"Blunderbuss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resting there already, and it my entrance, he had risen and approached his horse. He was a young fellow of medium height, but robust appearance, with a gloomy and haughty air. In one hand he held his horse's halter, in the other a brass blunderbuss. The fierce air of the man somewhat surprised me, but not having seen any robbers I no longer believed in them. My guide Antonio, however, who came up behind me, showed evident signs of terror, and drew near very ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... moment a big man with a shock of red hair and a huge beard leveled a blunderbuss at him. It flashed across him that his last moment had come, when a man behind leaped suddenly upon the ruffian's back and they fell to the ground together, the blunderbuss going off in the fall and riddling a soldier standing next to Ralph ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the land pirates in the neighborhood! Of course, the town—of some four houses, six "groceries," a store and blacksmithery—was aroused, indignant! Impatient for a victim, the posse comitatus "fired up," armed to the teeth with pistol, bludgeon, blunderbuss, gun, bowie-knife, and—whiskey, started up the river to reconnoitre and intercept the pirate and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle. Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company, raised his arms in prayer, invoking the "God of Armies" as though he addressed his supplication before a vast ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... tore up the voting papers, under cover of their municipal authority. There had been no respect for the law. Everywhere fraud, intrigue, even violence. At Calcatoggio an armed man sat during the election at the window of a tavern in front of the mairie, holding a blunderbuss, and whenever one of Sebastiani's electors (Sebastiani was Jansoulet's opponent) showed himself, the man took aim: "If you come in, I will blow out your brains." And when one saw the inspectors of police, justices, inspectors of weights and measures, not afraid to turn into ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... question of his guilt, and he should have been given the benefit of a doubt. They say he could have defeated Longstreet. There are some people, you know, who would have it that an army could be whipped by a good general with six mules and a blunderbuss. But we do not regard those people. They know no more about it than a lady who talked to me about Porter's case. She argued the question of Porter's guilt for half an hour. I showed her where she was all wrong. When she found she was beaten she took refuge with "Oh, well, anyhow he had no genius." ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... whistled around him, along the bulwarks amidships his men were fighting hand to hand with the Seraskier's galley that lay lashed alongside. There were no orders to give for the moment, so he occupied himself with firing a blunderbuss into the crowd on the Turkish deck, and handing it to a servant to reload with half a dozen balls, and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great giant—" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old blunderbuss. You tell her, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a House close to the person of the Sho[u]gun was no drawback to the close attention Aoyama Shu[u]zen gave to official duty throughout his career. The Aoyama stood high in the council of the governing power. Even an old blunderbuss like Hoki no Kami could not shake this influence. When Yukinari tore the mirror from the hands of the young Sho[u]gun Iyemitsu Ko[u], berated him roundly for effeminacy, and dashed the offending object to pieces on the stones of the garden, this wanton treatment of the prince could ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... king, I needed not this intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature's rill. It dashes not more quickly o'er the rocks than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew, and shot the partridge, snipe, or antlered deer! Ah! well may England's dramatist remark, 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!' Why did I steal my nephew's, my young Giglio's—? Steal! said I? no, no, no, not steal, not ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he took ten pearls from his own necklace, pearls as large and round as bullets of a blunderbuss. The merchant's wife quickly took them on his behalf and hung them around his neck; and the merchant crossed his arms like the ogres and spoke his thanks. Then the great king went off again, flying away like lightning ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... later, he came rushing back from the hall, exclaiming: "There! See, what a blunderbuss I am! I forgot to thank you, which I do, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... are sort of down on your friends to-day, aren't you? I'm an idiot to think of cutting down the pine grove. I'm a milksop compared with a red-headed Indian you never saw before. Now I'm a blunderbuss for answering a simple question asked me by my sister. What do you think I am, anyhow? ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the theatrical gentleman; "but till I can forget the blunderbuss fired from the upsetting coach, the cobweb over the poor's-box, and the gay parson and undertaker at the harlot's funeral, I cannot allow of the comparison. Besides, I admire Hogarth for another reason: did he consider an engraver's to be an infradig. profession? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... striking resemblances to our own. It was, for example, an age of warfare; and, as in our own age of hideous inventions, military methods were all upset by the discovery that the foot soldier with his blunderbuss was more potent than the panoplied knight on horseback. While war raged abroad, there was no end of labor troubles at home, strikes, "lockouts," assaults on imported workmen (the Flemish weavers brought in by Edward III), and no end of experimental laws to remedy the evil. The Turk came into Europe, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Charles Grandison, where thrilling things were going on in the cedar parlour. It was my mother's favourite book, but was carefully laid aside when my grandmother came—nay, even concealed as conscientiously as I under my coat conveyed away the bell-mouthed, silver-mounted blunderbuss which hung over the hat-rack in the lobby. Buckshot, wads, and a powderhorn I also secreted ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... and Peterkin replied by laying down a huge bell-mouthed blunderbuss, and divesting himself of a pair of enormous horse-pistols with which he had purposed to overawe the natives! We then jumped into our ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... from the same glass, that my power is not equal to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-in-the-hole now became quite ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or that, being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the remonstrances and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them, and believing them to belong to some highwaymen who had recently committed some depredation on that road, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... muscular, and evidently capable of enduring continued and violent exercise without fatigue. A broad-brimmed hat, a shirt and trousers, and a coloured poncho over his shoulders, completed his attire; his weapons being a long lance and a large-mouthed blunderbuss. Of his steed, which he had caught and broken-in himself, he was excessively proud; and he boasted that, mounted on its back, there was not a bull on the plains, however fierce, which he could not overtake and capture with his lasso. He would conduct ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... Addiscombe, together with Lord Thurlow, he found the turnpike gate between Tooting and Streatham thrown open. Both passed through it, regardless of the threats of the turnpike man, who, taking the two for highwaymen, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs; but, happily, no injury was done, and Pitt had the good fortune to escape from what might have been a very serious, if not fatal, accident. Foote, too, met with a bad accident on horseback, which, at the time, seemed a lasting obstacle to his career as an actor. Whilst riding ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... in the least," the Major answered, and old Gid smiled. "You couldn't scare her with a bell-mouth blunderbuss," he declared. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... weapon even at the date of that first and greatest of pitched battles. Its claim, as the parent of projectile implements, is recognized in the common etymology of arcus, arcualia—artillery. Arblast, arquebuse, blunderbuss, mark a humbler collateral descent in the same verbal family. The ballista, or fifty-man-power bow, constituted the heavy, and the individual article the light, artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall'. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... my whip till he howled for mercy. My servant, who was a little way behind, heard the noise at this moment, and, seeing how I was engaged thought that I was attacked, and flew to the rescue. Six men flung themselves upon him, and during the struggle his pistol or blunderbuss went off, and the ball whizzed past our heads to lodge in the plaster wall. It might have shot me as well as Hasan, though afterwards this fact was used against me. The native Christians all threw themselves on the ground, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... with guinea-pieces. At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. Next the visitor turned to news of a more thrilling character: how the down mail had been stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback—a white and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their faces; how Tom the guard's blunderbuss missed fire, but he swore he had winged one of them with a pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds in money, some valuable papers, and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a malicious smile triumphs in his success. We have had many gross anachronisms in similar designs. There is a laughable picture in a village in Holland, in which Abraham appears ready to sacrifice his son Isaac by a loaded blunderbuss; but his pious intention is entirely frustrated by an angel urining in the pan. In another painting, the Virgin receives the annunciation of the angel Gabriel with a huge chaplet of beads tied round her waist, reading ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... trigger of his blunderbuss, aimed into the very centre of the boat. Shrieks, curses and plashings, as of bodies falling in the water succeeded; and in the confusion occasioned by the murderous fire, the first boat evidently ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... days, when a man wanted a scrap with his neighbour, he put a double charge of powder into his blunderbuss, crammed in on top of it two horse-shoes, his latch-key, an old watch-chain, and a magnet, and then started on the trail. It was very effective, but of course some busy-body "improved" on it. Nowadays our gunners ring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... accordingly replaced, and Tooler, on mounting the box, told the men to get a gallon of beer, when the gentleman in black generously gave them half a crown, and the horses started off, leaving Tom with his blunderbuss, Harry, Bill, Sam, and their companions, bewildered with the mystery which the whole day spent in the alehouse by no ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... would be!" mocked the veteran. "Still, you know, if you're going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can't ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... however, still continued near the house, and two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one, Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but Curtis, so far from being intimidated, marched boldly up to him, and his lordship was so struck with the determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that he suffered him ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall |
