast size 'cumbereth the ground.' At Mellifont a modern cornmill of large size has been built out of the stones of the beautiful monastic buildings, some of which still adorn that charming ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... One interesting relic of the former supremacy of the Portuguese was the right claimed by Portugal to nominate the Roman Catholic prelates throughout India. This right, natural enough in the sixteenth century, became absurd in the nineteenth. A long quarrel arising from this claim has recently ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens

... the Colonel, beginning to wax indignant, 'do they send such a museum relic here to fight a reasonably ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... let me add; the boat being no longer serviceable, was burnt, Sturt giving as a reason that he was reluctant to leave her like a log on the water. What a priceless relic that ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... gear," answered the Mate, hugging himself at thought of the new lanyards, the stout Europe gammon lashings, he had rove off when the boom was rigged. Now was the time when Sanny Armstrong's spars would be put to the test. The relic of the ill-fated Glenisla, now a shapely to'gallant mast, was bending like a whip! "Good iron," he shouted as the backstays twanged a ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... remains that practically all children up to a certain age consider it perfectly legitimate to lie to their enemies if they but tell the truth to their friends. Children may lie to the policeman, or to the teacher, or to anyone with whom they are for the moment in conflict. This is a relic of the time when our savage ancestors found it necessary to practice deceit in order to save themselves from their enemies. So ingrained is this instinct that many a child will stick to a falsehood before the teacher ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... last revealed in a miraculous manner to the prayers of Landulphus, one of his successors in the episcopacy.—The cathedral of Chartres, in early ages, set up a rival claim for the possession of this precious relic; but its existence here was formally verified at the end of the seventeenth century, by the opening of the chasse, in which a small quantity of bones was found tied up in a leather bag, with a certificate ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... a procession toward? or a relic to be displayed?" asked Ambrose, trying to recollect whose feast-day it ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... some seven thousand years old; that his existence, his history, is a myth, traced upon the cylinders of Babylon; that man never fell except to himself and his own conscience; that the "redemption" scheme is an idiosyncrasy of Paul; that a priesthood is avowedly a pagan conception, and sacrifice a relic of barbarism. Tell them this, for you know it is true, and that your creeds and confessions are false. Speak out as your conscience bids you speak, that yours is no temple of truth, no cathedral vast enough to hold the race, nothing but ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... after and stow the plugs away in their capacious pockets. As the town became settled, visitors would carry off the bones as mementos of the old chief. After they were all gone, some wags would place the bones of some dead sheep for relic-hunters to pick up and carry home as the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... relic of the past, still in vogue in the offices of daily papers, which is of an absurdity truly exquisite. It is the practice of paying by the column, or, in other words, paying a premium for verbosity, and imposing a fine upon conciseness. It will often happen that information which cost three ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... day army of heroes would have no opportunity to display the individual valor of its members, just so a merchant who counts upon his direct acquaintanceship for success, is a relic of ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... to the former high reputation of the Radish survives in the "Annual Radish Feast at Levens Hall, a custom dating from time immemorial, and supposed by some to be a relic of feudal times, held on May 12th at Levens Hall, the seat of the Hon. Mrs. Howard, and adjoining the high road about midway between Kendal and Milnthorpe. Tradition hath it that the Radish feast arose out of a rivalry between the families of Levens Hall and Dallam ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... and would-be detective, Dallas. A pretty penny it must have cost. Where did he get the money? Skylarking around the country like a millionaire, and what did he pick out that antiquated curiosity of a relic car for? Well, it was the 'Dallas Special,' sure enough, and it made its run just the same as if he was a ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... scalping-knife. In Boston and other of the older and safer settlements, the Indians had found devoted friends before Philip's War; and even now they had apologists and defenders, prominent among whom was that relic of antique Puritanism, old Samuel Sewall, who was as conscientious and humane as he was prosy, narrow, and sometimes absurd, and whose benevolence towards the former owners of the soil was trebly reinforced by his notion that ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... the Faith among the unfortunate natives. Whereupon the Pope created him Count and Governor of the country, the heathen name of which he changed to St. Paul, and gave him as the emblem of his authority a sword in the hilt of which was fixed a thorn of gold. This holy relic, under the name of the Spina d'Oro, is preserved, for the reverence of the faithful. In the cathedral of the city of Vallanza, where the descendants of St. Guy still reign as lieutenants of the Sovereign ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... theory of the Oriental origin of fairies? At the same time, let us admit that the superstitious belief in capnomancy—i.e., divination by smoke—still said to be prevalent in some parts of the Highlands, is probably the relic of the old sacrifices by fire to the gods. In so far the superstition has a mythological significance, but then, are we not driven back to the consideration whether these gods were not actual personages ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... strange snatches and fragments of song has been all but irretrievably lost, and almost wholly unsuspected. Stonehenge, or the Coir-mhor, on Salisbury Plain, is the grandest remaining monument of the Druids in the British Isles. Everybody has heard of this mysterious relic, though few know that many other Druidical circles of minor importance are scattered over various parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In Scotland they are especially numerous. One but little known, and not mentioned by the Duke of Argyll in his ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... myself sometimes," Easton said placidly. "I suppose it is a relic of our original savage nature, when men did not mind dirt, and lived by hunting and fighting and ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... neckcloth, and a large projecting shirt frill—which were all the peculiarities of person and dress that could be distinctly made out. He was smoking a long pipe, and placidly rocking himself to and fro. His appearance, through the two windows, was that of a finely preserved relic ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... you are wondering at England and her relic of Woden-worship, shall I tell you that here, in America, we too possess relics of this very pagan god to which some people accord a superstitious regard? Look on the threshold, or above the door of some cottage or cabin, and you will see nailed there a common horse-shoe as a protection against ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... willing to pay for the production of thousands of volumes annually, the value of which is inappreciable from its littleness, may perhaps not be unwilling to encourage, to the extent of the purchase of a small edition, the preservation in print of a relic which, even in the mere commonplace power of giving amusement, exceeds the majority of circulating novels: while readers whose appetites are more discriminating, and the students of the past, to whom the productions of their ancestors have a memorial value for themselves, may find their ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand. Differing accounts were given of its history and purport. Some authorities stated that a devotional cross had once formed the complete erection thereon, of which the present relic was but the stump; others that the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had been fixed there to mark a boundary or place of meeting. Anyhow, whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something sinister, or ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... some attention. Weakness, and fasting, and horror had overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay senseless by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine, the gaoler (a weak-minded man whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him with indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with half-suppressed pity when ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the stiff leg and straight left; they stood up to show tricks of foot and hand—cunning shifts and feints; they ducked and side-stepped and smote the empty air with whirling fists to the imminent peril of the owl that was a parrot, which moth-eaten relic seemed to watch them with his solitary glass eye. And ever the Spider's respect and admiration for the mild-eyed, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... Davis, the English navigator, had a chair made out of her timbers, which he presented to the University of Oxford, still guarded sacredly in the Bodleian Library. No wonder that Cowley, while sitting in it, wrote his stirring lines, and apostrophised it as "Great Relic!" How ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... are," was his smiling rejoinder. "But you don't expect to find in it a relic of the Revolution, do you?" he asked laughingly, pinching her cheek, then bending down to kiss again the rosy face upturned ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... human bones were found in the deposits of the early Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin Quignon relic ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... later the disagreeable relic of caterpillar existence ceased to canker the worshipful matron's public life, and the grim eyes of the past to cast malignant glances down into a white ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... "I can see her now. She wore a pince-nez and a bicycling skirt. I am sure of it. Come and sit down here, and I will prove to you how much cleverer I am than that ancient relic." ... ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... can examine this interesting problem on its merits, we have to get over one nasty puddle that lies at the beginning of it. Much of the prejudice against financiers is based on, or connected with, anti-Semitic feeling, that miserable relic of medieval barbarism. No candid examination of the views current about finance and financiers can shirk the fact that the common prejudice against Jews is at the back of them; and the absurdity of this prejudice is a very fair measure of the validity of other current notions on the subject ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... passion-kindled rhetoric. The time came when she had learned to listen for his step, when her eyes glistened at meeting him, when the words he uttered were treasured as from something more than a common mortal, and the book he had touched was like a saintly relic. It never suggested itself to her for an instant that this was anything more than such a friendship as Mercy might have cultivated with Great-Heart. She gave her confidence simply because she was very young and innocent. The green tendrils of the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... describes them, filthy in their habits, and treacherous in their character, but some would have seen, and seen truly, more beauty and dignity than he does with all his manliness and fairness of mind. However, his one fine old man is enough to redeem the rest, and is perhaps tire relic of a better day, a Phocion among ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... known, by positive evidence, to exist in any of the South Sea islands, except New Zealand, yet it is extremely probable, that it was originally prevalent in them all. The sacrificing human victims, which seems evidently to be a relic of this horrid practice, still obtains universally amongst these islanders; and it is easy to conceive, why the New Zealanders should retain the repast, which was probably the last act of these shocking rites, longer than the rest of their, tribe, who were situated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And the Ouled Nails could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge brass nails, such as ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... the synclines, but others, equally long-headed, discard entirely all theory of this kind, and drill wherever it may be most convenient or where other operators have already demonstrated the existence of gas. It will surprise many of our readers to know that the divining rod, that superstitious relic of the middle ages, is still frequently called upon to relieve the operator of the trouble of a rational decision. The site having been selected, the ordinary oil-drilling outfit is employed to sink a hole of about six inches in diameter until the gas is reached. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... of Saint-Jean-du-Doigt takes place on the 22nd of June, and is, perhaps, the most solemn of these festivals. During its celebration the relic of the Saint, the little finger of his right hand, is held before the high altar of the church by an abbe clad in his surplice. The finger is wrapped in the finest of linen, and one by one the congregation ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... find a comprehensive formula for what the Renaissance meant as to tie it down to a date. The year 1453 A.D., when the Eastern Empire—the last relic of the continuous spirit of Rome—fell before the Turks, used to be given as the date, and perhaps the word "Renaissance" itself—"a new birth"—is as much as can be accomplished shortly by way of definition. ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to "fraternize" with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world—the most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with. "Go on!" cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in ecstasy—"Go on, and win! Break the bank—Mille tonnerres! my gallant English ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... or fresh-water deposits; relic seas, so long as they are partly salty, and saline lakes are ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... them round to his monks with an air of deep reverence. I do not doubt he took the image of her gracious Majesty for a very mighty and potent goddess. As soon as all had inspected them, with many cries of admiration, he opened a little secret drawer or relic-holder in the pedestal of the statue, and deposited them in it with a muttered prayer, as precious offerings from ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... it seemed almost impossible that he, Freddie Kirby, native of Kansas, unromantic aviator, should have been the one to discover this relic of an unknown, lost race. Yet the cylinder of gold was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... his fame. This prophet who desired not to have followers, lest he too should become a cult and a convention, and whose main thesis throughout life was that piety is a crime, has been calmly canonized and embalmed in amber by the very forces he braved. He is become a tradition and a sacred relic. You must speak of him under your breath, and you may not laugh ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... had died a month or two before the play was published; he had grown to be, in extreme old age, the most venerable figure of the Restoration, and it is possible that the Humorous Lovers may have been a relic of his Jacobean youth. He might very well have written it, so old was he, in Shakespeare's lifetime. But the Duke of Newcastle was never a very skilful poet, and it is known that he paid James Shirley to help him with his plays. I feel ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... claim his attention. He walked past lawns, shrubs, and flower-beds, and only stopped at an old stone fountain, which tradition declared to have been one of the ornaments of the garden in the time of the monks. Having carefully examined this relic of antiquity, he took a sheet of paper from his pocket, and consulted it attentively. It might have been a plan of the house and grounds, or it might not—I can only report that he took the path which led him, by the shortest way, to ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... earlier days for the wedding-feast of Selina and the soldier, which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. This relic was now as dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization. Till quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily, and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow over her life ever since—that of which the water-drawers had ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... thought of it excited him disagreeably. At the bottom of his heart he genuinely considered now that his marriage to Tanya had been a mistake. He was glad that their separation was final, and the thought of that woman who in the end had turned into a living relic, still walking about though everything seemed dead in her except her big, staring, intelligent eyes—the thought of her roused in him nothing but pity and disgust with himself. The handwriting on the envelope reminded him how cruel and unjust ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... beauty; but the head of one young man certainly stood the trial. Fine features, of a cast frequently seen towards the north of Albania, and a set of the best teeth, (this is very general,) showed that he might have once been more prosperous in love than he proved to be in war. I thought of a relic, and took up a skull, the best I could find, but it was full of red earth, and seemed damp and unpleasant; so I put it down again. I next discovered a beautiful tooth; this would have surpassed the former in elegance and convenience, but I fancied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... been composed. Admirable in itself and a precious document of our early literary history, it gains still further lustre from being indissolubly associated with that monument which Kemble has called the most beautiful as well as the most interesting relic of Teutonic antiquity." ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... An interesting relic of the execution of the Bishop is in possession of the rector of St. Mary's Church—viz. the sergeant's mace, which was the authority of the soldiers who conducted the Bishop down to Gloucester. This mace, which is the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... slipped off. He held it tight between his hands. He was too numb and stupefied even to think of Francey, but there was magic in that dirty, blood-stained handkerchief. It might have been a saint's relic, or a Red Indian's totem, preserving him from evil. He knew nothing about saints or totems, but he knew that Francey was good and stronger than ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... conviction that he will use them in the place to which he is going. A peculiar custom among several races is this: the oldest son cuts a piece from the heel of his deceased father, which he hangs round his neck, and wears as a sacred relic. Some of the tribes on the Perene and Capanegua do not, like most wild nations, respect the remains of the dead, but throw the bodies into the forest unburied, to be devoured ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... forum, at present, is the last sad relic of ancient oratory. But does that epitome of former greatness give the idea of a city so well regulated, that we may rest contented with our form of government, without wishing for a reformation of abuses? If we ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... who, of all the plunderers of yon fane On high, where Pallas lingered, loth to flee The latest relic of her ancient reign - The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be! England! I joy no child he was of thine: Thy free-born men should spare what once was free; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... separate scale is distinguishable upon their glistening bodies, the wrinkling of the skin in the coils, the sparkling points of eyes, and the minute nostrils. Such works of art are not made nowadays; the ring is an antique,—a relic of an age when skill was out of all proportion to liberty,—a very distant time indeed. To deserve such a setting, the stone must have exceptional qualities. Let us take a closer look ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... he had had one once; but that the priest had touched it with a holy relic and it had gone away. "It was on the back ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... treasures which sufficed for them. Plainly this waif has had its experiences. It was Robinson Crusoe's, Annie, depend upon it. We will save it from the flames, and when we establish our marine museum, nothing save a veritable piece of the North Pole shall be held so valuable as this undoubted relic ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... is an old relic of home, a thing of no great worth, a poor trifle, but sacred to me ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... of Slavery upon our national policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with its glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an anachronism of summer, the relic of a by-gone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame too humble, because it faded in the presence of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's hands, his sea-voice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... walk through ruins old and hoary, And make each relic and persue his search? Who would not listen and applaud each story, Told of an ancient ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... the Pawnbroker's Son. He has on a cutaway suit—a relic of his first and last public concert before the war. His shoulders sag dejectedly and his face is drawn and white. He comes in and sits on the bed. A knock—a determined knock—is heard at the door but Jean does not move. The door opens and his landlady—a ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart

... that some one or more of the number will come to harm if the thing is done. This is what Mr. Tylor calls survival in culture. The faint belief in the corporate liability of these thirteen is the feeble relic and last dying representative of that great principle of corporate liability to good and ill fortune which has filled such an ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... the Provencal custom at the Christmas festival for the old thus to instruct the young and so to keep family tradition alive. No doubt there is in this a dim survival of ancestor-worship; but I should be glad to see so excellent a relic of paganism preserved in the Christmas ritual of my ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... lingering representative. New Zealand seems to have been cut off from the southern continent at the close of the Permian or beginning of the Triassic, and so preserved for us that very interesting relic of Permian life. From some primitive level of this group, it is generally believed, the great Deinosaurs arose. Two different orders seem to have arisen independently, or diverged rapidly from each other, in different parts of the world. One group seems to have evolved ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... lieutenant-governor they form a "house of lords" which may or may not agree with the policies of the chief magistrate. They can aid him greatly, or they can "clip his wings" and materially curb his freedom of action. The Council is a relic of the old provincial and colonial days, its inherited aristocratic body clothed in democratic garments. As its duties could be performed by the Senate without loss of dignity, and with pecuniary saving, its retention as a part of the body politic is due to the ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... and 7 show the site and general appearance of this interesting relic of the Roman occupation ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... of St. Sergius is a relic hidden away and almost buried in the midst of a labyrinth of ruins. Without a guide it is almost impossible to find your way thither. The quarter in which it is situated is enclosed within the walls of what was once ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... and even, in saint and relic worship, cuts a "monstrous cantle" out of paganism, it excludes, not only all Judaeo-Christians, but all who doubt that such are heretics. Ever since the thirteenth century, the Inquisition would have cheerfully burned, and in Spain did abundantly burn, all persons ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... we feel the phantom, the more promptly it responds to our appeal. But he had no relic of his family—ring, miniature, or lock of hair—while Bouvard was in a position to conjure up his father; but, as he testified a certain repugnance on the subject, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... bridge builders, and that they were so named from the sacrifices which are offered upon the