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Curfew   Listen
noun
Curfew  n.  
1.
The ringing of an evening bell, originally a signal to the inhabitants to cover fires, extinguish lights, and retire to rest, instituted by William the Conqueror; also, the bell itself. "He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." "The village curfew, as it tolled profound."
2.
A utensil for covering the fire. (Obs.) "For pans, pots, curfews, counters and the like."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Curfew" Quotes from Famous Books



... unanswered. The stars twinkled overhead, the sandman was abroad, curfew sounded through the dunes, and ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... after twilight, when darkness was at hand and the curfew sounded for human children to be at home, Peter and Pan and Sandy settled down near each other and near ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... remember your counsel well," said Jenkin; "I was to be introduced to her by you when I was perfect in my gallantries, and as rich as the king; and then she was to be surprised to find I was poor Jin Vin, that used to watch, from matin to curfew, for one glance of her eye; and now, instead of that, she has set her soul on this Scottish sparrow-hawk of a lord that won my last tester, and be cursed to him; and so I am bankrupt in love, fortune, and character, before I am out ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... The curfew[361-1] tolls the knell[361-2] of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... press, remind the reader of some of these aforementioned rules and regulations. We read that "Tapsters are forbid to sell to the Indians," and that "unseasonable night tippling" is also tabooed; likewise drinking after nine in the evening when curfew rings, or "on a Sunday before three o'clock, when ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... hemmed round by an amphitheatre of purple mountain, rich in tint and furrowed by ravines, high in air, when the tall gables and narrow windows of its ancient graystone houses, and the tower of the old church, from which every evening the curfew still rings, show like silver in the moonbeams, and the black elms that stand round throw moveless shadows upon the short level grass—is one of the most singular and beautiful sights I have ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... any about the dead. The good Lord will take care of them, and they don't cause him half as much sitting up at nights as the living do, and he always knows where to find them when the curfew blows. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of Domesday Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs, outlaws, became the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. The Charter of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize, From Pummery-Tout to where ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael—repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling or by a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starving Irish village in which the curfew ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... interwoven with masterly skill. It is a picture, in music, of the old Paris. The citizens rejoice over their day's work done. The Huguenots shout their lusty Rataplan, while the Papist maidens sing their solemn litany ("Ave Maria") on their way to chapel; and as they disappear, the quaint tones of the curfew chant are heard, and night and rest settle down upon the city. It is a striking introduction to what follows,—the exquisite duet between Marcel and Valentin, the great septet of the duel scene, beginning, "De dritti miei ho l'alma accesa," with the tremendous ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... was the best that there was in him. It was that which kept him on his feet and jaunty and swaggering so long, that which clenched his teeth on the hiccoughs of his death agony. In the damp garden the fountain drips sadly. The firemen's bugle sounds the curfew. "Just go up to number 7," says the mistress of the establishment, "he's a long while over his bath." The attendant goes up and utters a shriek of horror: "O Madame, he 's dead—but it isn't the same man." They run to the spot, and no one, in truth, can recognize ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... The curfew bell rang at nine o'clock; the lights were put out; and all had betaken themselves to their hammocks. The sentries (not a few,) passed backwards and forwards outside, or stood at ease in their boxes. ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown

... bells in the town rang out the curfew,—a custom fallen elsewhere into desuetude, but still observed in the provinces, where venerable habits are abolished slowly. Though the lights were not put out, the watchmen of each quarter stretched the ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... dare to "turn up," from the fear of being thought unfashionable, is simply monstrous! His behaviour is perfectly inexcusable; and, as a punishment, he should in future be compelled for a certain time to dine at our Saxon forefathers' early hour, and go to bed at the sound of the curfew bell instituted by their Norman conquerors—that is how I would ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... city's centre; hence, it was but five minutes' walk to the park, scarce ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though often I had heard ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... supply, and schoolhouses and paved streets are not the result of throwing confetti, tooting tin horns and waiving the curfew law. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... were repudiated by their chief. The feeling of all parties coincided with Mr. Tuffnell; finally, an Irish repealer rose and announced that the government were bartering their Corn Bill to secure coercion to Ireland. Lord George Bentinck said the Coercion Bill was 'a second Curfew Act,' that nothing but necessity could justify it, and if it were necessary it must be immediate. Sir Robert remained irritated and obstinate. He would not give up a stage either of the Corn Bill or the Coercion Bill; he wanted to advance both before Easter. The mere division ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... keys of the castle do not leave the belt of the old steward; when curfew is rung and he has made his rounds to make sure that all the doors are fast shut, he gives them up to William Douglas, who, if he stays up, fastens them to his sword-belt, or, if he sleeps, puts them under his pillow. For five months, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... bearer's eyes; and as he paced forth in the ghostly darkness, carrying his own sun by a ring about his finger, day and night swung to and fro and up and down about his footsteps. Blackness haunted his path; he was beleaguered by goblins as he went; and, curfew being struck, he found no light but that he ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... take a flagrant instance of wrong-doing. Suppose some person to persist in playing "Dolly Grey" on