"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A mine charged with gunpowder, it appeared, had been laid beneath its vaults by Demdike, with a view to its destruction at some future period, and this circumstance being known to Nance, she ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... related that Napoleon I, to secure saltpetre for making gunpowder, composted "filth, dead animals, urine and offal with alternate layers of turf and lime mortar," and asserted that "a nitre-bed is the very pattern of a vine-border" and that "when the materials have been turned over and over again for a year or two they are in exactly the proper ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... impede us, and the Indians were not likely to annoy us while the camp and the remains of the barque afforded any plunder. Accordingly we packed up, and having destroyed what muskets and weapons we did not want and thrown our spare gunpowder into the sea, shortly after noon began our march through ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... him of three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On the 1st of February, 1793,[4208] the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... unbelieving Guy Faux, who approaches the stately superstructures of history, not to gaze upon them with the eye of faith and veneration, but only that he may descend to the vaults, with his lantern and his keg of critical gunpowder, in order to blow the whole fabric sky-high,—such an ill-conditioned trouble-tomb should be burned in effigy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... nails and screws. 2. Two iron axes and several hatchets. 3. A saw. 4. A small case of planes, tongs, augers, files, chisels, etc. 5. A third case with iron brackets, hooks, hinges, etc. 6. A case of matches. 7. A barrel of gunpowder. 8. Two muskets and a pistol. 9. Several swords. 10. A bag of cartridges. 11. A large sail cloth and some ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... seemed extremely brief, He rose, I fancy, somewhat ill at ease, Then cursed his stars and hers for their decrees (I wouldn't swear I'm telling you the truth), And so the clerk and parson lost their fees, Decidedly their stars were most uncouth, For Flora was as gunpowder to Gilbert's youth. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... him too much surprised and too much bewildered to speak. Then, "Bombs?" she echoed incredulously. "There must be some mistake! There has never been any gunpowder in my possession. I might almost go so far as to say that I have never seen a gun or a pistol at ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dislike of her husband, had attracted the attention of men. But before February there was a sudden reconciliation between her and Darnley. She brought him to a house in Kirk of Field, near Edinburgh, and at midnight of the 9th it was blown up with gunpowder by the servants of Bothwell, the body of the King being found in the garden. On 21st April Bothwell waylaid and carried off Mary to Dunbar. But he was still a married man, having wedded Lord Huntly's sister fourteen months before. And now in May, came ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... on what was involved in the threat of the U-boats after Sir I. Hamilton had landed his troops in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On more than one occasion he honoured me with a surprise visit in my office. These interviews in my sanctum were of quite a dramatic, Harrison-Ainsworth, Gunpowder-Treason, Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would then thrust the door to and lock it on the inside with a deft ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... hardly a living soul when three English correspondents went there, after escape from Amiens, now in German hands. A tall cuirassier stood by some bags of gunpowder, ready to blow up the bridge. The streets were strewn with barbed wire and broken bottles... In Paris there was a great fear and solitude, except where grief-stricken crowds stormed the railway ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... faces. Many fell; the rest attempted to retreat, and were precipitated to the floor below. The Indians swarmed up in numbers, and filled the whole upper story. I stood concealed in a small closet which had not been entered. Just then I perceived, besides the smoke of gunpowder, a cloud of greater density ascending through the floor, and a strong ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... subject of the day were required[181]. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this distant tunnel—literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were falling in upon us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed large ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... make bread of wheat, but of Indian corn; they must not wear linen nor woollen, but dress like their fathers, in the skins and furs of animals; they must not drink ardent spirits; and I do not remember whether he extended his inhibitions to the gun and gunpowder, in favor of the bow and arrow. I concluded, from all this, that he was a visionary, enveloped in their antiquities, and vainly endeavoring to lead back his brethren to the fancied beatitudes of their golden age. I thought there was little danger of his making ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... became stricken by plague, and consequently overtaken by death. It therefore happened that many attempts were made by those in health to escape incarceration. In some cases they bribed, and in others ill-treated the watchmen: one of whom was actually blown up by gunpowder in Coleman Street, that those he guarded might flee unmolested. Again, it