sacred bridge, which are of great sanctity and antiquity. The Latins call a bridge pontem. This bridge is intrusted to the care of the priests, like any other immovable holy relic; for the Romans think that the removal of the wooden bridge would call down the wrath of Heaven. It is said to be entirely composed of wood, in accordance with some ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... both, and use them discreetly. When I am gone, I request you, my friend, to discharge the last sad duties of humanity, and to see me buried according to the usages of my caste. The simple beings around me will then behold that I am mortal like themselves. And let this precious relic of female loveliness and worth, (taking a small picture, set in gold, from his bosom,) be buried with me. It has been warmed by my heart's blood for twenty-five years: let it be still near that heart when it ceases to beat. I have yet more to say to you; but ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... and yet curious, we looked through the cracks in the shutters. We saw a procession of peasants and townspeople, led by a number of priests, carrying crosses and banners and images. In the place of honor was carried a casket, containing a relic from the monastery in the outskirts of Polotzk. Once a year the Gentiles paraded with this relic, and on that occasion the streets were considered too holy for Jews to be about; and we lived in fear till the end of the day, knowing that the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... to a rustic bridge that humped high in the middle, spanning a cool green stream, willow-bordered. The cool green stream was an emerald chain that threaded its way in a complete circlet about the sylvan spot known as Wooded Island, relic ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... Quebec for modern illustrations of this kind of faith. "Bareheaded people stood out upon the corner in East 113th Street yesterday afternoon, "said a New York City newspaper of December 18, 1898, "because they were unable to get into the church of Our Lady Queen of Angels, where a relic of St. Anthony of Padua was exposed for veneration. "Describing a service in the church of St. Jean Baptiste in East 77th Street, New York, where a relic alleged to be a piece of a bone of the mother of the Virgin was exposed, a newspaper of that city, on July 24th, 1901, said: "There ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... follows to Miss Mackenzie, on receiving the book she had promised to send him as a relic of her brother:— ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Africa, through the sun-bright cities of Spain, he travelled—unfriended as a man under a curse, lonely as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the remembrance of his ruined projects desert his memory, or his mad determination to revive his worship abandon his mind. At every relic of Paganism, however slight, that he encountered on his way, he found a nourishment for his fierce anguish, and employment for his vengeful thoughts. Often, in the little villages, children were frightened from their sports in a deserted temple by the apparition of his gaunt, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... politics, but he could not support the measure. Mr. Shiel endeavoured to make the honourable baronet refute himself by quoting extracts from his former speeches on the same subject. He spoke, however, of the honourable baronet in terms of the highest respect, as "a venerable relic of a temple dedicated to freedom, though ill-omened birds now built their nests and found shelter in that once noble edifice." On the second night of the debate the bill was supported by Messrs. Brotherton and Charles ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... abnormally broad-backed and broad-bodied that a male rider who sat astride her was forced to stick his legs out at a most awkward and ridiculous angle. That broad back carried, however, most comfortably a side-saddle or a pillion. Being extremely short-legged this treasured relic was unprecedentedly slow, and altogether I found the Narragansett Pacer, though an object of great pride and even veneration to her owner, not all my fancy had ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... it with the deserted husband? Stern and unyielding also. The past year had been marked by so little of mutual tenderness, there had been so few passages of love between them—green spots in the desert of their lives—that memory brought hardly a relic from the past over which the heart could brood. For the sake of worldly appearances, Emerson most regretted the unhappy event. Next, his trouble was for Irene and her father, ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... out strips of bright yellow cloth, which two clowns held across the ring for the Circus Boy to leap over as his horse passed under. This did not bother him in the least, though he had never tried the act before. It was a relic of the old circus days that few shows ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... himself. In Egypt even the native Christians reverence Moslem saints or holy men. They pay frequent visits to them to ask for counsel and to hear their prophecies, to beg a hair of them in memory, "and dying, mention it within their wills, bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue." Any relic of a venerated saint is worn as a ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... Rivarol. "I have learned no such word in your very admirable language. He who will allow his soul to be vexed by creditors is a relic of an imperfect civilization. Of what use is science if it cannot avail a man who has accounts current? Listen. The moment you or any one else enters the outside door this little electric bell sounds me warning. Every successive step on Mrs. Grimier's staircase ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's "early days," perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... That is where I want to have my wedding. I don't believe that anybody else would have thought of it. Perhaps it's more than a hundred years since the last Indian wedding was held in that little deserted chapel; but it's all right, kept in good order, just as a relic beside the big new church. I think"—turning to the clergyman—"that it will be perfectly delightful and original to have you marry me there, at high noon, on the last ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... woman, poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin a sacred but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my sorrow, that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer, my love, it is my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!" That appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past crowded ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot. "No granite in situ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a cutting was being regularly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... missionaries were carried to Sainte Marie, and buried in the cemetery there; but the skull of Brbeuf was preserved as a relic. His family sent from France a silver bust of their martyred kinsman, in the base of which was a recess to contain the skull; and, to this day, the bust and the relic within are preserved with pious care by the nuns of the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... sought in vain to hide itself among the leaves. So busied had I been it escaped my notice. Instinctively I reclaimed the prize and with no gentle hand I doubt, for his touch and jeering manner desecrated the sacred relic of ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... jewels glittered on his sight. The rooms were drear and empty, their hollow floors mocking his footsteps with long-silent echoes. One treasure only he found, the jewelled table of Solomon, a famous ancient work of art which had long remained hidden from human sight. Of this wonderful relic we shall say no more here, for it has a history of its own, to be told in a ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... Kodiak lies on the opposite side of the island from the canneries, a bleak, wind-swept relic of the country's first occupation, and although peopled largely by natives and breeds, there is also a considerable white population, to whom Christmas is a season of thanksgiving and celebration. Hence it was that ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... loved the young maiden whom she had reared with the intensity of which a strong and fervent nature like hers perhaps alone is capable. Zarah was all that was left to her grandmother in the world, the sole relic remaining of the treasures which she once had possessed. It may be permitted to me here, as a digression, to give a brief account of Hadassah's former life, that the reader may better understand her position at the point ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... priests enter or leave the churches. They are like the palaces of a theatre, set on an empty stage, and waiting for the actors. It will be a long time before the actors come to Mozambique. It is, and will remain, a city of the fifteenth century. It is now only a relic of a cruel and barbarous period, when the Portuguese governors, the "gentlemen adventurers," and the Arab slave-dealers, under its blue skies, and hidden within its barred and painted walls, led lives of magnificent debauchery, when the tusks of ivory were piled high along its water-front, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... countenances, however pretty they may be, have something terrifying in them. The great nobles make a tolerably grand display of carriages on the last days of the carnival; but the pleasure of this festival is the crowd and the confusion: it seems like a relic of the Saturnalia; every class in Rome is mixed together. The most grave magistrates ride with official dignity in the midst of the masks; every window is decorated. The whole town is in the streets: it is truly a popular festival. The pleasure of the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... the enmity of the great conflict, but it refuses to abandon its old traditions and idols. In "Governor" Pemberton, as he was still fondly called, the inhabitants of Elmville saw the relic of their state's ancient greatness and glory. In his day he had been a man large in the eye of his country. His state had pressed upon him every honour within its gift. And now when he was old, and enjoying a richly merited repose ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... Jew, spared the sight of the destruction of Jerusalem which, according to his own canon in the text, would have proved that the system to which he had given his life was not of God; and the only relic of his wisdom is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... around my feelings as I landed on Beechey Island and looked down upon the bay, on whose bosom once had ridden Her Majesty's ships "Erebus" and "Terror;" there was a sickening anxiety of the heart as one involuntarily clutched at every relic they of Franklin's squadron had left behind, in the vain hope that some clue as to the route they had taken hence ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... the same purpose he deposited it in a creek. When it was thoroughly clean, the grinning white skull was painted red all over and placed in a decorated basket. Then followed the ceremony of formally handing over this relic of the dead to the relations. The brothers-in-law, who had been in attendance on the body, painted themselves black all over, covered their heads with leaves, and walked in solemn procession, headed by the chief brother-in-law, who carried the skull in the basket. Meantime ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... the following:—A portion of Aaron's rod that budded; a portion of one of the five loaves that fed the five thousand; a shoulder-blade of one of the Holy Innocents; two pieces of the Virgin Mary's veil; part of the stone paten of the Evangelist S. John. The great relic of the house was the arm of S. Oswald. The date when this was acquired is not certainly known, some thinking that this period is too early a date to assign to its acquisition. Bede relates[30] "that this Oswald, King of Northumberland, was very free and liberal in giving of alms ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... character. The sacrifice of Agamemnon in Aulis, as told in the opening of the 'Iliad,' connects the tree and serpent worship together, and the wood of the sacred plane tree under which the sacrifice was made was preserved in the temple of Diana as a holy relic so late, according to Pausanias, as the second century of the Christian era." The same writer further adds that in Italy traces of tree-worship, if not so distinct and prominent as in Greece, are nevertheless existent. Romulus, for ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... seems to demonstrate clearly that the world is too far advanced to be driven into combination by force. And as to Alexander the Great, has the world really made no progress since his time? Force or war is a relic of a savage age, and will be relegated to the background with the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... seen at the Musee d'Artillerie at Paris. In the time of Louis XIV. the art of casting cannon was carried to a high degree of perfection. The gun in question may have been made by a French blacksmith on the spot. A far less probable supposition is, that it is a relic of some unrecorded visit of the Spaniards; but the pattern of the piece would have been antiquated even in the time of De Soto.] Nor were these La Salle's only dependants. By the terms of his patent, he ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... displayed them in the hollow of his hand. She touched them lightly, reverently, as a tourist touches a sacred relic in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... she replied, "and look up thither, where Christ with His saints expecteth thee. Fight the good fight, for thy soul's sake, and show thyself faithful and steadfast in thy Saviour's love. Remember him too whose relic thou bearest round thy neck." [Footnote: The father of Pancratius had suffered martyrdom, and the relic mentioned was stained with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver spectacles were hurriedly replaced. "Ha!" he said, "Alexandrines, the tragic metre. I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. 