the euphonium, or to contract a baneful habit of reciting "Curfew shall not Ring" at evening parties, the Christian believer in Free Will would call him a bad man, and would say he ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... conquest of England, and as one of the strongest elements of its permanency, the feudal system was brought into England; the territory was surveyed and apportioned to be held by military tenure; to guard against popular insurrections, the curfew rigorously housed the Saxons at night; a new legislature, called a parliament, or talking-ground, took the place of the witenagemot, or assembly of the wise: it was a conquest not only in name but in truth; everything was changed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... week or two after Myles had come to Devlen—Blunt was called to attend the Earl at livery. The livery was the last meal of the day, and was served with great pomp and ceremony about nine o'clock at night to the head of the house as he lay in bed. Curfew had not yet rung, and the lads in the squires' quarters were still wrestling and sparring and romping boisterously in and out around the long row of rude cots in the great dormitory as they made ready for the night. Six or eight flaring links ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... Monarch's to the Muses' Court, Their meals were frugal and their sleeps were short; To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn, And froze ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... offered him, he drank the young couple's health and withdrew. The old men settled down to their customary game of draughts, and the lovers sat in the window-seat watching the moon rise and the stars come out one by one. At nine the village curfew rang, and the guests rose up ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman

... blacker and more deserted every moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare intervals now that they encountered a passer-by in the street, or a light in the windows. Gringoire had become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts which surround ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... long as a woman can fight?" Kate cried quickly. "Chivalry?" she went on contemptuously. "That's surely a survival of ages when the old curfew rang, and a lot of other stupid notions filled folks' minds. I—I just ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... room was next to Miss West's, and the Southerner's knock often appealed to Lizzie's hospitality when Mme. Clopin's early curfew had driven her boarders from the salon. It sounded thus one evening just as Lizzie, tired from an unusually long day of tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She was in too indulgent a mood ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... Union Army it had been determined to hold them permanently as a conquered territory. It could be done thus. First, the original inhabitants must be disarmed and put under stringent laws, like that of the curfew, etc. Then to every private soldier in the Union Army a farm, say of fifty acres, would be assigned, on condition that whenever summoned by the captain of his company he would present himself armed to do military duty. In like manner the captain would ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... made a desperate bid for bed, and replied 'Bloaters.' The sentry replied, 'Advance, friend,' and the scene closed. You doubt this as ben trovato. Well, do not doubt any longer when I plead conviction in personal guilt. I was 'Bloaters.' Nevertheless, to an active sentrydom, as well as to vigilant curfew, we were becoming cheerfully accustomed. It is martial law, and the camp is the centre of Boerdom. Anything, indeed, is welcome, even martial law, if it relieves ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... for the transportation of freight during a period of emergency;[40] prescribing price schedules for the distribution of milk;[41] or for all commodities[42] and for rental housing[43] in time of war; regulating wages and prices in the production and distribution of coal;[44] imposing a curfew to protect military resources in designated areas from espionage and sabotage;[45] providing for the appointment of receivers or conservators for Federal Savings and Loan Associations;[46] allotting marketing quotas for tobacco;[47] and prescribing methods ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... sometimes shrewd, but often the silly children of convention like the rest of us. West Dempster has an evil reputation in the underworld. The pinching of joy-riders is purely incidental; they run in anybody they catch after the curfew ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson

... Betty had taken a great deal of trouble to understand about the Norman Conquest herself, and to make it easy for Godfrey, but he would not take any interest to-day in the oppression of the poor Saxons, or the curfew bell, or Domesday Book. ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... 1620, as that when the family of Van den Gheyns were bringing the art of bell founding to perfection in Louvain, and notes that the tower and bells of each fortified town were half civic property. Thus the curfew, the carolus, and the St. Mary bells in Antwerp Cathedral belong to ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... you again?" Few days passed in which I did not see in my mind's eye the talismanic letters on the Abbey tower—"King Robert The Bruce." All my recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped. I have referred to that bell in my "American Four-in-Hand in Britain"[10] when passing the Abbey and I may as well quote from ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... has been put up for the churchyard of Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge, the great bell of St. Mary's serving for the "curfew." But Stoke-Pogis is more likely to have been the spot, if any individual locality were indicated. The poet often visited the village, his aunt and mother residing there, and his aunt was interred in the churchyard of the place. Gray's epitaph on his mother is characterized not only ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... flow'rs, the brooks, and trees, Again are made our own, The woodlands rife with bees, And the curfew's pensive tone. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... much as they were. The towns had little or no cause of complaint, and the lesser Saxon gentry, with the Franklins and the Earls, were unmolested, unless they happened to have vicious neighbors. The Curfew bell, about which so great a clamor was raised, was a universal regulation in Europe; it was a call to prayers, an intimation that it was bedtime, and a means of guarding against fire, when streets ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Shelley came, felt the vastness, the pathlessness, of the heaven as Milton did. Or, to come to earth again, where does poetry set the ear more instantly and actively at the work of imaginative {112} creation than in those finely suggestive lines about the curfew...
— Milton • John Bailey

... called the curfew, a bell rang at sunset in summer and at eight in winter, which was the government signal for putting out lights and covering up fires. This law, which was especially hated by the English, as a Norman innovation and act of tyranny, was a necessary precaution against ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... I'll bring Daisy a pilot model—to use to scare strange kids." He put his watch to his ear. "Good lord, I'm going to have to cut to make it underground before the main doors close. Just ten minutes to Second Curfew! 'By, Gus. ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... he was good, Disguised himself that night in ample cloak, Round flapping hat, and vizor mask of black, And made, unnoticed, for the English camp. He passed the unsuspecting sentinels (Who little thought a man in this disguise Could be a proper object of suspicion), And ere the curfew bell had boomed "lights out," He found in ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... build their houses of stone and to keep a tub full of water before every building; and in each district a special official was equipped with a proper hook and cord for pulling down houses on fire. At night respectable town-life was practically at a standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no efficient police-force existed—merely ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... was so considered by all—to be invited to become a Sweetbriar. Within the association was much innocent entertainment. Picnics, musicals, evening parties approved by the school faculty—even little feasts after curfew—were hatched within the membership. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... who resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his eyes after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only circumstance which could have added to his distress,—the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... was pledged when they gave their word, even to an enemy. Some of the restrictions applying to the other citizens of Amiens did not restrain them. They were allowed to be on the streets after the hour of curfew, for one thing. And between the scouts and a good many of the German privates and younger officers a relation almost friendly had been established. Frank, for instance, was welcomed at one Bavarian mess, which contained several soldiers who had studied at English schools, and liked a chance ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... December's all too brief For me to hope to wipe away The memory of my sinful May!" And Friar Jerome was full of grief, That April evening, as he lay On the straw pallet in his cell. He scarcely heard the curfew-bell Calling the brotherhood to prayer; But he arose, for't was his care Nightly to feed the hungry poor That ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... by the hand, and made him sit down by his side, on the sofa. And Flemmingfelt a mysterious awe creep over him, on touching the hand of the good old man, who sat so serenely amid the gathering shade of years, and listened to life's curfew-bell, telling, with eight and seventy solemn strokes, that the hour had come, when the fires of all earthly passion must be quenched within, and man must prepare to lie down and rest till ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... around. On a bed of green serge, similar in all respect to the other beds in the Bastile, save that it was newer, and under curtains half-drawn, reposed a young man, to whom we have already once before introduced Aramis. According to custom, the prisoner was without a light. At the hour of curfew, he was bound to extinguish his lamp, and we perceive how much he was favored, in being allowed to keep it burning even till then. Near the bed a large leathern armchair, with twisted legs, sustained his clothes. A little table—without ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the burghers disappeared noiselessly into the darkness, and Mr. Hattingh literally tore home across the veld on his bicycle, clearing holes and jumping over stones in his mad career. He was able to reach his home just in time to be under shelter when the "curfew" rang 10 o'clock, the hour at which all respectable citizens, carrying residential passes, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... rose for a bath and walk before a seven o'clock breakfast, nine o'clock found us at school, and we returned to a two o'clock dinner. In the afternoon we walked, or rode on horseback, or studied together for an hour. We took tea at six or half past six o'clock, and the curfew ringing at nine found us preparing for bed. We had no time for unsuitable reading, and none of the cares or dissipations of maidenhood perplexed our straight ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... we hear of the nightly ringing of Bow bell at nine o'clock—a reminiscence, probably, of the tyrannical Norman curfew, or signal for extinguishing the lights at eight p.m.—is in 1315 (Edward II.). It was the go-to-bed bell of those early days; and two old couplets still exist, supposed to be the complaint of the sleepy 'prentices of Chepe and the obsequious ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... left to the clerk in order that he may ring the curfew-bell, or a bell at night and early morning, so that travellers may be warned lest they should lose their way over wild moorland or bleak down, and, guided by the sound of the bell, may ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... vanity was what was best in him. It alone had held him firm and upright so long; it alone clinched his teeth on the groans of his last agony. In the damp garden the water drips sadly. The bugle of the firemen sounds the curfew. "Go and look at No. 7," says the mistress, "he will never have done with his bath." The attendant goes, and utters a cry of fright, of horror: "Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the same man." They go, but nobody