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Arson   /ˈɑrsən/   Listen
Arson

noun
1.
Malicious burning to destroy property.  Synonyms: fire-raising, incendiarism.



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"Arson" Quotes from Famous Books



... to hate, with a deep, abiding hatred, the flannel bundle. She loathed the very smell of flannel before Theodora was six short weeks old, and the sight of the diminutive laundry, which hung upon the line between the cherry trees, almost drove her to arson. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... his eye met the chilling regard of a lean, yellow-faced priest. "Wonder what I'm booked for?" Idiotically, he recalled being summoned before a traffic court, years back. "Guess I don't get off with vagrancy; it'll probably be everything from speeding to mayhem, with maybe arson and well-poisoning ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... encouragement. But what was the fact? Why, sir, they were two of the greatest firebrands on my estate, and put both me and my agent to great trouble and expense. No, sir, I wouldn't give a curse for a priest's testimonial upon such an occasion. These fellows were subsequently convicted of arson on the clearest evidence, ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... worked, I found to my surprise that the guilt of the old man, though based wholly on circumstantial evidence, was established more clearly than that of his son—not indeed, as to the murders, but as to the arson, which served just as well to convict on. The handkerchief, which Joel had not been able to resist the temptation to steal, and the splinter of light-wood in his pocket, which fitted exactly into that found in the house, together with other circumstances, proved his guilt conclusively. But although ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... thing—there is no denying that. If he had been proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling graves, I believe they would have ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... scorification[obs3]; cautery, cauterization; ustulation[obs3], calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration[obs3]; carbonization; cupellation[Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion[obs3], flagration| [obs3]; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis[obs3], incendiarism; arson; auto dafe[Fr]. boiling &c. v.; coction[obs3], ebullition, estuation[obs3], elixation|, decoction; ebullioscope[obs3]; geyser; distillation (vaporization) 336. furnace &c. 386; blanket, flannel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... However, so long as what I have to say is not irrelevant, I do not know that length matters. There is an ancient procedure in the Areopagus, our murder court. When the members have ascended the hill, and taken their seats to decide a case of murder or deliberate maiming or arson, each side is allowed to address the court in turn, prosecution and defence being conducted either by the principals or by counsel. As long as they speak to the matter in hand, the court listens silently and patiently. But if either prefaces his speech ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... published abroad, do enormous damage to the Ministry. This, let me assure you, is a fatal error, and a blunder which could only be committed by an outsider in political life. The days are long past since a scandal could smash an administration; and we are so strong now that arson or forgery could not hurt, and I don't think ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... was convicted, at the same term of the court, of the crime of arson, and ordered to be hanged, and afterwards consumed to ashes in the same fire with Maria, as appears by the ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.

... too easy to produce an unprovoked murder, an inexplicable arson, neither led up to nor followed by the ordinary human history of such acts, and therefore as arbitrary as the deeds of idiots or the insane. A villainous hate, an alleged love, a violent death, are flashed at us, without being in any sort of tableau logic. The public ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... ignorance, naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friends—he was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer. He had no redeeming point that I could anywhere discover. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... almost every forest community sees fire after fire set through ignorance, carelessness or purpose, and so far from punishing the offenders accords them every privilege of business and society. In cities, however insignificant the damage, arson leads to the penitentiary. A forest fire may destroy millions and the cause not even be investigated. If, aggravated by a particularly inexcusable case of malice or carelessness, some property holder (seldom the people) secures an arrest, acquittal is practically certain because the community ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... theft and plunder, you condemn; but you acquit the general who devastates a whole town, and in the arrogance of his victory wishes to make himself, like Erostratos, immortal by incendiarism and arson." ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... all the din and clamor, under and above the howling and the volleys and the roar of flames, sounded the steady thumping of the sacred war-drums. The whole sky glowed red. The Indian night was scorched and smoked and lit by arson. Hell screamed with the cooking of red mutiny, and throbbed with the thunder of the sacred temple-drums. And that was only one of the hells, and a small one. India glowed red that night from ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil feminine ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... N.B.