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More "Defenceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legislative consideration. Mr. Wilberforce was still a member of the House, though most of those with whom he had been associated at the beginning of his public life were dead. Forty years had passed since he first took his seat, but he was ready once more to take up the cause of the defenceless. The abuses perpetrated against the West Indian negro ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... aloud. "Bully Mme. la Duchesse d'Agen?" he exclaimed. "Sacre tonnerre! what do you take me for. I shall not bully her. Fifty soldiers don't bully a defenceless woman. We shall treat Mme. la Duchesse with every consideration: we shall only remove five and twenty millions of stolen money from her carriage, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... it. Should Gorton turn up he is just the one to frighten a defenceless woman, and purchase his own silence. No; my ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... greatly improved the fort at Horncastle, were defeated in a fight at Tetford by the Britons under their leader Raengeires, and the British King caused the walls to be nearly demolished and the place rendered defenceless. (Leland's Collectanea, vol i, pt. ii, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... who, being in that miserable case, wished some day to be restored, to gain their promise of assistance, or their good-will. To these reasons was added, in Callista's case, the interest which naturally attached to a woman, young and defenceless. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... glass!" said Giovanni scornfully, as he lowered his point and stepped back two paces. "Take another sword, sir," he said; "I will not kill you defenceless." ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... rise! approach you here! Come—but molest not yon defenceless Urn: Look on this spot—a Nation's sepulchre! Abode of Gods, whose shrines no longer burn.[dr] Even Gods must yield—Religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's—'tis Mahomet's—and other Creeds Will rise with other years, till Man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... favouritism, partisanship, defence, opposition; her love for Barbara was all tenderness and no pride. In her self-lack she clung to her—as lordly dame, who had taken her castle for part of herself, and impregnable, but, its walls crumbling under the shot of the enemy, found herself defenceless before her captors, might turn and clasp her little maid, suppliant for protection. Good is it that we are not what we seem to ourselves "in our hours of ease," for then we should never seek the Father! The loss of all that the world counts first things is a thousandfold repaid ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... I none; Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, ah! leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me! All my trust on Thee is stay'd, All my help from Thee I bring: Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Northern and Southern States. No doubt, the Rebel Government may send to England and purchase swift steamers like the Alabama, and man them with the reckless outcasts of every nationality, and send them forth to prey like pirates upon defenceless commerce. No doubt, in their hate, the Rebels may build sea-monsters like the Merrimack, or the Arkansas, or those cotton-mailed steamers at Galveston, and make all stand aghast at some temporary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank. Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey. There was a brief and breathless struggle—three daggers gleamed in air—a shriek rang through the stillness—another instant and the victim ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... kings their minstrel / —that may ye fairly know— Leave not all defenceless / there amid the foe. With them a thousand heroes / rode forth full dexterously, And soon had gained their purpose / ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... in this straitened pass an attack was suddenly made by the whole force of the mountaineers. Climbing along the mountain-sides above the defile, they hurled down stones on the entangled foe, and loosened and rolled great rocks down upon their defenceless heads. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of Makwanpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... man, in Dante's age, who sunk into his grave without bequeathing a heritage of love; on whose sod no refreshing dew of sorrowing affection descended. Lonely as his relics in the sepulchre, his spirit wandered in the dreaded region of probation; alone he was left defenceless, prayerless, friendless to settle his awful score with unmitigated justice. It is this feeling, unrivalled for poetic beauty, that gives color and tone to the second division of Dante's poem. The five or six cantos, at the opening, have all the milk of human nature that entered ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... accomplished? Unseen in the heights above, the Tyrolese peasantry hurl down rocks, roots, and trunks of pine trees, as well as sending a "deadly hail" from their rifles along the "whole line" of the defenceless army below. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... thoughts, which could ever turn to infants as articles of diet; under any conceivable circumstances, this would be felt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism—cannibalism applying itself to the most defenceless part of the species. But, on the other hand, the tendency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and murders is universal. If you are summoned to the spectacle of a great fire, undoubtedly the first impulse is—to assist in putting it out. But that field of exertion is very limited, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... many who have a vague kind of suspicion that things might be better, are mingled a few, who seem very desirous they should remain as they are. These are the rich; who, having by extortion and rapine plundered the defenceless, and heaped up choice of viands and the fat of the land, some sufficient to feed ten, some twenty, some a hundred, some a thousand, and others whole armies, and being themselves each only able to eat for one, say to the hungry, who ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... directly opposite her father's house. He noticed that Helen was very silent, and he even reflected how handsome a man was Thayer Kent; but through it all he seemed to hear the echo of that knock upon his studio door and a foreboding which he could not shake off made him reflect gloomily how utterly defenceless he should be ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... lawless authority so dear to men of fierce and brutal passions. Cabrera, moreover, was a dastardly wretch, whose limited mind was incapable of harbouring a single conception approaching to grandeur; whose heroic deeds were confined to cutting down defenceless men, and to forcing and disembowelling unhappy women; and yet I have seen this wretched fellow termed by French journals (Carlist of course) the young, the heroic general. Infamy on the cowardly assassin! The shabbiest corporal of Napoleon ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... wooden ships maintaining a close blockade at some Southern port. While there was much newspaper comment in England that the vessels were "new Alabamas," and in America that they were "floating fortresses," suitable for attack upon defenceless Northern cities, their primary purpose was to break up the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... fear'd, So little welcome, why did Heav'n release me From prison? My sole friend, misled by passion, Was bent on robbing of his wife the tyrant Who ruled Epirus. With regret I lent The lover aid, but Fate had made us blind, Myself as well as him. The tyrant seized me Defenceless and unarm'd. Pirithous I saw with tears cast forth to be devour'd By savage beasts that lapp'd the blood of men. Myself in gloomy caverns he inclosed, Deep in the bowels of the earth, and nigh To Pluto's realms. ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... and debauchery, the army of the Crusaders, led on by King Richard, began to march towards Jerusalem. Saladin harassed his advance and rendered the strongholds on the way defenceless and ravaged the whole country. Richard was nevertheless ever victorious. His great personal bravery struck terror into the Moslems, and he won an important victory over them at Arsur. Dissensions now broke out among chiefs of the Crusaders, and Richard himself proved ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... revolts me that you should try to terrorise a defenceless man to gratify your own vanity and humiliate me," she answered angrily. "As for being afraid, the remote prospect of having to marry you ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... was a liberal professor, was deaf to all his promises, and luckily invincible by his force; for, though she had not yet learnt the art of well clenching her fist, nature had not however left her defenceless, for at the ends of her fingers she wore arms, which she used with such admirable dexterity, that the hot blood of Mr. Wild soon began to appear in several little spots on his face, and his full- blown cheeks to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... hundred persons quietly listening to the word of God. They were politely invited to sit down: but they replied by noisy interruption and threats. "Mort-Dieu, they must all be killed!" was their exclamation as they returned to report to Guise what they had seen. The defenceless Huguenots were thrown into confusion by these significant menaces, and hastened to secure the entrance. It was too late. The duke himself was approaching, and a volley from the arquebuses of his troop speedily scattered the unarmed worshippers. It ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... coming!" the soldier cried in a terrified whisper. "My God, they are coming! Come back! Come back!" For Claude had their only weapon, and the guard was defenceless. Defenceless by the side of the stairs up ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... address, as he rose and gracefully led her to a seat beside his own. "See how my plans for the reduction of these heathen Moors are quietly working; they are divided within themselves, quarrelling more and more fiercely. Pedro Pas brings me information that the road to Alhama is well nigh defenceless, and therefore the war should commence in that quarter. But how is this, love?" he added, after speaking of his intended measures at some length, and perceiving that they failed to elicit Isabella's interest as usual. "Thy thoughts are ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... I would do. Instead of running away, I would boldly walk up to them, and by signs make them understand that I am no scout, but a friend in need of nothing but kindness and friendship. I never yet heard of the Indian that would tomahawk the defenceless stranger that sought his camp openly ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Mafeking, and in the expectation of attack, this town was securely fortified, while all the women and children were advised to leave. The fortification of Kimberley was also commenced. The European exodus from all quarters continued, defenceless men and women alike being subjected to insult and ill-treatment by the Boers. Mr. Kruger's birthday was kept at Pretoria with general rejoicing, and on the following day a telegram was sent by President Kruger to the New ...
— 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
... the storm crashed about Jill's defenceless head at the midday hour also of the same day, when she ought to have been searching the coolness of her midday sleeping chamber, and forgetfulness of the last ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... strike Rob's defenceless hand, for Shaddy's keen knife-blade met it a couple of inches below the gaping jaws, cut clean through its scale-armed skin, and the head dropped among the lovely petals of the orchis, while the body, twisting and twining upon itself in a knot, went down through the bush and could be ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... chairs, and drawing the seat near the Student's—"you have ere this heard the news, and indeed in a county so quiet as ours, these outrages appear the more fearful, from their being so unlooked for. We must set a guard in the village, Aram, and you must leave this defenceless hermitage and come down to us; not for your own sake,—but consider you will be an additional safeguard to Madeline. You will lock up the house, dismiss your poor old governante to her friends in the village, and walk back with me ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whatever their race or creed, are now children of the one common soil. The Orangeman looked upon himself as part of a foreign garrison, holding the "Papishes" in subjection. He was armed with deadly weapons; consequently, the defenceless Catholic was almost entirely at his mercy, and the Orangeman was but too often backed up in his lawlessness by the law ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... not, except within the walls of a convent; already she saw in fancy her daughter's head encircled with a wreath of sainted glory, and she placed her in the Ursuline convent, in hopes that the example of the nuns might induce her to join their sisterhood— Josepha was in my power defenceless! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... not offend a courtly ear by the recital of those disgusting scenes. Besides this, it might give pain to that humanity which hath, as you observe, prompted your overtures, to dwell upon the splendid victories obtained by a licentious soldiery over unarmed men in defenceless villages, their wanton devastations, their deliberate murders, or to inspect those scenes of carnage painted by the wild excesses of savage rage. These amiable traits of national conduct cannot but revive in our bosoms that partial affection we once felt for everything which bore ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the cold gleam of steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried it to his poniard. Sant' Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk, to go so slyly about the business of stabbing a poor, helpless, defenceless Fool. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... manliness: his head raised, the body's attitude, not studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the beak to the end of the tail, from four feet ten inches to five feet; and from the tip of one wing to the other, from twelve to thirteen feet. This bird feeds chiefly on carrion: it is only when impelled by hunger that he seizes living animals, and even then only the small and defenceless, such as the young of sheep, vicunas, and llamas. He cannot raise great weights with his feet, which, however, he uses to aid the power of his beak. The principal strength of the condor lies in his neck and in his feet; yet he cannot, when flying, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... is primarily an oligarchy of directors of labour and distributors of subsistence. It is a very close oligarchy, for those beneath it are quite defenceless, levelled down to an equality of poverty and misery. It is a form of government very difficult to replace, for it holds in its hands the threads of such an intricate organisation that it must be protected ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... poppies with his staff. At last the messenger was tired, and went back to Sextus and told him what had passed. But Sextus understood what his father meant, and he began to accuse falsely all the chief men, and some of them he put to death and some he banished. So at last the city of Gabii was left defenceless, and Sextus delivered it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course, defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger. So secure did the captains feel, that it was not uncommon for ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... contains your double. But, conceivably, everything may be different here. The whole romantic story may have run a different course. It was as it was in our world, by the accidents of custom and proximity. Adolescence is a defenceless plastic period. You are a man to form great affections,—noble, great affections. You might have met anyone almost at that season ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... any emergency, firmness to resist temptation when presented in its most alluring form, was blended with that genuine kindness of manner, that deference towards the weak and defenceless, which renders its fortunate possessor not only esteemed, but beloved. Yet with so much that was admirable in mind and heart, of him it might be said, as it was of one of old, "One thing thou lackest." Strange, that the subject of the greatest ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... off on his nation as the authentic sword of the Scythian war-god. Yet he was easily overawed by the majesty of religion. He scorned the guilty, corrupt courtiers of Constantinople, but he almost trembled before a holy man. Already in 451 he had spared the defenceless city of Troyes at the entreaty of its bishop, St. Lupus, and had asked the benefit of his prayers. And when he gazed on the calm countenance, noble presence, and dauntless demeanor of Pope Leo, an awful dread fell upon him. Alaric had conquered Rome, but Alaric had died immediately afterward. How ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... as I was by enemies. Twice over I shivered as to the fate of poor Sandho, the deep, muttering roar of the lions seeming to make the ground tremble and the air vibrate. If they scented my horse and drew near I was perfectly defenceless, and could do nothing to save the poor beast. So alarmed did I grow at last upon his account that I determined to risk being seen, and hurriedly began to collect scraps of dead wood, twigs, and such pieces of dry grass as were likely to burn. I did not ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Master was put to a violent death, and immeadiately after his Royall Sonne ... sent me a Commicon to governe here under him.... But the Parliament, after the defeat at Worcester, (by the instigation of some other intent) sent a small power to force my submission to them, which finding me defenceless, was quietly (God pardon me) effected. But this parliament continued not long after this, but another supream power outed them, whoe remained not long neither, nor his sonne after him.... And now my intelligence is not enough to tell me what incorporate, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... was unable to save them from the frightful errors glanced at above? Not even in this sense; for the great mass of Mr. Mozley's educated people had no legal training, and must have been absolutely defenceless against delusions which could set even that training at naught. Like nine-tenths of our clergy at the present day, they were versed in the literature of Greece, Rome, and Judea; but as regards a knowledge of nature, which is here ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... from whence the noise came. He found a poor wretch, who had been crossing from a neighbouring village, in the possession of a party of kidnappers, who were tying his hands. Mr. Falconbridge, however, dared not rescue him, lest, in the defenceless state of his own town, retaliation might be ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not to be ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... reasoned long; but this only increased Papillette's resistance: therefore, being quite defenceless against the tears of a child so dear, her majesty promised to speak ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... and all without arms, or perhaps with only a couple of swords, I used to wonder at their apparent security, and could not help observing, when we were night and day pursued by bandits, "These robbers must have an extraordinary affection for Muslims, and be very Deists themselves; for these few defenceless people pass unmolested, and we are pursued continually, although our caravan is ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... family seated beneath their bamboo huts and spreading palms; the light steps of the young men and maidens tripping to music, dance and song; their pastimes suddenly broken upon by the tramp of the merchants of flesh and blood; the capture of defenceless people suddenly surprised in the midst of their sports, the cries of distress, the crackling of flames, the cruel oaths of reckless men, eager for gold though they coined it from tears and extracted it from blood; the crowding of the slaveships, the horrors of the middle passage, ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... unison with his hatred of all liberty, were condemned to exile, and had cause to apprehend further severity. It is for the exclusive admirers of the Chief of the Empire to approve of everything which proceeded from him, even his rigour against a defenceless sex; it is for them to laugh at the misery of a woman, and a writer of genius, condemned without any form of trial to the most severe punishment short of death. For my part, I saw neither justice nor pleasantry in the exile of Madame de Chevreuse for having had the courage (and courage was not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... neighbouring example of the Congo Free State. The danger both of forced labour and of concessions was that they alike tended to destroy native law and tribal custom, and so to create 'one universal black proletariat'—a vast reservoir of cheap defenceless labour. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... too, he learned to look on his fate more calmly. His humour grew lighter; it was as if he drew himself up and looked misfortune in the eyes, saying: "Yes, I know I am defenceless, and you can plunge me deeper and deeper yet; but for all that, if I choose to laugh ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the commencement of the Indian Mutiny, a terrible outbreak of cruelty and fanaticism which, while it inflicted unspeakable anguish upon hundreds of our defenceless countrywomen and their children, desolated many an English home, and evoked the horror and compassion of the civilised world, was also the occasion of numberless acts of heroism and devotion, not only on the part ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... towers on every side, that within a few days, by the impetuosity and fury of the stones, the same bulwark was in a great part broken down; and the walls and towers from which the enemy had sent forth their weapons, the bastions falling in ruins, were rendered defenceless; and very fine edifices, even in the middle of the city, either lay altogether in ruins, or threatened an inevitable fall; or at least were so shaken as to be exceedingly damaged. * * * And although our guns had disarmed the bulwark, walls, and towers during the day, the besieged by night, with ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... that many of these warfares by sea and land are the most unjust, wanton sacrifice of life and property, recorded in the annals of history. I know that there are times and occasions when it is necessary to do battle with foreign powers in self-defence, or to relieve the oppressed and defenceless of other nations; such was the glorious object of the battle of the Nile: but many, many battles are fought with ambition for their guiding star, and high hopes of honor and reward in this life to urge on the combatants, while ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... stiff-backed tapestry chair by the fire. Maggie stood in front of her. She was disarmed at that all-important moment by her desperate sensation of defenceless loneliness. It was as though half of herself—the man-half of herself—had left her. She tried to summon her pluck but there was no pluck there. She could only want Martin, over and over again inside herself. Had any one been, ever ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... any man can remain a slave rather than die; and secondly, how much stranger it is that any other man, himself a slave, can be found to hunt down or to hang his fellow; yet the tyrants never lack executioners. Their castles are crowded with retainers who wreak their wills upon the defenceless. These retainers do not wear the brazen bracelet; they are free. Are there, then, no beggars? Yes, they sit at every corner, and about the gates of the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Glendinning drew his sword and sprang at his companion, who, already full of indignation at the memory of what he had been so recently compelled to witness, could ill brook the indignity thus offered to the defenceless girl. His weapon flashed from its sheath on the instant, and for a few moments the two men cut and thrust at each other with savage ferocity. Wallace, however, was too young and unused to mortal strife to contemplate with indifference the possibility of ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... attacked, he would also be able to make many friends for the Marquis and call quite a number of defenders to his aid. Then, too, he could not endure the thought of going so far from Arles while Dolores was there, alone and defenceless, and might need his protection ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... are in habitual illicit intercourse, and I was credibly informed that this cruelty was often resorted to, to disabuse the mind of a deceived and injured wife who suspects unfair treatment. This attested fact, disgraceful as it is, can scarcely be wondered at in men who mercilessly subject defenceless women to the lash without a spark of human feeling, or compunction of conscience. It is little to the credit of United States senators that they have not at least made laws to protect women from the barbarous usage of flogging. One would imagine that men, who, perhaps, above all others in the world, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... no!" I answered hastily. "How could he be pleased if that happened, since then he would be left defenceless, if he were not killed too. Now, Umslopogaas, let us make a ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... fight the invader: precisely at that moment occurred the question of what should be done with the Christian slaves. A stronger case cannot be imagined: they were ten thousand fighting men; and the more horrible it seemed to murder so many defenceless people, the more dreadfully did the danger strike upon the imagination. It was their number which appalled the conscience of those who speculated on their murder; but precisely that it was, when pressed upon the recollection, which appalled the prudence of their Moorish masters. Barbarossa ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... beautiful old villages of France along a front of five hundred miles. The facts are monotonous in the repetition of their horror, and one's imagination is not helped but stupefied by long records of outrages upon defenceless women, with indiscriminate shooting down village streets, with unarmed peasants killed as they trudged across their fields or burned in their own homesteads, with false accusations against innocent villagers, so that hostages were collected and shot in groups ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the room. But before me stood Miss Agnes, pale, erect, her lips quivering. She held fast a chair, which she had drawn up in front of her, as one would place a shield between one's self and some wild animal. How slender and defenceless she looked! I followed the terrified glance of her eyes. There, in the middle of the room, stood a stranger,—not so terrible to look upon, for he was young, and it seemed to me I had never seen so handsome a man. His black hair and eyes quite pictured the hero ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... when, suddenly, our ears were startled by the echo of the warwhoop, and the crack of the rifle, and our hearts appalled by the gleam of the tomahawk and the scalping knife, as they descended in indiscriminate and remorseless slaughter, on defenceless women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... self-possession and master the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge of the precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as any man who breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the lookout for a house left defenceless and unprotected or for some easy and dishonest stroke of business, or as that thief whose various exploits you ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... surprised, and somewhat frightened, at what he witnessed, for the tales of the nursery had strongly impressed on his mind the terrors of the invisible world. Yet, naturally bold and high-spirited, the little champion placed himself beside his defenceless sister, continuing to brandish his weapon in her defence, as boldly as he had himself ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... keenly, as her refraining from contradicting him. But below the grossness and sin of the poor lout and caitiff there was a fund of sullen, latent manliness and kindness, which held him back from insulting the defenceless woman—for all her pride and purity—who was his wife, just as it had held him back from dallying with and caressing her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... though essentially amiable. I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten P.M. every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... this Rebel regiment (Cummings's 33rd Virginia) advances to seize the crippled and defenceless guns, it is checked, and driven back, by the 1st Michigan Regiment of Willcox's Brigade, which has pushed forward in the woods at ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of slavery, have eagerly seized upon this little passage of scripture, and held it up as the masters' Magna Charta, by which they were licensed by God himself to commit the greatest outrages upon the defenceless victims of their oppression. But, my friends, was it designed to be so? If our Heavenly Father would protect by law the eye and the tooth of a Hebrew servant, can we for a moment believe that he would abandon that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Had his defenceless sister been trifled with? that was the question which affected him. Her refusal of Edward as a husband was, he knew, dictated solely by a humiliated sense of inadequacy to him in repute, and had not been formed till since the slanderous ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... closed upon the words with the severity of an irrevocable resolution. Avery heard him with a sense of wild rebellion at her heart to which she knew she must not give rein. She stood before him, a defenceless culprit brought up ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... at the mouth of the valley whence we came, half looking to see it blocked by men, but it was not. There was nothing to stay us three armed men in this place, with but three against us, and they well-nigh defenceless. Morfed saw that ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... how dear she had become to him. Only, as he looked at her moving close beside him, so beautiful and so defenceless, he thanked God that he had kept his manhood clean, so that nothing that he did for ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a true knight, Mr. Fleet," she said, humbly, "and the need or danger of every defenceless woman is alike ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... editor may perhaps, under the circumstances, be pardoned for suggesting that "it were better for Loyalists not to put themselves in the power of men who have proved themselves unfit even to associate with civilised beings. Bundoran will feel the evil effects of these insane attacks upon defenceless people next season when tourists and pleasure-seekers will avoid this seat of stupid bigotry, and visit some other summer resort where they will at least be allowed to worship their Maker according to their own desires." Exactly. Many visitors left at once, and will never return. During ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out—which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them all ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... town, they gave themselves over to all kinds of excesses, perpetrating atrocious cruelties on defenceless women and children, and pillaging convents ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... rather, the fear of ennui," interrupted Flemming. "One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nor did the expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira Singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then there was a scuffle and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... do as little as possible; and endeavor to appear insensible to their insults. I would say to you, if you will excuse the triviality of the comparison, imitate those feeble insects who simulate death when they are touched. They are defenceless; and that is their only chance ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the most tragic and terrible thing of all is that she will think she owes everything to him! No! If I was capable of weeping, I should have wept at the pathos of the spectacle of Miss Fancy as she left us just now unconscious of her fate and revelling in the most absurd illusions. That poor defenceless woman, who has had the misfortune not to please you, is heading straight for a life-long martyrdom." Mr. Prohack ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... abandoned Britain early in the fifth century, the Saxons took advantage of the defenceless state of the inhabitants to settle in the island, at first as colonists and afterwards as conquerors. The intermingling of these fierce heathens with the Christian population had a depressing influence on the Church; ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... lowest ruffian may stab your good name with impunity in England, will you be so uncandid as to exclaim against Italy for the practice of common assassination? To what purpose is our property secured, if our moral character is left defenceless? People thus baited, grow desperate; and the despair of being able to preserve one's character, untainted by such vermin, produces a total neglect of fame; so that one of the chief incitements to the practice of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... English fiction, and we know of no other Friend in latter-day fiction to equal him. Defoe in his inimitable manner has defined surely and deftly the peculiar characteristics of the sect in this portrait. On three separate occasions we find William saving unfortunate natives or defenceless prisoners from the cruel and wicked barbarity of the sailors. At page 183, for example, the reader will find a most penetrating analysis of the dense stupidity which so often accompanies man's love of bloodshed. The sketch of the second lieutenant, who was for "murdering ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the side, where the heads of those in the boat had been cut off. Sometimes the pirates would wait until they knew the men of a village were away at their paddy farms, then they would fall suddenly upon the defenceless old men, women, and children, kill some, make slaves of the young ones, and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... nearly covered them, he could bear it no longer. He took out his knife, and under pretence of joining in the sport, drew near to Shargar, and with rapid hand cut the cords—all but those that bound his feet, which were less easy to reach without exposing himself defenceless. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... have it, this chanced to be the little Helen, altogether defenceless and unarmed. Murtagh, still shouting, rushed to the rescue; while Henry, with his musket raised to his shoulder, endeavoured to get between the ape and its intended victim, so that he could fire right into the face of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Gospel in cosmopolitan centres, who, through self-interest, cut their moral disquisitions to fit the predilections of their wealthy parishioners, many of whom were under national condemnation as "malefactors of great wealth." Animated by love for all creatures, the defenceless wild animal as well as the domestic pet, he was unsparing in his indictment of those big-game hunters who shamelessly described their feelings of savage exultation when some poor animal served as the target for their ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... occupation. Did one Teuton in the place have to suffer as a consequence even the insult of a word? No. What would the Germans have done? General Botha's forces had crossed a desert through which it was the open boast of the enemy that it was strewn with mines and with every well poisoned. Was a single defenceless citizen of Windhuk or Karibib the worse for it after the occupation? Not one. The greater part of General Botha's forces were on a half—a quarter—an eighth rations when they made Karibib, Okahandja, Okasise, Waldau and the capital; they ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... statement, she must most strongly impress Lord Derby with the necessity of referring to our defenceless state, and the necessity of a large outlay, to protect us from foreign attack, which would almost ensure us against war. The country is fully alive to its danger, and Parliament has perhaps never been in a more likely state to grant what is necessary, provided ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... come in." Then Canneloro, who wished to become friends with the doe, bound his sword as a countryman does, when he carries it in the city for fear of the constables. As soon as the ogre saw Canneloro defenceless, he re-took his own form, and laying hold on him, flung him into a pit at the bottom of the cave, and covered it up with a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... apparent than in that form of warfare which has lately received the name of commerce-destroying, which the French call guerre de course. This operation of war, being directed against peaceful merchant vessels which are usually defenceless, calls for ships of small military force. Such ships, having little power to defend themselves, need a refuge or point of support near at hand; which will be found either in certain parts of the sea controlled by the fighting ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... exploits; it was a private war. And the Chouans professed to wage it only against the government. So long as they limited themselves to fighting the gendarmes or national guards in bands of five or six hundred, to invading defenceless places in order to cut down the trees of liberty, burn the municipal papers, and pillage the coffers of the receivers and school-teachers—(the State funds having the right to return to their legitimate owner, the King), they could be distinguished ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... compelled to accept such an estimate of the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in England. Nor does it, as a rule, involve any great risk to the hunters, for the head-hunting raids are usually mere butcheries of defenceless people, the Dyaks either stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are absent and slaughtering everyone whom they find in it—old, men, women, and children. The head of an orang-utan, by the way, is as highly prized in many of the Dyak ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... river was impassable, and that the thousand men, with no one to oppose them, were making a long march somewhere. But the Romans and Lazi at early dawn unexpectedly fell upon them, and they found some still buried in slumber and others just roused from sleep and lying defenceless upon their beds. Not one of them, therefore, thought of resistance, and the majority were caught and killed, while some also were captured by the enemy, among whom happened to be one of the commanders; only a few escaped ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... upon him like a tigress, lifting the fragile form high in the air, and dashing it down to the floor again with all her cruel force. She shakes, she bites him, she rains blows upon the poor, defenceless child, leaving prints of her vicious fingers all over the poor little body wherever she touches the tender skin, marks of her cruel nails on the delicate arms and hands, long, deep scratches from which the blood exudes ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... so horribly unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed—the weak, the defenceless, the infirm—it has done—what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?