can recognise the fine gentleman who entered a short time ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... to the spectator's imagination is often all that they rely on; proof of the singular fulness and reality of the culture of the time. The art of suggestion has never been carried farther. Such traditional subjects as "Curfew from a Distant Temple" and "The Moon over Raging Waves" indicate the poetic atmosphere of this art. Ma Yuan, Hsia Kuei and the emperor Hwei-tsung are among the greatest landscape artists of this period. They belong to the South Sung school, which loved to paint the gorges and towering rock-pinnacles ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... Mice" a million times every Sunday evening, till I could have cried for monotony and the vexation of the thwarted tune. But at school I had to pay the penalty for my prejudice every hour of the day. Especially I suffered at night during preparation, when they rang the curfew on the church bells at intolerable length, for these were tranquil hours to which I looked forward eagerly. We prepared our lessons for the morrow in the Great Hall, and I would spread my books ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... bidding to task or pleasure or repose, the music of the grey belfries floated overhead; a voice from the old time, an admonition of mortality in strains sweet to the ear of childhood. Harvey had but to listen, and the days of long ago came back to him. Above all, when at evening rang the curfew. Stealing apart to a bowered corner of the garden, he dreamed himself into the vanished years, when curfew-time was bed-time, and a hand with gentle touch led him from his play to that long sweet slumber which is ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and, at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp, outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... complied with great pleasure, and having once started, he found it difficult to stop. From "Lord Ullin's Daughter" he passed to "Curfew," hence to "Barbara Frietchie" and "Young Lochinvar," and as he read Hinton sat with closed eyes ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... suggested, "that it was scarce an hour since the tolling of the curfew;" an ill-chosen apology, since it turned upon a topic so harsh to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the darkness of Burmah?—or of Mrs. Hemans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter's horn, and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day?—and scores and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to the discouraged—their ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... thought. "People awake! Some student or some saint, confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in bed snoring like their neighbours? What's the good of curfew, and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell-towers? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The gripes to them!" He grinned as he saw where his logic was leading him. "Every ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... Benedight Blesse this house from wicked wight; From the night-mare and the goblin, That is hight good fellow Robin; Keep it from all evil spirits, Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets: From curfew time To ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... after curfew, she heard a loud knocking at the door of her house. Accustomed to receive visits at all hours, she took her lamp without hesitation, and opened the door. An armed man, apparently much agitated, entered the room. Louise Goillard, in a great fright, fell ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... military forces which arrived the city was thoroughly policed. At night the city was in darkness again. It was impossible to do much relief work at night and the curfew order was due in part to the advisability of keeping the men where they could protect their own households ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... T. U. alone has secured temperance measures of many kinds, including a law in every State requiring scientific temperance instruction in the public schools; in many States curfew laws, and statutes prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and of liquor on or near fair grounds, Soldiers' Homes and school-houses, and preventing gambling devices, immoral exhibits, etc. The Federation of Women's Clubs has obtained laws for free traveling libraries and has united with other ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... weary grown, When curfew o'er the wold is blown, He sees, as in a magic glass, Some lost and lonely mountain-pass; And lo! a sign of deathful rout The mocking vine has wound about,— An earth-fixed arrow by a spring, All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing; That stifled shaft ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... hear Thy voice, dear Lord, In singing winds and falling snow, The curfew chimes, the midnight bell, "Sleep well, my child," it murmurs low; "The guardian angels come and go— O ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... said the Abbot, in reply, "and viatoribus licitum est—You know the canon—a traveller must eat what food his hard fate sets before him. I grant you all a dispensation to eat flesh this day, conditionally that you, brethren, say the Confiteor at curfew time, that the knight give alms to his ability, and that all and each of you fast from flesh on such day within the next month that shall seem most convenient;—wherefore fall to and eat your food with cheerful countenances, and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... head where late it lay In life's grey dusk itself is grey, And when the curfew of life's day By death is tolled, Shall forfeit not the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... Merchant-gild of the town. A seven years' apprenticeship formed the necessary prelude to full membership of these trade-gilds. Their regulations were of the minutest character; the quality and value of work were rigidly prescribed, the hours of toil fixed "from day-break to curfew," and strict provision made against competition in labour. At each meeting of these gilds their members gathered round the Craft-box which contained the rules of their Society, and stood with bared heads as it was opened. The warden and a quorum of gild-brothers ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... towns, being almost entirely constructed of wood, were liable to periodic and devastating conflagrations, which fact suggested to that genius, William the Conqueror, the institution of Couvre-feu, or in its more popular form, Curfew, which rang at eight o'clock in the evening, when all lights were to be extinguished. The ringing of curfew has survived in many of our towns and villages to this day, but it is doubtful if the custom has been continuous ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... away are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle. A dismantled gate-house with some rather extensive foundations are all that remain. In a little church near by the matins and the curfew are still tolled, one of the bells used having belonged to the priory. Few English ruins have more romance attached to them than those of Kenilworth, for the graphic pen of the best story-teller of Britain has interwoven them ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... Marriage by the State; Recent Legislation; Radical Statutes in Sexual Matters; Legal Separation; The Married Woman's Privileges; The "Age of Consent"; Female Suffrage by Property-Owners; Kidnapping, Curfew, Rape; Statistics of Divorce; Industrial Liberty of Women; Female Labor in ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... presents, what different garments might be owned and worn by a citizen, and even the number of trees that might be planted in his garden. Each citizen had to serve his turn as watchman on the walls or in the streets at night. When the great bell in the belfry rang the "curfew," [7] at eight or nine o'clock, this was the signal for every one to extinguish lights and fires and go to bed. It was a useful precaution, since conflagrations were common enough in the densely packed wooden houses. After curfew the streets became deserted, except for ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 35 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid— 40 Weak masters though ye be—I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds. And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 45 With his own bolt; the strong-based ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... that I have is at your service; yet 'tis only lately that lads have been allowed to rove past curfew time. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... millionaire which had sprung up overnight in such numbers in New York and Philadelphia. Proudly defiant of a product so alien to all her traditions, her citizens would have sworn that no votary of modern high finance could exist over one curfew-toll within her gates. For Boston had her own financial eminence, of a character in keeping with the chill conditions of conservatism and rectitude appropriate to the metropolis of the New England conscience. She had her Stock Exchange, her ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Passeyr, which rushes from the mountain through the valley, glistened like a silver belt in the gloom. The church-bells of the villages of St. Leonard and St. Martin, lying on both sides of the valley, tolled a solemn curfew, awakening here and there a low, sleepy echo; and from time to time was heard from a mountain- peak a loud, joyous Jodler, by which a Tyrolese hunter, perhaps, announced his speedy return to his family in the valley. The gloom in the narrow Passeyrthal became deeper ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... they were something about 'the curfew tolling the knell of parting day,' but I can never recollect more of ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... how the bells were rung when people died, and whether those were different bells from wedding-bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies of the living; and then the precocious small boy proceeds to give the astonished clockmaker some useful information about King Alfred's candles and curfew-bells. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... 19 a proclamation was issued forbidding the possession of firearms without licence. On August 7 the curfew ordinance was extended to 11 p.m., and again, in the following month, to midnight. In September there was another serious outbreak up the Laguna de Bay, where two or three hundred insurgents, led by a French half-caste, General ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... were cold, because the fire had gone out,' he answered, trying in vain to remember whether he had dreamed anything at all. 'And—that it's time to go home. I hear the curfew ringing.' ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... Edward. It was rebuilt in 1860, excepting the fourteenth century tower, with its quaint gargoyles, and the Norman south porch. From the tower, shot made from the organ pipes of the church was hurled at the castle during the siege. The clock was constructed while Elizabeth was queen and curfew is still rung daily from October to March at 8 p.m. Within the church may be seen the old altar frontal used prior to the Reformation, and the fifteenth-century font. Of much interest are the quotations from the churchwardens' accounts ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... only sentence which, in revising these essays, I am now inclined to question; but the point is one of extreme difficulty. There might be a law, for instance, of curfew, that candles should be put out, unless for necessary service, at such and such an hour, the idea of "necessary service" being quite indefinable, and no penalty possible; yet there would be a distinct consciousness ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... that dusk room Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... last organized resistance had been wiped out, and curfew had been imposed, and peace of a sort restored. There was still the threat from Keegark, but it was looking less ominous now than it had the evening before. Von Schlichten and Paula were having dinner in the Broadway Room, confident that there was ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... The curfew has not even yet fallen entirely into disuse. In the last century it was oftener heard to 'toll the knell of parting day.' At Ripon its place was supplied by a horn sounded ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... kept his treasure long, 'Mid seasons grave or gay, Till to death's plaintive curfew-song, Calmly he ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... boy,—what can you tell me about the curfew?" The first boy was well up in the curfew, and rattled off a "full, true, and particular account" of that fine old English institution, much to everybody's satisfaction. The Doctor went on repeating two or three verses till he came ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... chambers above; in the outer walls the windows are high and narrow; each is filled with old painted glass. A strong, grim building, this; and when the iron gates are locked, as they are every night when the curfew bell—an ancient institution jealously kept up in Hathelsborough—rings from St. Hathelswide's tower, a man might safely wager his all to nothing that only modern artillery could effect an entrance to ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... bells at St. Mary's were ringing the customary curfew. The Dean was seated before the fire in his arm-chair. An open book, a treatise on some abstruse question of pure mathematics, lay on the table by his side. He was meditating on his past exploits, and planning new punishments. But somehow there was a strange sinking at his heart. What could be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... boys' home at the Abbe's charity school. And that was not like a happy real home, for the little Brothers were rough and rude and far from loving one another. He had started at dusk from the school, hoping to be at the village church before curfew. For Pierre had a sweet little voice, and he was to earn a few pennies by singing in the choir on Christmas morning. But it was growing late. The church would be closed and the Cure gone home before Pierre could reach it; and then ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... it so graphically that by the time she reached the "big, black hole, and the groaning ropes of the old dummy" the girls were howling and tumbling around in a pretty good imitation of Madam Z herself. They shuddered, acted the spook, and Judith proclaimed something like the old "Curfew shall not" in her swing out the window that she imagined went with the wild night's terrors. This detail of Judith's upset things some, for she fell off the couch (her pedestal for the tragic act), and although she rebounded quickly there ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... P.M., curfew hour for robots. Lights out and lock yourself in until six in the morning, eight hours of boredom and darkness for all except the few night workers. But there were ways of getting around the letter of a law that didn't concern itself ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... of receiving nothing but bread. Silence was enjoined at meal times and the Bible was read. Latin was, from the first, the only lawful medium of conversation. All the members of (p. 083) a college, had to be within the gates when the curfew bell rang. Bearing arms or wearing unusual clothes was forbidden, and singing, shouting and games were denounced as interfering with the studies of others, although the Parisian legislators were more sympathetic with regard to games, than their English contemporaries. ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... as black as Lucifer. God bless us! here was goodman Theophilus buried; he was the best Nutcracker that ever dwelt in Enfield. Well, tis 9. a clock, tis time to ring curfew. Lord bless us, what a white thing is that in the Church porch! O Lord, my legs are too weak for my body, my hair is too stiff for my night-cap, my heart fails; this is the ghost of Theophilus. O Lord, ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... around Laura's waist as she answered, "She is the most motherly woman I ever met. She seems to have room in her big, warm heart for every girl that wants mothering, no matter who or what she is." They were back at the camp now, and she added, "But we must get to bed quickly—there's the curfew," as a bugle sounded a ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... quest, begun on Monday, was continued for three days in the few hours that I could snatch between five o'clock, the closing-time at the shop, and ten o'clock, the curfew hour at the "home." On Wednesday the strain grew unbearable. All the associations of Wolff's were tinctured with memories of the dead Bessie and the lost Eunice. Under the counter, in the big pasteboard box, their checked-gingham ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... theologians bitterly hostile to the heretical "orientalism" of the Fatimites, and always ready to excite a tumult. Moizz was resolved to give them no chance, and one of his repressive measures was the curfew. At sunset a trumpet sounded, and anyone found abroad after that was liable to lose not only his way, but his head. So long as they were quiet, however, he used the people justly, and sought to impress them in his favor. In a singular interview, recorded by Makrisi, he exhibited himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various



Words linked to "Curfew" :   signaling, edict, order, rescript, decree, jurisprudence, signal, fiat, sign, deadline, law



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