—In places addicted to arson, We can't recommend a wooden parson: But if the Church any such appoints, They'd better at least have iron joints. In parts, not much by Protestants haunted, A figure to look at's all that's wanted— A block in black, to eat and sleep, Which (now ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... arson could make a more legitimate call upon a body of citizen regulators than that of wife-beating and the abuse of small children. So it came about that after the wife had forgiven her indignities and returned to her ascendency of henpecking, which ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... at anything, and it occurs to me that in all likelihood they have sought refuge in this cavern, where they fancy they can continue to defy the law with impunity, after a long series of crimes—robbery, murder, arson, and excesses of all descriptions committed together. In this case Back Cup is nothing but a lair of pirates, the Count d'Artigas is the leader of the band and Serko and Spade ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... the officials and the clerks, against nobles, ecclesiastics, corn-dealers and land-owners, against every species of public authority whatever its origin. Everywhere the authorities are constrained to tolerate or excuse murders, pillage and arson, or, at the very least, insurrections and disobedience. For two years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law; a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy; a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders who devastate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... MacTaggart, on whatna charge?" asked the writer, taking a confident, even an insolent, tone, now that he was on his own familiar ground. "Rape, arson, forgery, robbery, thigging, sorning, pickery, murder, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... firmly, "I shall count myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none but God and my conscience." And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by Jose Quintana's gang of international crooks ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... organization. Hypnotized by German success, we should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers. For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood, there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... who ruled by murder and arson were heroes and martyrs, the defenders of law and order were criminals according to British Socialists: "The thirst of the well-to-do classes for the blood of the Communards was insatiable. The latter were tried and shot in batches."[1115] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... smouldered. She would not give in, would not abandon hope and accept the situation at its face value, as irremediable. Upon this was she firmly determined: the night was not to pass unmarked by some manner of attempt to escape or summon aid. She even found herself willing to consider arson as a last resort: the hotel afire would make a famous torch to bring assistance from the mainland. Only ... she shrank from the attempt, her soul curdling with the sinister ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... concremation^, cremation; scorification^; cautery, cauterization; ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ebullition, estuation^, elixation^, decoction; ebullioscope^; geyser; distillation (vaporization) 336. furnace &c 386; blanket, flannel, fur; wadding &c (lining) 224; clothing &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... diversified by various attempts at arson—the latest, with aid of gunpowder, being successful. On the first of last February, the British minister's residence at Yedo was burned to the ground by armed incendiaries, who made their work more sure by laying trains of gunpowder, which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... had power to revoke it. I might write to my bookseller for an unburnt copy, and place it on the shelf where this one had stood—this gloriously glowing one. I would do nothing of the sort. What I had done I had done. I would wear forever on my conscience the white rose of theft and the red rose of arson. If hereafter the owner of this cottage happened to miss that volume—let him! If he were fool enough to write to me about it, would I share my grand secret with him? No. Gently, with his poker, I prodded that volume further among the coals. The all-but-consumed binding shot ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... were particularly active in disseminating libels upon Napoleon; they charged him in their books and pamphlets with murder, arson, incest, treason, treachery, cowardice, seduction, hypocrisy, avarice, robbery, ingratitude, and jealousy; they said that he poisoned his sick soldiers, that he was the father of Hortense's child, that he committed the most atrocious cruelties in Egypt and Italy, that he married Barras' discarded ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... say, never on a large scale; though I daresay, if the truth were spoken, a considerable amount of small matters might be raked up against me, as well as against another man; but then, I've never committed piracy, nor high treason, nor arson, nor any of them sort of things. As to smuggling, and the like of that, why, I'm a seafaring man, and I suppose all callings have their weak spots. I daresay your trade is not altogether without blemish, honorable and useful as it ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... such a dwelling house must be an intent of committing felony, and not a trespass; and this much I think is sufficient to define the nature of this crime, which notwithstanding the many examples which have been made of it, is still too much practised. As to arson, by which the Law understand maliciously and voluntarily burning the house of another by night or by day; to make a man guilty of this it must appear that he did it voluntarily and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... things to the need of destroying them. Sometimes the individual turns upon himself the revolutionary frenzy that he cannot otherwise exercise. Russia is full of these madmen, who, not content with committing arson or throwing bombs at hazard into the crowd, finally mutilate themselves, like the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... th' best five-cint see-gar that money can buy; yet, whin a good frind iv mine wants to make me a prisint f'r Christmas, he goes to a harness shop an' buys a box iv see-gars with excelsior fillin's an' burlap wrappers, an', if I smoked wan an' lived, I'd be arristed f'r arson. I got a pair iv suspinders wanst fr'm a lady,—niver mind her name,—an' I wurruked hard that day; an' th' decorations moved back into me, an' I had to take thim out with pumice stone. I didn't lose th' taste iv th' paint ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... "the United States and Her Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisitions ... deliver up to justice all persons ... charged with murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy or arson or robbery or forgery or the utterance of forged paper...." Power was given to judges and other magistrates to issue warrants of arrest, to hear evidence and if "the evidence be deemed sufficient ... it shall be the duty of the ... judge or ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... the crime of murder only. Treason is punishable by death; but as this offense is defined and made punishable by the laws of the United States, not all the states take cognizance of it. If committed in such states, it is tried in the courts of the United States. In New York, murder, treason, and arson in the first degree, are punishable by death. Few states make more than these crimes thus punishable. In two or three states, the penalty of death has been abolished, and imprisonment ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... the Constitution and the laws for himself, if he is to obey and support them only as he may say he understands them, a revolution, I think, would take place in the administration of justice; and discussions about the law of treason, murder, and arson should be addressed, not to the judicial bench, but to those who might stand charged with such offences. The object of discussion should be, if we run out this notion to its natural extent, to enlighten the culprit himself how he ought to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... necessary for commerce; and I see that you are of an opinion contrary to this. In this matter, before taking sides with the bishop, you should enquire very exactly as to the number of murders, assassinations, cases of arson, and other excesses caused by brandy ... and send me the proof of this. If these deeds had been continual, His Majesty would have issued a most severe and vigorous prohibition to all his subjects against engaging in this traffic. But, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... the principal" was, in the minds of most thrifty New England women, a sin only second to arson, theft, or murder; and, though the rule was occasionally carried too far for common sense,—as in this case, where two elderly women of sixty might reasonably have drawn something from their little hoard in time of ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... is ready," he said in his cold, level voice. "The wedding is to take place in the village church to-morrow at eleven. You, Ragley, will take up your position, disguised as a policeman, by the church porch, arrest Wonderson on a charge of arson, and detain him until I arrive, if I should not be already there. I have here the policeman's uniform complete. We are cub-hunting to-morrow morning, and at the proper moment I shall leave the hunt and make my way across to the church, provided with the forged warrant of arrest (which I shall, as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... a robber) belongs to a class who rob in gangs, but never commit murder—arson and housebreaking also forming part of their profession. These are all high-class Rajpoots, originally from Guzerat; who, on being conquered, vowed vengeance on mankind. They speak both Hindostanee and the otherwise extinct Guzerat language; this is guttural in the extreme, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Antipodean novelists. 'Every now and then,' he says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; "no promenade, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... His mania is arson, poor fellow; and when the terrible wish comes over him to set the place on fire he forgets his artistic conceit, and his mean, weak, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... penal servitude." That would be indeed awkward for the Government if penal servitude were easily procurable. Unfortunately, the women must first qualify for it, and their crimes would disembarrass the Government. Mrs. Leigh could have been safely left to starve had her attempted arson of that theater really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... the devil to go skylarkin' in!" he cried jovially. "A night for murder an' arson an' robbin' graveyards! Listen to her, boys! Hear her roar! Poke Drury, I'm tellin' you, I'm glad your shack's right where it is instead of seventeen miles fu'ther on. An' ... Where's the girl?" He had swept the room with his roving eye; now, dropping his voice a little ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... find, lie very easily, and if you will give me sufficient time, I dare say I can become sufficiently expert in other and more criminal matters to please even your fancy. I cannot, I fear, commit a murder, nor would I choose to embark upon an attempt at arson; but I could easily learn to cheat at cards; or I could, if it would please you better, make shift to forge your own name to a bill for a hundred pounds. I confess, however, I am entirely in the dark as to why you choose to have me ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... from Cayenne," suggested the doctor, "or like a man who is wanted by the police of three countries for crimes ranging from arson to wilful murder." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... all. The land was convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there, and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot, arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast army of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... home of such courage, such virility, that her unconsenting admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine. Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes, with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them, expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a certain gallant ease, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... devious type of rustic could not live under her. The neighbours round declared that the Lady Mary Kemp's farm was a hotbed of disorder. I expect it was, too; three of our men were hung up at Canterbury on one day—for horse-stealing and arson.... Anyhow, that was my mother. As for me, I was under her, and, since I had my aspirations, I had a rather bitter childhood. And I had others to contrast myself with. First there was Rooksby: a pleasant, well-spoken, amiable young squire of the immediate ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... New York the unterrified democracy went to arson and murder, hand in hand with the immense majority of Irishry. Meagher, Nugent, Corcoran and thousands like you, are exceptions. The O'Connors, O'Gormans, etc., are the unterrified. For these bloody saturnalia the wedding ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... a charge of arson and murder," Judge Thayer commanded sternly. "And see that you ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... 'flash-point' of the river is decidedly too low, or else such an unlooked-for catastrophe could never have occurred. Then you will get the Government to take the matter up, and to bring a charge of arson against the New Woman. And, finally, you will have notices put up all along the banks from Goring to Greenwich, 'Ladies are requested not to bring inflammatory articles near the river; the right of setting the Thames on fire is now—as formerly—reserved specially ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... he never appeared, and I—my father was a K.C., so I'm not frightened—I just walked in and sat down in the first court I came to. It wasn't very interesting, but there were three judges. All in red, too. By the way, what's arson?" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... atrocity, murder an' theft, For battery, arson and hate, >From breakin' the Sabbath to coveting cows, An' false affidavits an' perjurin' vows, I'm adept at whatever the law disallows, And the gallowsmen gape at the noose that I left, For I flit while the bally ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... have a Winchester shouldered muskets, shotguns, and other firearms. Warrants of arrest against the Tollivers on charges of murder, arson, and various other crimes and misdemeanors were issued and the date set for the arrest of the men was June ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or arson than ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... bill was passed which made a woman punishable for the crime of arson, even though the property set fire to might belong ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... amazed. "What if he did! what if he did!" repeated Mr. Cattle; "why, it's arson, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... Mr. Paine's wit. Several striking examples might be cited; but two must suffice. Some years ago, when he was County Attorney, a man who had been indicted in Kennebec County for arson, was tried, and acquitted by the jury on the ground that he was an idiot. After the trial, the Judge before whom the case had been tried, sought to reconcile Mr. Paine to the verdict by some explanatory ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, the plantation ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... unsolved problem. He owned that house, and somehow contrived to pay the taxes thereon. He also lived and throve in bodily health in spite of evil ways, and his children were many. There seemed no way to dispose finally of Jim Simmons and his house except by murder and arson, and the village was a peaceful one, and such measures ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... this was arson. They began to wonder whether Herr Arne and his wife were really asleep, or whether ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof

... compelled to put our handkerchiefs to our faces. This floor is appropriated for such crimes as assault and battery; assault and battery, with intent to kill; refractory seamen; deserters; violating the statutes; suspicion of arson and murder; witnesses; all sorts of crimes, varying from the debtor to the positive murderer, burglar, and felon. We should have enumerated, among the rest, all stewards, (colored,) whether foreign ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... followers are to be traced almost all those false principles concerning the power of the spiritual and temporal authorities and the possession of earthly goods and rights which before in Bohemia, and now with us, have called forth revolt and rebellion, plunder, arson, and murder, and have shaken to its foundations the whole commonwealth. The poison of these false doctrines has been long flowing from Bohemia into Germany, and will produce the same ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... penalty is not confined to murder. It may be inflicted for robbery with violence, homicide, wounds inflicted by children upon their fathers, mothers, and grand-parents, as well as for arson. This sounds a somewhat drastic blood code, but when I state that the average number of persons executed in Japan does not exceed thirty a year, it will be seen that either the crimes mentioned ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... I won't get it out, if I have to pack it out in a canteen," said Roger. "High treason, arson, murder are nothing to stand between me and that cache ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... was present at a flogging, after which I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner and the revolting accessories. I have talked to men who were chained to trucks. Once when I was drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg merchant who was convicted of arson, took a teaspoon out of his pocket and gave it to me, and the long and the short of it is that I have upset my nerves and have vowed not to come to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... or spoil the product of the machines in order to render the conduct of industry unprofitable, if not actually impossible. It may range all the way from machine obstruction or destruction to dynamiting, train wrecking, and arson. It may be some petty form of malice, or it may extend to every act advocated by our old ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... confirmed by official documents, records, etc., giving an account of events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,—100,000 Jewish families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation from America. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... cleared the cantonments; and meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It was exposed there to a vicious jezail fire poured into it by the Afghans, who abandoned the pleasures of plunder and arson for the yet greater joy of slaughtering the Feringhees. When the rear-guard moved away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... wolf rides in his chariot; the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... Police Station," said the practical Whiteside. "I have a warrant for your arrest, Milburgh, on a charge of wilful murder, arson, forgery, and embezzlement." ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... certainly possible too to Divine Power without the sequence of natural cause and effect at all. A conflagration, to take a parallel, may be the work of an incendiary, or the result of a flash of lightning; nor would a jury think it safe to find a man guilty of arson, if a dangerous thunderstorm was raging at the very time when the fire broke out. In like manner, upon the hypothesis that a miraculous dispensation is in operation, a recovery from diseases to which medical science is equal, may nevertheless in matter of fact have taken place, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... mysterious act, and would perhaps have puzzled the proprietors of the store even more than it would a stranger. For a stranger would have said at once this is burglary, or else arson; but those acquainted with the place would have known that neither of those crimes was very practicable. This enterprising sailor could not burn down this particular store without roasting himself the first thing; and indeed he could not burn it ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... little thing, with the yellow head? Shouldn't you say she looks like an angel, and ought to be put on the altar to hear the prayers of sinners? Would you believe she is a mother? Arson is her hobby. She is a regular 'fire-bug'. She was adopted by a German couple, and one night, when the old farmer had come home with the money paid him for his sheep and hogs, she stole the last cent he had, pocketed all the oold frau's silver spoons, poured ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... could carry her out of the station to the fence which separates the lines from the road, climbed over it and ran as swiftly as a hunted deer through the fields, pursued by the two gendarmes, who, however, soon gave up the chase. Her Serene Highness finally reached the Villa Arson, almost two miles distant, terribly frightened and with her clothes pretty nearly torn off her back. Here she found that noble-hearted and Christian woman her mother, from whom she has never since separated. Nor has she yielded up to her husband her little son, born ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... the chief of police, "I arrest you for murder, burglary, arson, and conspiracy. You put up a splendid fight, old man, and I am only sorry that it is our ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... year, during the days of Pentecost, peace was established between the men of Utrecht and Holland, and those of Geldria, for during a whole year they had been at grievous enmity, and many deeds of rapine, murder, and arson had been wrought in ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis

... but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... mainly bamboo work and mud—by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin which is carried about the roadway at the time of the annual festival. If such a hint should prove ineffective, recourse may be had to arson. Finally, there is the pistol. I remember someone's remark, "A man does not lose a common mind and heart ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... "Bootlegging, chicken-stealing, sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... known something about Irish crime, but the following true tale takes a lot of beating. On the last day of the Clonmel Assizes, in July, Judge Torrens heard a case of arson, in which the prisoners, who were four in number, were all acquitted, after a trial ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... I do. But don't look at me as if I'd confessed to arson or burglary. Listen, Judge! If you have good taste in jewelry, I'll let you help me ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... gradual encroachment of the composition may be traced in the Anglo-Saxon laws, /1/ and the feud was pretty well broken up, though not extinguished, by the time of William the Conqueror. The killings and house-burnings of an earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson. The appeals de pace et plagis and of mayhem became, or rather were in substance, the action of trespass which is still familiar to lawyers. /2/ But as the compensation recovered in the appeal was the alternative of vengeance, we might ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... British Labour Party and the daily messages of fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—that when the "Black and Tans" were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, I venture to say, horrify every ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... but another circumstance interests me in the case—the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one place one hears of a student's robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... "Something must be done, but I doubt if that's it. It's tough to be—disgraced, to have a thing like this hanging over you. I wouldn't mind it half so much if I were up for murder or arson or any ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... were fighting with the army that barred their way to freedom. If "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had portrayed the rule of slavery rather than the rarest exception, not all the armies that went to the field could have stayed the flood of rapine and arson and pillage that would have started with the first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty to his master, closing the fetters upon his own limbs—maintaining and defending the families of those who fought against ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... able, they, to disperse all manner of enthusiastic Polish Chivalry; which indeed, we observe, usually stands but one volley from the Russian musketry; and flies elsewhither, to burn and plunder its own domestic enemies. Far and wide, robbery and arson are prevalent in Poland; Stanislaus lying under covert; in Dantzig,—an imaginary King ever since the equinox, but well trusting that the French will give him a plumper vote. French War-fleet is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... old Parvis's fam'ly I reckon," said the captain, "kept a dry-goods store in New York city, and realised a handsome competency by burning his house to ashes. Same name, anyhow. David Polreath, Unchris'en Penrewen, John Tredgear, and old Arson Parvis." ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens

... Scared, yes. And mad as hell. But he'll get along. It's too bad. We've pinched him three times on suspicion of arson, but we couldn't make it stick. Something ought to happen to make that guy stop playin' with matches—only ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... the king with even corporal inflictions. The king should cherish all good men with agreeable speeches and gifts of wealth. He who seeks to compass the death of the king should be punished with death to be effected by diverse means. The same should be the punishment of one who becomes guilty of arson or theft or such co-habitation with women as may lead to a confusion of castes. A king, O monarch, who inflicts punishments duly and conformably to the dictates of the science of chastisement, incurs no sin by the act. On the other hand, he earns merit that is eternal. That ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... order to stop the slave trade each nation was to keep a squadron (carrying at least eighty guns) cruising off the coast of Africa. (2) It was agreed that any person who, charged with the crime of murder, piracy, arson, robbery, or forgery, committed in either country, shall escape to the other, shall if possible be seized and given up to the authorities of the country ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... discharged, there being no evidence against the others. Of eighteen alleged offenders who were sent to Philadelphia, and marched through the streets, with the label "Insurgent" on their hats, but two were found guilty of crime. One was convicted of arson, another of robbing the United States mail, when the mail was intercepted with a view of capturing letters from the Federal officers in the western counties to the authorities at the capital. In both instances President Washington granted first a ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... Lucia conversed in the cottage of the former, M. Brianza, cure of Luserna, seated in the confessional, listened with horror and indignation to a tale of intended wholesale rapine, murder, and arson, which his ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... slimy tracks of the German ambassador at Washington had to be followed through devious underground channels that no one had suspected. The embassy had filled the country with German poison gas, and backed the German campaign of wholesale arson. Germans living here, many of them American born, were busily counteracting public opinion as the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... remnant of the old days, that present day newsmongers use as a yardstick for comparisons. If a modern domestic complication breaks out, the current gossip outmatches it by the entanglements in the Barrow family. If it's murder, robbery, or arson, some of the Barrows did worse and got ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... law forbidding murder and providing for its punishment, oppressed him; whether he felt it a hardship not to be allowed to murder at will, and he replied that he did not. I cited many other laws, such as the laws relating to arson, burglary, criminal assault, and so on, with the same result. His outcry about the oppression of law, as such, proved to be just an empty cry about an abstraction; a bogey of his imagination. Of ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... assented. "Owing to these frequent acquittals, murder and arson have become much more common. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... from the discipline of slavery and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction governments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about ten to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negro quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... it, but just as much she liked being with women. She never had any difficulties with men. Miss Thompkins insinuated at intervals that she flirted, but she had the sharpest contempt for flirtation, and as a practice put it on a level with embezzlement or arson. Miss Thompkins, however, kept on insinuating. Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins. Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... there was never sae meikle siller clinked in his purse either before or since. And to the boot of all that, Gilliewhackit said that, be the evidence what it liked, if he had the luck to be on Donald's inquest, he would bring him in guilty of nothing whatever, unless it were wilful arson or murder ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... when he begins to show signs of fatigue and exhaustion. Nay, it is to be feared that we are still suffering from the outrage committed on Victorian literature by Mr. Mill's incendiary housemaid. We may yet note marks of arson in the restored volume. At the same time, there are large parts of his work which are as true historically as they are poetically brilliant. Part I.—"The Bastille"—is almost perfect. The whole description of Versailles, its court, and government, of the effervescence of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... a picturesque place—a large log enclosure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in moccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, desolate deserters, often deserving pity—the debris of a four years' war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... religion, or to proscribe and condemn it. The great fire, which destroyed half of Rome under Nero, and which was purposely attributed to the Christians, brought the situation to a crisis. The first persecution began. Had the magistrate who conducted the inquiry been able to prove the indictment of arson, perhaps the storm would have been short, and confined to Rome; but as the Christians could easily exculpate themselves, the trial was changed from a criminal into a politico-religious one. The Christians ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... wrongs, all these outrages, all these crimes of blood and deeds of horror, were committed to plant the accursed institution on the soil that had been, by a great national act, dedicated to freedom. But violence and arson, bloodshed and murder, failed. The black banner of slavery is trailing in the dust. The stars and stripes wave triumphantly over a free and joyous people. The heretofore invincible is conquered. I have borrowed ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins

... protection. (2) As long as there are persons whose habits and character predispose them to crime, as long as there are social inequalities and wants that provoke to criminal acts, and as long as there are attractive or easy victims, so long will thieving and arson, rape and ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... the provisions of the third section, come under the exclusive cognizance of the Federal tribunals. It follows that if, in any State which denies to a colored person any one of all those rights, that person should commit a crime against the laws of a State—murder, arson, rape, or any other crime—all protection and punishment through the courts of the State are taken away, and he can only be tried and punished in the Federal courts. How is the criminal to be tried? If the offense is provided for and punished by Federal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson



Words linked to "Arson" :   burning, combustion



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