'Dieux de l'immense plaine et des vastes forets.' Very good," he said, "very good indeed! 'Et du geolier lui-meme apprendre des lecons.' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the directors of the Bank of England cannot be themselves by trade bankers. This is a relic of old times. Every bank was supposed to be necessarily, more or less, in opposition to every other bankbanks in the same place to be especially in opposition. In consequence, in London, no banker has a chance ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... was a relic of Dushan, little mended by the Turk, and had been three times struck by lightning, the magazine each time exploding (once while I was in Montenegro), only because the Turkish government, in putting up the lightning-rod and finding the supply of rod short, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... had seemed goblin-like before, but as he now stood there before the glistening relic of mortality, over which he had partly thrown the corner of the table-cloth, the scene was weird and grim in the extreme; for the one uncovered eye-socket seemed to leer at him in company with a ghastly pride, as if rejoicing at the relief the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... present of it, my lady, to poor Mrs. Baxter, John Dutton's sister, my lady, who was always so much attached to the family, and would have a regard for even the smallest relic, vestige, or vestment, I knew, above all things in nature, poor old soul!—she has, what with the rheumatic pains, and one thing or another, lost the use of her right arm, so it was particularly agreeable and appropriate—and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... memory of Charlemagne, went down into the vault, and gave the priests of the Cathedral convincing proofs of his munificence. The Empress was shown a piece of the true cross which the Carlovingian Emperor had long worn on his breast as a talisman. She was offered a holy relic, almost the whole arm of that hero, but she declined it, saying that she did not wish to deprive Aix-la-Chapelle of so precious a memorial, especially when she had the arm of a man as great as Charlemagne to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the gossip of the department of the Aube,—a good deal of it being there manufactured,—should be ignorant of facts of this nature. But his ignorance will seem natural when we mention that this noble relic of the Napoleonic legions went to bed at night and rose in the morning with the chickens, as all old persons should do if they wish to live out their lives. He was never present at the intimate conversations ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... explained as praying for direction by omens of the rosary, opening the Koran and reading the first verse sighted, etc., etc. At Al-Medinah it is called Khirah and I have suggested (Pilgrimage, ii. 287) that it is a relic of the Azlam or Kidah (divining arrows) of paganism. But the superstition is not local: we have the Sortes Virgilianae (Virgil being a magician) as well ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... dissolution. It was worse when fresh ordinances of the vicar-general ordered the removal of objects of superstitious veneration. Their removal, bitter enough to those whose religion twined itself around the image or the relic which was taken away, was embittered yet more by the insults ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... its own; but they have now disappeared. Not a single house in the river bank remains, and not more than about a hundred feet of the old "piliers des Halles," the last that have resisted the action of time, are left; and before long even that relic of the sombre labyrinth of old Paris will be demolished. Certainly, the existence of such old ruins of the middle-ages is incompatible with the grandeurs of modern Paris. These observations are meant not so much to regret the destruction of the old town, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... case at the end of the room is a mass of fused gun flints, a relic of the fire which in 1841 destroyed the Great Store in the Tower and many thousand stand of ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... djeuner but finishes his cigar en route to work. We were at the edge of Paris before the Illustrator had thrown his away. We were not in the car of ancient lineage but in that relic of other days a real automobile without the great white letters of the army upon its sides and bonnet. Yet we were going into the heart of the Army. We would not be among the derelicts of battle that afternoon but with men sound of mind and body, and the thought was grateful ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... eye-glasses trained on Oliver, half concealed by a huge china "compoteer" (to quote the waitress), and at present filled with last week's fruit, caulked with almonds, sat Mrs. Southwark Boggs—sole surviving relic of S. B., Esq. This misfortune she celebrated by wearing his daguerreotype, set in plain gold, as a brooch with which she fastened her crocheted collar. She was a thin, faded, funereal-looking person, her body encased in a black silk dress, which looked as if it had ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and Cromwell, Mary and Pole, Elizabeth and Cecil, are tried in Froude's pages by the simple test of what they did, or failed to do, for England. Froude detested and despised the cosmopolitan philosophy which regards patriotic sentiment as a relic of barbarism. He was not merely an historian of England, but also an English historian; and holding Fisher to be a traitor, he did not hesitate to justify the execution of a pious, even saintly man. Fisher would ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... Pope Gregory IV recommended that on the anniversaries of the dedication of churches wrested from the Pagans, the converts should build themselves huts with the boughs of trees round their churches, and celebrate the day with feasting. The rush-bearing is probably the last relic of that ancient ceremony. At one time there was always a village feast in connection with it, though it degenerated at last into a sort of rustic saturnalia, and had ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... article, so far as workmanship is concerned. The value of the gems in themselves is not great enough to make it worth while to sell it. It will be worth more as a curiosity than anything else. It will doubtless be an interesting relic to keep for the boy ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... infallibility. [To the Spanish Soldiery. Well, cut-throats! What do you pause for? If you make not haste, There will not be a link of pious gold left. And you, too, Catholics! Would ye return From such a pilgrimage without a relic? The very Lutherans have more true devotion: See how they strip ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... Supper; and they were taught, not only that Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood from His side in the same vessel, but that he and Mary Magdalene, sailing on Joseph's shirt, had brought over the relic from Palestine to Glastonbury. "The Quest of the Saint Graal" was the highest achievement of the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... unhappy, until Judgment Day. Various penalties attended the condition of non-baptism, but perhaps the most significant is the Northumberland custom of burying an unbaptised babe at the feet of an adult Christian corpse—surely a relic of the old sacrifice at a burial which is indicated so frequently in the graves of prehistoric times, particularly of the long-barrow period. In Ireland we have the effect of non-baptism in a still more grim form. In the sixteenth century the rude Irish used to leave the right arms of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... that have appeared! and after the island diet, what a hospitable spot the minister's table! And yet he must have lived on friendly terms with his outlandish hosts. For to this day there still survives a relic of the long winter evenings when the sailors of the great Armada crouched about the hearths of the Fair-Islanders, the planks of their own lost galleon perhaps lighting up the scene, and the gale and the surf that beat about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long-accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilom did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... these passages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, in fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the substitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted from in the text is ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... Catholics. Even Protestants not only acknowledged the heroism of his virtues, but also sought to possess some earth from his grave, and one of them, J. H., still living, was restored to health and usefulness by the application of this relic to his diseased and ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul

... simply a stiffly starched blue muslin, that had once belonged to Linnet and had been "let down" for Marjorie, and her head was crowned with a broad-brimmed straw hat, around the crown of which was tied a somewhat faded blue ribbon, also a relic of Linnet's summer days; her linen collar was fastened with an old-fashioned pin of her mother's; her boots were new and neatly fitting, her father had made them ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... even before the launch has brought their feet to Ellis Island soil. In six months they are Americanized. Does it matter that a thing so gigantic should be a little coarse and blundering in detail, if this stumbling giant of the new time breaks a gracious relic or so in his eager clutch and treads a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... genus found first on the Discovery. It has the most complex water-tubes, which it uses as legs, and a few limy rods in its soft skin instead of the bony calcareous plates of sea-urchins and starfish. After them came the feather-stars, a relic of the old crinoids which used to flourish in the carboniferous period, examples of which can be found in the Derbyshire limestone; and there were thousands of brittle-stars, like beautiful wheels of which the hubs and spokes remained, but not the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... was 'a fort within a fort' (vide Map, p. 10); but eventually the inner wall was demolished. At various times the outer wall has been altered, but the Fort as we have it to-day is the selfsame Fort St. George nevertheless, a glorious relic of bygone times, and verily a ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow

... was detained during the whole of yesterday within sight of the island; but, about noon to-day, a fresh wind springing up from the eastward, she was soon out of sight. A few days since, our gardener, while digging in Paradise, turned up a Spanish copper-coin of Charles III., dated 1774, probably a relic of some ship which had ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... habits and white lace capes, and there are mediaeval religious processions with gorgeous costumes and solemn chants, and the bells ring all day long, and there is a service every five minutes with music, and a blessed relic to kiss in every church. She will be a Catholic in less than no time, and look back upon the camp-meeting with ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... spiral staircase in the transept and a Holy Sepulchre are of interest. The lycee and the hospital have chapels of the 17th and 16th centuries respectively. The Tour Hautefeuille (a keep of the 11th century) is the principal relic of a chateau of the counts of Champagne; the rest of the site is occupied by the law courts. In the Place de l'Escargot stands a statue of the chemist Philippe Lebon (1767-1804), born in Haute-Marne. Chaumont is the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... Baron, drawing an immense sword, and glaring round at Otto: but though at the sight of that sword and that scowl a less valorous youth would have taken to his heels, the undaunted Childe advanced at once into the apartment. He wore round his neck a relic of St. Buffo (the tip of the saint's ear, which had been cut off at Constantinople). "Fiends! I command you to retreat!" said he, holding up this sacred charm, which his mamma had fastened on him; and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... persuaded the men to bind me, and in the excess of my fury, when he took me by the collar, I struck at him; he reeled; and, with the sudden lurch of the vessel, he fell overboard, and sank. Even this fearful death did not restrain me; and I swore by the fragment of the Holy Cross, preserved in that relic now hanging round your neck, that I would gain my point in defiance of storm and seas, of lightning, of heaven, or of hell, even if I should beat about until the Day ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... I answered. 'Well now, I think that really should give us the last link that we wanted. I must congratulate you on coming into the possession, though in rather a tragic manner of a relic which is of great intrinsic value, but of even greater importance as ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... she possessed something worth more than uncut rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And the Ouled Nails could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge brass nails, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... victim, and the lot fell on Marana, who was led forth in grand procession as the victim of the dragon. Pithyrian, in distraction, rushed into a Christian church, and fell before an image which attracted his attention, at the base of which was the real arm of a saint. The sacristan handed the holy relic to Pithyrian, who kissed it, and then restored it to the sacristan; but the servitor did not observe that a thumb was missing. Off ran Pithyrian with the thumb, and joined his daughter. On came the dragon, with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... triumph of that moment, I was ready to "fraternize" with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world—the most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with. "Go on!" cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in ecstasy—"Go on, and win! Break the bank—Mille tonnerres! my gallant English comrade, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... gone; but, as their belongings were scattered about in the usual untidiness, Ivan argued return. Throwing off his hat, then, he filled and lighted a pipe, seated himself at the battered piano—sole remaining relic of old Petrov Lihnoff, and now too dilapidated for sale—and yielded himself for an hour to that most dangerous luxury of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... When last seen, she had been seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white night-dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders.' No trace was found of her manuscript on Italy: her love-correspondence with Ossoli was the only relic—the last memorial of that howling hurricane, pitiless sea, wreck on a sand-bar, an idle life-boat, beach-pirates, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... on two faded, flapping sun-bonnets, to which Miss Pickens added an old ragged India shawl, relic of past grandeur. Annie's feet were bare, her Aunt wore army shoes made of cow-skin, part of the Bureau supply. She was a tall, thin woman, and, with the habit of former days, carried her head high in air as she walked along. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... would now have been flourishing. I doubt if any English visitor ever troubles its stagnant repose. Yet it boasts its 'grand' place, imposing enough as a memorial of departed greatness, and, as usual, a Flemish relic, in the shape of a charming belfry and town-hall combined. It was really truly 'fantastical' from the airiness of its little cupolas and galleries, and was in tolerable order. Like the old Calais watch-tower, it was caked round by, and embedded in, old houses, and ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... The true Deity is not represented by any image. This is a relic of primeval monotheism: out of place as referring to the Nile, but pointing to a deeper and sounder faith. Compare the laws ...
— Egyptian Literature

... there is one surpassingly strange relic of the past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of upstart tyranny and beggared pride on these Italian plains, rises misshapen and disconsolate above the stream that bears the city's name. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... we suspect, a recent convert, or it would occur to him that doctors are still secure of a lucrative practice in countries full of the relics of greater saints than even Southwell. That father was hanged (according to Protestants) for treason, and the relic which put the whole pharmacopoeia to shame was, if we mistake not, his neckerchief. But whatever the merits of the Jesuit himself, and however it may gratify Mr. Turnbull's catechumenical enthusiasm to exalt the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... suddenly remember that it is Friday, or the Mohammedan Sunday, on which day great throngs repair to the grave-yards and visit the tombs of the marabouts or saints, gazing upon some ancient relic which the departed wore in his life-time, and which on account of its disreputable condition no respectable European ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... "what we found within. A Popish relic, is it not? Colet and Mistress Gale were for making away with it at once, but it seemed to me that it was a token whereby the poor babe's friends may know her again, if she have any kindred ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which were believed by the Christians to be the footprints of the angel seen by Gregory the Great on the summit of Hadrian's tomb. Philip de Winghe describes them as those of a puer quinquennis, a boy five years old.[18] This curious relic has been removed to the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... garden, very near the foot of the mountain, is the old farmhouse, in one corner of which is a little chapel whose door stands open the year round. It is of particular interest to the peasants, being the last relic of a certain superstitious legend of the countryside. The people come from miles around, crossing the fields by a little path which they themselves have beaten down, to kneel before this tiny altar; and on the last Sunday ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... step down to them. We say that thus we keep them warmer, both for cattle and for men, in the time of winter, and cooler in the summer-time. This I will not contradict, though having my own opinion; but it seems to me to be a relic of the time when people in the western countries lived in caves beneath the ground, and blocked ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... was, but it was evidently foreign to the place. He possessed the universal human weakness of regarding everything with a personal application. It now seemed strange to him that he should have come here at all; stranger still, that he should have mounted this queer relic of days so long gone by, and thus discovered that peculiar object under the dead tree. He began to think he had been led here for a purpose. Now Rufe was not so good a boy as to be on the continual lookout for rewards of merit. On the contrary, the day of reckoning ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... sat on the column, the living sovereign throned on the relic of dead grandeur. He sat so motionless that the birds heeded him no more than if he had stiffened into stone, senseless as the block which supported him, monumental as the marble. His robes, his jewels, glowed and glittered in the light of the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... in those inner, upper circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving from the tree-temples of the earliest primitive East when nature-worship prevailed. The English engineers made an opening in ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... device was so placed upon the bench as to set directly over a hole, about ten inches in diameter. And under the bench was one of the saddlelike chairs. The architect's antiquarian lore came back to her with a rush, and she remembered something she had seen in a museum—a relic ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... will know that they are strange birds whose ancestors reach back and back through the ages, maybe a million years. You will think—as who would not?—that a loon is a wonderful gift that Nature has brought down through all the centuries; a living relic of a time of which we know very little except from fossils men find ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... since in the course of ages they would get carried down by the onward movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This wood, therefore, suits all the requirements of the case. In fact, the argument is for the case of a relic exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found the Holy Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat at Treves, not to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter evidence. I am, however, bound to admit that another explanation of the presence of this piece ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... see indeed the land-ward walls of the city, and a most interesting historical relic they are.[22] They stretch for about four miles, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn. It is still, comparatively speaking, all city inside of them, all country on the outside. There is a double line of walls ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... would commence, and would in time level all the walls; yet in the two centuries which have elapsed since Padre Kino's visit—and the Casa Grande was then a ruin—there has been but little destruction, the damage done by relic hunters in the last twenty years being in fact much greater than that wrought by the elements in the preceding two centuries. The relic hunters seem to have had a craze for wood, as the lintels of ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff

... should be drained. And will you please tell me why this precious platter from which I have eaten much stewed chicken, fried ham, and in youthful days sopped the gravy——will you tell me why this relic of my ancestors is called a willow plate, when there are a majority of orange trees so extremely fruitful they have neglected to grow a leaf? Why is it not an orange plate? Look at that boat! And in plain sight of it, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... small man, and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... the site of an old slave-pen, the key of which is preserved as a relic of those dark days. The neat chapel now stands as a symbol of light and truth to the people. The pastor, Rev. W. L. Johnson, is a graduate of Fisk, and his wife is from Le Moyne Institute. She has taught in our service at ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various

... "since the pure old religion was destroyed, profanity and covetousness have got the upper hand; so every church where even a single pious relic of the wealth of the good old times remains, must be guarded, as you see, by dogs. [Footnote: It is an undeniable fact, that the immorality of the people fearfully increased with the progress of the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... as far as the head of the Basin of Mines, but their search for mineral wealth was fruitless, beyond a few meagre specimens of copper. Their labors were chiefly rewarded by the discovery of a moss-covered cross in the last stages of decay, the relic of fishermen, or other Christian mariners, who had, years ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... Cassio, Charles, Mercutio, Benedick, (Of all your names I scarce know which to pick,) Colossal relic of the nobler time When great JOHN PHILIP trod the scene sublime; Ay, true Colossus, for like that which strode From shore to shore, while seas beneath him flowed, You seem to stand between two generations, High o'er the tide of Time and its mutations; Be not alarmed; this comes ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... 'Anoob, where a copious supply of water issues from three spouts, the fountain has on each side the representation of a chained lion, sculptured in stone. One's first impression would be that this were a relic of the Genoese or Venetian crusaders; but these figures, whatever their meaning or origin, are not infrequent upon fountains about the Lebanon, even when only rustically daubed in red ochre; and it has not been often noticed that there are similar lions ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... was exerted, men have often been found who have fostered the popular belief for their own vanity or advantage; and, on the other hand, philosophers have assailed it more by ridicule than by argument, as a relic of a barbarian age. Not so with all; for we believe we are not wrong in stating, that the celebrated Olbers compared the moon's positions with the weather for fifty years, before he gave his verdict against ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... derived its present name. The keep of this venerable structure, black with age and smoke, still stands entire at the northern end of the noble high-level bridge—the utilitarian work of modern times thus confronting the warlike relic of the older civilisation. ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... be delivered to the Bristol coach at the White-horse-cellar in Piccadilly, a parcel containing sixty-four Ghosts, one of which is printed on brown for your own eating. There is but one more such, so you may preserve it like a relic. I know these two are not so good as the white: but, as rarities, a collector would give ten times more for them; and uniquity will make them valued more than the charming poetry. I believe, if there was but one ugly woman in the world, she would occasion ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... is the use of tellin anybody that? I worried some before I married Pa. I guess it's natural. I thought, thinks I, 'Mary Ann Bishop, he's years older'n you, 'n' he's weakly, 'n' there ain't much doubt but what you'll be left a relic'. Now look, that was ten years ago, and Pa ain't no more out o' slew 'n' he was then. 'N' then I thought, 'There, he's had one wife.' (Pa was a widower.) ''N' I expect he'll be always a-comparin' of us.' It ain't happened once, at least, not out loud, an' oh! how good he was to that woman! It didn't ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... necessary to make repairs near the tomb of Edward the Confessor, when, by removing a portion of the pavement, an exquisitely beautiful piece of carved work, which had originally formed part of the shrine of Edward's tomb, was discovered. This fine relic, the work of the eleventh or twelfth century, appears to have been studded with precious stones; and the presumption is, that during the late civil wars it was taken down for the purpose of plunder, and after the gems were taken out, buried under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... young god's death!—Buddha. Such a mock trial and death could not have taken place under the Roman or Jewish laws. The sacraments derive from the Greeks, from the Indians—the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, from the Haoma sacrifice of the Persians, originally Brahmanic. The Trinity, was it not a relic of that ineradicable desire for polytheism implanted in the human bosom? Was the crucifixion but a memory of those darker cults and blood sacrifices of Asia, and also of the expiating goats sent out into the wilderness? What became of that Hosanna-shouting crowd which welcomed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... now, would she have prayed for life as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have prayed to be taken from the evil to come—to be taken away one evening at least before this day's sun arose? It is true, she still wears a look of gentle pride, and a relic of that noble smile which belongs to her that suffers an injury which many times over she would have died sooner than inflict. Womanly pride refuses itself before witnesses to the total prostration of the blow; but, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... letter to Isoult from Lady Frances herself; and the last relic of Jennifer's uneasiness was appeased by the fair hair and beard of the messenger. She only said now that there might have been two strangers in the fire; she ought to have ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... his benediction over it, and returned it into my hands, supposing, of course, that I was a Roman Catholic. I had meant to present it to his Holiness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of his lips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, round which it has ever since been suspended. He asked me some unimportant questions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on a sudden, turned ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... his famous collection of virtu would be the envy and admiration of the relic-mongers and the curiosity-seekers of two or three hundred years hence; but he had not been dead fifty years before the red flag was waving over Strawberry Hill, and it was not taken down till the villa had been despoiled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... early riser, was awake on the following morning at daylight. Dodd and I, with a coincidence of opinion as rare as it was gratifying, regarded early rising as a relic of barbarism which no American, with a proper regard for the civilisation of the nineteenth century, would demean himself by encouraging. We had therefore entered into a mutual agreement upon this occasion ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... for modern illustrations of this kind of faith. "Bareheaded people stood out upon the corner in East 113th Street yesterday afternoon, "said a New York City newspaper of December 18, 1898, "because they were unable to get into the church of Our Lady Queen of Angels, where a relic of St. Anthony of Padua was exposed for veneration. "Describing a service in the church of St. Jean Baptiste in East 77th Street, New York, where a relic alleged to be a piece of a bone of the mother of the Virgin was exposed, a newspaper ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... yet another phase of theism discovered. Sometimes a particular mountain, or hill, or some great rock, some waterfall, some lake, or some spring receives special worship, and is itself believed to be a deity. This seems to be a relic of hecastotheism. Fetichism, also, seems to have come from that lower grade, and all the minor deities, the spirits of mountains and hills and forest, seem to have been derived from that same stage, but with this development, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... narrative relates the finding of the image of the child Jesus, which had been left in the island by a member of the Magallanes expedition. Our author exults over this find, which he extols as miraculous, and asserts to be the "greatest relic ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... enemies be not known, by positive evidence, to exist in any of the South Sea islands, except New Zealand, yet it is extremely probable, that it was originally prevalent in them all. The sacrificing human victims, which seems evidently to be a relic of this horrid practice, still obtains universally amongst these islanders; and it is easy to conceive, why the New Zealanders should retain the repast, which was probably the last act of these shocking rites, longer than the rest of their, tribe, who were situated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... should only I, Of all the other princes of the world, Be cas'd up, like a holy relic? I have ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... disappeared, so that the building as it stood when occupied by Berry and Lincoln was somewhat longer. Of the original building there only remain the frame-work, the black-walnut weather-boarding on the front end and the ceiling of sycamore boards. One entire side has been torn away by relic-hunters. In recent years the building has been used as a sort of store-room. Just after a big fire in Petersburg some time ago, the city council condemned the Lincoln store building and ordered it demolished. Under this order a portion of one side was torn down, when Mr. Bishop persuaded the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... present, is the last sad relic of ancient oratory. But does that epitome of former greatness give the idea of a city so well regulated, that we may rest contented with our form of government, without wishing for a reformation of abuses? If ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... inartistic, was a relic of the days of the dandies, when country squires had their town houses, and before labour found itself in London drawing-rooms. Consumed by curiosity, Hugh pressed the electric button marked "visitors," and a few moments later a smart young ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... will be well disposed of," whispered the old man, and he pressed it into the hand of the youth, who thrust the little relic ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... says:—'The tune is a pretty Irish air, call The Humours of Ballamagairy, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded very happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them. I preserve this little relic in his own ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... dangers and cares which inevitably beset a human being. By no violent transition was I led to ponder on the turbulent life and mysterious end of my father. I cherished with the utmost veneration the memory of this man, and every relic connected with his fate was preserved with the most scrupulous care. Among these was to be numbered a manuscript containing memoirs of his own life. The narrative was by no means recommended by its eloquence; but neither did all its value flow from my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... romantic passage of Maryland history, of which no annalist has ever given more than an ambiguous and meagre hint. It refers to a deed of bloodshed, of which the only trace that was not obliterated from living rumor so long as a century ago was to be found in a vague and misty relic of an old memory of the provincial period of the State. The facts by which I have been enabled to bring it to the full light of an historical incident, it will be seen in the perusal of this narrative, have successively, and by most curious ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... remembering that Isaac's provocation had been great, she determined to make the ordeal as bearable as possible. She sent for some water, selected a piece of appetizing rose pink soap, a relic of her Christmas store, and called Isaac, who, when he guessed the portent of all these preliminaries, suffered a shocking relapse into English. Nerved by this latest exhibition, Miss Bailey was deaf to the wails of Isaac and unyielding to the ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... satisfied it would be of no use to think of her. Accordingly, I bent my brows, and looked towards Irville, which is an abundant trone for widows and other single women; and I fixed my purpose on Mrs Nugent, the relic of a professor in the university of Glasgow, both because she was a well- bred woman, without any children to plea about the interest of my own two, and likewise because she was held in great estimation by all who knew her, as a lady of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... exists still, we believe, a venerable relic of the border past, was, in the year 1777, the abode of a "number of Quakers, together with one druggist and a dancing-master, sent to Winchester under guard, with a request from the Executive of Pennsylvania, directed to the County-Lieutenant of Frederick, to secure them." The reasons for this ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... gathering of the people around this impressive scene, intimated their knowledge of what they considered to be a judicial punishment annexed to perjury upon the Donagh. This relic lay on the table, and the eyes of those stood within view of it, turned from Anthony's countenance to it, and again back to his blood-stained visage, with all the overwhelming influence of superstitious ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... writing bad and dimmed by time, and the sheets tattered and torn. Later followed the disclosure that an aged and infirm mother of the grandmother owned it, and that she had some time before compelled its return to the private drawer from which the relic-loving daughter had abstracted it. Still later came a letter saying that since the attorney was so relentlessly exacting, she had written to her mother praying her to part with the manuscript. Then followed another communication,—six ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... "without waiting on going into position at the time set. The men dragged a gun forward in the early morning of October 23rd, and sent a shell at the enemy. There was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of Berlin. The gun has been sent to West Point as a relic." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... spirit of the make-believe. The little girl, searching for an appropriate stone to place on the imaginary table for imaginary bread, thrust her hand down among the debris and, withdrawing it, exposed a relic. It was the faded remnant of a baby's shoe, grotesque in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... lived in danger of his scalping-knife. In Boston and other of the older and safer settlements, the Indians had found devoted friends before Philip's War; and even now they had apologists and defenders, prominent among whom was that relic of antique Puritanism, old Samuel Sewall, who was as conscientious and humane as he was prosy, narrow, and sometimes absurd, and whose benevolence towards the former owners of the soil was trebly ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... May the 24th, Rev. Thomas Dixon, one of the Baptist clergymen of New York City, said: The heresy trial is a record of barbarism, a relic of savagery. It belongs to the crudeness, and ignorance, and superstition of barbaric times. It ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... Canute, and on the 13th of November 1020 was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. In 1022 he went to Rome to obtain the pallium, and was received with great respect by Pope Benedict VIII. Returning from Rome he purchased at Pavia a relic said to be an arm of St Augustine of Hippo, for a hundred talents of silver and one of gold, and presented it to the abbey of Coventry. He appears to have exercised considerable influence over Canute, largely by whose aid he restored his cathedral at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... long ago; it was the pledge of his return given in the hasty or hard-fought flight of the daring youth whose image it is; or perhaps it bears the lady's face, and has been found on the breast of a warrior slain in battle; or, dearer than holy relic, was still caressed by the poet troubadour, even though he knew his mistress long ago proved faithless. More than one queen, for reasons of state, placed at the side of a mighty king, has gazed each night in hopeless adoration at the miniature of some one far from the throne, yet who, supreme ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Durbelliere, and his beard for many days had not been shorn. He was wretchedly thin and gaunt; indeed, his hollow, yellow cheeks, and cadaverous jaws, almost told a tale of utter starvation. Across his face he had an ugly cicatrice, not the relic of any honourable wound, but given him by the Chevalier's stick, when he struck him in the parlour at Durbelliere. Nothing could be more wretched than his appearance; but the most lamentable thing of all, was the wild wandering of his eyes, which too plainly told that the mind ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... time the way has been growing wilder. Thickset hedges have yielded to dykes of stone, and there is every sign that I am approaching the rugged region of the coast. At each point of vantage I can see a Cross, often a relic of the early Christians, stumpy and corroded. Then I come on a slab of gray stone upstanding about fifteen feet. Like a sentinel on that solitary plain it overwhelms me with ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... the truth of the above story, it is asserted that on clear days traces of the buried city may be seen, while occasionally a fisherman casting his net hauls up some household utensil or relic of bygone days. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... see each other again, and rejoice together in happier days; the little ones are well, and send duty to papa. Don't fail of letting me hear from you by every opportunity. Every line is like a precious relic of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of an old Spanish galleon, one of the few which had the good fortune to escape Commodore Anson. The whole of one side of the vessel is gone, and she is now fast falling to pieces, but the Spaniards look upon her with great reverence. She is a relic of their former grandeur; and I was informed by a Spanish gentleman that she never would be broken up. I looked upon her, if not with reverence, at least with sympathy; and as I made a sketch of ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... at the first table that morning, and Barry took the opportunity to make himself familiar with some general details of the ship's company. The brigantine was a relic of an ancient period of shipbuilding, and her main cabin fitted her excellently. Dark, full of deep recesses in which great square windows opened to the ocean's free breezes; cosy with an old-world cosiness; picturesque with spacious skylight dome, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... never went into steam—not really. If I only live long enough I shall become a bizarre relic of a dead barbarism, a sort of monstrous antiquity, the only seaman of the dark ages who had never gone ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... one vial which contained a black liquid like oil. "It is a relic of the past," said she, "an heir-loom from the Untori, the ointers of Milan. With that oil they spread death through the doomed city, anointing its doors and thresholds with the plague ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... over the half-frozen form in which a flicker still lingered they shook their heads. Death waged a stern battle even for this last relic, but life triumphed, and when the agony of returning animation had ceased the sole survivor told the cruiser's mess how Trawler No. 1 ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... getting in," he commented. "In half an hour, the Paris plane starts from the Cortlandt Street aero-tower. And beyond Paris lies Constantinople; and beyond that, Arabia—the East! Men are going out that way, tonight! And I—stick here like an old, done relic, cooped in Niss'rosh—imprisoned in this steel and glass cage of my ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... centre of the quadrangle rose the great keep, which still stands, the finest relic of Norman civil architecture in England. It possessed great strength, and at the same time was richly ornamented with carving. The windows, arches, and fireplaces were decorated with chevron carvings. A beautiful ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... universally. The Church now retains for the faithful one congregational vigil, the vigil of Christmas. Formerly, it was customary to observe a fast on a day or night of a vigil, but that custom was suppressed sometimes, or fell into disuse. Vigil fasts are now few. Almost the only relic of the vigil now remaining is the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... This relic of a long-past civilisation excited Hans even more than it did myself, since having never seen anything of the sort, he thought it so strange that, as he informed me, he imagined that it must have been built ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... they bear traces of great antiquity. Many have been strongly bound with iron, but all are now in a state of decay. This lonely cheerless room, strewn with antique fragments and suggestive of the boy-poet's day-dreams, is certainly the most interesting relic in Bristol. Its comfortless neglect is a true epitome of the life of him who first shaped his course ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... containing his portrait set in diamonds. On Maitland's declining, in the circumstances, to accept any present of value, the Emperor begged him to keep as a souvenir a tumbler from his travelling case, bearing the crown and cipher of the Empress Josephine. This relic is still preserved at Lindores. A photograph of it ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... on other ordinances. And the same notion is prevalent and many who have withdrawn from the communion of that church. Many serious people who attend other religious duties with pleasure and advantage, are afraid to obey Christ's dying command! Is not this a relic of popery? When Luther left the papal communion, his reformation, particularly relative to this ordinance, was but partial. Many other protestants retain a tinge of catholic leaven. Is not the distinction respecting the sanctity of divine ordinances from this source? It is not found in the gospel. ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... other building of the same date as itself, but stood alone, 130showing, as it reared its time-worn head high above the more modern dwellings of which the street was composed, like some giant relic of the days of old. This tower contained a peal of bells, the fame of which was great in that part of the country, and of which ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... on Lake Zurich, date from very early times, some say 2000 years before Christ, and contain remains of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, weapons, instruments, pottery, linen cloth, and the like. The relic of latest date is a Roman coin of A.D. 54. The British remains are much more recent, belonging entirely to the Iron period and to historic times. The object sought in these structures is somewhat obscure—most probably it was the security their ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... true that Berta put away Adrian Baker's letter carefully, treasuring it as one treasures a relic. It is true that she passed whole hours seated at her piano running her fingers up and down the keys, playing Adrian Baker's favorite airs, which he himself had taught her. But except this, Berta lived like other ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... vanquished—utterly defeated in the battle of life. As old monkish legends teach, the devil might have carried him off bodily and he would not have resisted. In his prostrated nature, but one element of strength was apparent—a perverted pride that rose like a shattered, blackened shaft, the one prominent relic of ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... behalf of my grateful sex here represented, to thank you for the great pleasure and interest with which your gracious presence at these festivals never fails to inspire us. There is no English custom which is so manifestly a relic of savage life as that custom which usually excludes you from participation in similar gatherings. And although the crime carries its own heavy punishment along with it, in respect that it divests a ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... that the falsetto is a relic of the boy's voice, which has deteriorated from lack of use. This seems not unreasonable, and a considerable amount of evidence is offered in support of it. We may safely assume however that it is produced by the true vocal cords and the lightest register ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... too ill to be moved, and off I galloped with the bell." To make this story complete, I should add that the son of this gentleman, residing in Hertfordshire, restored to Scotland this interesting relic, after the lapse of ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... to the blacks has been permitted to live for thirty-five years,—in the parish of St. Thomas in the East,—that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... stylish, angular hand to Mr. Brotherton, told him what it would cost, and how she believed she could make expenses for herself and help a number of other women who, like her, were tempted to go the wrong road. She even sent him five spoons—the last relic of the old Mauling decency, five silver spoons dented with the tooth marks of the Mauling children, five spoons done up in pink tissue that she had always told little Ouida Hogan should come to her some day—she sent ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... she be given a clerkship of a lower grade. This was done, and although she was cut by the injustice of the act, she clung patiently to her only means of support. Two weeks later, it is said that a Northern newspaper contained an editorial which spoke sneeringly of "A Troublesome Relic," and ended with, "We draw the line at Miss Van Lew." Even though she had not a penny in the world, she could not bear the sting of that, and she wrote her resignation, and went back to the great, lonely house ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... army of heroes would have no opportunity to display the individual valor of its members, just so a merchant who counts upon his direct acquaintanceship for success, is a relic of the past—a ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... to lie about like other books, but was kept constantly wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, with gold tassels—the only relic of departed grandeur they had brought with them to the cottage—everything else of value had been sold off ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... soldier, which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. This relic was now as dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization. Till quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily, and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... the trail had ended here, as it had for this other remnant of vanished life that lay before him now with arms outstretched. The Desert Rat stared at the relic. A cross! The body formed a cross! Here again was ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... Lesdiguieres died at Paris in her fine hotel. She was not old, but had been long a widow, and had lost her only son. She was the last relic of the Gondi who were brought into France by Catherine de' Medici, and who made so prodigious a fortune. She left great wealth. She was a sort of fairy, who, though endowed with much wit, would see scarcely anybody, still less give dinners to the few people she did see. She never went to Court, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... egotism, if I say that these differences appear to be largely symbolised by my own existence. There is no Rector in an English University. Now, the organisation of the members of a University into Nations, with their elective Rector, is the last relic of the primitive constitution of Universities. The Rectorate was the most important of all offices in that University of Paris, upon the model of which the University of Aberdeen was fashioned; ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... been made known to the world by my predecessors that the United States have on several occasions endeavored to acquire Cuba from Spain by honorable negotiation. If this were accomplished, the last relic of the African slave trade would instantly disappear. We would not, if we could, acquire Cuba in any other manner. This is due to our national character. All the territory which we have acquired since the origin of the Government has been ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... side of Roman missionaries. These good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its religion and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a relic of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental and had lost many of its European traits, the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... hope did not that paper at once excite! but now it has become, by the premature death of its noble writer, an inestimable relic, and a source of unspeakable regret; for it aggravates, to a peculiar degree in me, the mourning and melancholy that pervade the whole moral and poetical world,—in me, who looked forward (after the success of his great efforts) to the prospect of being ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... mother's name— preceded and strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.]) D'Arc was born at Domremy, a village on the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... amusing example of this occurred when a supposed tooth of Buddha was brought to Goa, to redeem which the Rajah of Pegu offered a sum equal to half a million dollars. While the government was inclined to sell, the archbishop forbade the acceptance of such tainted money and ordered the relic destroyed. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... dragon, swallowed her alive, but that she escaped unhurt from the monster. Her girdle was long preserved in the abbey of St. Germain, in Paris; and females were, it was generally believed, undoubtedly relieved in their hour of suffering by the application of the sacred relic. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... disclaims all manner of dependence. Its sovereignty is divided between the two rajas of Sabluan and Kanali, who, in imitation of their former masters, boast an origin of high antiquity. One of them preserves as his sacred relic the bark of a tree in which his ancestor was nursed in the woods before the Pasaman people had reached their present polished state. The other, to be on a level with him, possesses the beard of a reverend predecessor (perhaps an anchorite), ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... that he encountered what he wanted. He was leaning back against the wall, after a long period of vain effort on the door, when his hand encountered what his sense of touch told him was a clothes hook, formed of bent wire—a relic of the days when Billy's dungeon was used as a cupboard evidently. With eager fingers the young reporter unscrewed the hook from the wall and then went to work to straighten it out till he should have a serviceable bit ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... taken by one of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power; whereas, there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes ... I persecute; if I say, Everybody in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you, who are a Catholic ... I do not persecute! What barbarous nonsense is this! as if degradation ...
— English Satires • Various

... heart seems to have melted towards his former friend; he wrote her one or two letters, conciliating, friendly, but how different from the former ones! The Countess of Albany, whom he had loved and trusted, was dead; the woman who remained was dear to him as a mere relic of that ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... which his ancestors had entered had grown smaller and smaller from the bottom until it had become little more than a window. Five stairs connected the street with the damp floor of the tannery, and above, near a pointed arch, a relic of medieval Valencia, floated like banners the skins that had been hung up to dry, wafting about the unbearable odor of the leather. The old man by no means envied the moderns, in their luxuriously appointed business offices. Surely they blushed with shame on passing through his lane ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... "The pretended relic was enclosed in a charming, old silver box, and that determined my choice, and putting my purchase into my pocket, I went to the railway station, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... and paid for by our old extra wiper here, that dreamer, kicker and would-be detective, Dallas. A pretty penny it must have cost. Where did he get the money? Skylarking around the country like a millionaire, and what did he pick out that antiquated curiosity of a relic car for? Well, it was the 'Dallas Special,' sure enough, and it made its run just the same as if he was a ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... best swordsman, and the heartiest drinker of his day. He is still looked upon in Germany as the typical hero of corps student life, and his pipe, or his Schlaeger, or his cap, or his Kneipe jacket is preserved as the relic of a saint. His was not the tepid virtue born of lack of vitality. One has but to remember Augustine and Origen and Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the preachers of salvation, the best of them, have generally had themselves to tame ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... tower which stands upon the green knoll high above the town. It is a relic of very old times, when San Cipriano had fortifications. It has been a ruin for more than a century,—a mere shell, open to the sky, encircling a wide space of ground. A few days before Hans's death, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... that old fashion in which the Venetians made their glasses,—a most pure kind of glass, with a long stalk, within which was a curved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed and twisted. This old glass was an heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with many traditions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils of time, that had shattered empires; and, if space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he deemed unjust; his jealousy of Hubert (de Burgh), although it led him to join the foreign party in 1223, did not prevent him from more than once interposing to prevent his overthrow. He was, moreover, almost the last relic of the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest." Although twice married he left no children, and his immense possessions passed to his four sisters. The earl's memory remained green for a long time, and in the Vision of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... day to fathom the mystery of this terrible relic of some remote superstition. It may have been that the abhorrence and extinction of evil was roughly typified, or that it was understood that the death of the victim would, as if he were a scapegoat, cleanse the worshippers of the sins with which he was thus loaded. It is idle to ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... She made a pretext of looking at her skirt (which was new) in the parlor cheval-glass; but in the parlor, behind the door, she did not give a glance to the picture in the mirror. The "pire glass," as Mrs. Murray called it, was a relic of the family's better days when Norah's father was alive and kept a grocery-store and owned a horse and wagon; its florid frame of black-walnut etched with gilt, its tall mirror, very little marred by water-spots on the back, long had been reverently admired by Norah; it showed that the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... from the cabinet and read. She bequeathed her heart to the convent of Val de Grace. It was taken from her body, cased in a costly urn, and conveyed to the convent in a carriage. The Archbishop of Auch seated himself beside the senseless relic, while the Duchess of Montpensier occupied another seat in ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... old man, clad in duck, turning yellow with age. When he threw the helmet back it exposed a wrinkled brow and a baldish head, except for a few wisps of hair at the temples. He appeared to be of great age—a fossil, an animated mummy, a relic from an ancient graveyard; and the stoop of his lean shoulders accentuated these impressions. It was plain that the tropics were fast making an end ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... fording the Laramie River to inspect the grave,—if such it can be called, as shown in the picture on this page,—where the body was dried up like a mummy, and nothing else but fragments of a buffalo-robe dangling in the wind was to be seen. Relic hunters had carried away everything in the shape of ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... goddess whom the Middle Ages had perfected and who in the minds of the simple and the savage has survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been faithful to her; who ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... the seat of government, Washington presented, it is believed, to all his chief officers some token of regard. To Wolcott he gave a piece of plate. Mrs. Washington gave to his wife, when visiting her for the last time, a relic still more interesting. Asking her if she did not wish for a memorial of the general, Mrs. Wolcott replied, "Yes," she "should like a lock of his hair." Mrs. Washington, smiling, took Her scissors and cut off for her a lock of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... 1880, the Rev. Chauncy Maples, of the Universities Mission, in a paper read to the Geographical Society, describing a journey to the Rovuma and the Makonde country, told of a man he found there, with the relic of an old coat over his right shoulder, evidently of English manufacture. It turned out, from the man's statement, that ten years ago a white man, the donor of the coat, had traveled with him to Mataka's, whom to have once seen and talked with was to remember for life; a white man who treated black ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... question if I live And wonder what may ever bid me die. But live I will, being yet not dead with thee, Father. Thou knowest in Paradise my heart. I feel thy kisses breathing on my lips, Whereto the dead cold relic of thy face Was pressed at bidding of thy slayer last night, And yet they were not withered: nay, they are red As blood is—blood but newly spilt—not thine. How good thou wast and sweet of spirit—how dear, Father! None lives that knew thee now save one, And none loves ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... actually have the face to tell me it is harmless! Judged by its effects, I consider it quite as reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl. Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation, but a flute is nothing less than a relic of barbarism." ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... very famous. It did not strike me as being remarkable. I could make any number of them with a pattern, without the least effort. But at any rate, when told by the verger to gaze upon the beauties of this wonderful relic and tremble, we were obliged to gaze also upon the beauties of the aforesaid nice young man, who was sketching it. As we turned to go away, aunt Celia dropped her bag. It is one of those detestable, all-absorbing, all-devouring, thoroughly respectable, but never proud Boston bags, made ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin









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