chanced that strong men, rendered desperate when brought face to face with loathsome death, lowered themselves from windows of their houses in sight of the watch, whom they threatened with instant death if they ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... upon a burning house to put out the flames. How wonderful this is! If you were to mix them together as carefully as you could, using exactly the same proportion of each as is found in water, you would make something very dangerous, which might blow up with a terrible noise like gunpowder. It is only when they are "combined," which means very closely joined together, that they ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... cardinal, taking off his hat, "the Church militant does not burn gunpowder, it fights hand to hand. Come for me at six," ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... British Channel? On June 13, 1778, Keppel, with twenty-one ships of the line and three frigates, was despatched to keep watch over the Brest fleet, War had not been proclaimed, but Keppel was to prevent a junction of the Brest and Toulon fleets, by persuasion if he could, but by gunpowder in the last resort. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... too-presuming officers of justice — of his princely generosity, and undaunted courage. In short, they are proud of him, and would no more consent to have the memory of his achievements dissociated from their river than they would to have the rock of Ehrenbreitstein blown to atoms by gunpowder. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... I heard voices on the other side of the hedge. Madeleine and Frances were speaking to a poor girl whose clothes were burned, her hands blackened, and her face tied up with bloodstained bandages. I saw that she was one of the girls employed at the gunpowder mills, which are built further up on the common. An explosion had taken place a few days before; the girl's mother and elder sister were killed; she herself escaped by a miracle, and was now left without any means of support. She told all this with the resigned and unhopeful manner ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... except to say that "the origin of planting Yew trees in churchyards is still a subject of considerable perplexity. As the Yew was of such great importance in war and field sports before the use of gunpowder was known, perhaps the parsons of parishes were required to see that the churchyard was capable of supplying bows to the males of each parish of proper age; but in this case we should scarcely have been left without some evidence on the matter. Others again state that ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... to learn the art of being cured of all calamities, that of the purse inclusive. Then, too, St. John's own judicious generosity; the presents of invaluable snuff, of first-growth Champagne, of Mocha coffee to one, and of gunpowder tea to another, showed a knowledge of women and human nature, that must, but for the malice of justice, inevitably have led to fortune. What will now become of the countess, who led her daughters to this palace of Hygeia as regularly as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... being the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, we, the sheriff's, attended my Lord Mayor from Guildhall to St. Paul's: and as his lordship's coach was, on this occasion, drawn as before by six horses, which he intended to do on every public occasion, it caused a more than ordinary concourse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... permanent peace was ever made upon a barrel of gunpowder as a basis, and of course an explosion followed this one. The colonists naturally evaded the last item of the bargain, and the rebels, receiving the gifts and remarking the omission of the part of Hamlet, asked contemptuously if the Europeans expected negroes to subsist on combs and looking-glasses? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Assamica. The quality of the tea depends much on the season when the leaves are picked, the mode in which it is prepared, as well as the district in which it grows. The green teas include Twankay, Young Hyson, Hyson, Gunpowder, and Imperial; while the black comprise Bohea, Congou, Souchong, Oolong, and Pekoe. The teas of certain districts, such as ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... like sparks to gunpowder, and several in the crowd cried: "No! No!" "Hang him!" "Don't let him escape!" A few others said they agreed ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... three other officers of lower rank—a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as gunpowder. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... first for qualities which he has as strongly as I—and more strongly. He's a braver man than I, because, though raised to gentle things, when you ordered him into the fight, he was there. He never turned back, or flickered. I was raised on raw meat and gunpowder, but he ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... appearance. In one part there is an area of about 3 or 4 Cheshire acres planted with trees and divided with walls, which in 1807 was covered, like the rest of the town, with good houses, but it happened that a barge full of gunpowder passing through the canal, blew up, killed 200 people, including a very clever Professor Lugai, and destroyed all the houses. It was a sad catastrophe, to be sure; but now, as it is all over, and all the good people's mourning laid aside, I think the Town may be congratulated as ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... and whiskey were almost the only products that would pay their cost of transportation to Philadelphia, and the proceeds