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More "Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appalling weapons. The invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first came into use, and a man-at-arms of great prowess could be killed ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... he always carried about him; and not imagining that his adversary had any arms he threw himself upon Candide: but our honest Westphalian had received a handsome sword from the old woman along with the suit of clothes. He drew his rapier, despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelite stone dead upon ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... grasping the handle of his rapier in one hand, with the other he twisted up his blond moustache, as he looked fiercely around; but meeting no glance which returned the defiance of his own, he slowly withdrew, left foot foremost, and strolled along the dark, narrow streets with all the reckless nonchalance of a young soldier who has ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... violence. Murder was common everywhere. On the slightest provocation a man of spirit was expected to whip out a rapier or dagger and plunge it into his insulter. The murder of unfaithful wives was an especial point of honor. Benvenuto Cellini boasts of several assassinations and numerous assaults, and he himself got off without a scratch from ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... for whatever was novel and brilliant; when translations without number of the classical writers and contemporary foreign works were welcomed alike with the "costly attire of the new cut, the Dutch hat, the French hose, the Spanish rapier, the Italian hilt." "It is a world to see how Englishmen desire to hear finer speech than the language will allow, to eat finer bread than is made of wheat, or wear finer cloth than is made of wool." Such are the words in which John Lyly, the Euphuist, characterized his own ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... vine-dresser Courier will resolve. The questions have been replaced to-day by others; but nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Genevieve and the bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... not neglected England, but of late she has paid her the wrong kind of attention. Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and writes: "Above all, speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country above all nations in the world, as they have good reason ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... what sort of folks the French are, we may reply they are folk wt noses on their faces, and that like St. Paul never speaks but they open their mouth. Rapier and Miton[384] ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... Rushing in on him, I bore him backwards until he was penned up in the entrance of one of the caverns against the shafts of a wagon. Then suddenly he changed his tactics. Realizing at last that a clumsily-wielded bludgeon is powerless against a stick expertly handled rapier-wise, he dropped his club, and the next moment the moonbeams flashed from the broad blade of a knife. This was quite a different affair. He now stood on guard with the knife poised and his left hand outspread ready to snatch at my stick. It was a much more effective plan; only he did not know that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... The ranks are broken, along the royal line They fly, the braggarts of the court! the bullies of the Rhine! Stout Langdale's cheer is heard no more, and Astley's helm is down, And Rupert sheathes his rapier, with a curse and with a frown, And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in their flight, "The German boor had better far ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... puchera of the following day. They were un-cooked, and were as hard as marbles; these I dashed upon the floor, and the greater part of them fell just about the doorway. Eh bien, mon maitre, in another moment in bounded the count, his eyes sparkling like coals, and, as I have already said, with a rapier in his hand. "Tenez, gueux enrage," he screamed, making a desperate lunge at me; but ere the words were out of his mouth, his foot slipping on the pease, he fell forward with great violence at his full length, and his weapon flew out of his hand, comme ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... hair. "They tell of my predecessor in office, the first President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. "Asticot, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... I thought, seemed surprised at my cunning in fence, and lost the confident smile with which he had first, regarded me. Presently I felt the point of my rapier touch his tunic upon the breast, and, in my sensitive grasp, I knew that my blade had encountered steel. The look which I gave him must have conveyed to him the knowledge that I had discovered his treachery, for he set his lips and attacked ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... clothes. He bought them at second hand—a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, and all that—a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... take possession of the French stage. The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman—an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... oath, Kueelo whirled about. Latham had a vision of the man's ludicrous face. Then a tiny, shiny tube appeared like magic in the Martian's hand. A power-rapier. Latham had heard that Martians carried them always. Tiny and easy to conceal. A press of a stud released a rapier-like shaft of electronic power that ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... virgin ear catches the clash of swords at work behind a wall. The mothers of Sussex look round to count their chicks—I mean those young gamecocks that waited on her. Two dainty youths have stepped aside into Brickwall garden with rapier and dagger on a private point of honour. They are haled out through the gate, disarmed and glaring—the lively image of a brace of young Cupids transformed into pale, panting Cains. Ahem! Gloriana beckons awfully—thus! They come up for judgement. Their ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... took them as far as Belgium, and then Lieutenant West and I carried them to London. D'Artagnan's share was a bad rapier-wound." ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable occasion, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... though he did not hit so hard as Dryden, struck more deftly and probed deeper. He wielded a rapier where the other used a broadsword, and though both used their weapons with the highest skill and the metaphor must not be imagined to impute clumsiness to Dryden, the rapier made the cleaner cut. Both employed a method in satire which their successors (a poor set) in England have not ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... with a rapier is quite another thing," he went on. He smirked and made a face at the parakeet who did its best to smirk back. "That is a graceful and fine art. Refined, and not at all degrading ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... But if he had met her father in the corridor, coming to her after the supper, he would have been unarmed. Her father, on the contrary, being on actual duty, wore the sword of his rank, like any other officer of the guards, and the King wore a rapier as a part of ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... art, but not vested with the glories of sculpture, nor the mathematical magnitude of architecture. He does not walk a demigod, but a stiff Anglicised imitator of French paces. He is a symmetrical, but a small invisible personage at rapier practice." Now, clever as this is, it only proves that Addison is not a Shakspeare or Milton. He does not pretend to be either. He is no demigod, but he is a man, a lady-man if you will, but the lovelier on that account. Besides, he was cut off in his prime, and when he might have girt himself up ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... his right trousers leg, and drew from his Wellington boot a two-edged, pointed thing almost long enough to merit the name of rapier. He tossed it in the air, let it spin six or seven times end over end, caught it deftly by the point, and returned it to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a 10 beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copper-spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and 15 wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, I think, forty more; all great doers in our ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the huge dog suddenly turn on its leash and raise itself off the ground to stick out a long rapier-like tongue and lick the girl's cheek before she could move her ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... and sue to him for mercy" (and it should seem the Emperor had really this, or a very little better opinion of our military men, for he afterwards, twice or thrice in his life, said the very same thing); as also, that he challenged the King to fight him in his shirt with rapier and poignard in a boat. The said Sieur de Langey, pursuing his history, adds that the forenamed ambassadors, sending a despatch to the King of these things, concealed the greatest part, and particularly the last two passages. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Ogilvie was often daringly disagreeable. There was indeed something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who wiped his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... attacked Tressilian with a vigour which, for a moment, seemed to give him the advantage of the combat. But this advantage lasted not long. Tressilian added to a spirit determined on revenge a hand and eye admirably well adapted to the use of the rapier; so that Varney, finding himself hard pressed in his turn, endeavoured to avail himself of his superior strength by closing with his adversary. For this purpose, he hazarded the receiving one of Tressilian's passes in his cloak, wrapped as ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... trunks, and hose of a slightly deeper hue, which vanished immediately into a pair of huge thighboots of untanned leather. A leather swordbelt, gold-embroidered at the edges, carried a long steel-halted rapier in a leather scabbard chaped with steel. The sleeves of his doublet which protruded from his leather casing were of the same colour and material as his trunks. In one hand he carried his broad black hat ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... get my gweat gwandpapa's sword." And with this he got upon a chair and by the failing light of the nursery fire carefully took down from over the chimney the dress rapier which had figured at peaceful levees of other days. "Now," he said, "if you are afwaid I will go ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,—a hemisphere of the world,—which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including Charlemagne's sword and sceptre, and the last Dauphin's ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an armchair by the fireplace and threw one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said. "That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... black silk, and fastened at the collar with black enamelled clasps; a cloak of black velvet, passmented with gold, and lined with crimson satin; a flat black velvet cap, set with pearls and goldsmith's work, and adorned with a short white plume; and black velvet buskins. His arms were rapier and dagger, both having gilt and graven handles, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... should, nor have I prohibited him from occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and fishes and goes a birding, and he has a pretty fancy for the making of salmon-flies, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... desire for a tete-a-tete. He expected flattering questions about his writings, and would have enjoyed talking about them; instead of which this English girl with the crimson colouring and the maddening eyes had coolly kept him at a distance with her rapier brain. He felt a sudden indignation at her sexlessness, and struck a match for his own cigarette with such energy ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... precedence should arise, such as no master of ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has come to. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's cafe is now situated, and ran him through with his rapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace of the Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that within the hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house to guard him. In as short space, the Orsini called out three thousand ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... nervous and ill at ease. He shifted from side to side as if M. Godin's glance had pierced him like a rapier, and he were trying vainly to wriggle off of it. He seemed unable to disengage himself and at length replied in ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... passed on amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... protected, encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to 'live by the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... assistants—a common bravado of the rash Tybalts and hot-headed Mercutios of those fiery days of the duello, when even to crack a nut too loud was enough to make your tavern neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the master, jealous of his professional honour, challenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and, determined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried all his most skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in his turn pressed Sanquhar with his foil so hotly and boldly that he unfortunately thrust out one of his eyes. The young baron, ashamed of his own rashness, and not convinced that ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... whose heart was as tender as her judgment was weak, was more painful perhaps than absolute ill-usage. Sir Philip was a voluptuary, that is, a completely selfish egotist, whose disposition and character resembled the rapier he wore, polished, keen, and brilliant, but inflexible and unpitying. As he observed carefully all the usual forms towards his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of the world; and useless and unavailing as that may be while actually possessed by the sufferer, it is, to a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a rapier, and left her for dead, staring ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... in writing the work was to amuse but, in amusing, he also intended to pillory the aristocracy and his wit is as keen as the point of a rapier; but, when we bear in mind the fact that he was an ancient, we will find that his cynicism is not cruel, in him there is none of the malignity of Aristophanes; there is rather the attitude of the refined patrician who is always under the necessity of facing those things which he holds ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... not be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax of a vulgar squabble, To redden your foe's nose, or make him hobble ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... back, as it does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the latter half of the inoculating filament, which extends below the animal to the base of the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that of the Leucospis, with this difference, that its lower half sticks out like a rapier. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Madre de Dios, raked her fore and aft, And took her bullion,—singing, light at heart, His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip. Straight onward came young Eustace to his death! For hidden behind the arras near the stair Stood Regnald, like the Demon in the play, Grasping his rapier part-way down the blade To strike the foul blow with its heavy hilt. Straight on came Eustace,—blithely ran the song, "Old England's darlings are her hearts of oak." The lights were out, and not a soul astir, Or else ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... into the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the riot sat the Lord High Admiral's players—a score or more loud-swashing gallants, richly clad in ruffs and bands, embroidered shirts, Italian doublets slashed and laced, Venetian hose, gay velvet caps with jeweled bands, and every man a poniard or a rapier at his hip. Nick felt very much like a little brown sparrow in a flock of gaudy ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the walls richly adorned with carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps somewhat too stiff to be graceful. He was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... to whom Lord Houghton has already compared him—the French tale-tellers from Anthony Hamilton to Voltaire. In these, perfect as their form often is, there is constantly a slight want of geniality, a perpetual clatter and glitter of intellectual rapier and dagger which sometimes becomes rather irritating and teasing to ear and eye. Even the objects of Peacock's severest sarcasm, his Galls and Vamps and Eavesdrops, are allowed to join in the choruses and the bumpers of his easy-going symposia. The sole ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... permitted to interfere in the least with the arrangement founded on the much more decisive floral aspects of the Iris and Lily. So, in the fifth volume of 'Modern Painters,' the sword-like, or rather rapier-like, leaves of the pine are opposed, for the sake of more vivid realization, to the shield-like leaves of the greater number of inland trees; but it would be absurd to allow this difference any share in botanical arrangement,—else we should find ourselves thrown ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... combats across the table of the House: Gladstone wielding the mighty broadsword of his powerful eloquence, and seeming as if at every moment he would annihilate his antagonist; Disraeli, with marvellous skill and exquisite adroitness, bringing the rapier of his wit to bear upon his opponent, and again and again pinking him with some stinging epigram or smart retort that set all the Tory benches roaring with delight. It made one's young blood grow warmer to watch the struggle from the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he was proud of the impression he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, An' draws a roosty rapier— He swoor, by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he would from that time forth ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... had sat down, directly opposite the visitor, fronting him eye-to-eye. Nothing loath, McQuiggan accepted the challenge. His hard, brisk voice, with a sub-tone of the snarl, crossed the Doctor's strong, heavy utterance like a rapier engaging a battle-axe. Both assumed a suavity of manner felt to be just at the breaking point. The two spectators sat, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... this tone is like drawing the lead from the pistol or putting a foil on the rapier: it defeats his purpose, it renders his weapon ineffective. So far from setting his congregation on fire he sets them asleep; instead of sending them away with clenched convictions they leave the church tittering, ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... reading-room wherein to learn all that passes in the world. They have a town council held now and then in an ancient wainscoted hall, with painted panels and coats of arms, carved oaken seats black with age, and narrow windows from which men once looked down into the street, wearing trunk hose and rapier. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... was a handsome man, about forty years of age, well sunburned, with a keen dark eye, and close-clipped moustache, which indicated that he had served in foreign wars. He threw his hat and long jewelled rapier aside, and on removing his rocquelaure, discovered a white velvet coat more richly covered with lace than any that Spiggot had ever seen even in the palmiest ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... shifted as they might for the time: and heaving their planks overboard, took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver: JOHN DRAKE took the rapier, and made a gauntlet of his pillow, RICHARD ALLEN the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace, called Eion. ROBERT took the caliver and so boarded. But they found the frigate armed round about with a ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... her name. He tore her with his nails and teeth, and ate her. Six weeks before his capture he had fallen upon another child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... tranquil and unpretentious, in his force of character he reminded Lawrence of Laura Clowes. She too had been attacked once or twice that evening by her husband, and Lawrence had admired the way in which she either foiled or evaded the rapier point, or took it to her bosom without flinching. This same silken courage, it seemed, Val also possessed. Both would stand up to a blow with the same grave ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... that shows me where thou stand'st I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest, And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart Where it was forged, with my rapier's point. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... As long as no direct accusation came, he felt safer. He was reasonably sure, basing his opinion of skippers on many past encounters, that this one would go typically to his subject. In his growing cock-sureness, Peter expected no rapier-play. It would be a case, he felt sure, of all the cards on the table at once; a slam-bang, as ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Well-favored—you have seen him—exquisite In courtly compliment, of simple manners; You may not hear a merrier laugh than his From any boatman on the bay; well-versed In all such arts as most become his station; Light in the dance as winged-foot Mercury, Eloquent on the zither, and a master Of rapier and— ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into the Dark ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... parchment; the hair was turning white, and was thin upon the temples. The clear-cut features were impressive, both in outline and in expression, and the eye was as the eye of the eagle, so keenly penetrating and far-seeing that many had shrunk before its gaze as before the sharp thrust of a rapier. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and four. I dare say I should not have been at all happier. If only Pix were not so rude! It is dreadful, Anton, to be daily liable to this. When you were away, I challenged him," said he, pointing to an old rapier on the wall; "but he behaved very ill. I told him I was sorry to be obliged to do it, and offered him a choice of arms and place. He rudely wrote back that he would fight on the ground floor where ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... looked on his person with envy, and on his light rapier with mistrust. In sooth, he was a proper man for stealing a lady's heart, either in hall or bower. Many had been his victims;—many were then in the last extremities of love. But of him it was currently spoken that he had never yet been subjected ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... members of this Club have, at the sword's point, disputed the proper scanning of one of Pope's couplets. Over so weighty a matter as spilled Burgundy on a gentleman's cuff, ten men fought across this table, each with his rapier in one hand and a candle in the other. All ten were wounded. The question of the spilled Burgundy concerned but two of them. The eight others engaged because they were men of 'spirit.' They were, indeed, the ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... regiment was at the door. "Oh heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly—fly, my Poinsinet: 'tis the colonel—my husband!" At this, each gentleman of the party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through the colonel and all his mousquetaires, or die, if need be, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was worth interrogating, what was the oddest thing that had happened in their lives. One would have supposed that I should often have got for my impertinence a surly answer, or, at any rate, an elegant rapier-thrust, or some other form of snub. Strangely enough, I never found anyone "shy" at my question, but I did get many curious answers, and some of these I have a perfect right to record. A section of this chapter should deal ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... servant who looked after the napery. The martial sound with which this distinguished name strikes a modern ear is due to historical association, assisted, as I have somewhere read, by its riming with rapier! The water-supply was in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... But we may bear in mind that factor of observation, and give it a casting vote in any decision upon public decency. That is all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the popular humorist, for example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County Council for suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles the ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he should do his best to imagine the mental process of some nice boy or girl he knows, "taking it in." ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... intention of using, even in case of need, the weapons with which it has been proved he was provided. Mr. Rand must know. As a rule, gentlemen bearing arms about their persons may be considered the potential users of said arms, whether the antiquated rapier or the modern pistol—but then, I bethink me, we are not speaking of men of honour. We are speaking of a small criminal in a small way, and Mr. Rand assures us that his thoughts matched his estate—they were humble, they were ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... cause of his intent, went straight to the portall of the Duchesse chamber, and knockinge at the dore, said that the Duke was come. Which being opened, hee entred in with a nomber of lightes, accompanied with the guarde, hauinge a rapier readye drawen in his hande, like a furious man besides himselfe, began to looke rounde about, and vnder the bedde of the Duchesse: from whence he caused his owne proper nephew to be drawne. To whom, without geuing him leisure to speake, for feare lest his malice should be discouered, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the exactest ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... rank. "That's not Kirby!" he bawled. "He's no more Kirby than I am Kirby! Didn't I sail with Kirby from the Summer Isles to Cartagena and back again? He's a cheat, and I am a-going to cut his heart out!" He was making at me with a long knife, when I whipped out my rapier. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... are manifest: he was the master of idiomatic English, a great moralist and reformer, and the king of satire, all the weapons of which he managed with perfect skill. He had a rapier for aristocratic immunities of evil, arrows to transfix prescriptions and shams; and with snobs (we must change the figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, "he was the first social regenerator ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... that I waited to see other qualities in you; qualities of the judgment. And suddenly you flashed upon me a single glance; I felt it clash against my willpower. I felt your look go past my guard like a rapier slipping around my blade. I, Colonel Macon, was for the first time outfaced, out-maneuvered. I admit it, for I rejoice in meeting such a man. And the next instant you told me that I should keep you here out ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world, Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen? Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled, You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne — what does your ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier through his body. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis another prince in disguise!" "'Ware thy tongue, friend: belike he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seized the staff he had driven into the ground, and leaving one half of it fixed there, showed it to be a sheath that concealed a tolerably long rapier; and, what may be called its hilt being planted in the ground, he swiftly, coolly, and deliberately threw himself upon it, and in an instant the bloody point and half the steel blade appeared at his back, the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bluish. There was a light wind blowing among the mountain tops, keen as a rapier where it touched, carrying with it a fine dust of snow-powder. Gerald went out with the fine, blind face of a man who is in his state of fulfilment. Gudrun and he were in perfect static unity this morning, but unseeing ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... express that diplomatic contempt for the Senate which his colleagues, if they felt it, were obliged to conceal. He performed his duties with conscientious precision. He never missed an opportunity to thrust the sharp point of his dialectic rapier through the joints of the clumsy and hide-bound senatorial self-esteem. He delighted in skilfully exposing to Madeleine's eyes some new side of Ratcliffe's ignorance. His conversation at such times sparkled with historical allusions, quotations in half a dozen ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... dear fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... cried a tall man with an enormous mustache and a long rapier, "bravo, fair Paulet, it is high time to put little Voiture in his right place. For my part, I always thought his poetry detestable, and I think I ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... now! why, you shall have my bond, Uncle, or Tom White's, James Brock's, or Nick Hall's: as good rapier and dagger men, as any be in England. Let's be damned if we do not pay you: the worst of us all will not damn ourselves for ten pound. A ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... forfeit of his crimes. The wages of sin is death! And his head is before thee. Heaven hath avenged the innocent blood he hath shed. Last night, in the lusty vigour of a drunken debauch, passing over London Bridge, he encounters another brawl, wherein, having run at the watchmen with his rapier, one blow of the bill which they carried severed thy brother's head from his trunk. The latter was cast over the parapet into the river. The head only remained, which an eye witness, if not a friend, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Whenas he came, I first bespake him faire, But then he throwes and tosses me about, As one forgetting that I was his mother: At last I call'd for help: and as I cried, Corambis Call'd, which Hamlet no sooner heard, but whips me Out his rapier, and cries, a Rat, a Rat, and in his rage The good olde man he killes. King Why this his madnesse will vndoe our state. Lordes goe to him, inquire the body out. Gil. We will my Lord. Exeunt Lordes. King Gertred, your sonne shall presently to England, His ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... CHURCHILL was forthcoming from the Treasury Bench. Mr. BALFOUR made ample amends to-day for the omission. There is something in the personality of his critic—memories of Lord RANDOLPH, perhaps—that seems to put on extra polish on Mr. BALFOUR'S rapier when he deals with him. Who that heard it will ever forget his inimitable description of the then HOME SECRETARY superintending—"with a photographer"—the historic Siege of Sidney Street? This afternoon his sword-play was equally brilliant; and there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... slates like tears, and uttering their hollow sighs through empty casements, merely because they were "one mile two furlongs from the Castle." But the new stone tablet which told you so seemed to mock their misery, and looked like a fresh stab into their poor old sides; as if the rapier of a king had killed ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... have elsewhere noted, a Persian unto Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a professional among the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices and little games of them that dwell thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he appears such an abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the innocent and guileless gypsies, little suspecting that a rye lies perdu in his wrap-rascal, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... back, when he was passing his examination, for laughing, and then went laughing to sea again—was in command of a boat at the cutting-out of a French corvette, and when on board was so much amused by the little French captain skipping about with his rapier, which proved fatal to many, that at last he received a pink from the little gentleman himself, which laid him on deck. For this affair, and in consideration of his wound, he obtained his promotion to the rank of lieutenant—was ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... his drill and fought it out with Peale. They might have been compared to a rapier and a two-handed broadsword. Jack was more than a skilled boxer. He was a cool punishing fighter, one who could give as well as take. Once Peale cornered him, bent evidently on closing and crushing his ribs ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... knew where to strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... manners, even to the quaint bows they both gave the master of ceremonies, as they entered the royal chamber, were their very own, part of their daily equipment, and that nothing in the gorgeous banquet hall, from the jewelled rapier belted to Oliver's side, and which had once graced the collection of a prince, down to the priceless bit of satsuma set out on the table and now stuffed full of cigarettes (the bit could be traced back to the Ming dynasty), were ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mademoiselle," said Dr. Hilary. "I watched you as you faced that tigress, and your eyes were like a swordsman's as he regards his enemy's rapier." ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he learned had to reach him some other way. His mind ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ordinary in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the disaffected Prieska district. His disengagement from Lord Roberts removed for the time a potential cause of failure, namely, the uncertainty, to which perhaps the escape of De Wet at Poplar Grove may be due, whether a battle was to be fought with the Commander-in-Chiefs rapier or ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... with his name at length, for want of arms, trickt upon them? any of these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... I dashed forward, snatching as I did so a rapier from the wall, the only weapon handy. But before I reached the spot, a voice from the study doorway called: "Stop!" and the next moment the report of a ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would have challenged ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... you know, I am called Captain la Jonquiere; my father was, like myself, a soldier of fortune; this is a trade at which one gains in general a good deal of glory and very little money; my glorious father died, leaving me, for sole inheritance, his rapier and his uniform; I girded on the rapier, which was rather too long, and I wore the uniform, which was rather too large. From that time," said Dubois, calling the chevalier's attention to the looseness of his coat, "from that time I contracted the habit of always having ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to, and on whom I gazed. That wondrous night of pleasure and pain that I had once passed listening to him seemed to have been taken up again at the spot where it had broken off, and the same hand was continuing it. I stared at the man called Alf. There he sat with his cloak and doublet, and long rapier and mask of black velvet. But there was something in the air of the peaked beard, a familiar mystery in the wild mass of raven hair that fell as if wind-blown over his shoulders, which ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... spinnet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... of it. Instead of a yawning sepulchre, with Romeo and Juliet dying in the middle foreground, and that luckless young Paris stretched out on the left, spitted like a spring-chicken with Montague's rapier, and Friar Laurence, with a dark lantern, groping about under the melancholy yews—in place of all this costly piled-up woe, I would have liked a pretty, mediaeval chapel scene, with illuminated stained-glass windows, and trim acolytes ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... splutter, Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his toy-rapier whets. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... for the hour was late. Glad that there was something I could rail out against, I strode down upon the men, and caught them assembled in Diccon's cabin, dicing for to-morrow's rum. When I had struck out the light with my rapier, and had rated the rogues to their several quarters, I went back through the gathering storm to the brightly-lit, flower-decked room, and to ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... a distance of twenty paces. D'Artagnan and Cahusac rushed to pick it up, but D'Artagnan reached it first, and put his foot upon it. Cahusac ran to the guardsman whom Aramis had killed, took his rapier, and was returning to D'Artagnan; but on his road he met Athos, who had taken breath during the moment's respite which the latter had procured him, and now recommenced the fight, fearing that the Gascon would kill his enemy. D'Artagnan saw that he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... always rather bromidic. The amusing person catches foibles and exploits them, and it is easy to forget that wit flashes all too irresistibly at the expense of other people's feelings, and the brilliant tongue is all too often sharpened to rapier point. Admiration for the quickness of a spoken quip, somewhat mitigates its cruelty. The exuberance of the retailer of verbal gossip eliminates the implication of scandals but both quip and gossip become deadly poison when ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... jerk of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first dimmed and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Mrs. Dodd, "and of bludgeons and things, rather than the polished rapier. What expressions to fall from two highly educated gentlemen! ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... gipsies, where a band of these wild sons of Hagar were creating a perfect furor by the shrillness and discord of their voices. Never was such terrific music inflicted upon mortal ears. It went through and through you, quivering and vibrating like a rapier; but the common classes of Russians delight in it above all earthly sounds. They deem it the very finest kind of music. It is only the dilettante who have visited Paris who profess ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... braidings, and with broad silver shoulder-straps on either side. A vest of white calamanca peeped out from beneath it, and knee-breeches of the same disappeared into high polished boots with gilt spurs upon the heels. A silver-hilted rapier and a plumed cap lying upon a settle beside him completed a costume which was a badge of honour to the wearer, for any Frenchman would have recognised it as being that of an officer in the famous Blue Guard of Louis the Fourteenth. A trim, dashing soldier he looked, with his ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blot on the cheek of nature—a blight on the Christian world—a reprobate—I'll have your soul, Sir. You must play at tennis, and put down elect brethren in another world to-morrow.' As he said this, he brandished his rapier, exciting Dalcastle to offence. He gained his point. The latter, who had previously drawn, advanced upon his vapouring and licentious antagonist, and a fierce combat ensued. My companion was delighted beyond measure, and I could not keep him from ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and then rapidly disengaging, lunged in carte as before. The blade passed through the body of his adversary, and the lunge was given with such force that the pommel of his sword struck against the ribs. The duke fell an inert mass upon the ground as Ronald withdrew the rapier. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... of native invention. It will be noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the better pleased ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the smallest degree before the adversary, or even to show feeling when the medical student who acts as surgeon in an adjoining room staunches the flow of blood or sews up the scars caused by the swords. The duel of a more serious kind—that with pistols or the French rapier, or with the bare-pointed sabre and unprotected bodies—is punishable by law, and is growing ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... for just as a long, grim-looking villain, with a great rusty rapier in his hand, was within a single leap of them, and quite sure of either killing or making prisoners of them both, Jack flings a little drop of green water that he got in the filly's ear over his left shoulder, and in an instant there was a deep, dark gulf, filled with black, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace," I said, reaching out my hand and touching the rapier which he was just in the act ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... there is found also a qualitative modification, whence we have three systems: (a) boxing and wrestling; (b) fencing with sticks; and (c) rapier and broad-sword fencing. In the first, which was cultivated to its highest point among the Greeks, direct immediateness rules. In the boxing of the English, a sailor-like propensity of this nation, fist-fighting is still retained as a custom. Fencing with a stick is found among the French ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... stockings and sword and belt and hose, and after that took Wotton and Brigden to the Pope's Head Tavern in Chancery Lane, where Gilb. Holland and Shelston were, and we dined and drank a great deal of wine, and they paid all. Strange how these people do now promise me anything; one a rapier, the other a vessel of wine or a gun, and one offered me his silver hatband to do him a courtesy. I pray God to keep me from being proud or too much lifted up hereby. After that to Westminster, and took leave of Kate Sterpin who was very sorry to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a tailcoat with gold buttons and a rapier:—"See'st thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not his gait in it the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odour from him? Reflects he not on thy baseness court-contempt?" Observe how mysterious he is: consider the secrets burning on his tongue. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... material, with the cape embroidered in silver. The bonnet was to match, with a small white feather. He placed the chain the prince had given him round his neck, and with an ample ruff and manchets of Flemish lace, and his rapier by his side, he took his place in the boat, and was rowed to Greenwich. He felt some trepidation as he was ushered in. A page conducted him to the end of the chamber, where the queen was standing with Lord Walsingham ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... methinks I see my cousin's ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier's point:—Stay, Tybalt, stay!— Romeo, I come! this do I ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... had been in a battle of some kind. We circled him three times with flying-fish bait and once with barracuda, and as he paid no attention to them we left him. This fish leaped half out on two occasions, once showing his beautiful proportions, his glistening silver white, and his dangerous-looking rapier. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... recall them, but assert the truth with the point of my rapier. If you are not as great a coward, as you are a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... who stood at his commaund, and some ten or twelue others that followed him, most of them his owne seruants; the rest, surprised with feare, fled, whom, neither with his perswasions, nor threatning with his rapier ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... the arms of those behind, and as he fell he dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin's feet. The knight stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that narrow passage, he held a sword ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... forest of masts; the leeward division—six ships in a cluster, almost as confused—was parted by an interval of nearly three miles from the main body of the fleet, and into that fatal gap, as with the swift and deadly thrust of a rapier, Jervis drove his fleet in one unswerving line, the two columns melting into one, ship following hard on ship. The Spaniards strove furiously to close their line, the twenty-one huge ships bearing down from the windward, the smaller squadron clawing desperately up from ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... are told, "a pair of large French-fashioned hose or trousers over her petticoats, put on a man's doublet or coat, a peruke such as men wore, whose long locks covered her own ringlets, a black hat, a black coat, russet boots with red tops, and a rapier by her side. Thus accoutred, the Lady Arabella stole out with a gentleman about three o'clock in the afternoon. She had only proceeded a mile and a half when they stopped at a post-inn, where one of her confederates was waiting ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... from a six weeks' trip to the B. C. Coast scouting for new nut trees and selling nut tree nursery stock. The outstanding discovery of the trip is the Rapier walnut tree. This young giant was planted 24 years ago by Mr. Rapier on Texada Isl. I estimate this tree to be 60 to 70 feet in height, the measured spread is 60 feet one way and 70 at widest point, and other measurements as follows: from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... for the display of tact than in the introduction of witty or humorous stories into a discourse. Wit is keen and like a rapier, piercing deeply, sometimes even to the heart. Humor is good-natured, and does not wound. Wit is founded upon the sudden discovery of an unsuspected relation existing between two ideas. Humor deals with things out of relation—with ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... old men with their complement of women and children, and one contained three young fellows of twenty who had probably smuggled themselves into the car and who cringed when my Polish interpreter lunged on them with his rapier of light and retreated into a corner where two cows stood with necks crossed in affection. These youths knew they had no business in that car, for even in the chaos of retreat the word had been passed among the civilian refugees: "Women, children, and old men first in the cars; young men can ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... up, rise up, get up! I have lost my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te gire. Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... walked suddenly away, and falling on her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell so baldly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bright, cold smile and subtlety of aspect, I have often thought that I was beholding the Jesuit of the closet really devout, and the Jesuit of the world, ambitious, artful, and always on the watch for making his rapier thrusts.' Mr. Gladstone, in a word, is extremely eminent, but strangely eccentric, 'a Simeon Stylites among ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... knight, trampling his enemy under foot in the lists, crowned by Justice with laurel, and preceded by Fame, sounding his praises. The other figure presents a duellist, in his shirt, as was then the fashion (see the following ballad), with his bloody rapier in his hand: the slaughtered combatant is seen in the distance, and the victor is pursued by the Furies. Nevertheless, the wise will make some scruple, whether, if the warriors were to change equipments, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... turret till James set his foot on its chain, the man with the dagger vanished. The Master was slain by two of James's attendants; the Earl, rushing with four or five men up the turret-stair, fell in fight by Ramsay's rapier. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... some reward to those y^t should find him. The Indeans came to y^e Gov^r here, and tould wher he was, and asked if they might kill him; he tould them no, by no means, but if they could take him and bring him hither, they should be payed for their paines. They said he had a gune & a rapier, & he would kill them if y^ey went aboute it; and y^e Massachuset Indeans said they might kille him. But y^e Gov^r tould them no, they should not kill him, but watch their opportunitie, & take him. And so they did, for when they light of him by a ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... the Giant on his right side, Lusine on his left, and the egg-stealer behind him. He removed the Jail-breaker's rapier from his sheath. The official ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with which that room was so familiar, was about to be enacted.... But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to DREAM with a rapier. But now, he was free; reality was before him; the world ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... first-rate fight of it, do Messrs. Irving dei Franchi and M. Terriss de Chateau Renaud, until the latter collapses, and "subsequent proceedings interested him no more." As long as the strong right arm of the Corsican Brother can draw a good and shining rapier, he will draw as good and brilliant a house as he did on the first night of this revival. Why ought this piece to go well in the first theatre in Ireland? Why? because it's a great play for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that they turned ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not much vnlike our toasting yrons, but longer: these they cast out of an instrument of wood, very readily. The other sort is greater then the first aforesayd, with a long bone made sharpe on both sides not much vnlike a Rapier, which I take to bee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... fair slenderness. Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly Up to its climax and then dying proudly? Who found for me the grandeur of the ode, Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load? Who let me taste that more than cordial dram, The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram? Shew'd me that epic was of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring? You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty, And pointed out the patriot's stern duty; The ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... through. More connections between it and the Albertan railways were required; and he was in Canada looking round and negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in him—so common in the men of his race—of the dry shrewdness of the financier with a kind of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may bear in mind that factor of observation, and give it a casting vote in any decision upon public decency. That is all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the popular humorist, for example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County Council for suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles the ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he should do his best to imagine the mental process ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... came to be much more than a restoration!—but they could not restore the colour to her hair nor the lightness to her heart. She looked at mankind from a cynical altitude of worldly wisdom; her wit grew keen and swift as d'Artagnan's rapier; her bon-mots had a way of passing into proverbs, or of being stolen by more distinguished contemporaries. She took her revenge upon society as completely as she could, yet without bitterness. Indeed, it is probable that, could she have ordered her life anew, she would not have ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... unaccustomed delight, as she listened to the merry badinage of this group of educated city dwellers and, although it was something new to her, her quick mind soon realized that Philip was a most entertaining conversationalist, with a wit like a rapier which flashed and touched, but never hurt, and that Donald, in his slower way, possessed a dry humor which she had not suspected. At the end of that time a telephone call came for Donald which sent him forth, pretending to grumble over the lack of consideration of modern children, who ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Fletcher of Manchester went with my letters to Vanylos this Sunday morning. Nov. 3rd, Mr. John Cholmeley toward London by Market-Harborow. Nov. 7th, the fellows and the receyver agreed not with me in accounts. Paulo post nonam mane Arthur's left eye hurt at playing at fence with rapier and dagger of sticks, by a foyne of Edmond Arnold. Nov. 10th, Mr. Burch his letter from Mathew Palmer. Nov. 14th, the fellows wold not graunt me the 5. for my howse-rent, as the Archbishops had graunted: and our foundation commaundeth an howse. Nov. 17th, I sent Ed. Arnold to London on fote ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... He is knight, dubb'd with unhatch'd rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... system that had afflicted Wuerttemberg during Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should be remembered that this mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang their rulers to the nearest tree. This should ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the sharp, sparkling, audacious Fanny Newt had become the inert, indifferent woman before her. A clever villain might have developed her, through admiration and sympathy, into villainy; but a dull, heavy brute merely crushed her. There is a spur in the prick of a rapier; only stupidity follows the blow ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... picture—a slightly hazy dream-picture. Charles-Norton stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his head. He was as at the bottom of the sea—a warm and quiet summer sea. Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the red flowers about ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... clad in a lion's skin.[363] That irresistible deity assumes such a fierce shape. Assuming again the form of the sword, the bow, the mace, the dart, the trident, the mallet, the arrow, the thick and short club, the battle-axe, the discus, the noose, the heavy bludgeon, the rapier, the lance, and in fact of every kind of weapon that exists on earth, Chastisement moves in the world. Indeed, Chastisement moves on earth, piercing and cutting and afflicting and lopping off and dividing and striking and slaying and rushing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world, Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen? Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled, You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne — what does ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... of the wall. The gate opened, the two men came out, and in an instant Desmond and his companion dashed forward. Taken by surprise, the men had no time to defend themselves. With his left hand Desmond caught at Diggle's sword arm, and, pointing his rapier ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... one side with his army, and now there loomed ahead the Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops. Battle seemed imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by. The 4th of December found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested, rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London not a hundred and thirty miles away. And still no English rising for the rightful King! Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing beginning ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... he drew out the blade and drove it home just behind the glossy black shoulder. Night shuddered and lay still. The knife had sunken deep, and Constans had to exert all his strength to withdraw it. The bare point of a rapier touched him meaningly on the arm; he stood up and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... takes several forms. A grandiloquence that sways uneasily between rodomontade and mere verbiage, a rotundity of diction, a choice of subjects which can only be described as sanguinolent, the use of the bludgeon where others would prefer a rapier. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... here to purchase old swords, the greater part of which are mere rubbish, and never made at Toledo, yet for such they will give a large price, whilst they would grudge two dollars for this jewel, which was made but yesterday"; thereupon putting into my hand a middle-sized rapier. "Your worship," said they, "seems to have a strong arm, prove its temper against the stone wall;— thrust boldly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... extract from a candy-pulling or a husking-bee. The Pompadours and DuBarrys didn't know how. Louis XVth went around by himself in droves, stiff and uncomfortable as a Presbyterian Sunday-school, wishing every time his rapier galled his kibes or tangled his royal legs that he had remained comfortably dead in that dog-hole at St. Denis. There was entirely too much formality for fun. The next time New York's toad-eaters give a bal-masque they should disguise themselves ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lest a question of precedence should arise, such as no master of ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has come to. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's cafe is now situated, and ran him through with his rapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace of the Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that within the hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house to guard him. In ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... communing with his own thoughts. The upper part of his person, which only was visible, the rest being hid by the table and depending cloth, was clothed in a black coat or doublet, without ornament or even the appearance of a button, and at his side he wore a rapier, evidently more as a badge of his ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... across the fields toward Denny's roadster, several hundred yards away—Jim, blond and bulking, a hundred and ninety pounds of hardy muscle and bone; Denny wiry and slender, dark-eyed and dark-haired. The sledge-hammer and the rapier; the human bull, and the human panther; the one a student kept fit by outdoor studies, and the other a careless, rich young time-killer groomed to the pink by the big-game hunting and South Sea sailing and other adventurous ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... of pearls. I can see her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish hat and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue rosettes upon her white silk shoes! The Nozze di Figaro was followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of a female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man. Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... them? any of these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I have ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... comforts and consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity: briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner learn by rote what one master says of another:—"He was never provoked into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour of his calling, and in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and incorrupt." The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... my light rapier, worn about the garrison, while he was armed with his heavy campaign blade. I was already a dead man, or so I felt, for there was no spirit in me for the fight. Our blades crossed, and immediately he noted ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Andy's face, as if they knew where to strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held in his fingers; and ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... it were out of space, and gave him a quick side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to the dak-bungalow," he said, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... sun, With glorious peal of trumpets on his ear Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... saw two mastiffs, exceeding great and fierce, that ran hard upon her track, and not seldom came up with her and bit her cruelly; and in the rear he saw, riding a black horse, a knight sadly accoutred, and very wrathful of mien, carrying a rapier in his hand, and with despiteful, blood-curdling words threatening her with death. Whereat he was at once amazed and appalled, and then filled with compassion for the hapless lady, whereof was bred a desire to deliver her, if so he might, from such anguish and peril of death. Wherefore, as ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in mockery through the air. He replaced it on his head, drew his rapier, with quick turns of his wrist swished the supple blade through the air till it sang, then flashed it out at me like the tongue of an adder, and said, "Sit you still, Farmer Wheatman, sit you still. Move but your hand and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of Defence, in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the exactest Method now ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... starting boldly for the King, then making a brilliant retreat, calling loudly for help, as the rapier tickled him in ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... is the way of intensity, that focuses all its impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash of lightning. Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supreme and dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty. Their power, in some one single direction, is absolutely distinct and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... weapons of the times of the Coal Measures seem very formidable, just as those personal weapons of the middle ages seem so that were borne at a time when every soldier took the field cased in armor of proof. The slim scimitar or slender rapier would have availed but little against massive iron helmets or mail coats of tempered steel. And so the warriors of the period armed themselves with ponderous maces, battle-axes as massive as hammers, and double-handed swords ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen her son. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying, 'A rat! a rat!', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because he heard something stir there, whereas we know that what he heard was a man's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help!' And in this scene she has come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... clipping her by the wrists. "Cold boy, you shall not so easily slip me. A pretty girl you make, Aladdin; but love pierces such disguise as a rapier might ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... a side street off the Strand, when four men sprang out and held my hands to my side, another snatched my watch and purse, and as I gave a cry for the watch, he smote me with the pommel of his rapier in my mouth, then throwing me on the ground the villains took to ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... the light of the moon how that the apparition flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprang out of the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the ghost saw this he would have turned and fled, but the young nobleman gave him such a blow on the head with his fist that he fell upon the ground with a loud wailing. Summa: the young lord, having called back his driver, dragged the ghost ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... buried. But mark me," and she clapped her hand to her heaving bosom, "mark me, somewhat else hath made entrance here, with drums and trumpets and high jubilee: Hate!—I hate you, Herdegen, as I hate death, pestilence, and hell; and I hate you twice as much since your skill with the rapier brought the combat with the Brandenburger, into which I entrapped you, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to find the judge before lunch, and at table he did not seem especially devoted to Ellen in her father's jealous eyes. He joked Lottie, and exchanged those passages or repartee with her in which she did not mind using a bludgeon when she had not a rapier at hand; it is doubtful if she was very sensible of the difference. Ellen sat by in passive content, smiling now and then, and Boyne carried on a dignified conversation with Mr. Pogis, whom he had asked to lunch at his table, and who listened with one ear to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon. You could not fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust with blow of ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Vnnaturall though thou art: Their vnderstanding Begins to swell, and the approching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore That now ly foule, and muddy: not one of them That yet lookes on me, or would know me: Ariell, Fetch me the Hat, and Rapier in my Cell, I will discase me, and my selfe present As I was sometime Millaine: quickly Spirit, Thou shalt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... like a keen rapier, with a flash like lightning, crossing a poor little broken blade, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... natural tendency to that sort of wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret. Each mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point, as the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier. And the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city, when I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such polished intercourse; including especially two men ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue. But they were ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... sensible. In this room, for instance, members of this Club have, at the sword's point, disputed the proper scanning of one of Pope's couplets. Over so weighty a matter as spilled Burgundy on a gentleman's cuff, ten men fought across this table, each with his rapier in one hand and a candle in the other. All ten were wounded. The question of the spilled Burgundy concerned but two of them. The eight others engaged because they were men of 'spirit.' They were, indeed, the first gentlemen of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... his hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and fishes and goes a birding, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... thumbs at him in an indecorous or careless manner—look to it that you be prepared to draw and mayhap to be spitted upon his sword's point, with honor. Sdeath! A gentlemen of courage carries his life lightly at the needle end of his rapier, as that wonderful Japanese, Samsori, used to make the flimsiest feather preside in miraculous equilibration upon the tip ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... her bullion,—singing, light at heart, His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip. Straight onward came young Eustace to his death! For hidden behind the arras near the stair Stood Regnald, like the Demon in the play, Grasping his rapier part-way down the blade To strike the foul blow with its heavy hilt. Straight on came Eustace,—blithely ran the song, "Old England's darlings are her hearts of oak." The lights were out, and not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... convenience, not of affection; indeed poor Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr. Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr. Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had made to him in the course of their married ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... which we call changelings," saith [1264]Scheretzius, part. 1. c. 6. make men victorious, fortunate, eloquent; and therefore in those ancient monomachies and combats they were searched of old, [1265]they had no magical charms; they can make [1266]stick frees, such as shall endure a rapier's point, musket shot, and never be wounded: of which read more in Boissardus, cap. 6. de Magia, the manner of the adjuration, and by whom 'tis made, where and how to be used in expeditionibus bellicis, praeliis, duellis, &c., with many peculiar instances and examples; they can walk in fiery ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... will perhaps never be the same again. It was impossible. She was not meant for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... argued, one had to be civil, whereas Mrs. Ogilvie was often daringly disagreeable. There was indeed something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who wiped his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never hated her opponent. She smiled at ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... sword, n. rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, fencer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,— Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,— That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... it up; when the king hath his own again, I will repay thee;" or "I will go coin it from Noll's ruby nose," and would ride away singing, and in a fortnight the poor gentleman would surely be slain. And, as for your worst kind of cavalier, when I did gently remind him, he would swear and draw his rapier and make a fearful pass near my belly—that I was glad to see him depart with a skinful of mine own wine unpaid for. Moreover, Master Will, an he were handsome and a moon-raker, my wife, that is now at rest, would ever take his part, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... finally against the Italian newcomers, who sought to take possession of the French stage. The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman—an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries 'A rat, a rat!' And in this brainish apprehension, kills ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... judgments on the subject of lithography. Now, there are many red rags in the various arts with which to encompass the discomfiture of the Philistine's bull, and the raven will always appropriate the feathers of the peacock and look ridiculous in them; but the rapier enwreathed in the red rag of painting is more readily rushed upon, and plumes of appreciation more wantonly borrowed and grotesquely worn in this walk of art than in ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... was in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike. That is to say, he began in a sarcastic strain. But this sort of thing is difficult to keep up. By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given place to the bludgeon. For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must be met half-way. His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm and moved by it. Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic towards him, always assumed ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... ledge of the inner reef, both afulu sama sama and afulu lanu uli (yellow and purple mullet) are certain to be found; and, as the little craft slips along, a large gar—green-backed, silvery-sided, and more than a yard long—may dart after you like a gleaming, hiltless rapier skimming the surface of the water. If you put out a line with a hook—baited with almost anything—a bit of fish a strip of white or red rag—you will have some sport, for these great gars are a hard-fighting fish, and do the tarpon jumping-trick ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... excessive cold, or a devouring heat, when it suddenly seizes a convulsionist, requires that he should be pushed into the midst of flames; a sharp pang, similar to that caused by an iron point piercing the flesh, demands a thrust of a rapier,[12] given in the spot where the pain is felt, be it In the throat, in the mouth, or in the eyes, of which there are numerous examples; and let the rapier be pushed as it may, the point, no matter how sharp, cannot pierce the most tender flesh, not even the eye of the patient: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Harvard College, dressed much in the fashion of half a century earlier; namely, coat and waistcoat with broad flaps, small-clothes, ruffles at his bosom and wrists, a cocked hat of the old style, and a steel-hilted rapier at his side. Ten years afterwards, one of the best governors the Commonwealth has ever had, Mr. Lincoln, who served the State in this capacity for nine several terms, wore also a distinguishing costume, but more ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... excellences are manifest: he was the master of idiomatic English, a great moralist and reformer, and the king of satire, all the weapons of which he managed with perfect skill. He had a rapier for aristocratic immunities of evil, arrows to transfix prescriptions and shams; and with snobs (we must change the figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, "he was the first social ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the bludgeon ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, but Shakespeare arrays ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Weel, away he trots to the castle to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking-rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hunderweight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communings so often tauld ower that I almost think I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... and still was, in a state of intense nervous excitement; his mind was galloping; the effect of that clash had been to rouse in him a keen exaltation and a sense of resistless power. If Henry Nelson was seriously interested in this girl, he reasoned, here then was another weapon ready shaped—a rapier aimed at his enemy's breast—and all he had to do was grasp it. That promised to be a pleasant undertaking. Nor had he any doubt of success, for Barbara Parker had aroused his liking so promptly that reason—and experience—told him ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... by any cowardice you found in me." The men armed themselves as they could with stretchers from the boat, or anything that came to hand. They hove the planks overboard to make a clear fighting space, and "took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver. John Drake took the rapier and made a gauntlet of his pillow, Richard Allen the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace called Eion. Robert took the caliver, and so boarded." It was a gallant, mad attempt, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... he laid the handle of his knife; and with thongs, which he had already cut out of the strap of his bullet-pouch, he spliced the knife and pole together. This gave him a formidable weapon—for the knife was a "bowie," and had a long blade, with a point like a rapier. He was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... partly owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at second hand—a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, and all that—a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... captain (in rank defiance of the sumptuary laws then existing) sported trunk hosen of pale pink satin, a richly embroidered and padded satin doublet of the same hue, confined at the waist by a belt of green satin heavily broidered with gold thread, from which depended on one side a long rapier and on the other a wicked-looking Venetian dagger with jewelled hilt and sheath, while, surmounting his grizzled and rather scanty locks, he wore, jauntily set on one side, a Venetian cap of green velvet adorned with a large gold and cameo ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... fully dead; His veins smok'd, his bowels all-to reeked, Ruthless were rent, and thrown about the place: All clottered lay the blood in lumps of gore, Sprent[80] on his corpse, and on his paled face; His trembling heart, yet leaping, out they tore, And cruelly upon a rapier They fix'd the same, and in this hateful wise Unto the king this heart they do present: A sight long'd for to feed his ireful eyes. The king perceiving each thing to be wrought As he had will'd, rejoicing to behold Upon the bloody sword the pierced heart, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... front of him and placed a small white chip on the ground, called him to "attention", ordered him to place his eyes on that chip, and told him if he removed them from it before I gave the command "rest", I would run him through with my rapier. ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... turning white, and was thin upon the temples. The clear-cut features were impressive, both in outline and in expression, and the eye was as the eye of the eagle, so keenly penetrating and far-seeing that many had shrunk before its gaze as before the sharp thrust of a rapier. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... still. He was short and slight, and could have slipped through a very narrow space, but Trombin seemed to swell himself out till he filled the bridge from side to side, and kept his hand on the hilt of his rapier. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Charles's rapier was shining in the sunlight, and he fell on guard in the most elegant attitude, his left ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... left the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should know I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long straight blade, like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous weapon, and with a blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was ready to thrust and parry against the world. I called upon my foes. No enemy appeared, and by the light of two candles, with a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... for I heard it tear.'—'Whereabouts?' said I. 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, 'You killed her.'" Poor Hutchinson could not see the cat he had killed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... improvised little melodramas. Men once wore their backgrounds as they wore their clothes—to fit their moods. A cap and feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones, echoing stairways ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion had no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an impostor because it had cunningly ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... hall with a hard and sounding step as measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor, he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... a long brawny arm with a clenched fist at its extremity. Richard Mivane's well-rounded periods and gentlemanly phrasings were like the educated thrusts and feints of an expert fencer who opposes his single rapier to the bludgeons and missiles of a furious mob. He saw in less than five minutes that the scheme of extenuation and conciliation was futile, that retort and retaliation would be returned in kind, that the stoppage of the pack-train from Blue Lick on the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a week. We shall not only let our light shine, but we shall make it shine into every human heart in this community. If they're too callous we'll punch a hole with our trusty blade and let the light in. The lantern and the rapier shall be our weapons.' ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... absolute frenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... such dubious results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... his face to the wall in the bitterness of his situation—for like some other men, he had the intensest horror of death when he came peaceably to his bedside, though ready enough to meet him with a 'hurrah!' and a wave of his rapier, if he arrived at a moment's notice, with due dash and eclat—sat up like a shot, and gaping upon Puddock for a few seconds, relieved himself with a long sigh, a devotional upward roll of the eyes, and some muttered words, of which the little ensign heard only 'blessing,' very fervently, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dynasty was worth saving. Public opinion in Spain was therefore no less inflamed than in America, but it was less well-informed. Cartoons represented the American hog, which would readily fall before the Spanish rapier accustomed to its nobler adversary the bull. Spanish pride, impervious to facts and statistics, would brook no supine submission on the part of its people to foreign demands. It was a question how far the Spanish Government could bring itself ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... well, I hope that we shall soon agree! For now your fancies to expel, Here, as a youth of high degree, I come in gold-lac'd scarlet vest, And stiff-silk mantle richly dress'd, A cock's gay feather for a plume, A long and pointed rapier, too; And briefly I would counsel you To don at once the same costume, And, free from trammels, speed away, That what life is you ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Italian nature, open to every gust of feeling, over which impressions came and went like summer clouds, could turn at a moment's notice from the hand-to-hand grapple of a deadly duel to the lightest and most delicate rapier practice of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... aid of his insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done, the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The insults lavished on Lady Binks ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... months' work Desmond was dismissed from drill, and had obtained such a proficiency with the rapier that he felt that he could now relax his work, and see something of the city, which he had been hitherto too busy to explore. He had seen the principal streets, in the company of his comrades, had admired the mansions of the nobles, the richness of ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... this various knowledge like a shining suit of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic association by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... more disarming passe in the everlasting duel between a man and a woman than this appeal—whether it be made intentionally or not—the appeal to his honour as a gentleman. Up flies the glittering rapier from his hand, he is weaponless—and at her mercy. For every man, even more especially when he is not one, would ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... trade. Their