—you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes—horrible; though the cause of your war may ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... to re-form after the charge, they were practically defenceless against a tremendous attach on their rear led by the Makalaka Chief in person, whilst hundreds of assegais were hurled in with deadly effect from both sides. About twenty bleeding men managed to reach ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... endeavoured to compel him to do so, the former beheld the chance which Fortune had so kindly afforded him for fortune and happiness glide out of his reach; so that when he stood at length in the street with the liberated Gertrude, there was no one near them. Totally forgetting the defenceless situation of his companion, he was about to spring away in pursuit of the Boar of Ardennes, as the greyhound tracks the deer, when, clinging to him in her despair, she exclaimed, "For the sake of your mother's honour, leave me not here!—As you are a gentleman, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel. Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless in such ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their Natures softened with something mild and tractable, and by that means are qualified for a Domestick Life. In this Case the Passions generally correspond with the Make of the Body. We do not find the Fury of a Lion in so weak and defenceless an Animal as a Lamb, nor the Meekness of a Lamb in a Creature so armed for Battel and Assault as the Lion. In the same manner, we find that particular Animals have a more or less exquisite Sharpness and Sagacity ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... intending anything derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenceless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames, and cork up my ink-bottle for ever, than infringe ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Luebeck, seven years before, under similar circumstances. But they were the warriors of Alexander, Francis, Frederic William, and Charles John; terrible as destroying angels to the foe, kind and generous to the defenceless citizen. As far as the author's knowledge extends, not a man was guilty of the smallest excess within our walls. They even paid in specie for bread, tobacco, and brandy. The suburbs, indeed, fared not quite so well. There many an inhabitant suffered severely; but how was it possible ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... Pensacola, for which the enemy had been preparing since the end of February, when the disaster at Donelson had made it necessary to strip other points of troops. The heavy guns had been removed, though not to New Orleans. The defenceless condition of the place was partly known to the officer commanding at Fort Pickens, but no one could spare him force enough to test it. At the time of its final abandonment, Commander Porter, who after the surrender of the forts ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... had disappeared. What he did that night, God and he alone can tell; but at four o'clock in the morning a Republican detachment surrounded the farmhouse where Stofflet was sleeping, disarmed and defenceless. At half-past four Stofflet was captured; eight days later he was executed at Angers. The next day Autichamp took command, and, to avoid making the same blunder as Stofflet, he appointed the Abbe Bernier general ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... defend the girl from the anger of his secretary, but when she said, with a certain challenge, "Through the door," he doubted if she were so defenceless as she seemed. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... skulk like an assassin, and plunge the secret dagger in the heart of some unhappy man, who hath incurred my groundless jealousy or suspicion, without indulging him with that opportunity which the worst criminal enjoys? Or is it honourable to poison two defenceless women, a tender wife, an amiable daughter, whom even a frown would almost have destroyed?—O! this is cowardice, brutality, hell-born fury and revenge! Heaven hath not mercy to forgive such execrable guilt. Who gave thee power, abandoned ruffian! over ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... expression of the officer's face that he had won the day: "Come now, Count von Hemelstein, let's be friends. I would not have liked you had you not resented my remarks, and I was a cad to take advantage of your absolutely defenceless position." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... great battle lost. And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold's immediate following. They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless. ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... and sent her fleet to destroy Amalfi. The ships of Amalfi were on guard with Roger's navy in the Bay of Naples. The armed citizens were, under Roger's orders, at Aversa. Meanwhile the home of the republic lay defenceless on its mountain-girdled seaboard. The Pisans sailed into the harbour, sacked the city, and carried off the famous Pandects of Justinian as a trophy. Two years later they returned, to complete the work of devastation. Amalfi never recovered from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... fatal to Florence Kearney, and only the veriest dastard would have taken advantage of it. But this Santander was, and once more drawing back, and bringing his blade to tierce, he was rushing on his now defenceless antagonist, when Crittenden called "Foul play!" at the same time springing forward to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... Children left to the cruel mercy of slave-holders, could never be forgotten. Brothers and sisters could not refrain from weeping over the remembrance of their separation on the auction block: of having seen innocent children, feeble and defenceless women in the grasp of a merciless tyrant, pleading, groaning, and crying in vain for pity. Not to remember those thus bruised and mangled, it would seem alike unnatural, and impossible. Therefore it is a source of great satisfaction to be able, in relating these heroic ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenceless Spaniard. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... accused to plead not guilty, though anomalous in its aspect, is yet usually a proper protection to the ignorant and defenceless: such, under an impression of general guilt, might admit an aggravated indictment, and lose the advantage of those distinctions made by legislators on public grounds, between crime and crime; or the executive might ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... one appear for the prisoner? Gentlemen of the legal profession, I am sorry to see this reluctance to aid a defenceless man. Will not some one oblige me, by volunteering? I shall consider it a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... go into the house, Hetty," said Judith, "and see that the savages are gone. They will not harm you, and if any of them are still here you can give me the alarm. I do not think they will fire on a poor defenceless girl, and I at least may escape, until I shall be ready to go among them of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... am glad you have not retreated into the desert and defenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; I should as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that the basaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art and raised ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... proverbial expression which the Swiss twist into a historical compliment, asserting that it arose in early mercenary times, from the fact that they were too virtuous to accept the suggestion of the general who hired them, and wished them to take their pay in kind from the defenceless people of the country they ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... unhappily, rare, and many a heroic legend is spoilt by the insolence of the hero to people of lower rank. Again, the legends often look lightly on the ill-treatment of maidens; yet the true hero is one who is never tempted to injure a defenceless woman. Similarly, a broken oath to a heathen or mere churl is excused as a trifling matter, but the ideal hero sweareth and breaketh not, though it be ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... do not want weapons to face an old man in broad daylight; and he is too much of a soldier to attack me if I am defenceless. If the servant comes after I am gone, you must remember every detail of what he says, and you must also arrange a little matter with him. Here is money, as much as will keep any Roman servant quiet. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... disposition, or at least into indifference and almost brutal neglect. But the institutions of chivalry immediately gave a new face to this. Either sex conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other. In the unsettled state of society which characterised the period when these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults of multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually stood in need of a protector and a champion. The knights on the other hand were taught to derive their fame and their honour from the suffrages of the ladies. Each sex stood in need of the other; and the basis of their union ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... unnecessary; I understand the circumstances perfectly. The firm was in a dangerous position at the time; I had gone off, and you had my defenceless name and reputation at your mercy. Well, I do not blame you so very much for what you did; we were young and thoughtless in those days. But now I have need of the truth, and now ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... martyrs to the cause of nationalities, or what we call the Balance of Power, which European statesmen have ever found it necessary to maintain at any cost, since on this balance hang the interests of feeble and defenceless nations. Ay, Heaven heard,—the God whom he ignored,—and sent a retribution as signal and as prompt and as awful as his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Might not I, lady, say the same of mine? But not to come to battle, ev'n of words, With a fair lady, and my kinswoman; And as averse to stand before your face, Defenceless, and condemn'd in your disgrace, Till the good king be here to clear it all— Will ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... individuals—as at Lord Brougham, "Dizzy," Lord Aberdeen, and, during his earlier career, John Bright. But many things were done forty years ago which nowadays "the Table" would neither tolerate nor excuse—such as certain attacks upon defenceless royalty (more particularly upon Prince Albert) as being both unfair and in bad taste. The courteous high-mindedness of Sir John Tenniel has made greatly for this mellowing and moderation, to the point, indeed, that many complain ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a brazen thing! You know that he is dead, and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the defenceless dead—why it is more than crime, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... its government, their various practices to withdraw the affections of the people from it, the evident tendency of their arts and those of their agents to countenance and invigorate opposition, their disregard of solemn treaties and the laws of nations, their war upon our defenceless commerce, their treatment of our minister of peace, and their demands amounting to tribute, could not fail to excite in me corresponding sentiments with those which my countrymen have so generally expressed in ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... blockading squadron, la Tour and his wife succeeded in getting safely on board the Clement, and at once repaired to Boston, where their arrival created some consternation, for Boston happened to be at that time in a particularly defenceless position. Governor Winthrop remarked: "If la Tour had been ill-minded towards us, he had such an opportunity as we hope neither he nor any other shall ever have the like again." However, la Tour had come with no ill intent, and after some ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... three months and a {48} half. They were filled with hardship. On the very first day of the long march, a band of Indians from the north, finding Hearne defenceless, plundered him of wellnigh all he had. 'Nothing can exceed,' wrote Hearne, 'the cool deliberation of the villains. A committee of them entered my tent. The ringleader seated himself on my left hand. They first begged me to lend them my skipertogan[1] to fill a ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... interested to see how utterly defenceless this theory leaves us against the silliest delusions, may consult with advantage the Dictionary of Mysticism, by the Abbe Migne (passim), or, if they wish to ascend nearer to the fountain-head of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... certainly does not please the most intelligent persons at home. Obstinate officials set at defiance the liberal initiations of the government. In conflicts with simple citizens guilty officials are like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with the defenceless. The bureaucrat inevitably cares more for routine than for results. The machinery is regarded as an achieved result instead of as a working instrument. It tends to be the most unimproving and shallow of governments in quality, and to over-government ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... incident of the childhood of this zealous champion of human rights, related in a letter I have, shows how early he took his stand by the side of the weak and defenceless. When he was about six years old, and going to school in Connecticut, a little colored boy was admitted as a pupil. Weld had never seen a black person before, and was grieved to find that the color of his skin caused him to be despised by the other boys, and put off on a seat by himself. The ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... and pregnant summary the reader will note outlined the elements characteristic of all strategic situations: the bases, the seaports; the communications, the railway lines; the front of operations, the frontier of the Orange Free State, or rather, perhaps, in this defensive—or defenceless—stage, the railroad line parallel to it, which joins De Aar, ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... were no less troubled by upwards of forty living ones, who all of a sudden surrounded them, and in the Catalan tongue bade them stand and wait until their captain came up. Don Quixote was on foot with his horse unbridled and his lance leaning against a tree, and in short completely defenceless; he thought it best therefore to fold his arms and bow his head and reserve himself for a more favourable occasion and opportunity. The robbers made haste to search Dapple, and did not leave him a single thing of all he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... form for a maid to avoid the crass mention of sex. With prohibition has come such an outburst of Get Moral Quick legislation that the reaction is now being felt throughout the length and breadth of the flapper. The legislators would lengthen the skirts to protect the defenceless male from a chance thought of legs and the like. Whereat the flapper retaliates by conversing pretty ceaselessly about—well, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... feet glow scorching with the floor; His breath choked gasping with the volumed smoke, But still from room to room his way he broke. 820 They search—they find—they save: with lusty arms Each bears a prize of unregarded charms; Calm their loud fears; sustain their sinking frames With all the care defenceless Beauty claims: So well could Conrad tame their fiercest mood, And check the very hands with gore imbrued. But who is she? whom Conrad's arms convey, From reeking pile and combat's wreck, away— Who but the love ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... reconnoitred Sebastopol and Odessa, but being fully convinced of the helplessness of few or even of many ships against the heavy batteries of the present day, I did no more than look about me, occasionally exchanging shots with the enemy. As to burning defenceless towns and villages, I have always been thoroughly adverse to such things, so I never undertook it. Some people think war should be made as horrible as possible; in this I do not agree. I could easily have burnt the Emperor's palace ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... the strength of the weak, the armour of the unarmed, the defence of the defenceless. If the Christian Church in its times of persecution and affliction had kept itself to the one weapon that is allowed it, it would have been more conspicuously victorious. And if we, in our individual lives—where, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... unpardonably bearish manner; and he could not apologise for his behaviour unless he confessed his jealousy of Austin, which, in all probability, would have subjected him to the mocking ridicule of Viviette—a thing which, above all others, he dreaded, and against which he knew himself to be defenceless. Viviette, too, found silence golden. She knew perfectly well why Dick had slammed the door. An explanation would have been absurd. It would have interfered with her relations with Austin, which were beginning to be exciting. But she loved Dick in her heart for being a bear, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... work of great accuracy and value (Leipzig, 1870), article Haifisch.] the pike, the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they feed, had he not been as hostile to them also ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travelers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind? Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy! The ruins of this castle ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... and just as he had finished speaking rifle-fire broke out on our right, and a minute later, sharply, on our front. It was then 4.45, and a bewildering moment for the Brigadier, who had a great, bulky convoy to protect, and had it at the moment in a defenceless position. I think I would not take any reward to bear the responsibility of acting at such a moment. The shots were sounding quicker, but one could see nothing except the surrounding trees. Colonel Mahon ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Britain to defend Rome itself from invading hordes of savages, the unhappy Britons had forgotten how to govern and how to defend themselves, and fell an easy prey to the many enemies waiting to pounce on their defenceless country. Picts from Scotland invaded the north, and Scots from Ireland plundered the west; worst of all, the heathen Angles and Saxons, pouring across the seas from their homes in the Elbe country, wasted the land with fire and sword. Many of the Britons were ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... down on their snow-shoes from Canada through the forest in the depth of winter, fell upon the exposed settlements of New York and New England, and committed the most horrible barbarities. Schenectady, unsuspecting and defenceless, was attacked at midnight. Men, women, and children were dragged from their beds and tomahawked. The few who escaped, half-naked, made their way through the snow of that ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... surrounded with all her guard of ingenuous feelings and virtuous principles. He forces from her station a defenceless woman, who, without his malignant interposition, might have filled it with honour and happiness. He heaps up disgrace and misery upon a family that never gave him provocation, and perhaps brings down the grey hairs of the heads of it to the ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Wars of the Roses, three successive Earls of Devon lost their lives, and many of their followers must have fallen too, leaving defenceless ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... his love for birds. It was an encounter between a pet parrot and a tame monkey kept by his mother. One morning the parrot, Mignonne, asked as usual for her breakfast of bread and milk, whereupon the monkey, being in a bad humour, attacked the poor defenceless bird, and killed it. Audubon screamed at the cruel sight, and implored the servant to interfere and save the bird, but without avail. The boy's piercing screams brought the mother, who succeeded in tranquillising the child. The monkey was chained, and the parrot buried, ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... helpless to remain Amid this hollow, how ill judged! how vain! Our sea-breach'd vessel can no longer bear The floods that o'er her burst in dread career; 720 The labouring hull already seems half-fill'd With water through a hundred leaks distill'd; Thus drench'd by every wave, her riven deck, Stript and defenceless, floats a naked wreck; At every pitch the o'erwhelming billows bend Beneath their load the quivering bowsprit's end; A fearful warning! since the masts on high On that support with trembling hope rely; At either pump our seamen pant for breath, In dire dismay anticipating death; 730 ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... "See how my plans for the reduction of these heathen Moors are quietly working; they are divided within themselves, quarrelling more and more fiercely. Pedro Pas brings me information that the road to Alhama is well nigh defenceless, and therefore the war should commence in that quarter. But how is this, love?" he added, after speaking of his intended measures at some length, and perceiving that they failed to elicit Isabella's interest as usual. "Thy thoughts are ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... man deliberately committed murder, Al Hutchins did that morning in solitary at the Warden's bidding. He robbed me of the little space I stole. And, having robbed me of that, my body was defenceless, and, with his foot in my back while he drew the lacing light, he constricted me as no man had ever before succeeded in doing. So severe was this constriction of my frail frame upon my vital organs that ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... doubly arm'd, with that and Injury, And I am wounded and defenceless. [Aside. Hippolyta, why all this Rage to me? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... reason for this assassination, in open day, of a defenceless prisoner! The penalty of death for disobedience to one of the prison regulations. Is this, then, a caprice, or an access of ill-temper, on the part of an officer who has no authority in this matter, since prisoners awaiting trial are only responsible to the representatives of our ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and worthy of admiration, if one knew it to be an expedition directed against the red pirates of the plains, en route to chastise them for their many crimes—a long list of cruel atrocities committed upon the defenceless citizens of Chihuahua and New Mexico. But knowing it is not this—cognisant of its true purpose—the impression made is altogether different. Instead of admiration it is disgust; and, in place of sending up a prayer for its success, the spectator would feel apprehension, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... but when would that be a possibility? Just as soon as the attendant returned, he must go to his commander, and either make a clean breast of it or refuse to utter a word. What course would he ask or expect of a comrade if it were his, Hatton's, sister, who was here alone and defenceless? By heaven, McLean was right! They must shield her, so far as shield of theirs could serve, until Forrest himself could come to be her ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of hair looked like ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of an officer, and whose countance beamed with the rays of humanity, rode up to the carriage—she immedeiately addressed him in the most supplicating terms—imploring him to take pity upon a poor defenceless woman, who had not, and who could not injure him—He interrogated her as to who she was and how she came there.—She told him—He protested, that he did not before know of any such thing and requested to know, what she wished to do——She replied that she only required to be let on her feet, ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... luckless Hour, Tries the dread Summits of Cesarean Pow'r, With unexpected Legions bursts away, And sees defenceless Realms receive his Sway; Short Sway! fair Austria spreads her mournful Charms, The Queen, the Beauty, sets the World in Arms; From Hill to Hill the Beacons rousing Blaze Spreads wide the Hope of Plunder and of Praise; The fierce Croatian, and the wild Hussar, ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... moras[10] of Spartan troops for its protection. He always had his eye upon this place, and watched his opportunity. Hearing that the garrison had made an expedition into Lokris, he marched, hoping to catch Orchomenus defenceless, taking with him the Sacred Band and a few cavalry. When he came to the city he found that the garrison had been relieved by fresh troops from Sparta, and so he led off his men homewards through Tegyra, the only way that he could, by a circuitous route at the foot of the mountains; for the river ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... record. All the Venetian vessels, with the exception of one that escaped, were taken, together with their admiral. It is believed that, if the victors had gone immediately to Venice, they might have taken the city, which was defenceless, and in a state of consternation; but the Genoese preferred returning home to announce their triumph, and to partake in the public joy. About the time of the Doge's death, another important public event took place in the death of John Visconti. He had a carbuncle upon his forehead, just above ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... other successful missions, it is impossible to give the dates of their foundation with accuracy, nor is this to be wondered at, when we consider the perilous condition of Canada during her life, whether we remember the bloody atrocities of the savages on the often defenceless colonists, or the fiercely contested wars between the French and English that demoralized the whole state of society north of the St. Lawrence, or the tremendously destructive fires that swept away whole cities in whirlwinds of flame, or the pestilences that filled so many wayside graves, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... acquaintance some time previously at Keighley—and they agreed to walk back with me to Stockton-on-Tees. The girl's uncle and her three cousins made the party into eight—a veritable cavalcade in quest of a poor, defenceless woman. We got to Stockton all right, and the uncle and his sons took the girl in charge, while I was left with my three friends, the O'Gormans, to do as I liked. What was more, I was robbed of all opportunities of communing with the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenceless Spaniard. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the ice-bound river, past the quay where rough soldiers were brutalising a number of wretched defenceless women, to that grim Chatelet prison, where tiny lights shining here and there behind barred windows told the sad tale of weary vigils, of watches through the night, when dawn would bring ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... had two years elapsed, before the perfidious Cherokees broke out again in a fresh place, killing and driving the defenceless inhabitants at a most barbarous rate. Marion instantly flew again to the governor with the tender of his services to fight for his afflicted countrymen. His excellency was so pleased with this second instance of ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... colonels of the militia who had neglected their duty, but whose names he would not expose; that agitators in Ireland and political economists here wished to reduce this force, in order, under the pretext of economy, to leave the country defenceless; but he never would consent to this, and only agreed to the present measure upon a clear understanding that early in the next session the matter was to be brought forward in Parliament with a view to render the militia more efficient; that nothing but the militia ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... during several years, Hastings was employed in making bargains for stuffs with native brokers. While he was thus engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to the government, and declared war against the English. The defenceless settlement of Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly seized. Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, in consequence of the humane intervention of the servants of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unwarned and unprepared, the deadliest foe which can assail the soul. An appetite which has in all ages debased the weak, wrestled fiercely with the strong, and vanquished at times even the noble, is let loose upon an unwarned, unarmed, defenceless child. Oh, the utter, ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... it is said that there are deserters and scamps of various sorts who hover about the skirts of the Desert, particularly on the Cairo side, and are anxious to succeed to the property of any poor devils whom they may find more weak and defenceless than themselves. ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Algonquins were panic-stricken. Was the man pursued by Mohawks, or laying a trap to lure them within shooting range? Seeing them hesitate, the Indian threw down blanket and hatchet to signify that he was defenceless, and rushed into the water ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... boat being found with only three fingers of a man in it, and a bloody mark at the side, where the heads of those in the boat had been cut off. Sometimes the pirates would wait until they knew the men of a village were away at their paddy farms, then they would fall suddenly upon the defenceless old men, women, and children, kill some, make slaves of the young ones, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... length perceiving that their local position enabled them to reap a rich harvest by plundering vessels in passing this great highway of nations, commenced their piratical career. The small coasting vessels of the gulf, from their defenceless state, were the first object of their pursuit, and these soon fell an easy prey; until, emboldened by success, they directed their views to more arduous enterprises, and having tasted the sweets of plunder in the increase of their ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... seemed not possible to have resisted the boldness of her innocence or that last temptation of her weeping. And all that I had to excuse me did but make my sin appear the greater—it was upon a nature so defenceless, and with such advantages of the position, that I seemed to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like immunities. While in the savage condition we find the female sex, the young, and the weak, condemned to a hopeless state of degradation and to a lasting deprivation of particular advantages merely because they are defenceless; and what they are deprived of is given to others merely because they are old or strong: and this is not effected by personal violence, depending upon momentary caprice and individual disposition (in which case it might be considered as the consequence of a state of equality) but it is enforced ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... unfortunately quite in unison with his hatred of all liberty, were condemned to exile, and had cause to apprehend further severity. It is for the exclusive admirers of the Chief of the Empire to approve of everything which proceeded from him, even his rigour against a defenceless sex; it is for them to laugh at the misery of a woman, and a writer of genius, condemned without any form of trial to the most severe punishment short of death. For my part, I saw neither justice nor pleasantry in the exile of Madame de Chevreuse for having had the courage ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of despair, seized the barrel of his weapon in both hands; but Gabriel was coming forward with his axe, a terrible foe, and his first stroke carried away the butt of the rifle. He was still hesitating, however, to kill a defenceless man, when two armed servants appeared at the end of the pathway. Gabriel did not see them coming; but at the moment when they would have seized him by the shoulders, Solomon uttered a cry and rushed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... whom he was led. In the new life of bloodshed and adventure he seemed to delight. Like the free-lance in all ages, he seems to have squandered his booty as soon as it was acquired, and then to sea once more, to face the desperate hazard of an encounter with the knights, to raid defenceless villages, to lie perdu behind some convenient cape, dashing out from thence to plunder the argosy of the merchantman. Intolerable conditions of heat and cold he endured, he suffered from wounds, from fever, from hunger and thirst, from ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... across the swamps, and that he urged us to start at once, at the same time announcing his intention of accompanying us so as to protect us against treachery. I was much touched by this act of kindness on the part of that wily old barbarian towards two utterly defenceless strangers. A three—or in his case, for he would have to return, six—days' journey through those deadly swamps was no light undertaking for a man of his age, but he consented to do it cheerfully in order to promote ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... past, fast getting into the pining, distrustful snarl of the misanthrope. I saw myself alone, unlit for the struggle of life, shrinking at every rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of fortune, while all defenceless I looked about in vain for a cover. It never occurred to me, at least never with the force it deserved, that this world is a busy scene, and man, a creature destined for a progressive struggle; and that, however I might possess a warm heart and inoffensive manners ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... spirit make men to be humane and genial, open-hearted, frank, and sincere, earnest to do good, easy and contented, and well-wishers of mankind. They protect the feeble against the strong, and the defenceless against rapacity and craft. They succor and comfort the poor, and are the guardians, under God, of his innocent and helpless wards. They value friends more than riches or fame, and gratitude more than money or power. They are noble by God's patent, and their escutcheons and quarterings ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... There was Satan and all the devils, too, plotting to stop the Christian man from building the house of the Lord, and preaching the gospel to the heathen; ready to call up storms, and floods, and forest fires; to hurl the crag down from the cliffs, or drop the rotting tree on their defenceless heads—all real and terrible in those poor monks' eyes, as they walked on, singing their psalms, and reading their Gospels, and praying to God to save them, for they could not save themselves; and to guide them, for they knew not, like Abraham, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... in concealing that they did so for fear of incurring the displeasure of the first consul. Every day, however, they invented some new pretext to injure me, thus exerting all the energy of their political opinions against a defenceless and persecuted woman, and prostrating themselves at the feet of the vilest Jacobins, the moment the first consul had regenerated them by the baptism ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... politicians. It is the hybernating-place of fashion, of intelligence, of vice,—a resort without the attractions of waters either mineral or salt, where there is no bathing and no springs, but drinking in abundance and gambling in any quantity. Defenceless, as regards walls, redoubts, moats, or other fortifications, it is nevertheless the Sevastopol of the Republic, against which the allied army of Contractors and Claim-Agents incessantly lay siege. It is a great, little, splendid, mean, extravagant, poverty-stricken barrack ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... men in the world; and it was agreed between us, that Richard should be called oftener and worked more severely. The varlet was not suffered to stand up in his place; but was summoned to take his station near the master's table, where the voice of no prompter could reach him; and, in this defenceless condition, he was so harassed, that he at last gathered up some grammatical rules, and prepared himself for his lessons. While this tormenting process was inflicted upon him, I now and then upbraided him. But you will take notice that he did not incur ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... and turning round, she saw him leaning back in his chair, a defenceless animal without his spectacles, his eyes small and purpled ringed, his hair tossed about, his spruceness gone. 'I am sure you are not ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sense of humiliation. For there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to show that these boxes before him held what had once been the dwelling-place of that daily miracle, the sentient soul of man. These defenceless dead had been subjected to a last, continuous, intolerable insult; in their flesh he felt that his own humanity was degraded. Here was nothing to separate the human dead from the beasts of the field; these boxes would have looked the same had they held merely the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... separation Friendship in the wilderness Friendship at a supper The Author finds himself alone Monterey deserted High wages Officers' servants not to be obtained A few arrivals from the mines Stores shut, houses blocked up, and ships left defenceless. ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... ample indemnity in larger salaries, and they opened fire on corporations in general and railroads in particular, with a broadside of statutes. Against this fire the property of millions of small holders in the corporations has been almost defenceless. Some of these statutes are so drawn that the plain business man does not know whether he is a criminal or not; if he could afford to consult the best of lawyers it would not help him much. The only ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the governor of Damascus 'kept the city with a garrison,' which is the same word, and in its purely metaphorical usage Paul employs it when he says that 'the peace of God shall keep'—guard, garrison—'your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' We have to think of some defenceless position, some unwalled village out in the open, with a strong force round it, through which no assailant can break, and in the midst of which the weakest can sit secure. Peter thinks that every Christian has assailants whom no Christian by himself can repel, but that he may, if he likes, have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... You, the bad servant of a bad man's wicked son," exclaimed the angered tutor; "it's you who dare to set upon defenceless age and innocence, with its new cork legs on? Very good. Then take that, and I ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... fears were verified. Shot after shot was launched from the heavy jingal, and at the short range the gunners found the door an easy mark, and pounded it again and again until it was utterly shattered, and the opening into their stronghold was left defenceless. Nor could the besieged make the gap good with any other barrier. Between the firing of the heavy balls a steady fusillade of musketry was poured into the doorway, and no one dared to ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... that Helen was very silent, and he even reflected how handsome a man was Thayer Kent; but through it all he seemed to hear the echo of that knock upon his studio door and a foreboding which he could not shake off made him reflect gloomily how utterly defenceless he should ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... took receipts in proper form; and if we gave Madame Cibot a few forty-franc pieces, it is the custom of the trade—we always do so in private houses when we conclude a bargain. Ah! my dear sir, if you think to cheat a defenceless woman, you will not make a good bargain! Do you understand, master lawyer?—M. Magus rules the market, and if you do not come down off the high horse, if you do not keep your word to Mme. Cibot, I shall wait till the collection ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... remembered that, if the man had any feeling about him, the question was the sorest he could have asked—the child, who would now have been a girl, drowned, her sister and brother exiled, and Day bound over by legal authority to see to it that no defenceless person came in the way of the wife who had killed her child! A moment more, and Day had merely turned his back, going on with his work. Caius did not blame him; he respected the man the more for ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... request of the leading settlers of Wellington, to assure him that the matter should be left to the arbitrament of the Crown. The Crown, as represented by Mr. Shortland, was, perhaps, at the moment more concerned at the defenceless position of Auckland, in the event of a general rising, than at anything else. Moreover, the philo-Maori officials held that Rauparaha and Rangihaeata were aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and of the deed whereby Ku-ish, the Porcupine, cleansed his honour from the shame that had been put upon him. The murder was a brutal act, savagely done, and the ruthless manner in which the Porcupine killed the little defenceless child, who had done no evil to him or his, makes one's blood boil. None the less, when one remembers the heavy debt of vengeance, for long years of grinding cruelty and wicked wrong, which the Sakai owes to the Malay, one can find it in one's heart to forgive much ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... uselessness of contention, accepted the proffered escort of the gentleman before mentioned, and was followed out of the cars by the conductor and his blackguard assistants, all of them highly elated by the victory they had won over a defenceless old woman and a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Run it was feared that Beauregard and his men would descend upon Washington, then in a defenceless condition; but they were in no state to attack. They too felt the need of preparation for the coming struggle, whose magnitude both sides ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... with the Scoliae, meals are made on the spot on game legitimately acquired by indefatigable battues or by patient stalking in which all the rules have been observed; only, the animal hunted is defenceless and does not need to be laid low with a dagger-thrust. To seek and find for one's larder a torpid prey incapable of resistance is, if you like, less meritorious than heroically to stab the strong-jawed Rose-chafer or ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the house of a "Datu," or chief, named Oroncaya, he was suddenly surrounded by seventy Moros, who, seizing upon him, bound him to a tree and then flayed him alive, from the forehead to the ankle. In this miserable and defenceless situation, the barbarous "Datu" wreaked his vengeance on his body by piercing it all over with his "kris," or dagger, and then ordered his skin to be hung up on the pole of one of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Barbesieur, unable to suppress the gleam of satisfaction that WOULD shoot across his countenance. "Your valor then, which is equal to put opprobrium upon a defenceless man, will not bear you out to face him in a duel? What say these gentlemen here present, to such behavior on the part of a prince of the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... husband. Sir David Lindsay may not be unaptly quoted in illustration of this subject. His poem called "The Monarch" contains the following frightful picture of the exactions and enormities committed on these defenceless and unoffending victims ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... expose any of you. It is a matter that concerns myself alone. I hardly think they will attempt to molest a single, defenceless man. As for your son, I'll take care that no one ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... foresaw this, and he was lost in admiration at the native police idea. The stroke of genius that collected all the Felixes of the Congo basin into an army of darkness, and collected all the weak and defenceless into a herd of slaves, was a stroke after ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... exact, for Loveday had forgotten Mrs. Veale, but the rebuke drenched the impetuous girl like a cold wave. She stood defenceless. ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out—which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... himself upon Vasling, to whom, no doubt, was confided the task to fight him alone; for his accomplices rushed to the beds where lay Misonne, Turquiette, and Nouquet. The latter, ill and defenceless, was delivered over to Herming's ferocity. The carpenter seized a hatchet, and, leaving his berth, hurried up to encounter Aupic. Turquiette and Jocki, the Norwegian, struggled fiercely. Gervique and Gradlin, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... talk about Martin Conrad I was feeling defenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims, when something happened which seemed ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of caterpillars, which are especially defenceless, and which as a rule feed on leaves. The smallest and youngest are green, like the leaves on which they live. When they become larger, they are characterised by longitudinal lines, which break up the surface and thus render them less conspicuous. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... maintains that 'the public weal requires that one should commit treachery, use falsehoods, and perform massacres.' [17] Personally, he shrinks from such a mission. His softer heart is not strong enough for these deeds. He relates [18] that he 'never could see without displeasure an innocent and defenceless beast pursued and killed, from which we have received no offence at all.' He is moved by the aspect of 'the hart when it is embossed and out of breath, and, finding its strength gone, has no other resource left but to yield itself up to us who pursue it, asking for mercy ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... orthodox in matters folk-lorical. My defence might be that I had a cause at heart as sacred as our science of folk-lore—the filling of our children's imaginations with bright trains of images. But even on the lofty heights of folk-lore science I am not entirely defenceless. Do my friendly critics believe that even Campbell's materials had not been modified by the various narrators before they reached the great J.F.? Why may I not have the same privilege as any other story-teller, especially ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... the town, they gave themselves over to all kinds of excesses, perpetrating atrocious cruelties on defenceless women and children, and pillaging convents ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... could bear it no longer. He took out his knife, and under pretence of joining in the sport, drew near to Shargar, and with rapid hand cut the cords—all but those that bound his feet, which were less easy to reach without exposing himself defenceless. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... returning from the Tartar camp, With spoils and honour, when the war is done. 595 But a dark rumour will be bruited up, deg. deg.596 From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear; And then will that defenceless woman learn That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more, But that in battle with a nameless foe, 600 By the far-distant Oxus, he ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... which are in fact so horribly unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed—the weak, the defenceless, the infirm—it has done—what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?—you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes—horrible; though the cause of your war ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... a wilderness where a moment's weakness would have yielded them complete disaster. But they were merciless upon their own powers. They knew the stake, and played for all. The man played for the tiny lives which had come to cheer his resting moments, and the defenceless woman who had borne them. The woman supported him with a loyal devotion ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... whirled a shower of dust into the water, which speedily delivered several hundred nude fighters to the clothes-littered bank. A second and third shell dropping nearer drove all modest thoughts from our minds for the moment (unclothed, a man feels helplessly defenceless), and we hurried into our warrens through throngs of women rushing out to ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... and of the causes of the change, about men there is not much, and that little is more to the purpose. Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild. And in the first ages they were still without skill or resource; the food which once grew spontaneously had failed, and as yet they knew not how to procure it, because they had never felt ...
— Statesman • Plato
... the cook, struggling with the inspector. "Whatever do you mean? Shame—shame to 'old a defenceless lady. 'Elp!" ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... were slaughtered promiscuously, a special ferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror toward the unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They took a particular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty; and not without reason did the Church at that time consider as martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... listening to the word of God. They were politely invited to sit down: but they replied by noisy interruption and threats. "Mort-Dieu, they must all be killed!" was their exclamation as they returned to report to Guise what they had seen. The defenceless Huguenots were thrown into confusion by these significant menaces, and hastened to secure the entrance. It was too late. The duke himself was approaching, and a volley from the arquebuses of his troop speedily scattered the unarmed worshippers. It is unnecessary to describe ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... downward;" and that, being destitute of immortality, the whole period of their enjoyment is limited to the short date of their life on earth? It is the mark of a debased mind to seek amusement from the writhings of defenceless creatures, to sport even with the agonies of a fly. Parents and guardians of youth should particularly guard against the encouragement of a principle of cruelty, by allowing this practice. Children should not be suffered to indulge ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... force. Yet a Council of Philosophers (disciples of Rousseau and Voltaire) have sent forth Dumouriez, at the head of an hundred thousand men, to instruct the people of Flanders in the doctrine of freedom. Such a missionary is indeed invincible, and the defenceless towns of the Low Countries have been converted and pillaged [By the civil agents of the executive power.] by a benevolent crusade of the philanthropic assertors of the rights of man. These warlike Propagandistes, however, do not always convince ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... but I fear them to be of the outlawed Seminoles.[1] If so, they are following my people for the purpose of picking up plunder, or of snatching the prize of a scalp—a thing they could only gain by a cowardly attack upon one defenceless, for they dare not seek it in open fight. Or it may be that one of them is he who has conceived a bitter enmity against those who never treated him with aught save kindness, and that he has joined with him another ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... the waning daylight, she cantered over the scented grass without a thought of the danger which Wanaha had hinted to her. She was defenceless, unarmed, yet utterly fearless. Her spirit was of the plains, fresh, bright, strong. Life to her was as the rosy light of dawn, full of promise and hope. Her frail figure, just budding with that enchanting promise ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... things coolly and do a little every day, for at that time of year an hour's change in the wind might have brought a heavy fall of snow, or a sharp frost, or a; deluge of rain down upon the uncovered and defenceless heads of our live stock. The poor dear sheep, the source of our income, were after all the least well-cared for creatures on the Station. A well grassed and watered run, with sunny vallies for winter feeding, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... even the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and for the time at least, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Her eyes flinched from the necessary task of facing him down. Where women of more breeding have immeasurable resources of tradition behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to play for ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... possible; and endeavor to appear insensible to their insults. I would say to you, if you will excuse the triviality of the comparison, imitate those feeble insects who simulate death when they are touched. They are defenceless; and that is their ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... I don't understand you. In spite of your Quaker principles you felt it right to thrash these villains. What is the difference between thrashing the wretches who would harm a weak and defenceless woman, and helping your country to thrash that German bully who is a menace to Europe? If it was your duty to do one, it is surely your duty to do the other? The same principle ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... looked upon only as a necessary evil. On the other hand, if our views are not directed upon the complete destruction of the enemy's force, and if we are sure that the enemy does not seek but fears to bring matters to a bloody decision, the taking possession of a weak or defenceless province is an advantage in itself, and if this advantage is of sufficient importance to make the enemy apprehensive about the general result, then it may also be regarded as a shorter road ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... had, when met and challenged by the writer's ship, already accounted for no less than three German submarines which had opened the attack from close range, thinking her defenceless. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... this ruin accomplished? Unseen in the heights above, the Tyrolese peasantry hurl down rocks, roots, and trunks of pine trees, as well as sending a "deadly hail" from their rifles along the "whole line" of the defenceless army below. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Daws are such pleasant people. The Pines is an isolated spot, and my resources are few. I fear I should have found life here somewhat monotonous before long, with no other society than that of my excellent sire. It is true, I might have made a target of the defenceless invalid; but I haven't ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the lowest ruffian may stab your good name with impunity in England, will you be so uncandid as to exclaim against Italy for the practice of common assassination? To what purpose is our property secured, if our moral character is left defenceless? People thus baited, grow desperate; and the despair of being able to preserve one's character, untainted by such vermin, produces a total neglect of fame; so that one of the chief incitements to the practice of virtue ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, at the same ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... tavern-threshold to every blockhead in the parish,—or that any Pharisee who kept carefully to windward of his virtues, out of the way of infection, has thereby earned the right to mismoralize his failings after he is dumbly defenceless. The moral compasses that are too short for the aberration may be, must be, unequal to the orbit. We would not deny that Burns was a chamberer and a drunkard because he was a great poet; but we would not admit that whiskey and wenches made him any the less the most richly endowed genius of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... after the tumult and the reek of the town. Appalled, yet fascinated, I listen to the oft repeated tales of just how Jim McCarty sprang into the saloon and cleaned out the brawling mob. I feel very young, very defenceless, and very ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates,' The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the double and most convenient character of contestant and witness; and it ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... find them defenceless, and speedily fled. In the confusion, some of them had penetrated far into the camp, and had carried off the captain's daughter, a child of six years old. When peace was signed with Tippoo, three weeks afterwards, the commissioners were ordered ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... whatever party he may rank himself, who does not dread this event, and who would not prefer almost any neighbours to the French: and it seems perfect infatuation in the Administration of this country that they chuse the present moment for leaving that frontier almost defenceless by the reduction ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... sorrow, and indignation was too deep for utterance or even for tears. The priest and my father uttered not a word. Perhaps my father's conscience made him ashamed of such vile work—that of laying violent hands on a defenceless girl of eighteen years of age, for no crime whatever, only the love of liberty and pure Bible religion. But if the priest was silent, his vile countenance indicated a degree of hellish pleasure and satisfaction. Never did piratical ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... saw the commencement of the Indian Mutiny, a terrible outbreak of cruelty and fanaticism which, while it inflicted unspeakable anguish upon hundreds of our defenceless countrywomen and their children, desolated many an English home, and evoked the horror and compassion of the civilised world, was also the occasion of numberless acts of heroism and devotion, not only on the part of British soldiers and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... boiled cabbage, Frau Hadebusch raged about the ingratitude of man. Her shrieks called Herr Francke and the Methodist from out their warm holes; the brush-maker and his imbecile son also appeared in the dimly lighted vestibule; and before these five Hogarth figures stood the defenceless sinner, Daniel Nothafft. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... insults, which a brother, who has been so tenacious of an independence voluntarily given up by me, and who has appeared so exalted upon it, ought not to have shewn to any body, much less to a weak and defenceless sister; who is, notwithstanding, an affectionate and respectful one, and would be glad to shew herself to be so upon all future occasions; as she has in every action of her past life, although of late she has met with such ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Unionist," he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in Ireland; ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... If the Shepherd sends His sheep into the midst of wolves, surely He will come to their help, and surely any peril is more courageously faced when they can say to themselves, 'He put us here.' The sheep has no claws to wound with nor teeth to tear with, but the defenceless Christian has a defence, and in his very weaponlessness wields the sharpest two-edged sword. 'Force from force must ever flow.' Resistance is a mistake. The victorious antagonist of savage enmity is patient meekness. 'Sufferance is the badge of all' true servants of Jesus. Wherever they have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Am I defenceless?" He had a slight lift of the eyebrows. "That is news, indeed. It is you who are supposing. I have been a very certain man for ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... found to condemn him. Politics evidently had nothing to do with these exploits; it was a private war. And the Chouans professed to wage it only against the government. So long as they limited themselves to fighting the gendarmes or national guards in bands of five or six hundred, to invading defenceless places in order to cut down the trees of liberty, burn the municipal papers, and pillage the coffers of the receivers and school-teachers—(the State funds having the right to return to their legitimate owner, the King), they could be distinguished from professional malefactors. ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... not much o' the blood o' the Grants, either, that's in your veins, or ye would scorn to consort wi' such fire-raisin' cut-throats. It iss the fortune of war—whatever, and we can't affoord to leave our weemen an' bairns defenceless. So we accept your terms, if we are not hindered ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... And that hand of hers lingering in the air. And her kiss. What did it mean? Vehement alarm and irritation took possession of him. He got up and began to pace the Turkey carpet, between window and wall. She was going to give him up! He felt it for certain—and he defenceless. An old man wanting to look on beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead with her; even an old man has his dignity. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... been called Devil's Own by his former comrades and playfellows. A defenceless girl—my daughter! By good St. Anthony, if he crosses my path again it shall be for the last ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... now become supreme. The faint familiar perfume that stole about his room filled him with a kind of frenzy. Was this the chivalric devotion of which he had so boasted? this the desire to protect a young and defenceless woman? He no longer dared question himself. He seemed to feel her warm breath against his cheeks. He threw up his arms with a gesture of despair. A sigh stirred the deathlike stillness. At last! She was there, just within his doorway; the pale glimmer of the veiled moon fell upon her. Her trailing ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... believed the Holy Ghost had entered, set out for the Holy Land, so ignorant that at every large town or city they enquired, "Is this Zion?" Although a religious expedition, small regard was paid to decency or humanity. Defenceless cities en route were sacked. Women were outraged, men and children killed. The Jews were murdered wholesale. Almost universally the slaughter of Jews at home were preparatory to crusading abroad. Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria, although providing contingents for the crusading ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... are coming!" the soldier cried in a terrified whisper. "My God, they are coming! Come back! Come back!" For Claude had their only weapon, and the guard was defenceless. Defenceless by the side of the stairs up which the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... eyes "wax foul and sore" as he prepares to tell of its infliction. He compassionates "love's servants" as if he were their own "brother dear;" and into his adaptation of the eventful story of Constance (the "Man of Law's Tale") he introduces apostrophe upon apostrophe, to the defenceless condition of his heroine—to her relentless enemy the Sultana, and to Satan, who ever makes his instrument of women "when he will beguile"—to the drunken messenger who allowed the letter carried by him to be stolen from him,—and to the treacherous Queen-mother who caused them to be stolen. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... eventually obtained possession of the outer fortifications and the village of Le Petit-Andely, from which the inhabitants fled to the protection of the castle. The governor had no wish to have all his supplies consumed by non-combatants, and soon compelled these defenceless folk to go out of the protection of his huge walls. At first the besiegers seemed to have allowed the people to pass unmolested, but probably realizing the embarrassment they would have been to the garrison, they altered ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... there stood awaiting the coming of those his voice still continued to summons, perhaps some remorse, some compunctious visitings—for despite his crimes he was human—haunted the breast of the Egyptian; the defenceless state of Glaucus—his wandering words—his shattered reason, smote him even more than the death of Apaecides, and he ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Turks have artillery and cannot use it,' said Lord Montacute. 'Why, the most favoured part of the globe at this moment is entirely defenceless; there is not a soldier worth firing at in Asia except the Sepoys. The Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian monarchies might be gained in a morning with faith and the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Suffolk to cut the Weldon Railroad. He also sent out detachments to destroy the railroad between Petersburg and Richmond, but no great success attended these latter efforts. He made no great effort to establish himself on that road and neglected to attack Petersburg, which was almost defenceless. About the 11th he advanced slowly until he reached the works at Drury's Bluff, about half way between Bermuda Hundred and Richmond. In the mean time Beauregard had been gathering reinforcements. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... walk. Tears, blinding tears, were running down her face. She knew that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward omens. It was impossible to think of returning to the Vicarage. Angel's wife felt almost as if she had been hounded up that hill like a scorned thing by those—to her—superfine clerics. Innocently as the slight had been inflicted, it was somewhat unfortunate that she ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... by no means confines his attention to hunting monkeys and defenceless fish. He will hunt big game, and when hungry will not hesitate to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... hand fell from his sword-hilt,—a flush of shame reddened his dark face. He bent his fiery eyes full on the captive—and there was something in the sorrowful grandeur of the old man's bearing, coupled with his enfeebled and defenceless condition, that seemed to touch him with a sense of compassion, for, turning suddenly to the armed guard, he raised his hand with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... intolerable, he had thought then, that a man should have those large, full eyes, that straight, manly look and bearing, who had gone to his grave having deliberately planned that his dead hand should so deeply wound a defenceless woman, and that woman his sweet, young wife. Murray's mind was so full now of relief at the idea that Sir David had done his best at the last, that in his relief he almost forgot that, in a woman's mind the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... to see the land. Scarcely any Cape in the world is sighted by so many vessels and touched at by so few as Acheen Head. Lord Reay warned us most strongly against approaching it too closely in our comparatively defenceless condition, on account of the piratical ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... raise protecting walls for thee, Thou young, defenceless land of liberty? Or who could build a fortress strong enough, Or stretch a mighty bulwark long enough To hold thy far-extended coast Against the overweening host That took the open path across the sea, And like ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... leader, was slain by a stone thrown by one of the monks from the walls; this tended to kindle the fury of the besiegers, and so exasperated Hulda that it is said he killed with his own hand the whole of the poor defenceless monks, including their venerable abbot. The sacred edifice, completely in their hands, was soon laid waste; they broke down the altars, destroyed the monuments, and—much will the bibliophile deplore it—set fire to their immense library "ingens bibliotheca," ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... a bacchanalian, character; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Princess de Lamballe. A ferocious mob soon assembled at the door of the hotel, broke in by force, and after deliberately shooting him, dragged the body to the adjoining bridge, and with every mark of contumely threw it into the Rhone. Such is the brief outline of the murder of a defenceless man, on a charge which, whether true or not, should have rested between God and his conscience. Jouey may indeed be pardoned for commenting and enlarging on this story, though the simple facts address themselves more strongly to ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... innocent, Roderigo, I am innocent! Oh, how couldst thou be so deceived? He quitted the cottage, discomfited and enraged; again he sought me, and again and again; and when the door was closed upon him, he waylaid my steps. Lone and defenceless as we were, thy wife and child, with but one attendant I feared him not; but I trembled at thy return, for I knew that thou went a Spaniard, a Castilian, and that beneath thy calm and gentle seeming lurked pride, and jealousy, and revenge. Thy letter came, the only letter since thy ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... certainly one of the darkest that have ever vexed the minds of men. It contains a material truth before which we remain defenceless; and, if we accept it as it stands, we can discover no remedy for the evil that threatens us. But material and tangible truths are never anything but a more or less salient angle of greater and deeper-lying truths. And, on the other hand, mankind appears to be such a necessary and ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... my girl being trapped by such a villain as I firmly believed the man whom we knew as Sir Gilbert Carstairs to be was enough to shake every nerve in my body; but to think that she had been in his power for twenty-four hours, alone, defenceless, brought on me a faintness that was almost beyond sustaining. I felt physically and mentally ill—weak. And yet, God knows! there never was so much as a thought of defeat in me. What I felt was that I must get there, and make some effort that would bring the suspense to an end for both of us. I ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... unseen and unheard, crept near, and piercing him with their arrows he fell dead. They took his scalp, threw the body into a ditch, covering it with a few leaves, and fled. When they arrived at their village they very boastfully exhibited the scalp of the defenceless missionary, as that of an Iroquois warrior. To obtain this renown was the only object of the cowardly assassins ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... on the ice, and advanced alone and unarmed towards the canal, or chasm, which separated the parties. He carried a small white flag and a bag containing presents. Innocent-looking and defenceless though he was, however, the Eskimos approached him with hesitating and slow steps, regarding every motion of the interpreter with suspicion, and frequently stooping to thrust their hands into their boots, in which they all ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... always ignored him. Did it not rather mean, then, that Jewdwine would not trust her there; that, knowing her nature and how defenceless it lay before the impulses of its own kindness, he feared for her any personal communication with his friend? It did not occur to Rickman that what Jewdwine dreaded more than anything for Lucia was the influence of a unique and irresistible personal charm. As far as he could ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... highly dangerous to wooden ships maintaining a close blockade at some Southern port. While there was much newspaper comment in England that the vessels were "new Alabamas," and in America that they were "floating fortresses," suitable for attack upon defenceless Northern cities, their primary purpose was to break up ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... profoundly religious nature, must often have been severely tried by these throngs, but not even delicate health prevented her from exercising a large and beautiful hospitality to these spiritually lame, halt, and heart-sick who came to receive a healing touch. Though never ruffled, Emerson was not defenceless before boorish intruders. On one occasion a boisterous declaimer against "the conventionalities," who kept on his hat in the drawing-room after invitation to lay it aside, was told, "We will continue the conversation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... true, had come out to meet them, but all in the garb of peace; dressed in white, and crowned with flowers, as if for a festival. Hostility died away in the bosoms of the warriors, as they gazed on these defenceless men,—few are so brutal as to attack the unresisting and the friendly. But what was the astonishment of the whole army, when they beheld the fiery Alexander himself go forward towards the Jewish high priest, who headed the brilliant procession, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... with them to the place from whence the noise came. He found a poor wretch, who had been crossing from a neighbouring village, in the possession of a party of kidnappers, who were tying his hands. Mr. Falconbridge, however, dared not rescue him, lest, in the defenceless state of his own town, retaliation might ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... sous. Since Salvat's arrest, the woman and the child had been forsaken and suspected by one and all. Driven forth from their wretched lodging, they were without food and wandered hither and thither dependent on chance alms. Never had greater want and misery fallen on defenceless creatures. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of Great-Britain wages no War with the Industrious Peasant, the sacred Orders of Religion, or the defenceless Women and Children: To these in their distressful Circumstances His Royal Clemency offers Protection. The People may remain unmolested on their Lands, inhabit their Houses, and enjoy their Religion in Security. For these inestimable ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... returned Jeremias. "I have inquired particularly. The bird in the wood is not more defenceless than that child. Poverty there will be in the house; and what little there is, that monster of a ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... with the energy of despair, seized the barrel of his weapon in both hands; but Gabriel was coming forward with his axe, a terrible foe, and his first stroke carried away the butt of the rifle. He was still hesitating, however, to kill a defenceless man, when two armed servants appeared at the end of the pathway. Gabriel did not see them coming; but at the moment when they would have seized him by the shoulders, Solomon uttered a cry and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... doctrines shall be spread over the earth by fire and sword. They are only too ready to obey this order. Already steeped in blood from the combat outside the walls, they continue to gather in the harvest with dripping scimitars. The defenceless are fastened together with chains and driven out ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the question. "I never did trust that nurse," said I. "But to steal the treasured capital of a defenceless infant!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... innocent, and it is as much my duty to free him as it was to condemn him." Villefort thus forestalled any danger of an inquiry, which, however improbable it might be, if it did take place would leave him defenceless. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... National was of the same order. It began, inevitably, with ice-water. Ice-water is the thing that waiters fill up intervals with. Instead of pausing between courses for the usual waiter's meditation, they make instinctively for the silver ice-water jug, and fill every defenceless glass. Ice-water is universal. It is taken before, during and after every meal, and there are ice-water tanks (and paper cups) on every railway carriage and every hotel. At first one loathes it, and it seems to create an unnatural thirst, but the habit ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... thinks I, with my rings and London clothes, in the presence of the Honorable, with whom I had dealt in pride and anger! 'Twas a pretty figure I had cut, all my life—the whelp of a ruined, prostituted skipper: the issue of a murderous barratry! What protection had the defenceless child that had been I against these machinations? What protest the boy, growing in guarded ignorance? What appeal the man in love, confronted by his origin and shameful fostering? Enraged by this, what I thought ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the adherents of the Salonica Government to take advantage of the withdrawal of the Greek troops into the Peloponnesus in order to invade by land or by sea any part whatever of Greek territory thus left defenceless, or to permit the installation of Venizelist authorities in any territories actually in the possession of the Royal Government which they might see fit to occupy hereafter for military reasons. Lastly, they signified their readiness to raise the blockade as soon ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... it not be better that we should all be together, even if we are obliged to conceal ourselves in consequence of not being prepared? Suppose the savages were to overrun the island, and find my mother, my little brother, and sister, defenceless, at the time we were obliged to retreat from our house; how dreadful that ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... by what were called "free quarters"—in other words, the billeting of soldiers indiscriminately among the houses of the peasantry, thereby leaving the wives and daughters of Irish Catholics at the mercy of a hostile soldiery—by the burning of houses, the shooting down of almost defenceless crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women. Certain it is that many of the British officers high in command protested loudly against such a policy, and that some of them positively refused ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... With a terrible ironic calm she sorted them from his pockets, and spread them out on the table like a pack of cards. He dared not look at her. He was afraid to see what she was seeing. She had torn open the door of his secret chamber, and there in that blasting light was his treasure, naked, defenceless. He could have cried out in his dread, "Only ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenceless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters become mangy, and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... stain with which thou hast this day sullied the fair escutcheon of chivalry, in riding down a helpless Christian knight, and ravishing a defenceless maiden from the hands that alone have a right to protect her! I will give thee thy life on one condition, craven! Surrender up to me the maiden, and thou art free to depart! But enter not a foot again into the Christian camp. An army ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer and quicker; but the wrong was peculiarly great when at such a time and in such a place the defenceless Indians were thrust between the anvil of their savage red brethren and the hammer of the lawless and brutal white borderers. The awful harvest which the poor converts reaped had in reality been sown for them by their own friends and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Muspratt called promptly to his bugler. The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... errand thinking that the villa was defenceless. See your mistake! Each one of these behind me has more arrows in store than all your number, and never shot bolt from bow without piercing the mark. Off! Away with your foul odours and your yelping throats! And if, when you have turned tail, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... possibility of being claimed as slaves. Mr. Fitzgerald may not mean that I shall ever come to harm; but he may die without providing against it, as poor papa did. I don't know what forms are necessary for my safety. I don't understand how it is that there is no law to protect a defenceless woman, who has done no wrong. I will wait here a little longer to recruit my strength and have this matter settled. I wish it were possible for you, my dear, good mother, to come to me for two or three weeks in June; then perhaps you could ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... everywhere. They flew about his head like a firework, making him see sparks in a most startling way till Vane put all his remaining strength into a tremendous blow which took effect upon a horizontal bough; the stick snapped in two close to his hand, and he stood defenceless once more, but the victor after all, for the second boy was running blindly in and out among the trees, and the first was quite ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... famous collier, "River Clyde," We sat as men who wait the summons dread. Brave soldiers fell, defenceless, at our side, We, too, might soon be ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... it does not exist. I have had to ask myself what would happen to your country in the case of a European war, where your fleet was distributed to guard your vast possessions in every quarter of the world, and the answer to that is that you are, to all practical purposes, defenceless. In almost any combination which could arrange itself, your country is at ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for fuel, for tools, for repairs, the uncertain distribution of the available water, all these troubles are discussed in villages and in local Conferences. The Arms Act oppresses them, by leaving them defenceless against wild beasts and wild men. The union of Judicial and Executive functions makes justice often inaccessible, and always costly both in money and in time. The village officials naturally care more to please ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... getting out of life the full of its juice. Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I remember ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... above the clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenceless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that is singed in ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... and slowly turned his eyes toward the river. Once more Pootoo's gigantic weapon saved his defenceless head from the blow of an eager antagonist, but the white man knew naught of his escape. His dazed eyes saw only the band of warriors flying over the plain toward the field of battle. Far in their rear came a ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... cruel pranks he played on the poor, the helpless, and defenceless, until at last people became afraid to go outside their houses, and were afraid to stay in them, for every day brought some new wickedness done by him, and every fresh one was worse ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... that 'the public weal requires that one should commit treachery, use falsehoods, and perform massacres.' [17] Personally, he shrinks from such a mission. His softer heart is not strong enough for these deeds. He relates [18] that he 'never could see without displeasure an innocent and defenceless beast pursued and killed, from which we have received no offence at all.' He is moved by the aspect of 'the hart when it is embossed and out of breath, and, finding its strength gone, has no other resource left but to yield itself up to us who pursue it, asking for ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... wonderful how power has vanished, in a sense wonderful how it has increased. I sit here, an unarmed discredited man, at a small writing-table in a little defenceless dwelling among the vines, and no human being can stop my pen except by the deliberate self-immolation of murdering me, nor destroy its fruits except by theft and crime. No King, no council, can seize and torture me; no Church, no nation silence me. Such powers ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... under the idea that it will give them courage, and a spirit of hatred and revenge against their enemies. What can calm these ferocious feelings, and curb this savage fury of the passions in the torturous destruction of defenceless women and sucking infants? what, but the introduction and influence of Christianity, the best civilizer of the wandering natives of these dreary wilds, and the most probable means of fixing them in the pursuit of agriculture, and of those social advantages and privileges ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... so startled Malcolm that for a moment he forgot his watch, and when he looked again the men had vanished. Not having any clue to their intent, and knowing only that on such a night the house was nearly defenceless, he turned at once and made for it. As he approached the front, coming over the bridge, he fancied he saw a figure disappear through the entrance, and quickened his pace. Just as he reached it, he heard a door bang, and supposing ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... across the American, and the cat was still safely in the bag; but how much longer it could be kept there, the saints alone knew. He was feeling—very properly—guilty in regard to this latest escapade; but what can a defenceless waiter do in the hands of an impetuous young American whose pockets are stuffed with silver lire and ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... crawls about the bottom of the water or up the stems of plants, with its thickly-chitinized head and legs protruding from the larger orifice, while it maintains a secure hold of the silk lining of the tube by means of a pair of strong hooks at the posterior end of its soft defenceless abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... can I retain my Anger? Oh, look but ever thus—in spite of Injuries— I shall become as tame and peaceable, As are your charming Eyes, when dress'd in Love, Which melting down my Rage, leave me defenceless. —Ah, Madam, have a generous care of me, For I have now ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... God. They were politely invited to sit down: but they replied by noisy interruption and threats. "Mort-Dieu, they must all be killed!" was their exclamation as they returned to report to Guise what they had seen. The defenceless Huguenots were thrown into confusion by these significant menaces, and hastened to secure the entrance. It was too late. The duke himself was approaching, and a volley from the arquebuses of his troop speedily scattered the unarmed worshippers. It is unnecessary ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dread this event, and who would not prefer almost any neighbours to the French: and it seems perfect infatuation in the Administration of this country that they chuse the present moment for leaving that frontier almost defenceless by the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed—the weak, the defenceless, the infirm—it has done—what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?—you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes—horrible; though the cause of your ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... had had trouble with the Bedloes and perhaps others in the town, and that they warped the truth in the telling. For was any more faith to be put in the word of the Smiths than in that of Buck Thornton himself? And did she not know him for what he was, a man who was not above assaulting a defenceless girl, not ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... intriguing and troublesome rascal; a person who had, from the commencement, been trying to supplant and ruin him. He it was that gave the Sakarran pirates permission to ascend the river for the purpose of attacking the comparatively defenceless mountain Dyaks; and he it was that persecuted the unfortunate young Illanun chief, Si Tundo, even to his assassination. He was at last got rid of from Sarawak, but only to join and plan mischief with that noted piratical chief, Seriff Sahib; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the harbour; and after a due proportion of guns, some shotted and some not, the whole convoy were under weigh, and hove-to round their protectors. The first step taken by the latter was to disembarrass their proteges of one-third of their crews, leaving them as defenceless as possible, that they might not confide in their own strength, but put their whole trust in the men-of-war, and keep as close to them as possible. Having taken out every unprotected man, they distributed convoy signals in lieu, and half a dozen more guns announced ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... rolled over—shot through the heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to rush in and scalp the defenceless prisoners. I became aware of a head and a stick above ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... learnt a few hours later that they were part of loads which were disposed of on the outskirts of the town the day before. The circumstances connected with some of these kidnapping excursions are appalling, and the barbarities practised by cruel masters upon some of these defenceless creatures during the course of their servitude are scarcely less horrible than those reported from Turkey. It is no disgrace in this country for an official to ride a fine horse which was got for two Kafir children, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Natures softened with something mild and tractable, and by that means are qualified for a Domestick Life. In this Case the Passions generally correspond with the Make of the Body. We do not find the Fury of a Lion in so weak and defenceless an Animal as a Lamb, nor the Meekness of a Lamb in a Creature so armed for Battel and Assault as the Lion. In the same manner, we find that particular Animals have a more or less exquisite Sharpness and Sagacity in those ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... military training together." Carson touched lightly on fears that had been expressed lest political advantage should be taken by the Government or by the Nationalists of the conversion of the U.V.F. into a Division of the British Army, which would leave Ulster defenceless. "We are quite strong enough," he said, "to take care of ourselves, and so I say to men, so far as they have confidence and trust in me, that I advise them to go and do their duty to the country, and we will take care of politics hereafter." He concluded by ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... unfathomable abyss to this delightful world, and established that reign here which now totters to its base? How, therefore, dares yon treacherous fiend to cast a stain on Satan's bravery? he who preys only on the defenceless—who sucks the blood of infants, and delights only in acts of ignoble cruelty and unequal contention. Away with the boaster who never joins in action, but, like a cormorant, hovers over the field, to feed upon the wounded, and overwhelm ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... in his despatch urged the Madrid Government to grant certain reforms, in any case, which could not fail to affect the hitherto independent position of the friars in governmental affairs. He also drew the attention of the Government to the defenceless condition of the capital in the event of a foreign attack (vide Senate speeches reported in the Diario de las Sesiones, Madrid, 1899 and 1900). The friars were exceedingly wroth, and combined to defeat the General's ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... borders; neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year." Now, would obedience to this precept be tempting God? Doubtless not. Yet surely there is a much greater natural difficulty in the way of protecting the defenceless wives and families of a whole people during the absence of all the males at Jerusalem, than there is in providing subsistence sufficient for those who daily labour; for by this means the great mass of mankind are, and ever ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... party or the other, for those very principles. He who proceeds without principle, as chance, timidity, or self-preservation directs, will not perhaps fare better; but he will be less blamed. What are we in the great scale of events, we poor defenceless frontier inhabitants? What is it to the gazing world, whether we breathe or whether we die? Whatever virtue, whatever merit and disinterestedness we may exhibit in our secluded retreats, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Oh, often, often as I think That thou no longer livest, and that I Shall never see thee on the earth again, Incredible it seems! Alas, alas! What is this thing, that they call death? Oh, would That I, this day, the mystery could solve, And my defenceless head withdraw from Fate's Relentless hate! I still am young, and still Feel all the blight and misery of age, Which I so dread; and distant far it seems; But, ah, how little different from age, The flower ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenceless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames, and cork up my ink-bottle for ever, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... proudly. She wished to annihilate this newly-created countess with her withering contempt. But the king, who perceived the signs of a coming storm upon his mother's brow, determined to prevent this outbreak. It wounded his noble and generous soul to see a poor, defenceless woman tormented in this manner. He was too noble-minded to take offence at the quiet and composed bearing of the countess, which had excited his mother's anger. In her display of spirit and intelligence, he forgot her lowly birth, and laying his hand ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... class of birds there are a number of cases that make some approach to mimicry, such as the resemblance of the cuckoos, a weak and defenceless group of birds, to hawks and Gallinaceae. There is, however, one example which goes much further than this, and seems to be of exactly the same nature as the many cases of insect mimicry which have been already given. In Australia and the Moluccas there is ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... defeat into a victory, and save yourself from being mauled and possibly killed in a fight which was none of your own making. Added to all this, science gives a consciousness of power and ability to assist the weak and defenceless, which ought to be most welcome to the mind of any man. Though always anxious to avoid anything like "a row," there are times when it may be necessary to interfere for the sake of humanity, and how much more easy is it to make that interference dignified and effective ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... arms Marc Dupre loosed Maren, the trembling lessening as the danger passed. That sight of the defenceless girl among the Indians had shaken him like a leaf in the wind, had nerved his arms with iron, had worked in him both with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... political wisdom. The King of Prussia, faithful to the ruling principle of his life, wished simply to aggrandise his dominions at a much smaller cost and at much less risk than he could have done in any other direction; for at that time Poland was perfectly defenceless from a material point of view, and more than ever, perhaps, inclined to put its faith in humanitarian illusions. Morally, the Republic was in a state of ferment and consequent weakness, which so often accompanies the period of social reform. The strength arrayed against her was just then ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... General Lee and General Jackson were sitting by the side of the plank road, on some empty cracker boxes, discussing the situation, when Stuart came up and reported the result of his reconnoissance. He said the right flank of Howard's corps was defenceless and easily assailable. Jackson at once asked permission to take his own corps—about 26,000 muskets—make a detour through the woods to conceal his march from observation, and fall unexpectedly upon the weak point referred to by Stuart. It was a startling proposition ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... Of what grief have I not tasted? And why? Simply because I have ever kept the truth in view, because ever I have preserved inviolate an unsullied conscience, because ever I have stretched out a helping hand to the defenceless widow and the hapless orphan!" After which outpouring Chichikov pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped away ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering, terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness, were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and the self-confidence temporarily out of him. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... attack and murder of the Menomonies at Prairie du Chien. This murder was committed by a part of Black Hawk's band, who had been driven from their villages on the Mississippi below the rapids. They ascended the river to Dubuque—from thence the party set out, and fell on the unsuspicious and defenceless Menomonies. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Hall—"A fig for your pistol! I care not a curse for it."—"Ay, lad," said the deep voice of Fighting Charlie, "but the tow's out now". He had no occasion to utter another word; the rogues, surprised at finding a man of redoubted courage well armed, instead of being defenceless, took to the moss in every direction, and he passed on his ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... forgot yourself a fortnight ago as to hint at your outrageous ideas regarding me, I forced myself to remember that you were not an Englishman, that perhaps in your country there may be a social code which permits a man to dishonour his home and to annoy a defenceless woman. I cannot forgive you a second time. Let me pass! Let me pass, I tell you, or I ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... judged to be her unspeakable indiscretion, the thought rushed in on her straight from him, the naked, terrible thought, that there should be anything they had to hide, they had to be alone for. She saw at the same time how defenceless he was before it; he couldn't keep it back; he couldn't put it away from him. It was always with him, a danger watching ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... does not please the most intelligent persons at home. Obstinate officials set at defiance the liberal initiations of the government. In conflicts with simple citizens guilty officials are like men armed cap-a-pie fighting with the defenceless. The bureaucrat inevitably cares more for routine than for results. The machinery is regarded as an achieved result instead of as a working instrument. It tends to be the most unimproving and shallow of governments in quality, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... bright. "You a noble, and you dare not? You a noble, and you cannot govern yourself? Consider, M. le Vicomte! A few days may see me traverse the road so many traverse every day; the road of the guillotine. Then my daughter will be alone, defenceless, unprotected. I ask you—for I have no one else to whom I can turn—to be her brother and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... of 1812 furnished another startling proof of the isolated and defenceless position of the provinces. The relations between Upper Canada and Lower Canada, never cordial, {7} became worse. In 1814, at the close of the war, Chief Justice Sewell of Quebec, in a correspondence with the Duke of Kent (Queen Victoria's father), disclosed a ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... And they were near another of the sites consecrated by his history, the place where, just before the change of his name, the angels of God met him and 'he called the name of the place Mahanaim.' That means 'the two camps,' the one, Jacob's defenceless company of women and children, the other, their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... new champion aimed a fierce blow at Sigmund, which the old hero parried with his sword. The shock shattered the matchless blade, and although the strange assailant vanished as he had come, Sigmund was left defenceless and was soon wounded unto death ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... and victorious in Germany without a power to oppose them, should they venture to attack the Protestant states and to annul the religious treaty. Had Ferdinand been in reality far from disposed to abuse his conquests, still the defenceless position of the Protestants was most likely to suggest the temptation. Obsolete conventions could not bind a prince who thought that he owed all to religion, and believed that a religious creed would sanctify any deed, however violent. Upper Germany ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unfavourable notions of British heretics, and urged them on to the destruction of the colony. Good policy required that the governor should keep a watchful eye on the motions of such neighbours, and guard his weak and defenceless colony against the pernicious designs of their Spanish rivals. Some men he discovered who were attempting to entice servants to revolt; these were ordered to receive so many stripes. Others, in defiance of the feeble power of the magistrate, took to such courses as were subversive of public ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring, Cover my defenceless head With the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and exasperation! What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and well-conducted pranks? Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our own superior wit and address in concerted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, oh, leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me: All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring; Cover my defenceless head With ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... shown in his letters, was greatly impressed by the magnitude of the prize and by the defenceless condition of his capture. He alleged these as the motives for staying in person at St. Eustatius, to settle the complicated tangle of neutral and belligerent rights in the property involved, and to provide against the enemy's again ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... loose in the beautiful old villages of France along a front of five hundred miles. The facts are monotonous in the repetition of their horror, and one's imagination is not helped but stupefied by long records of outrages upon defenceless women, with indiscriminate shooting down village streets, with unarmed peasants killed as they trudged across their fields or burned in their own homesteads, with false accusations against innocent villagers, so that hostages were collected and shot in groups as a punishment for alleged ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... appalled. The sudden, paralysing conviction flashed upon her that the palace had been deserted by its guards and was in the hands of murderers. She seemed to hear them swarming everywhere, unopposed, yet lusting for blood, while she, a defenceless woman, stood cowering against ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... back to his aunt snivelling, defenceless but happy. He had never had a friend except Gustus, and now he had given Gustus the greatest treasure that ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... and had therefore had fuller experience than other men in the army, of the satrap's real character. On a sudden he now turns round, and on the faith of a few verbal declarations, puts all the military chiefs into the most defenceless posture and the most obvious peril, such as hardly the strongest grounds for confidence could have justified. Though the remark of Machiavel is justified by large experience—that from the short-sightedness of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... would judge the matter fairly. Herdonius, if nothing else, by avowing himself an enemy, in a manner gave you notice to take up arms: this man, by denying the existence of war, took arms out of your hands, and exposed you defenceless to your slaves and exiles. And did you, (without any offence to Caius Claudius and to Publius Valerius, now no more let me say it,) did you advance against the Capitoline hill before you expelled those enemies from the forum. It is shameful before gods and men. When the enemy were ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease, If ever deed of honour did thee please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms, He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call Fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spred ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... her they hardly seemed to exist, or were perceived, as it were, dimly, and their contact scarce felt. I suppose it is true in all warfares, that a well-armed and alert soldier is let alone by the foes that would have swallowed him up if he had been defenceless or not giving heed. And if you could have seen Esther's face during that hour, you would understand that all possible enemies were, at least for the time, as hushed as the lions in Daniel's den; so glad, so grave, so pure and steadfast, so enjoying, was the expression ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... importance of which had wholly escaped him, Paul's only auxiliary was the old notary, Mathias. Both were about to be confronted, unaware and defenceless, by a most unexpected circumstance; to be pressed by an enemy whose strategy was planned, and driven to decide on a course without having time to reflect upon it. Where is the man who would not have succumbed, even though assisted by Cujas and Barthole? How should he look for deceit and treachery ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... suddenly made by the whole force of the mountaineers. Climbing along the mountain-sides above the defile, they hurled down stones on the entangled foe, and loosened and rolled great rocks down upon their defenceless heads. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... strikes, like the fatal flash, fraught with destruction? When there is but a single moment longer in which rescue is still possible, ought assistance to be delayed? Open me the door; you need have nothing to fear from a poor defenceless wretch, who is deserted of all the world, pursued and distressed by an awful fate, when he comes to beseech Mademoiselle to save him from threatening danger?" La Martiniere heard the man below moaning and sobbing with anguish as he said these words, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... not stripped him of the armour of Achilles, which, in Homer, he is wearing. Achilles then meets Hector, but far from rushing to avenge on him Patroclus, he retires like a coward, musters his men, and makes them surround and slay the defenceless Hector. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne's heart fretted his bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate and cup from her hands, saying, "Now I'll push the shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... was a downright contemptible trick to play on the defenceless engineer. Had I been able to render him any assistance, I should have ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... solitary wife, remained to share his fate or halve the bitterness of his fall. Poor savage! he was learning the lesson which Fate teaches to most of us who live long enough, that the eyes of mankind are blind to the discredited, and that he who is defenceless and fallen finds few friends and little mercy. Nor, indeed, in this case did he ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... one. Now when the whole doctrine of our Saviour inculcates nothing more frequently than meekness, patience, and a contempt of this world, is it not plain what the meaning of the place is? Namely, that he might now dismiss his ambassadors in a more naked, defenceless condition, he does not only advise them to take no thought for shoes or scrip, but even commands them to part with the very clothes from their back, that so they might have the less incumbrance and entanglement in the going through their office and function. He cautions them, it is true, to. be furnished ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... "'Ah, alas! poor defenceless women learn, too late, how constantly associated is the retiring modesty which decries, with the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... can that strong, intrepid mind Attack a weak, defenceless kind? Those jaws should prey on nobler food, And drink the boar's and lion's blood; Great souls with generous pity melt, Which coward tyrants never felt. How harmless is our fleecy care! Be brave, and let thy ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the anti-foreign feeling in China culminated in the massacre of defenceless men and women, the three missionaries whose names head this chapter were working in the city of Ta-ning. The inhabitants of this little city among the hills had always treated the missionaries with ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... furnishes it with a keel of lead, in order to render it sufficiently steady. The old articulata abound in marks of ingenious mechanical contrivance. The trilobites were covered over back and head with the most exquisitely constructed plate armor: but as their abdomens seem to have been soft and defenceless, they had the ability of coiling themselves round on the approach of danger, plate moving on plate with the nicest adjustment, till the rim of the armed tail rested on that of the armed head, and the creature presented the appearance of a ball ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... attacking one defenceless temperance man, displayed the same spirit of cowardice as their northern brethren show when they hire a stranger to do the work for them. They had greater success attending their efforts, but probably there was no more ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... spent, unarmed, and defenceless, he scarce knew what to do; whether to fly, or to turn round and die as a refuge from the greater evil of endeavouring to prolong a struggle which seemed hopeless. Instinct, however, urged him on, at all risks, and though he could not go very far, or ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Overseer, who had the first Lot, with seventeen more of all Sorts and Sizes, but not one of Quality with him. When he saw this, he found what they meant; for, as I said, he understood English pretty well; and being wholly unarm'd and defenceless, so as it was in vain to make any Resistance, he only beheld the Captain with a Look all fierce and disdainful, upbraiding him with Eyes that forc'd Blushes on his guilty Cheeks, he only cry'd in passing over the Side of the Ship; Farewel, Sir, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... days since in Iowa, where the fiend now lies buried. Any man who is so dead to shame, and so callous of soul generally, as to force his unwelcome endearments upon a poor, defenceless old lady, while her beautiful young daughter stands weeping by, equally defenceless, deserves pretty much all the evil that can be done to him. Splitting him like a fish is so disgracefully inadequate a punishment, that the man who should administer it might justly ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... offend a courtly ear by the recital of those disgusting scenes. Besides this, it might give pain to that humanity which hath, as you observe, prompted your overtures, to dwell upon the splendid victories obtained by a licentious soldiery over unarmed men in defenceless villages, their wanton devastations, their deliberate murders, or to inspect those scenes of carnage painted by the wild excesses of savage rage. These amiable traits of national conduct cannot but revive ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the same thing. The only difference lies in the fact that thousands of defenceless women and little children are calling. Would you have the nation stand with its hands in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... magnanimity displayed in her latter years, do not redound more highly to her praise than all that preceded. Elizabeth wished for some plausible pretext to take away the life of the unhappy Mary, whom, though so defenceless, she regarded as a dangerous rival. The Duke of Norfolk made offers of marriage to Mary, to which she consented, in case she should be liberated. His scheme also was to favor the Catholic cause, and on its being ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... luck would have it, this chanced to be the little Helen, altogether defenceless and unarmed. Murtagh, still shouting, rushed to the rescue; while Henry, with his musket raised to his shoulder, endeavoured to get between the ape and its intended victim, so that he could fire right into the face of the assailant, without endangering the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... bliss, strove to take the full consciousness of it into a being which seemed too narrow to contain it. His first impulse was to rush forward, clasp her passionately in his arms, and hold her in the embrace which encircled, for him, the boundless promise of life; but she stood there, defenceless, save in her holy truth and trust, and his heart bowed down and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of a summer storm; like a prodigious gleaming army they swarm and bend forward, eager, undeviating, one-purposed. It's quite impossible to describe it—this great silver horde. They are entirely defenceless, of course, and almost every living thing preys upon them. The birds congregate in millions, the four-footed beasts come down from the hills, the Apaches of the sea harry them in dense droves, and even man appears from distant coasts to take his toll; but still they press bravely ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... defenceless on the score of reason, she shifted her ground and appealed to his delicacy. On this he appealed to her love, and then calm reason was jostled off the field, and passion and sentiment battled ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... soft place on the floor. We spoke to the nearest picket. He told us that it would be madness to try to cross one part of the ground unless we had revolvers, because a gang of Huns were in hiding ready to knock down passengers and hold up any one who seemed defenceless. However, after a little cogitating, he said that he would escort us to General Hastings' headquarters, and we started, picking our way over the remains of streets and passing over great obstructions that had been left by the torrent. Ruin and wreck ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Lightfoot rang'd the forest round, By chance his foe's retreat he found. "Let us a while the war suspend, And reason as from friend to friend." "A truce?" replies the Wolf. "'Tis done." The Dog the parley thus begun. "How can that strong intrepid mind Attack a weak defenceless kind? Those jaws should prey on nobler food, And drink the boar's and lion's blood, Great souls with generous pity melt, Which coward tyrants never felt. How harmless is our fleecy care! Be brave, and let thy mercy spare." "Friend," says the Wolf, "the matter weigh; Nature designed ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... as a tavern-threshold to every blockhead in the parish,—or that any Pharisee who kept carefully to windward of his virtues, out of the way of infection, has thereby earned the right to mismoralize his failings after he is dumbly defenceless. The moral compasses that are too short for the aberration may be, must be, unequal to the orbit. We would not deny that Burns was a chamberer and a drunkard because he was a great poet; but we would not admit that whiskey and wenches made him any the less the most richly endowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... two days of that eventful year which will long be remembered in San Francisco,—two days when a mob of her citizens set upon and killed unarmed, defenceless foreigners because they were foreigners, and of another race, religion, and color, and worked for what wages they could get. There were some public men so timid, that, seeing this, they thought that the end of the world had come. There were some eminent statesmen, whose names I am ashamed to write ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... checkmating the curse of fate and avoiding the threatened suicide. He who loses his life in the defence of persecuted and defenceless travellers dies as a man of honor. Let us ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates,' The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the double and most convenient character of contestant and witness; and it is but a subdued expression ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... philistinism, hounded on by dreadful protectors of dreadful "young persons," invades the very citadel of civilisation itself, and pours its terrible "pure" scum and its popular sentimental mud over the altars of the defenceless immortals. No one asks that these tyrannical young people and their anxious guardians should read the classics or should read the works of such far-descended inheritors of the classical tradition who, like Remy de Gourmont, seek to keep the sacred fire alight. Let them hold their hands off! ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... scarce wished for, never baulked the amorous conceited old, nor the ill-favoured young, yet when he had extended in his arms the young, the charming fair and longing Sylvia, the untouched, unspotted, and till then, unwishing lovely maid, yielded, defenceless, and unguarded all, he wanted power to seize the trembling prey: defend me, heaven, from madness. Oh Sylvia, I have reflected on all the little circumstances that might occasion this disaster, and damn me to this degree of coldness, but I can fix on none: I had, it is ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... and bodyguards: each of those preliminary victories had to be won. Once more I pause, and consider my situation. I have got the better of the guards; I am master of the garrison; I present you the tyrant stripped, unarmed, defenceless. May I claim some credit for this, or do you still require his blood? Well, if blood you must have, that too is not wanting; my hands are not unstained; the glorious deed is accomplished; the youthful tyrant, the terror of all men, his father's sole security and protection, the equivalent of many ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... catched full with a fair round swing. Whereas had these blows followed one another on a yielding head, the injury it inflicted as a battering-ram might have outweighed the damage it received in inflicting it. As it was, Peter—so Uncle Moses called the Sweep—was for one moment defenceless, being preoccupied in seizing his opponent by the ankles; and although his cranium had no sinuses, and was so thick it could crush a quart-pot like an opera-hat, it did not court a fourth double concussion, and this time he was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... deadly fight between these two young fellows. Sam's sword had gone from his hand in the fall, and he was defenceless, save by such splendid physical powers as he had by nature. But his adversary, though perhaps a little lighter, was a terrible enemy, and fought with the strength and litheness of a leopard. He had his hand at Sam's throat, and was trying to choke him. Sam saw that one great effort ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... seating himself in an attitude of luxurious ease, approaching almost to indolent recklessness. "We are the most chivalrous people in the world. There is no people, I think, on the face of the globe, among whom the innocent and defenceless are so ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... He foresaw this, and he was lost in admiration at the native police idea. The stroke of genius that collected all the Felixes of the Congo basin into an army of darkness, and collected all the weak and defenceless into a herd of slaves, was a ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... be made upon the place, the houses surrounded and strict search made. One hour the streets would be deserted, the next every corner bristled with rude soldiery, flinging insults and imprecations on the feeble old men and defenceless women, who, panic-stricken, stood about vainly endeavoring to seem at their ease and keep up a show ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... these masses of film and fluid, floating at the mercy of wind and wave, possess powers which we should hardly associate with so simple a structure, and can accomplish works of which we should little suspect them. Delicate and defenceless as they appear, they can capture fishes of large size, and digest them with ease and rapidity. Some of them are in truth formidable monsters. Professor E. Forbes gives the following humorous description ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... they only waited, they would have seen all the soldier garrison march away, leaving the women and children and a few grandfathers—and the fort would have been seized without trouble except to the defenceless families. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... him a torrent of abuse. "You! Who are you, that you dare to speak to me like that? His little finger is worth your whole body. He is a man, a brave man, not a coward, like you. A coward! Yes, a coward! a coward! A coward! You are very brave with defenceless men and weak women. You have beaten me until I was bruised black, you cur; but who ever saw you attack a man unless he was chained or bound? Do not I know you? I have seen you taunt a man at the triangles, until I wished the screaming wretch could get loose, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
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