derived from the sale of these were sufficient to purchase only a few things of prime necessity such as salt, gunpowder, and some indispensable articles of iron. Even this small trade of the West was crippled when the new government placed an excise tax on whiskey, and the resentment felt against the federal authorities for their apparent disregard of the economic interests of the ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... October. But a few days were wanting to the anniversary so dear to schoolboy hearts—that of Gunpowder Plot. This year the fifth of November celebration was to be of more than ordinary magnificence, for it was the last at which several of the elder boys, among them Jack, could hope to be present. Fireworks committees were formed and treasurers appointed, ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... their arms, for both sea and land, are fire-bombs. They have quantities of gunpowder, in the shape of loaves. Their artillery, although not large, is poor. They have also, and quite commonly poor, culverins and arquebuses, so that they depend mainly on their lances. I am informed that they do not fear the arquebuses very much, because ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... but in reality they had no legal status whatever. When the governor of Panama asked for their commission, Captain Sawkins replied that "we would ... bring our Commissions on the muzzles of our Guns, at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of Gunpowder could make them." Ringrose, p. 38. Legible, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... by war, threw its influence against disorder. The advance in the study and practice of law diminished habits of violence by furnishing legal redress. But the most powerful agent in destroying the old warlike taste was the invention of gunpowder. In the Middle Ages the whole male population had been soldiers in spirit and in fact. But the application of gunpowder to the art of war made it necessary that men should be especially trained for the military profession. A limited ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... eloquence! There are at least fifty thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, spread over the surface of America—in each the Declaration of Independence has been read; in all one, and in some two or three, orations have been delivered, with as much gunpowder in them as in the squibs and crackers. But let me describe what I ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of Bender realized on the Delaware. Scheme after scheme, and force upon force were tried and defeated. The garrison, with scarce anything to cover them but their bravery, survived in the midst of mud, shot and shells, and were at last obliged to give it up more to the powers of time and gunpowder than to military superiority ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... 1603, they set to work again;[176] and the assassin Ravaillac, who succeeded in removing the obnoxious champion of European independence in 1610, was probably inspired by their doctrine.[177] They had a hand in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and were thought by some to have instigated the Massaere of S. Bartholomew. They fomented the League of the Guises, which had for its object a change in the French dynasty. They organized the Thirty Years' ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... thirst of the soldiery by the manufacture of a kind of native beer. Foundries and workshops began, though slowly, to supply tools and machines; the earth was rifled of her treasures, natron was wrought, saltpetre works were established, and gunpowder was thereby procured for the army with an energy which recalled the prodigies ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... it there till it was extinguished. Then, overcome by the excitement of my feelings, I sunk down over one of the casks. There I lay for a moment, almost unconscious of anything. I need scarcely say that the casks were filled with gunpowder. I should have fainted had not Mr Vernon come in, and had ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... carry the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the husband be careful where he throws his slippers. If the husband come home from the store with his patience all exhausted, do not let the wife unnecessarily cross his temper; but both stand up for your rights, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... 1870. Various kinds of paper are manufactured, and especially a fine quality for use in the government offices. In the Island of Roda there is a sugar-refinery of considerable extent, founded in 1859, and principally managed by Englishmen. Silk goods, saltpetre, gunpowder, leather, &c., are also manufactured. An octroi duty of 9% ad valorem formerly levied on all food stuffs entering the city was abolished in 1903. It used to produce about L150,000 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... there was a brave captain whose name was Julius Caesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very strong, and conquered the people wherever they went. They had no gun or gunpowder then; but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or brazen caps on their heads, with long tufts of horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament, and breast-plates of brass on their breasts, and on their arms they carried a sort of screen, made ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... horses composing the elite of the Macedonian army. This was the true secret for disenchanting the martial pretensions of his army. Were you indeed such colossal men? In that case, the less is your merit; of which most part belongs manifestly to a physical advantage: and in the ages of no gunpowder the advantage was less equivocal than it is at present. In the other direction, the logic of the Greek artist who painted Marathon is more cogent. The Persians were numerically superior, though doubtless this superiority has been greatly exaggerated, not wilfully so much as from ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Steam and gunpowder have often proved the most eloquent apostles of civilization, but the impressiveness of their arguments was, perhaps, never more strikingly illustrated than at the little railway station of Gallegos, in Northern Mexico. When the first passenger ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... heroine seems to have engaged herself here as waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, Sir Gregory, and her late lover, Jack Ketch. What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make out, for a general melee ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot; which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a single musket goes off. Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of George the First. Jack Ketch ends the act with a dream—an apropos ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... Protestant sport, which, since the days of Lord George Gordon and the "No Popery" mob, had very generally fallen into disuse. On the 5th of the eleventh month of this present year all England was traversed by processions and lighted up with bonfires, in commemoration of the detection of the "gunpowder plot" of Guy Fawkes and the Papists in 1605. Popes, bishops, and cardinals, in straw and pasteboard, were paraded through the streets and burned amid the shouts of the populace, a great portion of whom would have doubtless been quite as ready to do the same pleasant little office ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a trick that I should care to have played upon me,' said Lord Grey, amid a general murmur of applause and surprise. 'Od's bud, man, you have lived two centuries too late. What would not your thews have been worth before gunpowder put ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remember The Fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason Why gunpowder treason ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... galleries were broken into in several other places, and the battle became now as fierce and continuous down in the cellars as it had before been on the breach. By the light of torches, in an atmosphere heavy with the fumes of gunpowder, surrounded by piled-up barrels of wine, the defenders and assailants maintained a terrible conflict, men staggering up exhausted by their exertion and by the stifling atmosphere while others took their places below, and so, night and day, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... boiler at 125 pounds pressure from one-half to one-third of a mile; and a 60 horse-power return tubular boiler under 75 pounds pressure somewhat over a mile. To quote: "A cubic foot of heated water under a pressure of from 60 to 70 pounds per square inch has about the same energy as one pound of gunpowder." From such a consideration, it may be readily appreciated how the advent of high pressure steam was one of the strongest factors in forcing the adoption of water-tube boilers. A consideration of the thickness of material necessary for cylinders of various diameters under a steam pressure ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the earth a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... this respect with a bullet thrown by the force of gunpowder from the barrel of a gun. The force in this case is the explosive force of the powder, and the bullet is thrown to the same distance whether it is a very weak man or a very strong man ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the ingredients of my grand substitute for gunpowder, when somehow it blew up, and set the ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... with the method of procuring the stone, are highly deserving the attention of strangers, who have there an opportunity of seeing this useful article forced from its natural situation by means of gunpowder; raised from the bowels of the earth, and conveyed through the country by means of inland navigation, to serve the purpose of the agriculturist, and also the architect. In these rocks there are numerous marine productions, and among others, one which the miners denominate a locust, for which ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system; what a hellish faculty above gunpowder! ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... house; the leader of which may have been equalled, but cannot have been surpassed by any of our earth-born politicians. The demons were prowling round the houses every night, as the foxes were sneaking about the hen-roosts. The men of Gloucester fired whole flasks of gunpowder at devils disguised as Indians ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have him peacemaker general between all the gunpowder Highlanders in the army? I beg your pardon, Flora, your brother, you know, is out of the question; he has more sense than half of them. But can you think the fierce, hot, furious spirits of whose brawls we see much and hear more, and who terrify me out of my life every day in the world, are at ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to you? I'll blow her up like gunpowder in a copper. We must stay here to-night;—for there's Peregrine, that king of good fellows, we must stay here till he comes back, from a little way off, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... of Repeal here than in London: and people seem amused at the troops and waggons of gunpowder that are to be met now and then upon the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... a little room in the house which had three names: the little room, the passage room, and the dark room. There was a big cupboard in it where they kept medicines, gunpowder, and their hunting gear. Leading from this room to the first floor was a narrow wooden staircase where cats were always asleep. There were two doors in it—one leading to the nursery, one to the ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the siege of Aberystwith; of a cannon called The King's Daughter, burst at the siege of Harlech; of a cannon burst in proving it by Anthony Gunner, at Worcester; of a cannon with two chambers; two iron guns, with gunpowder; and cross-bows and arrows, delivered to various castles." The King granted the petition in all its prayer. This petitioner was perhaps encouraged to prefer his (p. 230) memorial by the success with which another suit had been ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... spark to gunpowder. The oaths, the insult, the whole degrading episode, combined to drive McRae out of the self-restraint he had imposed on himself. He took one step forward. With a wide sweep of the clenched fist he buffeted the smuggler on the ear. Taken by surprise, West went spinning ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... still further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Field, on the south wall of Edinburgh. Here Mary attended him in his sickness. On Sunday morning, February 9, Murray left Edinburgh for Fife. In the night of Sunday 9-Monday 10, the house where Darnley lay was blown up by gunpowder, and he, with an attendant, was found dead in the garden: how he ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover—every smell ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... bolted down a loaf of bread which I bought for him, the vapour does not seem to injure the animal functions. Addison seems to have been very particular in his experiments upon the vapour of this cavern. He found that a pistol would not take fire in it; but upon laying a train of gunpowder, and igniting it beyond the sphere of the vapour, he found that it could not intercept the train of fire when it had once begun flashing, nor hinder it from running to the very end. He subjected a dog to a second trial in order to ascertain whether he was longer in expiring the first than ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Chancellor of the Exchequer loomed larger and larger, and the Premier vanished more and more completely from the public view. After the triumph of the Budget, everything went wrong with the Government, till, being defeated on a snap division about gunpowder in June, 1895, Lord Rosebery and his colleagues trotted meekly out of office. They might have dissolved, but apparently were afraid to challenge the judgment of the country on the performances of the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... are the spark that ignites the mass of gunpowder. Everywhere, the uprising of the people takes place on the very day on which the electoral assembly meets. From forty to fifty riots occur in the provinces in less than a fortnight. Popular imagination, like that of a child, goes straight to its mark. The ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is engaged on a History of the Art of War, of which the above, though covering the middle period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the general use of gunpowder in Western Europe, is the first instalment. The first battle dealt with will be Adrianople (378) and the last Navarette (1367). There will appear later a volume dealing with the Art of War among the Ancients, and another covering the 15th, 16th, ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... fort—for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of the assailants ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... which is now to be told; the stage in the main is the Rito itself. The language of the actors is the Queres dialect, and the time when the events occurred is much anterior to the discovery of America, to the invention of gunpowder and the printing-press in Europe. Still the Rito must have appeared then much as it appears now,—a quiet, lovely, picturesque retreat, peaceful when basking in the sunlight, wonderfully quiet when the stars sparkled over it, or the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... is talking of a pamphlet written by Seor Gutierrez Estrada, which has just appeared, and seems likely to cause a greater sensation in Mexico than the discovery of the gunpowder plot in England. Its sum and substance is the proposal of a constitutional Monarchy in Mexico, with a foreign prince (not named) at its head, as the only remedy for the evils by which it is afflicted. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... there is no fear of bad gas, and open lights can be used, the coal is blasted by gunpowder, as rock often is. This, however, cannot often be done; as the bad gas, called fire-damp, may come up any moment, and if set light to, go off like gunpowder or the gas from coal, and blow the chambers and everybody near ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... the curiously picturesque place, which looked no more than a village, with its gray-brown houses and gray brown shadows huddled confusedly together. Probably it looked much the same when the Camisards used to hide themselves and their gunpowder in caves near by; and certainly scarce a stone or brick had been added or removed since Stevenson's eyes saw the town, and his pen wrote of it, as he turned away there from the Tarn region, instead of being the first ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... ancient world, were marshalled and brought to bear in the Mysteries. By chemical and mechanical secrets then in their exclusive possession, the mystagogues worked miracles before the astonished novices.47 They had the powers of electricity, gunpowder, hydrostatic pressure, at their command.48 Their rites were carried out on the most magnificent scale. The temple at Eleusis could hold thirty thousand persons. Imagine what effect might be produced, under such imposing and prepared ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... at them, as we lie on our pillows and count the dead beats of thought after thought and image after image jarring through the overtired organ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest!—that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... son, Dwarka, desiring him to send the eight thousand rupees if he wished his father to live. The house having been plundered, the family had nothing left, and could persuade no one to lend them. On receiving a reply to this effect, Maheput had the old man's body plastered all over with moist gunpowder, and made him stand in the sun till it was dry. He then set fire to the powder, and the poor man was burnt all over. He then cut off both his hands at the wrists, and his nose, and sent them to his family, and in this condition be afterwards sent ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... supposed that this annunciation hurried the Marquis and his attendants into the route which Caleb prescribed, dragging Ravenswood along with them, although there was much in the matter which he could not possibly comprehend. "Gunpowder!" he exclaimed, laying hold of Caleb, who in vain endeavoured to escape from him; "what gunpowder? How any quantity of powder could be in Wolf's Crag without my knowledge, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... advancing. Still two or three days must elapse before they could reach Popayan. The interval was spent in strengthening the fortifications, and otherwise preparing for the defence of the city. Provisions were brought in, and gunpowder and shot manufactured, while the drilling of the men went on as energetically as at first. White men, Indians, and blacks, all seemed to take a real pleasure in their duties. The army was certainly a motley one, both in costume and colour, composed as it was of men of every shade from white to black—the ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... learned assembly at Montpellier in France; at least a work purporting to be a translation of such a discourse was published in 1658,(1) and further editions appeared in 1660 and 1664. KENELM was a son of the Sir EVERARD DIGBY (1578-1606) who was executed for his share in the Gunpowder Plot. In spite of this fact, however, JAMES I. appears to have regarded him with favour. He was a man of romantic temperament, possessed of charming manners, considerable learning, and even greater credulity. His contemporaries seem to have differed in their opinions concerning him. EVELYN ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone;—not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... hundred troops in this vicinity—the Third, Fourth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and part of the Twenty-second Ohio, one company of cavalry, and one of artillery. Rumors of skirmishes and small fights a few miles off; but as yet the only gunpowder we have smelled is ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the peal of bells rang out in thanksgiving, he took it for a challenge, and returned and sacked the place. In Cork he melted down the chapel bells, saying that "as it was a priest that invented gunpowder, the best thing that could be done with chapel bells was to make them ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... erroneous apprehension of violence, Dr. Johnson had provided a pair of pistols, some gunpowder, and a quantity of bullets: but upon being assured we should run no risk of meeting any robbers, he left his arms and ammunition in an open drawer, of which he gave my wife the charge. He also left in that drawer one volume of a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Sempach The Constant Prince The Carnival of Perth The Crown of St. Stephen George the Triller Sir Thomas More's Daughter Under Ivan the Terrible Fort St. Elmo The Voluntary Convict The Housewives of Lowenburg Fathers and Sons The Soldiers in the Snow Gunpowder Perils Heroes of the Plague The ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not have been employed except in the rudest way, as flints are in Kentish walls. But now it is possible to cut a block of granite out of its quarry to exactly the size we want; and that with perfect ease, without gunpowder, or any help but that of a few small iron wedges, a chisel, and a heavy hammer. A single workman can detach a mass fifteen or twenty feet long, by merely drilling a row of holes, a couple of inches deep, and three or four inches ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... pursuing maybe for quarter of a mile they met indeed two or three old men, innocent-looking but flushed about the face, sauntering towards the house with their hands in their pockets; and because their hands when examined were black and smelt of gunpowder, these innocent-looking old men went back in custody to the post where the bugles were sounding the recall. The soldiers turned back sullenly enough, but presently quickened their pace as a yellow glare in the fog gave the summons a new ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of his bow, and sharpening his arrows to shoot birds. His trade of a shoemaker could not be very lucrative in a country where the greater part of the inhabitants go barefooted; and he only complained that, on account of the dearness of European gunpowder, a man of his quality was reduced to employ the same weapons as the Indians. He was the sage of the plain; he understood the formation of the salt by the influence of the sun and full moon, the symptoms of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... left that Arrhigi was there. Either to spare life, or because no one was found bold enough to lead the forlorn hope in storming the entrance, it was resolved to blow up the cave. The engineers set to work, a shaft was sunk from above, a barrel of gunpowder was lodged in it—the explosion was ineffectual; it left the massive vault and sides of the narrow cavern as firm as ever. It was too deep to be reached without regular mining. Besides, the night was bitter, and the whole party shaking ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded on cars at the mill, and drawn by steam up a sharp incline, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... man of great weight among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his warlike character and gunpowder tales. All his golden stories of Kidd, however, and of the booty he had buried, were obstinately rivaled by the tales of Peechy Prauw, who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors to be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter, enriched every field and shore in the neighborhood ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... vnto him a certaine quantity of bread, oile, and rice, with hookes and instruments to fish withall, as also a hand gun and gunpowder. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... that, having absolute licence to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun—free to fire cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their own accord, though ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... fust place I don't calc'late that my boys be brought up to be food for gunpowder," replied ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... interrupted the story, to inquire what a shield was. "Formerly," answered Mr Barlow, "before men were acquainted with the pernicious effects of gunpowder, they were accustomed to combat close together with swords or long spears, and for this reason they covered themselves in a variety of ways, to defend their bodies from the weapons of their enemies. The shield was worn upon their left arm, and composed of boards fixed together, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the inequality of the towers produce rather an unfavourable effect. During the revolution, this august edifice was converted into a sulphur and gunpowder manufactory, by which impious prostitution, the pillars are defaced, and broken, and the whole is ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... from denouncing all reasoning from human goodness to Divine as "illicit." To take a parallel case. The manufacture of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences. Surely it is one thing to point out what precautions are necessary, and what evils are to be apprehended from ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... America. It was to him a spectacle, striking in its variety and refreshing in its brilliancy, as he had come, though indirectly, from the Army of Northern Virginia, where it was the custom to serve half-rations of food and double rations of gunpowder. Therefore, being young, sound of heart and amply furnished with hope, he looked ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... West and South. Forever hereafter a merchant or producer dwelling in the Congo can dispose of his ivory and ebony, or any other product whatsoever, in whatever market it will yield him the most money, and buy his shovel and hoe, his gunpowder, and the like, where he can buy them the best and the cheapest. It is, perhaps, not too much to affirm that the founding of such an empire on such a basis will make in time as great a change in commercial affairs as the establishment of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... the Great of Russia worked as a ship's carpenter at the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, the sailors' tales of vast, undiscovered lands beyond the seas of Japan must have acted on his imagination like a match to gunpowder.[1] Already he was dreaming those imperial conquests which Russia still dreams: of pushing his realm to the southernmost edge of Europe, to the easternmost verge of Asia, to the doorway of the Arctic, to the very threshold ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... lived in a small hut near the lighthouse. One evening about dark they discovered a party of some fifteen or twenty Indians creeping upon them, upon which they immediately retreated into the lighthouse, carrying with them a keg of gunpowder, with the guns and ammunition. From the windows of the lighthouse Thompson fired upon them several times, but the moment he would show himself at the window, the glasses would be instantly riddled by ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... O'Blaney insulted your shister with his vile proposhals, you'd no more ask the loan of his horse!—and I in dread, whenever I'd be left in the house alone, that that bad man would boult in upon me—and Randal to find him! and Randal's like gunpowder when his heart's touched!