battles with forest and red man were long past. They had leisure for diversions such as the chase, the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses, the dance, high play with dice and card, cockfighting, the gallantry of love, and the skill of the rapier. Law and politics ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... debate with Darrow, Frances Taylor Patterson had gone a little uneasy lest Chesterton's arguments "might seem somewhat literary in comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the famous trial lawyer." She found however that both trained mind and rapier tongue were the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the phrase. Suspicion, keen-edged as a rapier, ran swiftly through him. His arms tightened. "Olga, tell me what you mean! Who is it? Not—not that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... panting fiercer, the sweat poured down him, his throat was dry, and he could feel no more the fresh stirring of the air of the dawning. He would not stop to breathe, he had reached the point in his insensate fury when he could have flung himself upon the rapier's point and felt it cleave his breastbone and start through his back with the joy of hell, if he could have struck the other man deep but once. The thought made him start afresh; he fought like a thousand devils, his point leaping and flashing, and coming down with a crash; he stamped ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hurtled back into the arms of those behind, and as he fell he dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin's feet. The knight stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that narrow passage, he held ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... to be charged with a swift, rapier-like note. The boy broke off in his speech. He looked ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... should light on the most violent attacks on Christophe. He knew the writer. He went to the cafe where he knew he would meet him, found him, struck him, fought a duel with him, and gave him a nasty scratch on the shoulder with his rapier. Next day, at breakfast, Christophe had a letter from a friend telling him of the affair. He was overcome. He left his breakfast and hurried to see Georges. Georges himself opened the door. Christophe rushed in like a whirlwind, seized him by the arms, and shook him angrily, and began ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... themselves, and city apprentices had got reckless, and the duels, no death following, ceased to be sublime. About fifty years ago, serious men took to fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away. Holles, in Sherwood, as we saw, fought with rapier, and he soon spoiled Markham. Rapier and dagger especially; that is a more silent duel, but a terribly serious one! Perhaps the reader will like to take a view of one such serious duel in those days, and therewith close ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in a feint in tierce, was bearing so heavily on his opponent's rapier that his right foot slipped, and he stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham's breast high up on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, already unbalanced, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... he acts are well founded and justified by success; still we must require him to remember that he only travels on forbidden tracks, where the God of War may surprise him; that he ought always to keep his eye on the enemy, in order that he may not have to defend himself with a dress rapier if the enemy takes up ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... affected towards my suit? But oh, thou gull—thou dunderpate—thou losel knave, to lose one line moved by her sweet fingers. Get in; I'll not defile my rapier with beating of thee. Thanks to the lady thou hast just left; her condescension so affecteth my softer nature that I could not speak an angry word without weeping. March, rascal, and come not into my presence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... man of commanding stature, with black hair and keen black eyes that held a cruel light in them. He was arrayed in a blue velvet jerkin with hose of the same material. A large beaver hat with a long feather in it lay on the table. A rapier depending from his belt completed his attire which was that of a soldier. Without heeding this fact something in his bearing caused the girl to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... on the spot, however, impaled on a rapier as an unscrupulous entomologist would impale a beetle, could hardly be regarded as the fault of his opponent. The thrust was directed to the place where the centre of the body of the Frenchman should have been, BUT IT WAS NOT THERE. The sword passed only through ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... true that modern science has devised new and appalling weapons. The invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first came into use, and a man-at-arms of great prowess could be killed ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... nothynge abasshed to cast aside this grey friers coate, and to take vpon mee to be a souldiour, or your capitaine. And euen with that woorde he caste of his vpper coate; and vnderneth he was a playne souldiour, arraied in a skarlet cloke, and a long rapier hangeyng by his side. And in this warlyke apparell, in the personage of a Capitan, he stode and preached halfe an houre. Being sente for of the Cardinals with whom he was familiar, hee was asked what was the pretence of that new example. He answered, that he did it for his wenches pleasure, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... seventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the careless one of the nineteenth. And all this quite exclusive of the minute qualities and individualities of the character represented. The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and, seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... distrustful of his father's stability in the matter. The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... fate—which creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that your villain should always be allowed a certain run for his money—a temporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel the marquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, of the book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anything within those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going (very sensibly) to fly at him. He ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... come aboord, but that the rest should stay in their boates, which was granted: neuerthelesse they tooke small heede of these wordes; for on a suddaine they came foorth of the boate, entring the shippe, euery Spaniarde taking him to his Rapier which they brought in the boate, with other weapons, and a drumme wherewith to triumph ouer them. Thus did the Spaniards enter the shippe, plunging in fiercely vpon them, some planting themselues vnder the decke, some entring the Cabbens, and the multitude attending their pray. Then the Corrigidor ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Joshua Pettigrue catch him in his long arms, and settle some bedding under his head, so that he lay breathing heavily and pattering forth prayers. The minister showed himself a man that day, for amid the fierce carbine fire he walked boldly up and down, with a drawn rapier in his left hand—for he was a left-handed man—and his Bible in the other. 'This is what you are dying for, dear brothers,' he cried continually, holding the brown volume up in the air; 'are ye not ready ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fingers through his long black hair. "They tell of my predecessor in office, the first President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. "Asticot, come ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Revolution" he received an ovation such as few men have ever been accorded. The great Socialist theorist plunged into a keen and forceful attack upon the theories of the Bolsheviki. He was frequently interrupted by angry cries and by impatient questionings, which he answered with rapier-like sentences. He was asked what a "democratic" government ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... little back she cometh, and on her hip that bejewelled Spanish rapier that had once been part of Black Bartlemy's treasure (as hath been told) and which (having my own stout cut-and-thrust) I had not troubled to bring away ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... will buy it now, because you say so; and there's another shilling, fellow; I scorn to be out-bidden. What, shall I walk with a cudgel, like Higginbottom, and may have a rapier for money. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... medium for the display of a subject than praise, which is always rather bromidic. The amusing person catches foibles and exploits them, and it is easy to forget that wit flashes all too irresistibly at the expense of other people's feelings, and the brilliant tongue is all too often sharpened to rapier point. Admiration for the quickness of a spoken quip, somewhat mitigates its cruelty. The exuberance of the retailer of verbal gossip eliminates the implication of scandals but both quip and gossip become deadly poison when transferred ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... peculiar to the French cadets and younger sons of noble families in North America at the time, an accentuation of the French at home, and to some extent a survival of the spirit which Richelieu partially checked. Even in the forest he wore a slender rapier at his belt, and his hand rested now upon its ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count Frontenac long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... once more; nay, no compulsion, he has paid forfeit, and deserves not only free dismissal but reward. Kneel down—kneel, and arise Sir Knight of the Calabash! What is thy name? And one of you lend me a rapier." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is it that her victim, such a past mistress in architecture, such an adept in socialistic polity, has so far learnt no corresponding trick to serve in her own defence? She is as powerful as her executioner; like the other, she carries a rapier, an even more formidable one and more painful, at least to my fingers. For centuries and centuries the Philanthus has been storing her away in her cellars; and the poor innocent meekly submits, without ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth Relinquish her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants of the press stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France.—Poh! All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... favourite weapons were the duelling pistol and the "florette," or rapier. The "pelado," or lower orders, preferred the "lingua de vaca," which means literally "cow's tongue," a nasty-looking knife of no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume. It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Mr. George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole's cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remarked Colonel Bludyer, as he wiped his rapier on the grass. "If he ever gets over it, he won't forget that "plongeant" thrust in tierce. I never knew it fail, Thornton—never, with a man under thirty." So the Colonel put his coat on, and drove off to breakfast; while Sir Hugh ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... neglected England, but of late she has paid her the wrong kind of attention. Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and writes: "Above all, speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country above all nations in the world, as they ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
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