—and if Randal should come by himself, worse again! Honor, where would be your resolution to forbid him your presence? Then there's but one way to be right—I'll lave home entirely. Down, proud stomach! You ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Ritters with some reality of money), with Jesuit Dignitaries, Church and Quasi-Church Officialities, resident among them: population, high and low, is inclined by creed to the Queen of Hungary. Commandant Roth has only 1,200 regular soldiers; at the outside 1,600 men under arms: but he has gunpowder, he has meal; experience also and courage; and hopes these may suffice him for a time. One of the most determined Commandants; expert in the defence of strong places. A born Silesian (not Saxon, as some think),—and is of the Augsburg Confession; but that circumstance ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... going on required many men to be on shore for gunpowder and other stores, to replace what had been expended, there was not a single complaint of any one absenting himself from his duty, or of being intoxicated; though the inducement must have been great, from the number of wine-houses ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... brotherhood. It is meant to unite two people in sacred friendship, so that ever afterwards they feel bound to help and defend each other. When two persons agree to form this bond, a meeting is arranged for the performance of the ceremony and taking the vow. Some gunpowder and a ball are brought, with a little ginger, a spear, and two particular kinds of grass. A fowl is also used. Its head is nearly cut off, and it is left to bleed during the ceremony. Then a long vow of mutual friendship, assistance, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... who had entered go see what was doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand faithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay and Hepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as French Paris—emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the King's bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly face to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, and Bothwell ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... places himself in the embarrassing condition of having excited a degree of expectation which, if he proves unable to satisfy, is an error fatal to his literary reputation. Besides, when we meet such a title as the Gunpowder Plot, or any other connected with general history, each reader, before he has seen the book, has formed to himself some particular idea of the sort of manner in which the story is to be conducted, and the nature of the amusement which he is to derive from it. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... vertically upwards will ascend higher and higher, until at length its motion ceases, it begins to return, and falls to the ground. Let us for the moment suppose that we had a rifle of infinite strength and gunpowder of unlimited power. As we increase the charge we find that the bullet will ascend higher and higher, and each time it will take a longer period before it returns to the ground. The descent of the bullet is due to the attraction of the earth. Gravitation must necessarily act ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... on deck, discovered the stratagem of the Spaniards, removed the matches, and thus hindered the vessels from taking fire, acquainting the Commodore therewith. The little fort held out but an hour longer, after which it surrendered for want of gunpowder. The Commandant came himself to put his sword in the hands of M. Champmelin, who embraced him, returned him his sword, and told him, he knew how to distinguish between a brave officer, and one who was ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... peeped. Never was a boy more thoroughly awakened. His object was to get out of the house and go through the night avoiding everything human, for he was big with information of a character that he knew to be of the nature of gunpowder, and he feared to explode. He crossed the hall. In the passage to the scullery he ran ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by whom, is extremely uncertain. But that a castle stood on the site in very early times appears from many old books of charters. In its prime it was such a masterpiece of fortification as to be the wonder of the world, and it was thought, before the invention of gunpowder, that it never could be taken by any force ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the blessed relief. For the first moment, so genuine appeared his passion, I had believed him; and that the ambushment was there, as he had said. Then, like a train of gunpowder, light ran along my mind and I understood that it was the same game still that they were playing with me; that there was no ambushment ready; that they had indeed fixed upon this journey of the King's; but ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... circumstances were borne in mind by Mr Brooke. The rajah was now at Sar[a]wak, and the adventurer determined to enter the river of that name, and to proceed as far as the town. He was well supplied with presents; gaudy silks of Surat, scarlet cloth, stamped velvet, gunpowder, confectionery, sweets, ginger, jams, dates, and syrups for the governor, and a huge box of China toys for the governor's children. From Mr Brooke's own diary, we extract the following account of his position and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... alliance. Being an ambitious, restless man, he may have thought it expedient to do something to keep himself in power with his people. A military campaign is occasionally a fortunate circumstance for a politician, whether his skin be red or white. Gunpowder-popularity is of equal importance to the chiefs of the Sacs and the chiefs of the Illini. An "actual invasion" of a state—which, in these modern times, is supposed to consist in "levelling deadly weapons" at the inhabitants thereof, and "stealing their potatoes," is ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake |
