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More "Ransack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already a large gang of thieves and vampires have descended on and near the place. Their presumed purpose is to rob the dead and ransack the demolished buildings. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Don Alfonso stood confused; Antonia bustled round the ransack'd room, And, turning up her nose, with looks abused Her master and his myrmidons, of whom Not one, except the attorney, was amused; He, like Achates, faithful to the tomb, So there were quarrels, cared not ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... always manifest a most profound astonishment on noticing any piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... being his objects, he will not scruple to collect materials from all quarters. He will ransack the newest foreign publications, and extract from them whatever can serve his purpose. He will not forget that a work, which solicits the attention of many readers, must build its claim on the variety as well as copiousness ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... seem damning and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... interesting objects, was most actively at work. At such moments, sensibility quickly furnishes similes, and the sublimated spirits combine images, which rising spontaneously, it is not necessary coldly to ransack the understanding or memory, till the laborious efforts of judgment exclude present sensations, and damp the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... should be ashamed of, he reminded himself with impatient severity, as he traversed the upper hall on tip-toe to the western chamber. He had, on sundry previous occasions, sought, in the receptacles he was about to ransack, for sealing-wax, pencils, and the like trifles. Mabel was too wise a woman not to keep her secrets under lock and key, and if there were private documents left in his way, he was too honorable to pry ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Bagdad, and the European paradises of Naples, Florence, Monza, Mannheim and Leyden to draw up plans and a particular description of the Oxford Physic Garden, by Magdalen College, as well as the plantations of Worcester, Trinity and St. John's Colleges; and to ransack the bookshops of that seat of learning for such works as might be procurable in no more difficult tongue than the Latin. In this way Captain Barker became possessed of a vast number of monkish herbals, Pliny's Historia Naturalis, the Herbarum Vivas Eicones of ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the previous evening, there was a knock at the door. He had scarcely opened it, when he was seized by two ruffians with blackened faces, who threw him down, gagged and tied him, and then coolly proceeded to ransack every place, packed up every bit of jewelry, every watch, and every piece of money, and then decamped with their booty, locking the door on the outside. The robbery took place on the third and last day of the Easter Fair, exactly when there was the greatest noise and bustle from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried; "up, friend. Your life hangs trembling in the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... the moment dumb. Dorothy and Bess appeared, having completed a ransack of staterooms and cabins. The sight of her daughter restored to Mrs. Hanway-Harley the power ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... haven't lost them, they are all in the secret compartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put them before we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coach when we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats of their horses. They and their horses made so much noise that the brigands thought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging off Bambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the wine-skins. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... explained, invested with the corresponding expression. It is however certain that the word itself, with the meaning that is attached to it, must be previously acquired, and thoroughly comprehended, before the abstract Idea, or naked Thought, can select the befitting expression, and ransack the vast range of a copious vocabulary. The believers in the extreme rapidity of thought to which we shall presently advert, must be alarmed at this manner of explanation, which necessarily constitutes ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... can't do nothin' like dat, sah. Pies is foh de officers and gen'lems, sah, and of co'se Ah don't give pie to de men, sah, not even in dey vittles, sah, even if dey was pie, which dey wa'n't, sah, fob dis we'y day Mistah Falk he wants pie and stew'd he come, and me and he, sah, we sho' ransack dis galley, sah, and try like we can, not even two of us togetheh, sah, can sca' up a piece of pie foh Mistah Falk, sah, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Though with but one provided; And, truth to honour, for that matter, I hold it than a thousand better." In fresh dispute they sided; And loudly were they at it, when Approach'd a mob of dogs and men. "Now," said the cat, "your tricks ransack, And put your cunning brains to rack, One life to save; I'll show you mine— A trick, you see, for saving nine." With that, she climb'd a lofty pine. The fox his hundred ruses tried, And yet no safety found. A hundred ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... which to walk from Hanover Square to Regent's Park without the chance of cutting across the squares, to look for a man, whose whereabouts you could not determine to within twenty yards or so, to have an argument with him, murder him, and ransack his pockets. And then there was the ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... of his life, and he hath only held it by my mercy; and now let him thank his friends for this heavy load of disgrace I lay upon him, since I do it but to show my sufficiency; and they urging what a triumph he had over me, hath made me ransack my standish more ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... started across the prairie for Efaw Kotee's settlement. Tommy and Monsieur were keen to see it, and especially was the latter keyed up to ransack the place for proofs and information. Smilax led, keeping away from the graves. Doloria had made no reference to casualties, accepting them as an unfortunate necessity, and only once asked about the old ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the face of the Federal colonel and saw that it was an unusually kindly one. "We are defending this home, sir; that's all. I reckon those fellows who just ran off wanted to ransack it." ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... have," she answered. "It's easy enough to pick up imitations in the second-hand shops, or to ransack country houses; but these pieces are all genuine and have been in the family for generations. There are three Chippendales that belonged to my grandfather on my mother's side, Colonel Styles, and this ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... purposely create a tumult. Verres, we understand, was not there. The intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of it. At last one of Verres's ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and would ransack her closets and steal her delicacies, which he devoured in secret. Occasionally, when the usual visitors made their appearance he would treat them with civility; but as a general thing his remarks and replies were incoherent. For instance, a lady once asked him, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... which has created no small stir in the antiquarian world, and merits a brief description. Nothing was known of its existence previously; and this is an instance of the delightful surprises which explorers have in store for them, when they ransack the buried treasure-house of the earth, and reveal the relics which have been so long ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... him at the Siege of Pampelona, he was then a Colonel of French Horse, who when the Town was ransack'd, nobly treated my Brother and my self, preserving us from all Insolencies; and I must own, (besides great Obligations) I have I know not what, that pleads kindly for him about my Heart, and will suffer no other to enter— But ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... and poorest classes, entirely unmolested; and that we trusted much on many occasions to the honesty of the people, and never found cause to repent our trust—I cannot but feel that it would be an ungracious act to ransack newspapers and Reports to furnish materials for recording in detail, the vices of a population whom I have only personally known by their virtues. Let you and I, reader, leave off with the same pleasant impressions of the Cornish people—you, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... and confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that boy," said Corentin, to the gendarme, "and take him away by himself. And shut up that girl, too," pointing to Catherine. "As for you, Peyrade, search for papers," adding in his ear, "Ransack everything, spare nothing.—Monsieur l'abbe," he said, confidentially, "I have an important communication to make to you"; and he took him into ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... would take pains to conceal it in a secret place in her heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her ideas melted like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning faculties were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only a void; still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the truth, was the one thing that had remained. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... equipped him for the study of human society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788—September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and social customs of the ancient Persians, Scythians, Thracians, Athenians, Spartans, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... have they taken thee, My only one, my darling? Oh, the brigands! Naples shall bleed for this. What do ye here, Slaves, fools, who stare upon me? Know ye not I have been robbed? Hence! Ransack every house From cave to roof in Naples. Search all streets. Arrest whomso ye meet. Let no sail stir From out the harbor. Ring the alarum! Quick! This is a general woe. [Exeunt LUCA and FIAMETTA.] The Duke's my friend; He'll further ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... that spot," said he. "I'll go in the next ship bound to Valparaiso: there I'll charter a small vessel, and ransack those waters for some trace of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... of her or service of her other than their own, take to the cudgel and the rifle, and join sectarian orders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their own ignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit in national ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... later days,—for my intimacy with him lasted many years,—he became the feeder of my intellect. He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars. Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my clear perception ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... little bunches of pink roses peeping out through trellis work, and it was these which she had just begun to cut out. Though Tilling was noted for the ingenuity with which its more fashionable ladies devised novel and quaint effects in their dress in an economical manner, Diva felt sure, ransack her memory though she might, that nobody ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... a tinker's dam for the law," I continued. "Good enough! We'll take a leaf out of his book. To-morrow night you have an engagement—to ransack the captain's rooms." ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... sublimity, character? seek them in the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in these two poets only, all for which you must ransack innumerable metres, and God only knows how many writers of the day, without finding a tittle of the same qualities,—with the addition, too, of wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten Thomas ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... me. With noiseless steps I went the length of the dim, padded interior corridor to my own room. My belongings seemed undisturbed; a vague idea that Spawn might have seized this opportunity to ransack them had come to me. But it seemed not; though if he had he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... how pleased I am to see the face of an honest man. I am so tired of those devils of spies who come here ten times a day to ransack my pockets and my cell to satisfy themselves that I am not preparing to escape. The government is very solicitous ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... they set to work again to ransack every quarter of the raft; they rolled every spar aside, they overturned everything on board, and only grew more and more incensed with anger ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... d'Artin," Ortez bowed. "Here at last we find rest and refreshment. Let a feast be spread in the great hall, ransack the place for good cheer. We've done brave work this glorious day, my lads, and a merry ending we'll have before the night ...
— 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
... did not take much—only half-a-dozen articles of plate off the sideboard. Lady Brackenstall thinks that they were themselves so disturbed by the death of Sir Eustace that they did not ransack the house as they would otherwise ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slave-hunting Amazon. Unable to rear her family, incapable of seeking her food, of taking it even when it is within her reach, she needs servants who feed her and undertake the duties of housekeeping. The Red Ants make a practice of stealing children to wait on the community. They ransack the neighbouring Ant-hills, the home of a different species; they carry away nymphs, which soon attain maturity in the strange house and become willing ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... while the machine, darting backwards and forwards, was gradually turned round. A splendid burst of cheering pursued him when he finally sped down the street and disappeared. It was understood by those who heard his speech that he had gone off at more than twenty miles an hour to ransack the great European libraries for information about General John Regan. Everyone felt that the splendid eagerness of his departure ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which thy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... staring into the muzzles of three revolvers, held by two masked men, who stood looking over the footboard. Bidding them move at their peril, the man with two revolvers remained to guard the doctor and his wife, while the other began to ransack the room. As he did so, he carried on an easy, if not eloquent, dissertation upon the rights of man and the iniquitous conditions which made it necessary for the poor and oppressed to obtain by force, if they obtained at all, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... proceeded, with a hasty hand, as if he wished to get the work quickly over, to ransack drawers and boxes. Whenever one or the other had been searched in vain, he clapped his hand to his breast and muttered: 'God be thanked!' and appeared as if his mind were in some measure relieved of a burden which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... courage comes again, and arousing themselves they ransack the woods for a mile around till they find that owl, and if they do not kill him they at least worry him half to death and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... fully drawn in the First Book, that the Poet adds nothing to it in the Second. We were before told, that he was the first who taught Mankind to ransack the Earth for Gold and Silver, and that he was the Architect of Pandaemonium, or the Infernal Place, where the Evil Spirits were to meet in Council. His Speech in this Book is every way suitable to so depraved a Character. How proper is that Reflection, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded. "Had you hidden a tapu?" we may conceive him asking: and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and that is perhaps the strangest feature of the system—that it should be regarded from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them in those arts which are necessary for the support of life, in the lowest and most servile offices of the house, in the painful toils of the field; and frequently forced them, by the most inhuman treatment, to dig in mines, and ransack the bowels of the earth, merely to satiate their avarice; and hence mankind were divided into freemen and slaves, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Menelaus and thyself sustain'd, On the offending Trojan—service kind, But lost on thee, regardless of it all. And now—What now? Thy threatening is to seize 200 Thyself, the just requital of my toils, My prize hard-earn'd, by common suffrage mine. I never gain, what Trojan town soe'er We ransack, half thy booty. The swift march And furious onset—these I largely reap, 205 But, distribution made, thy lot exceeds Mine far; while I, with any pittance pleased, Bear to my ships the little that I win After long ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... couple of empty rooms were chosen on the second story, just over one of the State apartments at the end of the east wing; and my father, who was by no means well pleased with his office, set to work to ransack the ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate her. But as he had let his knife ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... bones of men and beasts: I did not disturb them, as all appeared to be modern. The floors sounding hollow, gave my companions hopes of "finds;" but I had learned, after many a disappointment, how carefully the Bedawi ransack such places. We dug into four sepulchres, including the sunken catacomb and the (southern) inscribed tomb. Usually six inches of flooring led to the ground-rock; in the sarcophagi about eight inches of tamped ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... lend you my white silk for evenings." And my sister, who was always good-natured, carried me off to ransack her wardrobe. ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. My right honorable friend, the member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Goschen) asks us to-night to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book, find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article, unless the product of the day, in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, Where did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to ransack their attics withal. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "They will undoubtedly ransack the ship and plunder her of every article of the slightest value, in the first place," said I; "but what they will next do is not so certain. 'Dead men tell no tales,' however, and the chances are that every male on board will ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... all the City would presently be affected—all will have to run the risk of contagion. There are thousands of women now who voluntarily enter the houses as nurses for a small rate of pay. Even robbers, they say, will enter and ransack the houses of the dead in search of plunder. It will be a shame indeed then if one should shrink from doing so when possibly one might ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... thro' ev'ry Class, Thro' ev'ry Rank of Men they pass, In ev'ry Class of Men they find Some Hearts corrupted to their Mind, Ev'ry Profession they explore, Ev'ry Profession gives them more; The higher Functions ransack'd, now Each vulgar Trade, each sweaty Brow Is search'd, and in them all were found, Some hollow, rotten, and unsound. In each depraved Bosom dwell These Sprites, nor miss their native Hell. Hence ev'ry Blockhead, Knave, and Dunce, Start into Preachers all at once. Hence Ignorance of ev'ry size, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... cry for hunger, so I ransack the ruins and bring away my spoils. Eat, Kinder, eat and ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... her it would be along shortly, she expressed her fears that they would take everything on the premises. They set me out a lunch and treated me rather kindly, so that I really began to sympathize with them; for I knew that the soldiers would ransack their house and confiscate everything they could lay their hands on. At last I resolved to do what I could to protect them. After the generals and the staff officers had passed by, I took it upon myself to be a sentry over the house. ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... of reasoning is also illustrated very well in these simple cases. It is an exploratory process, a searching for facts. In a way, it is a trial and error process. If you don't ransack the house, at least you ransack your memory, in search for facts that will assist you. You recall this fact {463} and that, you turn this way and that, mentally, till some fact is recalled that serves your need. No more in reasoning ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... plagiarize. convey away, carry off, abduct, kidnap, crimp; make off with, walk off with, run off with; run away with; spirit away, seize &c. (lay violent hands on) 789. plunder, pillage, rifle, sack, loot, ransack, spoil, spoliate[obs3], despoil, strip, sweep, gut, forage, levy blackmail, pirate, pickeer|, maraud, lift cattle, poach; smuggle, run; badger*; bail up, hold up, stick up; bunco, bunko, filibuster. swindle, peculate, embezzle; sponge, mulct, rook, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "give me a man's rig-out—a jersey and some breeches and a cap—quick," and, while the old fellow stared and whistled softly, I helped to ransack his box; and in a trice I had dressed myself, putting my pistols, my papers, and my money in my new clothes; but leaving everything else in ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... did not look like men suffering from thirst. However, a most extraordinary effect was produced on two of them, for they fell down on the deck, and rolled about as if in intense agony. This drew the attention of all hands on them; and as we had no surgeon on board, the captain began to ransack his medical knowledge to find ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... mortal child And by her radiant youth delighted, He is not fooled, but warily knoweth His love shall never be requited. And thus the wise Immortal doeth,— 'T is his study and delight To bless that creature day and night; From all evils to defend her; In her lap to pour all splendor; To ransack earth for riches rare, And fetch her stars to deck her hair: He mixes music with her thoughts, And saddens her with heavenly doubts: All grace, all good his great heart knows, Profuse in love, the king bestows, Saying, 'Hearken! Earth, Sea, Air! This monument of my despair ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in the morning, nearly half-past ten. The young man hurried downstairs and began to ransack the pantry. He did not want to be long away from the upper room. Once, as he was stooping to search the refrigerator for butter and milk he paused in his work and thought he heard a sound at the front door, but then all seemed still, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... will ransack the Earth rather than be cheated of one he has marked for his prey. Lura will be safe nowhere on Earth. Her capture by the Sons of God will discourage the timid who will say that if Turgan cannot protect his own daughter, how can he free the Earth? ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... halfway, but then the front of it came down and it changed into a writing desk, with an intriguing array of small drawers and pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle. To ransack all of these was Keith's most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a middle-aged man, and in the room behind him his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... matters of conviviality, goes farther than precept. Old Gudyill associated himself with a party so much to his taste, pretty much as Davy, in the Second Part of Henry the Fourth, mingles in the revels of his master, Justice Shallow. He ran down to the cellar at the risk of breaking his neck, to ransack some private catacomb, known, as he boasted, only to himself, and which never either had, or should, during his superintendence, renden forth a bottle of its contents to any one but a real ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was loath'd, and all the world Ransack'd for gold, which breeds the world['s] decay; And then large limits had their butting lands; The ground, which Curius and Camillus till'd, 170 Was stretched unto the fields of hinds unknown. Again, this people could not brook calm peace; Them freedom without war might not suffice: Quarrels were rife; ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. "Never mind knives," said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... follow into the swamp. For my own part, I wished to stay behind, but was told that such a course was attended with danger, as the Indians would most likely emerge from another part of the hammock, and endeavour to seize the horses, and ransack the waggons. This decided my adopting the least of the two evils, although I fully expected we should have a battle. After penetrating for I should think upwards of two miles, sometimes up to our knees in miry clay, and often stopped by impassable barriers of wild vines and ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... to invoke, and, at a touch of the magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,—what-not, est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach, and worshippers of Bacchus. Thus in a realized dream all eddies on in a delicious intoxication, and each is at once the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... glad of the break. His mind hadn't been on the job, anyway—it had been on the Egyptian cat. For perhaps the hundredth time he asked, "Why is the cat valuable? Why would anyone want it enough to stage that scene at El Mouski and then ransack our room?" ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... refreshments, after the immense fatigue they had all undergone in exploring the beauties of the surrounding country. Most of the party were of the same opinion, so forthwith he and Bob Mornington proceeded to ransack the hampers, and distributed the contents in the most primitive manner imaginable, to the amusement of the company generally, and to the extreme disgust of Grace Arlington in particular. And then there was a general ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own will soon be reduced to the poorest of all imitations, he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... fell into conversation about strong impressions. They were led to this discussion by recalling a witness who, by his own account, had begun to stammer and had gone grey owing to a terrible moment. The jurymen decided that before going to sleep, each one of them should ransack among his memories and tell something that had happened to him. Man's life is brief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast that there have been terrible moments ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... know that I wander about Paris a great deal, like book collectors who ransack book stalls. I just look at the sights, at the people, at all that is passing by and all that is ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... thanks to the women who have so generously allowed me to ransack their treasuries, filching here and there as I chose, always modestly declaiming against the existence of wit in ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... treat of right and wrong, because those are invariably the fame:)—nor is it less attended to by the Critics in their poetical Essays, or by men of Eloquence in every species and every part of their public debates. For what would be more out of character, than to use a lofty style, and ransack every topic of argument, when we are speaking only of a petty trespass in some inferior court? Or, on the other hand, to descend to any puerile subtilties, and speak with the indifference and simplicity of a frivolous narrative, when we ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... can be readily imagined. I could not be expected to endure so serious a deprivation without making a desperate effort to retrieve my fallen fortunes. I therefore proclaimed to all and sundry my inflexible determination to ransack the house from the top brick of the chimney to the darkest recesses of the cellar in quest of my vanished treasure. I began with a queer old triangular cupboard that occupied one corner of the kitchen. And in the deepest and dustiest corner ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... ways once more. He would never forgive himself for having allowed that girl to ransack his drawers—but he must act, and at once! He must, without fail, find that mislaid document. Of one thing he was sure—the document was not on the premises. ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the world is rich in blessings: Earth and Ocean, flame and wind, Have unnumber'd secrets still, To be ransack'd when you will, For the service of mankind; Science is a child as yet, And her power and scope shall grow, And her triumphs in the future Shall diminish toil and woe; Shall extend the bounds of pleasure With an ever-widening ken, And of woods and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... dearly liked to take another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the countryside—"See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "She used to be Mrs. van Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber man. She used to give 'boy and girl' parties, in the English fashion; and when we went there we'd do as we please—play tag all over the house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up masquerades! Mrs. Warden's as good-natured as an old cow. You'll meet her sometime—only don't you let her fool you with those soft eyes of hers. You'll find she doesn't mean it; it's just that she likes to have handsome men ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... freedom led to every part, And secret chamber of the heart, Dost thou thy friendly host betray, And shew thy riotous gang the way To enter in, with covert treason, O'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason, To ransack the abandon'd place, And revel ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... beautiful quilts are found in old trunks and bureaus, which have gathered dust for untold years in attics and storerooms. Opportunities to ransack old garrets are greatly appreciated by collectors, as the uncertainty of what may be found gives zest to their search. It was of such old treasure trove that the hangings were found to make what Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novel, "The Minister's Wooing," calls ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... Muse, you must versify your very best, To sing how they ransack the East and the West, To tell how they plunder the North and the South For food for the stomach and zest for the mouth! Such savoury stews, and such odorous dishes, Such soups, and (at Calais) such capital fishes! With sauces so strange they disguise the lean meat That ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that leprosy of lust, Which taints the hoariest years of vicious men Making them ransack to the very last The dregs of pleasure for ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... will not have any individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, 'I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... first declared my passion, it was not ill received by the lovely object who inspired it; but, just now, Leander has declared to me that he is preparing to deprive me of Celia; therefore let us make haste; ransack your brain for the speediest means to secure me possession of her; plan any tricks, stratagems, rogueries, inventions, to frustrate my ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... 'arth!" she went on. "Half the time you might ransack Wallencamp from top to bottom, and you'd find everybody a'most somewhere, and nobody to hum! It ain't much like the cake Silvy made last week—she's crazier than ever—'Where's the raisins, Silvy?' says I—I always make it chock full of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... shore, the boatmen reaping a harvest. "A bob th' trip, yer 'anner, on a day like this." The doors of the village inn swinging constantly, and the white-aproned landlord (mopping a heated brow at royal orders), sending messengers to ransack the village cupboards for a reserve of glasses. And when at last the boats are ready for the long pull up to Sligo town, and the impatient boatmen shouting, "Coom on now, byes! Before th' toide ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in their arms; they are drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... to search your rooms, sir. I am prepared to search every room in the Albany! Our man seems to have gone for the leads; but unless he's left more marks outside than in, or we find him up there, I shall have the entire building to ransack." ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... a month and ransack the islands, the cataracts and volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters, for which they pay as much money as I would get ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Delaware canal," which passes through the old state of Delaware, and unites the waters of the two bays. Here we were handed into a barge, or what we in common parlance would term a large canal boat; but the Americans are the fondest people in the universe of big names, and ransack the Dictionary for the most pompous appellations with which to designate their works or productions. The universal fondness for European titles that obtains here, is also remarkable. The president, is "his excellency,"—"congressmen," are "honorables,"—and ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... small stock of drugs. On September 7 he wrote Potts from Albany that he hoped the small supply that he obtained and the chest of medicines that Morgan had just sent would hold out until he could obtain additional supplies in New England, where he was then headed "to ransack that Country ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... Hebert, Laurence, were driven toward the prow, and made to understand by signs that they must not move on peril of their lives. A Tuck was placed at the helm, and the tartane's head turned towards the pirate captor; and all the others, who were not employed otherwise, began to ransack the vessel and feast on the provisions. Some hams were thrown overboard, with shouts of evident scorn as belonging to the unclean beast, but the wine was eagerly drank, and Maitre Hebert uttered a wail of dismay as he saw five Moors gorging large pieces ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fernand was actually born seven months after my marriage, by one of those fatalities that give ground for shameful accusations! I shall ask my aunt to carry the certificate in her pocket, until I can deposit it in some place of safety. The duke would ransack my rooms for it, and the whole police are at his service. Government refuses nothing to a man high in favor. If Joseph saw me going to Mademoiselle de Vaudrey's apartments at this hour, the whole house would hear of it. Ah—I am alone in the ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... wind had sprung up; the sun riding joyously in the heavens; and the Lagoon all tossed with white, flying manes; Media called upon Yoomy to ransack his whole assortment of songs:—warlike, amorous, and sentimental,—and regale us with something inspiring for too long the company had ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... are, Professor Aronnax," Captain Nemo then said. "You observe this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid out for their type of fishing. It's sheltered from the strongest winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable conditions for diving work. Now let's put on ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... materials, and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... most glowing and impassioned hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honour they acquired for themselves, and the great services they rendered to Christianity. In the following pages we shall ransack the stores of both, to discover the true spirit that animated the motley multitude who took up arms in the service of the cross, leaving history to vouch for facts, but not disdaining the aid of contemporary poetry and romance, to throw light ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... them.— He's simple and tells much. [To FLORIZEL.] How now, fair shepherd! Your heart is full of something that does take Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young And handed love as you do, I was wont To load my she with knacks: I would have ransack'd The pedlar's silken treasury and have pour'd it To her acceptance; you have let him go, And nothing marted with him. If your lass Interpretation should abuse, and call this Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... of doubtful formation, such as huckaback, pickapack, gimcrack, ticktack, picknick, barrack, knapsack, hollyhock, shamrock, hammock, hillock, hammock, bullock, roebuck. But the verbs on which this argument is founded are only six; attack, ransack, traffick, frolick, mimick, and physick; and these, unquestionably, must either be spelled with the k, or must assume it in their derivatives. Now that useful class of words which are generally and properly written with final c, are about four hundred and fifty in number, and are all ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sent off to ransack the stores for the article in question, but no measure was forthcoming. "Most likely we shall find one on the tartan," ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... have it at once!" she cried. "I'll ring and have it brought in, and ransack my cupboards to see what treats I can give you. Poor dears, it is dull for you sitting indoors all day long. We must think of some bright, exciting games for this evening." No sooner said than ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... regarded: yet I cannot but hope that if you knew at how dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with some gratulation on our success, and with some pity on our miscarriages. Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and ransack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk when his meaning is spent, to raise merriment without images, to harass his imagination in quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and his memory in pursuit of narratives which he cannot overtake; observe the effort with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... copy of "Pickwick" in which he had placed the will, was separated from his wife's bedroom by her boudoir. The walls were thick; through them no ordinary sound could penetrate, and, unless since his departure Jeanne had moved her maid or some other chaperon into his bedroom, he could ransack it at his leisure. The safe in which he would replace the will was in the dining-room. From the sleeping-quarters of Preston, the butler, and the other servants it was ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away," he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, "and at ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Towns. By this we are cut off from that domestick security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreable. Those Officers may under colour of law and the cloak of a general warrant, break thro' the sacred rights of the Domicil, ransack mens houses, destroy their securities, carry off their property, and with little danger to themselves commit the most ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... one type of German colonization in the Tsardom. There is another at which it may not be amiss to cast a glance. It is of recent date and consists of German elements already resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of easy-going toleration on the part of the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... statesmen that ever existed, or now exist, when they talk of right and wrong, they only mean proper and improper; and their measure of conduct is, not what they OUGHT, but what they DARE. For the truth of this I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to one of the ablest judges of men that ever lived—the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact, a man who could thoroughly control his vices whenever they interfered with his interests, and who could completely put on ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... tell me that, after all, a safe might not be necessary. If alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece of furniture, when—and this seemed beyond all reason—I saw something shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the half of ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Rossetti amidst these environments which aptly illustrates almost every trait of his character: his impetuosity, and superstition especially. It was his daily habit to ransack old book-stalls, and carry off to his studio whatever treasures he unearthed, but when, upon further investigation, he found he had been deceived as to the value of a book that at first looked promising, he usually revenged himself by throwing the ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to set the face as a flint against any slightest approach to sentimentality is true. But why assume that the men do not exist who are capable of such a measure of self-control? Grant that there are whole volumes of devotional matter, original and compiled, which one may ransack without finding a single form that is not either prolix, wishy-washy, or superstitious—it does not follow that if the Prayer Book is to be enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come from such sources. Moreover it is to ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... of 1878, while on a visit at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. Charles North, my kind host drew my attention to some large boxes of manuscripts, which he told me nobody knew anything about, but which I was at liberty to ransack to my heart's content. I at once dived into one of the boxes, and then spent half the night in examining some of its treasures. The chest is one of many, constituting in their entirety a complete apparatus for the history of the parish of Rougham from ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Two frigates, bearing the American colours, were to have been placed under the orders of Paul Jones, and M. de Lafayette was to command the small army intended to descend unexpectedly upon the western coast of England, and to ransack Bristol, Liverpool, and other commercial towns, for the advantage of the American finances. But this expedition was soon considered below the position in which M. de Lafayette was placed, and was abandoned for the plan of a descent on England, which was to be executed by the combined forces ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... in vain to find A simile[2] for womankind, A simile, I mean, to fit 'em, In every circumstance to hit 'em.[3] Through every beast and bird I went, I ransack'd every element; And, after peeping through all nature, To find so whimsical a creature, A cloud[4] presented to my view, And straight this parallel I drew: Clouds turn with every wind about, They keep us in suspense and doubt, Yet, oft perverse, like ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... had painstakingly scoured with silver polish one day to please the little tyrant, and which increased their value many times—so many times, in fact, that he hid them every night in fear of burglars. Since he concealed them each time in a different place, he was obliged to ransack his auntie's room every morning, to the great disturbance of Martha, the maid, who was an ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... await the action of the grand jury, which was soon to convene. Both he and his family had foreseen the event, and he had made the necessary arrangements for the conduct of his business. Humiliating as his arrest was, they all bore it with Spartan courage, and prepared to ransack the earth, if need be, to ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... to the landscape for a comparison, he does not ransack wood and field for specialties, as if he were gathering simples, but takes one image, obvious, familiar, and makes it new to us either by sympathy or contrast with his own immediate feeling. He always looked upon Nature with the eyes ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... collected, the water having separated the metal from the earth, and deposited it in the sands, thereby saving the expence of digging; hence it is esteemed an infallible gain to be able to divert a stream from its channel, and ransack its bed. From this account of the manner of gathering gold, it should follow that there are no mines of this metal in Brazil, and this the governor of Rio Grande, who happened to be at St Catharines, and frequently visited Mr Anson, did ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... but because, to use Doctor Johnson's words, the translator "exhibits his author's thoughts in such a dress as the author would have given them had his language been English." That same "indefatigable youthfulness" which converted courtiers into sailors and despatched them into unknown seas to ransack new worlds, urged men of the pen to seek out and to pillage, with an equal ardor of adventure, the intellectual wealth of their contemporaries in other lands and the buried and forgotten stores of the ancients upon their own neighboring book-shelves. A universal ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... navy toward the armed ships of the United States, "a few fir-built things with bits of striped bunting at their mast-heads," as George Canning, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, described them. Long before the declaration of war British squadrons hovered off the port of New York to ransack merchant vessels or to seize them as prizes. In the course of the Napoleonic wars England had met and destroyed the navies of all her enemies in Europe. The battles of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar, and a hundred lesser ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings before the council were all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the representative MOTHER of our race and age that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us. For any record of such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history. She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... and day. Find out where he lives and what he does; and ransack his room if possible. He is either an innocent man or a sleek rascal. Report to me ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... piracy, whate'er men say, Thou art a knight on Gloriana's quest. Oh, lay that golden unction to thy soul, This is no piracy, but glorious war, Waged for thy country and for all mankind, Therefore put out to sea without one fear, Ransack their El Dorados of the West, Pillage their golden galleons, sap their strength Even at its utmost fountains; let them know That there is blood, not water, in our veins. Sail on, my captain, to the glorious end, And, though at first thou needs must sail alone And undefended, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... but proceeded from the over-ruling hand of God, who put those things into their hearts for our safety and preservation. The People of the City whence the King fled, ran away also leaving their Houses and Goods behind them. Where we found good Prey and Plunder; being permitted to Ransack the Houses of all such as were fled away ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning and say, 'I am full of life, I will go to sea and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... perilous and painful prize! Which quickly drew me to that verdant wood, Doom'd to mislead me midway in life's course; The world I since have ransack'd part by part, For rhymes, or stones, or sap of simples new, Which yet might give ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... his fellows gat the field and put the Romans to flight, and after returned and came with their fellowship in such wise that no man of worship was lost of them, save that Sir Gawaine was sore hurt. Then the king did do ransack his wounds and comforted him. And thus was the beginning of the first journey of the Britons and Romans, and there were slain of the Romans more than ten thousand, and great joy and mirth was made that night in the host of King Arthur. And on the ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Satan as to taunt him with the mode in which he executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one new method of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... spears, yet know there is a place under his lowest belly whither thou mayst plunge the blade; aim at this with thy sword, and thou shalt probe the snake to his centre. Thence go fearless up to the hill, drive the mattock, dig and ransack the holes; soon fill thy pouch with treasure, and bring back to the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... final answer of France this week. Bussy(169) was in great pain on the fireworks for quebec, lest he should be obliged to illuminate his house: you see I ransack my memory for something ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... don't expect to find him in here, I suppose? Of course, if your duty carries you so far as to ransack a lady's room, ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... club last winter," said I, "did you occupy your time in discussions of the text? Did you compare manuscripts? Did you investigate the canonicity of Shakspeare's various plays? Did you ransack the past to know the value of the latest theory that there never was a Will. Shakspeare save as a nom de plume for Lord Bacon? Did you inquire into the origin of his several plots, and study to know how much of his work was really his own and how much was borrowed ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... said a word as Kennedy continued to ransack the place. At last under a rubbish heap he found a revolver wrapped up loosely in an old sweater. Quickly, under the bright light, Craig drew Clendenin's pistol, fitted a cartridge into it and fired at the wall. Again into the second gun he ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and, the stage being thus left vacant, we hear a latch-key turning in the outer door. A lady in evening dress enters, goes up to the bureau at the back of the stage, and calmly proceeds to break it open and ransack it. While she is thus burglariously employed, Lord Eric enters, and cannot refrain from a slight expression of surprise. The lady takes the situation with humorous calmness, they fall into conversation, and it is manifest that at every word Lord Eric is more and more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the town of Castanium at daybreak; the bands of Victor and Marsus will accompany you and will be also under your orders. My orders are strict, that no one is to be injured unless he resists. Tell the inhabitants that we wish them no harm. Ransack the armourers' shops for arrow and javelin heads, and search all the private houses for weapons; also bring off all the brass, copper, and iron you can find, with every axe head and chopper in the town. We can erect charcoal ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... with my garden, and people are very kind in giving me things. To-morrow we go to the Rowans, and I am to ransack his garden! I do think the exchange of herbaceous perennials is one of the joys of life. You can hardly think how delicious it feels to garden after six months of frost and snow. Imagine my feelings when Mrs. Medley ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... struggling and bargaining with a contentious company of porters. Alas! H. was not to be seen among them. There was still a chance; he might be one of the passengers who had got ashore before my coming down, and I was preparing to rush back to the city to ransack the hotels. Just then an internal convulsion shook the swarm around the luggage pile; out burst a little Gallego staggering under a huge British portmanteau, and followed by its much desired, and now almost ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... scholars before him had devoted themselves with indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,—or pretending to ransack,—the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures. As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,— particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would be found, if not of the particular ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... moment dumb. Dorothy and Bess appeared, having completed a ransack of staterooms and cabins. The sight of her daughter restored to Mrs. Hanway-Harley the power ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of skill and pride, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... off; these collections must come back. Factories have been robbed of their pumps, of their equipment, of their trucks; other pumps, other equipment, other trucks must be put in their place. Otherwise, nothing will prevent that in the future other expeditions will come to ransack other countries. A bold move towards Venice allowed base hands to be laid on the most beautiful works of art humanity had produced. A fortunate descent on the shores of Long Island or of New Jersey would allow the Metropolitan Museum to ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... contentious company of porters. Alas! H. was not to be seen among them. There was still a chance; he might be one of the passengers who had got ashore before my coming down, and I was preparing to rush back to the city to ransack the hotels. Just then an internal convulsion shook the swarm around the luggage pile; out burst a little Gallego staggering under a huge British portmanteau, and followed by its much desired, and now almost ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured, she would give us ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Balbo's eloquence applaud, and swear, He gropes his breeches with a monarch's air. For arts, like these, preferr'd, admir'd, caress'd, They first invade your table, then your breast; [y]Explore your secrets with insidious art, Watch the weak hour, and ransack all the heart; Then soon your ill-placed confidence repay, Commence your lords, and govern or betray. [z]By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe, but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling muse. The sober ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried; "up, friend. Your life hangs trembling in the scales; up, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... my intimacy with him lasted many years,—he became the feeder of my intellect. He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars. Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... after my marriage, by one of those fatalities that give ground for shameful accusations! I shall ask my aunt to carry the certificate in her pocket, until I can deposit it in some place of safety. The duke would ransack my rooms for it, and the whole police are at his service. Government refuses nothing to a man high in favor. If Joseph saw me going to Mademoiselle de Vaudrey's apartments at this hour, the whole house would hear of it. Ah—I am alone in ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then, how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack heaps of refuse which have ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... orators to seem damning and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, would have ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the copy of "Pickwick" in which he had placed the will, was separated from his wife's bedroom by her boudoir. The walls were thick; through them no ordinary sound could penetrate, and, unless since his departure Jeanne had moved her maid or some other chaperon into his bedroom, he could ransack it at his leisure. The safe in which he would replace the will was in the dining-room. From the sleeping-quarters of Preston, the butler, and the other servants it was ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... were driven toward the prow, and made to understand by signs that they must not move on peril of their lives. A Tuck was placed at the helm, and the tartane's head turned towards the pirate captor; and all the others, who were not employed otherwise, began to ransack the vessel and feast on the provisions. Some hams were thrown overboard, with shouts of evident scorn as belonging to the unclean beast, but the wine was eagerly drank, and Maitre Hebert uttered a wail of dismay as he saw five Moors gorging large pieces ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sweet, yet perilous and painful prize! Which quickly drew me to that verdant wood, Doom'd to mislead me midway in life's course; The world I since have ransack'd part by part, For rhymes, or stones, or sap of simples new, Which yet might give me back the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... preaches like him. Else religion would be to every one just what it should be, the most valuable and reliable friend of men. He explained the gospel of the day without fanaticism, yet with a grand simplicity which needed not to ransack the world for its wisdom, its figures of speech, or its scholastic arts. It was no religious study, hurled in its three divisions at the heart of stony sinners; nor was it what some would call a current article of pulpit manufacture. It was no cold, heathen, moral lecture, which sought nothing ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... trow[obs3]. take into consideration; take counsel &c. (be advised) 695; commune with oneself, bethink oneself; collect one's thoughts; revolve in the mind, turn over in the mind, run over in the mind; chew the cud upon, sleep upon; take counsel of one's pillow, advise with one's pillow. rack one's brains, ransack one's brains, crack one's brains, beat one's brains, cudgel one's brains; set one's brain to work, set one's wits to work. harbor an idea, entertain an idea, cherish an idea, nurture an idea &c. 453; take into one's head; bear in mind; reconsider. occur; present itself, suggest itself; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... sometimes, I suppose. Well, shall we go in? I have shown you all the wonders of the garden, and told you all the wonders connected with it of which I know aught. No doubt there would be other wonders more wonderful, if one could ransack the private history of all the Claverings for the last hundred years. I hope, Miss Burton, that any marvels which may attend your career here may be happy marvels." She then took Florence by the hand, and, drawing ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... morning I had taken a huge volume of Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then on our hour had been one of spiritual communion. I found the young mind insatiate and I had to ransack the library for stories and poems and pictures suitable to his years, though he rapidly developed a very advanced taste. The morning I read him the Shakespearian lines woven around the little Princes in the Tower, having suitably connected up the story for him with ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... I will consider these things, and appease the mutineers. But it goes hard with my pride, Thrasyllus, to make equals of this soft-tongued race. Why, these Ionians, do they not enjoy themselves in perpetual holidays?—spend days at the banquet?—ransack earth and sea for dainties and for perfumes?—and shall they be the equals of us men, who, from the age of seven to that of sixty, are wisely taught to make life so barren and toilsome, that we may well have no fear of death? I hate these sleek and merry feast-givers; they are a perpetual ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... upon the fallen man, fighting and cursing to be the first to ransack his pockets; while Philip, with his two companions, ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... "You ransack Baxter Street to-morrow for Dickey Series C, and come with it to this address," and she placed a small card ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... seemed disposed to be sociable while we were regaling ourselves, but not knowing how to go about it, was silent. Thus the onus fell upon us. So we began;—the crops, the weather, the soil, the neighbors, the invasion, the Great City. We had to ransack our heads for topics, each being quickly exhausted. We ate all our sharp appetites asked for; sharp they were, for it was now the middle of the afternoon, and we had been up since 3 o'clock A.M. Rising to go we offered money but the patriotic lady refused to look at it,—we ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... arid I shall remain deeply grateful for them all the days of my life. If I am able to repay you by avenging you on some proud miscreant that hath done you any wrong, know that it is my office to help the weak, to revenge the wronged, and to punish traitors. Ransack your memory, and if you find anything of this sort for me to do, you have but to utter it, and I promise you, by the Order of Knighthood which I have received, to procure you satisfaction to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... o'clock our cavalcade started across the prairie for Efaw Kotee's settlement. Tommy and Monsieur were keen to see it, and especially was the latter keyed up to ransack the place for proofs and information. Smilax led, keeping away from the graves. Doloria had made no reference to casualties, accepting them as an unfortunate necessity, and only once asked about the old ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... incredibly short time in which to walk from Hanover Square to Regent's Park without the chance of cutting across the squares, to look for a man, whose whereabouts you could not determine to within twenty yards or so, to have an argument with him, murder him, and ransack his pockets. And then there was the total ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Mr. Hobbs, and forthwith began to ransack his pockets for the band which said he was ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... amidst this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had allowed this pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins, would not ransack them in vain. But when he learned that the disorder increased; that the old guard itself was seduced; that the Russian peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which he caused them to be liberally paid for the purpose of drawing ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... ones cry for hunger, so I ransack the ruins and bring away my spoils. Eat, Kinder, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... with the air of a man who is longing to sleep, walked over to his master from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate her. But as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... trot, Poured out what first from quick invention came, Nor never stood one word thereof to blot; Much like his wit that was to use the same. But with my verses he his mistress won, Who doated on the dolt beyond all measure. But see, for you to heaven for phrase I run, And ransack all Apollo's golden treasure! Yet by my troth, this fool his love obtains, And I lose you for all my ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... there gold is always to be collected, the water having separated the metal from the earth, and deposited it in the sands, thereby saving the expence of digging; hence it is esteemed an infallible gain to be able to divert a stream from its channel, and ransack its bed. From this account of the manner of gathering gold, it should follow that there are no mines of this metal in Brazil, and this the governor of Rio Grande, who happened to be at St Catharines, and frequently visited ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... were for this very purpose, and under a presence of searching for and receiving the gold, he sent a centurion and a guard of soldiers; who, the set day being come, rose all at once, and at the very self-same time fell upon them, and proceeded to ransack the cities; so that in one hour a hundred and fifty thousand persons were made slaves, and threescore and ten cities sacked. Yet what was given to each soldier, out of so vast a destruction and utter ruin, amounted to no ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Instantly I began to ransack my brain for the possibilities, and almost at once the talk on the train with Horace Barton, the wagon sales manager, flashed into the field ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... of interesting objects, was most actively at work. At such moments, sensibility quickly furnishes similes, and the sublimated spirits combine images, which rising spontaneously, it is not necessary coldly to ransack the understanding or memory, till the laborious efforts of judgment exclude present sensations, and damp ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... be added a dozen or more which seem to be of doubtful formation, such as huckaback, pickapack, gimcrack, ticktack, picknick, barrack, knapsack, hollyhock, shamrock, hammock, hillock, hammock, bullock, roebuck. But the verbs on which this argument is founded are only six; attack, ransack, traffick, frolick, mimick, and physick; and these, unquestionably, must either be spelled with the k, or must assume it in their derivatives. Now that useful class of words which are generally and properly written with final c, are about four hundred and fifty in number, and are all ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... recommenced that rapid walking to and fro which was working such havoc in the nerves of the man in the room below her. When she paused, it was to ransack a trunk and bring out a flat wallet filled with newspaper clippings, many of them discoloured by time, and all of them showing marks ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... summer things, or its history and associations, is not to be approached by anything a millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers it as he goes to his work in the field, and yet none of the rich families whose names are synonymous with wealth can get anything to equal it if they ransack the earth. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... replied, "I do not lack, Though with but one provided; And, truth to honour, for that matter, I hold it than a thousand better." In fresh dispute they sided; And loudly were they at it, when Approach'd a mob of dogs and men. "Now," said the cat, "your tricks ransack, And put your cunning brains to rack, One life to save; I'll show you mine— A trick, you see, for saving nine." With that, she climb'd a lofty pine. The fox his hundred ruses tried, And yet no safety found. A hundred times he falsified The nose of every hound.— ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... his untidy ways once more. He would never forgive himself for having allowed that girl to ransack his drawers—but he must act, and at once! He must, without fail, find that mislaid document. Of one thing he was sure—the document was not on the premises. Brocq jumped ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... having equipped him for the study of human society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788—September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and social customs of the ancient Persians, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularly turned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her in the whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn't ransack to find the finery and frippery that ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... themselves with indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,—or pretending to ransack,—the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures. As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,— particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would be found, if not ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... human hair. Several of the horizontal loculi contained the bones of men and beasts: I did not disturb them, as all appeared to be modern. The floors sounding hollow, gave my companions hopes of "finds;" but I had learned, after many a disappointment, how carefully the Bedawi ransack such places. We dug into four sepulchres, including the sunken catacomb and the (southern) inscribed tomb. Usually six inches of flooring led to the ground-rock; in the sarcophagi about eight inches of tamped earth was based upon nine feet ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... said the other foreman, an hour later, as the two mounted loaned horses, "I reckon your big talk goes up in smoke. You're not the only director in this cattle company. Dell, ransack both our wagons to-day, and see if you can't unearth some dainties for this sick lad. No use looking in Straw's commissary; he never has anything to eat; Injuns won't ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... the royal party was masked, the unwilling host knew his guests but too well, and dared not deny their peremptory command. In the midst of the carousal, at a preconcerted signal, the king's followers began to ransack the house, maltreating the occupants, wantonly destroying the costly furniture, appropriating the silver plate, and breaking open doors and coffers in search of money. The next day even Paris itself was indignant ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... I knew him at the Siege of Pampelona, he was then a Colonel of French Horse, who when the Town was ransack'd, nobly treated my Brother and my self, preserving us from all Insolencies; and I must own, (besides great Obligations) I have I know not what, that pleads kindly for him about my Heart, and will suffer no other to enter— But ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Cartier and others attempted to establish a permanent settlement on the St. Lawrence. As it was hard to get good colonists to settle in the cold climate so far north, the leaders were allowed to ransack the prisons for debtors and criminals to make up the necessary numbers. They selected the neighborhood of the cliffs where Cartier had wintered in 1535, where Quebec now stands, as the most suitable place for their colony. But ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... social status altogether than that poor, weak, surreptitious Matthew. It was therefore only natural that the marriage should be celebrated in the Meynell mansion. Having considered this, I had only to ransack the registers of a certain number of churches round and about Aldersgate-street in order to find what I wanted; and after about a day and a half of hard labour, I did find the invaluable document which places me one generation nearer ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded. 'Had you hidden a tapu?' we may conceive him asking; and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and this is perhaps the strangest feature of the system—that ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bowed. "Here at last we find rest and refreshment. Let a feast be spread in the great hall, ransack the place for good cheer. We've done brave work this glorious day, my lads, and a merry ending we'll have before the ...
— 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
... perfumer, taking the chemist's hand. "This treasure has no value except the time that I have spent in finding it. We had to ransack all Germany to find it on China paper before lettering. I knew that you wished for it and that your occupations did not leave you time to search for it; I have been your commercial traveller, that is all. Accept therefore, not a paltry engraving, but efforts, anxieties, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Abdullatif at Bagdad, and the European paradises of Naples, Florence, Monza, Mannheim and Leyden to draw up plans and a particular description of the Oxford Physic Garden, by Magdalen College, as well as the plantations of Worcester, Trinity and St. John's Colleges; and to ransack the bookshops of that seat of learning for such works as might be procurable in no more difficult tongue than the Latin. In this way Captain Barker became possessed of a vast number of monkish herbals, Pliny's Historia Naturalis, the Herbarum ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lead THE RABBLE; but for their own private use, with almost all the able statesmen that ever existed, or now exist, when they talk of right and wrong they only mean proper and improper; and their measure of conduct is, not what they ought, but what they dare. For the truth of this I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to one of the ablest judges of men that ever lived—the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact, a man who could thoroughly control his vices whenever they interfered with his interests, and who could completely ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... thine honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... study by itself. A man may read familiarly the Mechanique Celeste, and yet not know how to teach the multiplication table. He may read Arabic or Sanskrit, and not know how to teach a child the alphabet of his mother tongue. The Sabbath-school teacher may dip deep into biblical lore, he may ransack the commentaries, and may become, as many Sabbath-school teachers are, truly learned in Bible knowledge, and yet be utterly incompetent to teach a class of children. He can no more hit the wandering attention, or make a lodgment of his knowledge in the minds of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... youth, blood, birth, and breeding to his finger-tips, sir. But he is, above all else, a brother to a—a sister, sir. Ah! what a creature! Fair, sir? fair as the immortal Helena! Proud, sir? proud as an arch-duchess! Handsome, sir? handsome, sir, as—as—oh, dammit, words fail me; but go, sir, go and ransack Olympus, and you couldn't match her, 'pon my soul! Diana, sir? Diana was a frump! Venus? Venus was a dowdy hoyden, by George! and as for the ox-eyed Juno, she was a positive cow to this young beauty! And then—her ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... de Yankees. Don't 'member dat they was so bad. You know they say even de devil ain't as black as he is painted. De Yankees did take off all de mules, cows, hogs, and sheep, and ransack de smoke-house, but they never burnt a thing at our place. Folks wonder at dat. Some say it was 'cause General Bratton was a high ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... ambition compasses, And is encompassed, while as craft deceives, And is deceived: whilst man doth ransack man, And builds on blood, and rises by distress; And th' Inheritance of desolation leaves To great-expecting hopes: He looks thereon, As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, And bears no venture ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in a low voice, 'you may ransack the town, as I've done, and get all your keys together. I want to see if you can find one, or contrive one with any locksmith's help, that will fit into that lock. I'll give you a month to try it. I'd give another man six. But you'll do the work of six in a sixth ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that, by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than master Sprigg was not to be found in the land—ransack the Paradise from Big Bone Lick ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... them of me. I denied all knowledge. Then they ransacked this house—I think they ransack it daily, but I am too clever for them. I am not allowed to go beyond the verandah, and when at first I disobeyed there was always one of them in wait to force me back with a pistol behind my head. Every morning Leon brings us food for the day—good food, but not enough, so ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... harm all ranks, all arts, all crafts appal: At Mars' harsh blast arch, rampart, altar fall! Ah! hard as adamant, a braggart Czar Arms vassal-swarms, and fans a fatal war! Rampant at that bad call, a Vandal-band Harass, and harm, and ransack Wallach-land! A Tartar phalanx Balkan's scarp hath past, And Allah's standard falls, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... modern history offers no other instance of forced labour and wholesale deportations. If, fifty years ago, the conscience of the world revolted against black slavery, what should its feelings be today when it is confronted with this new and most appalling form of white slavery? We should in vain ransack the chronicles of history to find, even in ancient times, crimes similar to this one. For the Jews were at war with Babylon, the Gauls were at war with Rome. Belgium did not wage war against Germany. She merely ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... she had just begun to cut out. Though Tilling was noted for the ingenuity with which its more fashionable ladies devised novel and quaint effects in their dress in an economical manner, Diva felt sure, ransack her memory though she might, that nobody had ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... is known at the camp, and a great hue-and-cry follows. Handbills are got out, a reward is offered, and by that Sunday noon his name is on every street-corner. Squads of soldiers and police ransack the city and invade every Rebel asylum. Strange things are brought to light, and strange gentry dragged out of dark closets; but nowhere is found the Texan. The search is well done, for the pursuers are in dead earnest; and, Captain Hines, if you don't trust him now, you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... people have," she answered. "It's easy enough to pick up imitations in the second-hand shops, or to ransack country houses; but these pieces are all genuine and have been in the family for generations. There are three Chippendales that belonged to my grandfather on my mother's side, Colonel Styles, and this is a Sheraton. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... in acquiring an insight into new things is a natural tendency or drift of the mind. As soon as we see something new and desire to understand it, at once we involuntarily begin to ransack our old stock of ideas to discover anything in our previous experience which corresponds to this or is like it. For whatever is like it or has an analogy to it, or serves the same uses, will explain this new thing, though the two objects be in other ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off, and his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the army was. When I told her it would be along shortly, she expressed her fears that they would take everything on the premises. They set me out a lunch and treated me rather kindly, so that I really began to sympathize with them; for I knew that the soldiers would ransack their house and confiscate everything they could lay their hands on. At last I resolved to do what I could to protect them. After the generals and the staff officers had passed by, I took it upon myself to be a sentry over the house. ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... undoubtedly ransack the ship and plunder her of every article of the slightest value, in the first place," said I; "but what they will next do is not so certain. 'Dead men tell no tales,' however, and the chances are that every male on board will be slaughtered in cold blood, or thrown overboard, after which ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... offending Trojan—service kind, But lost on thee, regardless of it all. And now—What now? Thy threatening is to seize 200 Thyself, the just requital of my toils, My prize hard-earn'd, by common suffrage mine. I never gain, what Trojan town soe'er We ransack, half thy booty. The swift march And furious onset—these I largely reap, 205 But, distribution made, thy lot exceeds Mine far; while I, with any pittance pleased, Bear to my ships the little that I ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... most extraordinary effect was produced on two of them, for they fell down on the deck, and rolled about as if in intense agony. This drew the attention of all hands on them; and as we had no surgeon on board, the captain began to ransack his medical knowledge to find remedies ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... to it?"... I would ransack the phases of my development from the first shy unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as a man will go through muddled account books to find ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of Rossetti amidst these environments which aptly illustrates almost every trait of his character: his impetuosity, and superstition especially. It was his daily habit to ransack old book-stalls, and carry off to his studio whatever treasures he unearthed, but when, upon further investigation, he found he had been deceived as to the value of a book that at first looked promising, he usually ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... between popes and kings, Debate, like sparks from flints' collision, springs: As Jove's loud thunderbolts were forged by heat, The like our Cyclops on their anvils beat; 170 All the rich mines of learning ransack'd are, To furnish ammunition for this war: Uncharitable zeal our reason whets, And double edges on our passion sets; 'Tis the most certain sign the world's accursed, That the best things corrupted are the worst; 'Twas ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... "I haven't lost them, they are all in the secret compartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put them before we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coach when we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats of their horses. They and their horses made so much noise that the brigands thought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging off Bambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... exactly similar to that which Greece, at the time of the great Asiatic invasions, rendered to the mother of this civilization. But, while the service is similar, the act surpasses all comparison. We may ransack history in vain for aught to approach it in grandeur. The magnificent sacrifice at Thermopylae, which is perhaps the noblest action in the annals of war, is illumined with an equally heroic but less ideal light, for it was less disinterested and more material. Leonidas and his three ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... looks as if all the City would presently be affected—all will have to run the risk of contagion. There are thousands of women now who voluntarily enter the houses as nurses for a small rate of pay. Even robbers, they say, will enter and ransack the houses of the dead in search of plunder. It will be a shame indeed then if one should shrink from doing so when possibly ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... annex Asia than Isocrates spent in writing an oration, to bid the Greeks attack Persia, we know what he would have thought of Macaulay's antithesis. He blames Xenophon for a poor pun, and Plato, less justly, for mere figurative badinage. It would be an easy task to ransack contemporaries, even great contemporaries, for similar failings, for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap erudition, for misplaced flippancy, for ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... compasses, And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives, And is deceiv'd: whilst man doth ransack man And builds on blood, and rises by distress; And th' inheritance of desolation leaves To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon, As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, And bears ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and will inevitably be captured by its most lustful devil—or else be murdered. I am here like a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the orator Hortensius there was found a stock of 10,000 jars (at 33 quarts) of foreign wine. It was no wonder that the Italian wine-growers began to complain of the competition of the wines from the Greek islands. No naturalist could ransack land and sea more zealously for new animals and plants, than the epicures of that day ransacked them for new culinary dainties.(53) The circumstance of the guest taking an emetic after a banquet, to avoid the consequences of the varied fare set before him, no ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the women who have so generously allowed me to ransack their treasuries, filching here and there as I chose, always modestly declaiming against the existence of wit in what they ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... You know that I wander about Paris a great deal, like book collectors who ransack book stalls. I just look at the sights, at the people, at all that is passing by and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... acquaintance whom I could apply to? I ransack my memory to find a man good for a penny piece, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... To their belov'd Appointment flew; With busy search thro' ev'ry Class, Thro' ev'ry Rank of Men they pass, In ev'ry Class of Men they find Some Hearts corrupted to their Mind, Ev'ry Profession they explore, Ev'ry Profession gives them more; The higher Functions ransack'd, now Each vulgar Trade, each sweaty Brow Is search'd, and in them all were found, Some hollow, rotten, and unsound. In each depraved Bosom dwell These Sprites, nor miss their native Hell. Hence ev'ry Blockhead, Knave, and Dunce, Start into Preachers all at once. Hence ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, with the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack; the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus enquired into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise my ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... are cut off from that domestick security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreable. Those Officers may under colour of law and the cloak of a general warrant, break thro' the sacred rights of the Domicil, ransack mens houses, destroy their securities, carry off their property, and with little danger to themselves commit ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... daybreak; the bands of Victor and Marsus will accompany you and will be also under your orders. My orders are strict, that no one is to be injured unless he resists. Tell the inhabitants that we wish them no harm. Ransack the armourers' shops for arrow and javelin heads, and search all the private houses for weapons; also bring off all the brass, copper, and iron you can find, with every axe head and chopper in the town. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... opinion to you, do not attempt too much, for it is quality rather than quantity which is now desirable. I would therefore leave the multiplication of objects to the larger order of telescopes, and to those who are given to sweep and ransack the heavens, of whom there is a goodly corps. Now, for your purpose, I would recommend a batch of neat, but not over-close, binary systems, selected so as to have always one ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... mercy on himself, and no mercy on others," he explained, "where his literary labors are concerned. You must spare yourself, Miss Emily. It is not only absurd, it's cruel, to expect you to ransack old newspapers for discoveries in Yucatan, from the time when Stephens published his 'Travels in Central America'—nearly forty years since! Begin with back numbers published within a few years—say five years from the present date—and let us see ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the old state of Delaware, and unites the waters of the two bays. Here we were handed into a barge, or what we in common parlance would term a large canal boat; but the Americans are the fondest people in the universe of big names, and ransack the Dictionary for the most pompous appellations with which to designate their works or productions. The universal fondness for European titles that obtains here, is also remarkable. The president, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Few people will trouble to discover the most convenient forms and materials, and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... decorations; but every man, whether he copies or invents, whether he delivers his own thoughts or those of another, has often found himself deficient in the power of expression, big with ideas which he could not utter, obliged to ransack his memory for terms adequate to his conceptions, and at last unable to impress upon his reader the image existing in his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... which was impending over their festival, and bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings before the council were all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the steamer "Ajax." We shall arrive there in about twelve days. My friends seem determined that I shall not lack acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already sent me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing. I am to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts and the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the Sacramento Union—for which they pay me as much money as I would get if I staid ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the mind strictly to the actual facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and intellectually individual, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... him, and confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with an indulgent smile,—"for a clever man, you are really TOO foolish! Can't you see that you have betrayed my whereabouts to Sebastian? I crept away secretly, like a thief in the night, giving no name or place; and, having the world to ransack, he might have found it hard to track me; for HE had not YOUR clue of the Basingstoke letter—nor your reason for seeking me. But now that YOU have followed me openly, with your name blazoned forth in the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... your past, it comes in pictures. You have to ransack a great photographic gallery. Before you ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... have any individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, "I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:" no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... several cowboys to ransack the house. We went through the rooms, searching, calling out, flashing our lanterns ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... learning train'd, His rigid judgment Fancy's flights restrain'd; Correctly pruned each wild luxuriant thought, Mark'd out her course, nor spared a glorious fault. The book of man he read with nicest art, And ransack'd all the secrets of the heart; Exerted penetration's utmost force, And traced each passion to its proper source; Then, strongly mark'd, in liveliest colours drew, And brought each foible forth to public view: 280 The coxcomb felt a lash in every word, And fools, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... and stood fairly within the church, it was impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to cipher a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more similes. St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two of the Washington capitol set one on top of the other—if the capitol were wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... return to the anchorage, a party of officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, which I had found on the summit of a neighbouring hill. Two immense stones, each probably weighing at least a couple of tons, had been placed in front of a ledge of rock about six feet high. At the bottom of the grave on the hard rock there ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... two would have claimed their share—and a piece of plunder belonging to Mlle. Celie. Well, she has nothing but the diamond eardrops. Suppose Vauquier is left alone to guard Mlle. Celie while the other two ransack Mme. Dauvray's room. She sees her chance. The girl cannot stir hand or foot to save herself. Vauquier tears the eardrops in a hurry from her ears—and there I have my drop of blood just where I should expect it to be. But now follow this! Vauquier hides the earrings in her pocket. She goes to ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... thought of her or service of her other than their own, take to the cudgel and the rifle, and join sectarian orders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their own ignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... the profit side of the account; you say not a word of the cost of it all. First, if there was a whisper of a new piece (no matter how bad the weather), one had to ransack all the garrets in Paris, until one had found the author; then to get a reading of the play, and adroitly to insinuate that there was a part in it which would be rendered in a superior manner by a certain person of my acquaintance.—"And by whom, if you please?"—"By whom? a pretty ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... come without the added dignity of years. I have a motherly interest in you. If you were not married I dare say I should 'ransack the ages' for some one fit and proper, and turn ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Nine-tenths of the neighbours were far away on the seaters, and of the small remainder, almost all were attending the bishop on the opposite shore of the lake. Rolf shook his head at every deserted farm-house that he passed, thinking how the pirates might ransack the dwellings, if they should happen to discover that few inhabitants remained in them but those whose limbs were too old to climb the mountain. He shook his head again when he thought what consternation he might ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... got to de place and 'gin ransack it. Old Missy done lock dat stormhouse door and sot down on it and she wouldn't git up when dey done tell her to. So dey takes her by de arms and lifts her off it. Dey didn't hurt her any. Den dey brekks de lock and comes down in dere. I didn't see whay dey hadn't found us ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... However, a most extraordinary effect was produced on two of them, for they fell down on the deck, and rolled about as if in intense agony. This drew the attention of all hands on them; and as we had no surgeon on board, the captain began to ransack his medical knowledge to ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... drawn in the First Book, that the Poet adds nothing to it in the Second. We were before told, that he was the first who taught Mankind to ransack the Earth for Gold and Silver, and that he was the Architect of Pandaemonium, or the Infernal Place, where the Evil Spirits were to meet in Council. His Speech in this Book is every way suitable to so depraved a Character. How proper is that Reflection, of their being unable ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a most profound astonishment on noticing any piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some underhand motive ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... stated that already a large gang of thieves and vampires have descended on and near the place. Their presumed purpose is to rob the dead and ransack the demolished buildings. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... ambition compasses, And is encompass'd; whilst as craft deceives, And is deceiv'd: whilst man doth ransack man And builds on blood, and rises by distress; And th' inheritance of desolation leaves To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon, As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, And ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... ejaculated Mr. Hobbs, and forthwith began to ransack his pockets for the band which said he ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... if I may hazard an opinion to you, do not attempt too much, for it is quality rather than quantity which is now desirable. I would therefore leave the multiplication of objects to the larger order of telescopes, and to those who are given to sweep and ransack the heavens, of whom there is a goodly corps. Now, for your purpose, I would recommend a batch of neat, but not over-close, binary systems, selected so as to have always one or ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... herself face to face with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her ideas melted like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning faculties were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only a void; still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the truth, was the one thing that had remained. She broke ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... later won't do. I must know to-night; or, if that is impossible, to-morrow. Were it not for the mortification it would cause her I should beg you to put on all your force and ransack the city for this bride of five hours. But such publicity is too shocking. I should like to give her a day to reconsider her treatment of me. She cannot mean to leave me for good. She has too much self-respect; to say nothing of her very ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... home in idleness and riot, Ransack for mistresses th' unwholesome stews, And never know the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... respectable pursuit. He was aware, of course, that he could easily buy her an English peer or a foreign Prince for husband. But Sir Tancred's rank and birth satisfied his simple tastes; and he was quite sure that he might ransack the English peerage and the Courts of Europe without finding her as good a husband. He did not perceive that his millions ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... sir, as I should go and fight against the Hall? No, sir, my bad brother Nat, who is as full of wickedness as a gooseberry's full of pips, might go and try and take the Manor, if it was only so as to get a chance to ransack my tool-shed; but you know better than to think I'd go and do such a thing by him. Would ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Hotel de Pekin before I had done anything startling, and soon C——, the genial and energetic Swiss, who is the master of this wonderful hostelry, had given me coffee. He told me then to go into his private rooms, ransack the place and take what I liked. I found I was not alone in his private apartments. Baron R——, the Russian commandant, had just come in before me, and had fallen asleep from sheer fatigue as he was in the act of eating something. He looked so ridiculous lying in a chair with his ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... I had in this was very various, so that at one time guineas seemed to be dropping out of my pockets, whereas at others I might ransack them through without finding so much as a silver penny. And according to the state of my fortunes, so did I prosper in Marian's regard; and in this ill-state of my affairs I grew reckless, and drank to drive away better thoughts, and so came on rapidly ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Borkins," he said abruptly. "We've known each other a long time. I shouldn't like anything to happen to the chap while he's in my service, that's all. Get out now and make enquiries in every direction. Have Dimmock go down to the village. And ransack every public house round about. If you can't find any trace of him—" his lips tightened for a moment, "then I'll fetch in the police. I'll get the finest detective in the land on this thing, I'll ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... upon their piety and heroism, and portrays, in her most glowing and impassioned hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honour they acquired for themselves, and the great services they rendered to Christianity. In the following pages we shall ransack the stores of both, to discover the true spirit that animated the motley multitude who took up arms in the service of the cross, leaving history to vouch for facts, but not disdaining the aid of contemporary poetry and romance, to throw light ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... errand that he should be ashamed of, he reminded himself with impatient severity, as he traversed the upper hall on tip-toe to the western chamber. He had, on sundry previous occasions, sought, in the receptacles he was about to ransack, for sealing-wax, pencils, and the like trifles. Mabel was too wise a woman not to keep her secrets under lock and key, and if there were private documents left in his way, he was too honorable to ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... I get to it?"... I would ransack the phases of my development from the first shy unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as a man will go through muddled account books to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... poorest classes, entirely unmolested; and that we trusted much on many occasions to the honesty of the people, and never found cause to repent our trust—I cannot but feel that it would be an ungracious act to ransack newspapers and Reports to furnish materials for recording in detail, the vices of a population whom I have only personally known by their virtues. Let you and I, reader, leave off with the same pleasant impressions ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... whistling tears the air and there is a shower of shrapnel above us. Meteorites flash and scatter in fearful flight in the heart of the yellow clouds. Revolving missiles rush through the heavens to break and burn upon the bill, to ransack it and exhume the old bones of men; and the thundering flames multiply ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... much—only half a dozen articles of plate off the sideboard. Lady Brackenstall thinks that they were themselves so disturbed by the death of Sir Eustace that they did not ransack the house, as ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Corentin, to the gendarme, "and take him away by himself. And shut up that girl, too," pointing to Catherine. "As for you, Peyrade, search for papers," adding in his ear, "Ransack everything, spare nothing.—Monsieur l'abbe," he said, confidentially, "I have an important communication to make to you"; and he took ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in their arms; they are drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... that the old Romans greatly delighted in witnessing the combats of wild beasts, as well as gladiators, and that they used to ransack their whole broad empire for new and unheard-of animals—anything and everything that had fierceness and fight in it. Those vast amphitheatres, like the Coliseum, were built to gratify these rather sanguinary tastes in ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... been said relating to this armament. Two frigates, bearing the American colours, were to have been placed under the orders of Paul Jones, and M. de Lafayette was to command the small army intended to descend unexpectedly upon the western coast of England, and to ransack Bristol, Liverpool, and other commercial towns, for the advantage of the American finances. But this expedition was soon considered below the position in which M. de Lafayette was placed, and was abandoned ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... by the roadside is a little grove, capitally situated for a halting-place. We might stop there for a little, ransack the chariot to find whatever fragments may yet remain in it of our last stock of provisions, and gathering them all up take our breakfast, such as it may be, comfortably sheltered from this cold north wind on the lee side of the thicket there. The ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labor, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus inquired into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... all, and that's the plague of it. But I reckon it soon will be," she added with an emphatic little nod. "Papa shall learn that I can do something more for him than cook, and your example has fired my ambition. I'll ransack this town till I find something to do that will bring money. Dear old Mrs. Bodine! wasn't she perfectly enchanting yesterday? Do you think I can be content to live in idleness on her slender means? No, indeed. I'd buy a scrubbing-brush first. Oh, isn't this fun?" and the flour was ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the translator "exhibits his author's thoughts in such a dress as the author would have given them had his language been English." That same "indefatigable youthfulness" which converted courtiers into sailors and despatched them into unknown seas to ransack new worlds, urged men of the pen to seek out and to pillage, with an equal ardor of adventure, the intellectual wealth of their contemporaries in other lands and the buried and forgotten stores of the ancients upon their own neighboring book-shelves. A universal ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... will consider these things, and appease the mutineers. But it goes hard with my pride, Thrasyllus, to make equals of this soft-tongued race. Why, these Ionians, do they not enjoy themselves in perpetual holidays?—spend days at the banquet?—ransack earth and sea for dainties and for perfumes?—and shall they be the equals of us men, who, from the age of seven to that of sixty, are wisely taught to make life so barren and toilsome, that we may well have no fear of death? I hate these sleek and merry feast-givers; they are a perpetual ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... aged gander for its wisdom, knowing that the youthful gosling is proverbially "green." Miss Whiffle selected the aged gander for me, and I gnawed its sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle she appeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints (the locality was rich in fossils), and vegetables that, like eggs, only grew harder ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... strange; he never mentioned no names—never. He used to rave a great deal about two orphans and a will, and he would ransack the bed, and pull up the sheets, and look under the pillows, as if he thought it was there. Oh, he acted very strange, but never mentioned no names. I used to think he had something in his trunk, he was so very special about it. He was better the day they took him off; and ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... religion would be to every one just what it should be, the most valuable and reliable friend of men. He explained the gospel of the day without fanaticism, yet with a grand simplicity which needed not to ransack the world for its wisdom, its figures of speech, or its scholastic arts. It was no religious study, hurled in its three divisions at the heart of stony sinners; nor was it what some would call a current article of pulpit manufacture. It was no cold, heathen, moral lecture, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Robert was drawn into a list. Then, full of joyfulness at being allowed to help, she gathered up her reins, she nodded her pretty little head at him, and was just starting off her ponies at full speed, equally eager 'to tell Harry' and to ransack Churton for the stores required, when it occurred to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... read it, a million of times, That men are made up of falsehood and crimes; Search all the old authors, and ransack the new, Thou'lt find in love stories, scarce one mortal true. Then why this complaining? And why this wry face? Is it 'cause thou'rt affected most with thy own case? Had'st thou sooner made others' misfortunes thy own, Thou never thyself, this disaster hadst known; Thy compassionate ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the rifle, and join sectarian orders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their own ignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest of human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to make Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world has known. The better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by the exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen ideals which they recognized were implicit ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... at your peril," Ronald replied. "How can I tell you are not thieves who seek to ransack the house, and that your warrant is a pretence? I warn you that the first who enters I will ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... To those who had time to think, a sad, heart-rending sight, pitiful evidence of the degrading influence of war. During the first year of the struggle there was not a man in the British army who would have pushed a woman aside to ransack the sacred corners of her chamber. But war's brutal influence in time blunted the finer instincts. How could it be otherwise? The longer a struggle is protracted the fiercer and more bestial it will become, until at last ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... the death of the representative MOTHER of our race and age that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us. For any record of such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history. She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen Bess," went down to ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... the pressures of extreme poverty. But yet with most of them it was much otherwise, and they fell perpetually into such miserable penury, that they were forced to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants, to cheat with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be cheated of a third part of their estates, two ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and would ransack her closets and steal her delicacies, which he devoured in secret. Occasionally, when the usual visitors made their appearance he would treat them with civility; but as a general thing his remarks and replies were incoherent. For instance, a lady once asked him, "How do you feel to-day, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... morning, nearly half-past ten. The young man hurried downstairs and began to ransack the pantry. He did not want to be long away from the upper room. Once, as he was stooping to search the refrigerator for butter and milk he paused in his work and thought he heard a sound at the front door, but then all seemed still, and he hurriedly put a few things on ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... He will anticipate that one of us will go back to that house: to care for Kurgo's body, to get my belongings—for several reasons. So he will radio down—he probably can't come himself—for henchmen to station themselves at the house and to ransack it thoroughly for anything pertaining to me. The papers would ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... the grand jury, which was soon to convene. Both he and his family had foreseen the event, and he had made the necessary arrangements for the conduct of his business. Humiliating as his arrest was, they all bore it with Spartan courage, and prepared to ransack the earth, if need be, to ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... service, sir! Spare no money; ransack heaven and earth if it is necessary; but, in God's name, let me know, and let me know soon, where De Vlierbeck and his daughter are hidden. It is impossible for me to describe the sufferings of my heart ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... attached to the East, the scene of his chief diplomatic successes, a part of the world in which his Imperial word is law. He will continue to shower his favours upon it, and disturb everything there, so as to be able to fish in troubled waters. He will ransack everything for his purposes, even that very vague thing, homogeneous Turkey, based on the Mussulman faith. At this moment, he is planning I know not what kind of acceptance of the Cross by the Crescent, just as he planned Prince Henry's Chinese crusade. If the Cuban war did not detain him in Europe, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... sensations, in all their native wildness and simplicity, when fancy, awakened by the sight of interesting objects, was most actively at work. At such moments, sensibility quickly furnishes similes, and the sublimated spirits combine images, which rising spontaneously, it is not necessary coldly to ransack the understanding or memory, till the laborious efforts of judgment exclude present sensations, and damp ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... apartment of his there must be clues which will send him to the electric chair on former crimes: Warren is an artist who has handled other brushes than the ones he used on this masterpiece. He is not a beginner. So, I must ransack ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... for that spot," said he. "I'll go in the next ship bound to Valparaiso: there I'll charter a small vessel, and ransack those waters for some trace ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... come back. Factories have been robbed of their pumps, of their equipment, of their trucks; other pumps, other equipment, other trucks must be put in their place. Otherwise, nothing will prevent that in the future other expeditions will come to ransack other countries. A bold move towards Venice allowed base hands to be laid on the most beautiful works of art humanity had produced. A fortunate descent on the shores of Long Island or of New Jersey would allow the Metropolitan Museum to ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... amiable and affectionate disposition had quickly recommended him to her regard. The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. He began to ransack his tutor's desk for a piece of wax or twine necessary to his work. Moore happened to be absent. Mr. Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a long walk. Henry could not immediately find the object of his search. He rummaged ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire 690 That riches grow in Hell; that soyle ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... pleasantest occupation in the world to ransack the clothing of a skeleton, and he who was doing it could not help reflecting as he did so that it looked very much like a desecration and a robbing of the dead. To his great disappointment, however, he failed to discover anything which would give the slightest clue. It looked as if the man ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... his arguments, who would cut a very poor figure with those same arguments among those who are on the other side. Would you find out for yourself from books? What learning you will need! What languages you must learn; what libraries you must ransack; what an amount of reading must be got through! Who will guide me in such a choice? It will be hard to find the best books on the opposite side in any one country, and all the harder to find those on all sides; when found they would be easily answered. The absent are always in the wrong, and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... I am to see the face of an honest man. I am so tired of those devils of spies who come here ten times a day to ransack my pockets and my cell to satisfy themselves that I am not preparing to escape. The government is very solicitous ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... took him at his word and began to ransack the house, while Mordecai and Leah, paralyzed with fear, great beads of perspiration starting from their foreheads, sat idly by and watched the work of destruction. Not an article of furniture was left entire in the wild search for treasure, which, according to popular belief, every Jew was supposed ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... countenance—no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried; "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... about strong impressions. They were led to this discussion by recalling a witness who, by his own account, had begun to stammer and had gone grey owing to a terrible moment. The jurymen decided that before going to sleep, each one of them should ransack among his memories and tell something that had happened to him. Man's life is brief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast that there have been terrible ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there. The intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of it. At last one of Verres's lictors—absolutely a Roman lictor—is killed, and the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... of our early life as a race in tropical forests; and we still retain a marked liking for sweets of every sort. Not content with our strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, apples, pears, cherries, plums and other northern fruits, we ransack the world for dates, figs, raisins, and oranges. Indeed, in spite of our acquired meat-eating propensities, it may be fairly said that fruits and seeds (including wheat, rice, peas, beans, and other grains and pulse) still form by far the most important element ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... me somewhat oftener to my library. It is in the chief approach to my house, so that under my eyes are my garden, my base-court, my yard, and even the best rooms of my house. There, without order or method, I can turn over and ransack now one book and now another. Sometimes I muse, sometimes save; and walking up and down I indite and register these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed in a third storey of a tower. The lowermost ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber man. She used to give 'boy and girl' parties, in the English fashion; and when we went there we'd do as we please—play tag all over the house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up masquerades! Mrs. Warden's as good-natured as an old cow. You'll meet her sometime—only don't you let her fool you with those soft eyes of hers. You'll find she doesn't mean it; it's just that she likes to have handsome men ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... vain to find A simile[2] for womankind, A simile, I mean, to fit 'em, In every circumstance to hit 'em.[3] Through every beast and bird I went, I ransack'd every element; And, after peeping through all nature, To find so whimsical a creature, A cloud[4] presented to my view, And straight this parallel I drew: Clouds turn with every wind about, They keep us in suspense ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... this confusion that Napoleon again entered Moscow. He had allowed this pillage, hoping that his army, scattered over the ruins, would not ransack them in vain. But when he learned that the disorder increased; that the old guard itself was seduced; that the Russian peasants, who were at length allured thither with provisions, for which he caused ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Now they would ransack the house at their leisure. There was light enough in the attics to explore the treasures hidden there. They found old coal-hods for helmets, and warming-pans for fiery steeds, and they had tournaments in the huge halls. They piled up carpets for their comfort in their bedroom,—bits ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... Where have they taken thee, My only one, my darling? Oh, the brigands! Naples shall bleed for this. What do ye here, Slaves, fools, who stare upon me? Know ye not I have been robbed? Hence! Ransack every house From cave to roof in Naples. Search all streets. Arrest whomso ye meet. Let no sail stir From out the harbor. Ring the alarum! Quick! This is a general woe. [Exeunt LUCA and FIAMETTA.] The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... after many years of wandering the Tables of the Law seemed to have reached a place of enduring rest. Solomon, the Wise, decided to provide them with a magnificent home. Far and wide his messengers travelled to ransack the world for rare woods and precious metals. The entire nation was asked to offer its wealth to make the House of God worthy of its holy name. Higher and higher the walls of the temple arose guarding the sacred Laws of Jehovah for all ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... we might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured, she would give us ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a friend—an acquaintance whom I could apply to? I ransack my memory to find a man good for a penny piece, and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the Plague spreads—and it looks as if all the City would presently be affected—all will have to run the risk of contagion. There are thousands of women now who voluntarily enter the houses as nurses for a small rate of pay. Even robbers, they say, will enter and ransack the houses of the dead in search of plunder. It will be a shame indeed then if one should shrink from doing so when possibly one might ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... the break. His mind hadn't been on the job, anyway—it had been on the Egyptian cat. For perhaps the hundredth time he asked, "Why is the cat valuable? Why would anyone want it enough to stage that scene at El Mouski and then ransack our room?" ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... at the Siege of Pampelona, he was then a Colonel of French Horse, who when the Town was ransack'd, nobly treated my Brother and my self, preserving us from all Insolencies; and I must own, (besides great Obligations) I have I know not what, that pleads kindly for him about my Heart, and will suffer no other to enter— But ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the graves of their predecessors, they have confounded the famous and the infamous, the renowned and the notorious. Great saints, great sinners; great philosophers, great quacks; great conquerors, great murderers; great ministers, great thieves; each and all have had their admirers, ready to ransack earth, from the equator to either pole, to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... wife's bedroom by her boudoir. The walls were thick; through them no ordinary sound could penetrate, and, unless since his departure Jeanne had moved her maid or some other chaperon into his bedroom, he could ransack it at his leisure. The safe in which he would replace the will was in the dining-room. From the sleeping-quarters of Preston, the butler, and the other servants ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... life, and he hath only held it by my mercy; and now let him thank his friends for this heavy load of disgrace I lay upon him, since I do it but to show my sufficiency; and they urging what a triumph he had over me, hath made me ransack my standish more ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Islands, whither the north wind might have carried the castaways; then, if he was convinced that they had not been received in any of the ports of that locality, he would continue his search beyond the Northern Ocean, ransack the whole western coast of Norway as far as Bodoe, the place nearest the scene of the shipwreck; and, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... that my house is free to all," I said, hotly. "You have had the impertience to ransack it in my ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I suppose. Well, shall we go in? I have shown you all the wonders of the garden, and told you all the wonders connected with it of which I know aught. No doubt there would be other wonders more wonderful, if one could ransack the private history of all the Claverings for the last hundred years. I hope, Miss Burton, that any marvels which may attend your career here may be happy marvels." She then took Florence by the hand, and, drawing close to her, stooped over and kissed ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of France this week. Bussy(169) was in great pain on the fireworks for quebec, lest he should be obliged to illuminate his house: you see I ransack my memory for something ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... door, and stood fairly within the church, it was impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to cipher a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more similes. St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two of the Washington capitol set one on top of the other—if the capitol were wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, would ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... was much more serene, much sweeter. To be sure she could no longer ransack the storeroom. She never had to explain to the Major what had occasioned that last tempestuous quarrel but she roamed at will through the whole dusty house and possessed herself gloriously ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... I, "give me a man's rig-out—a jersey and some breeches and a cap—quick," and, while the old fellow stared and whistled softly, I helped to ransack his box; and in a trice I had dressed myself, putting my pistols, my papers, and my money in my new clothes; but leaving everything else in a heap on ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... the journey neither spoke to her nor watched her, though Isabel shone in borrowed plumes. There had been no time to buy clothes, and so Val, though grudgingly, had allowed Laura and Yvonne to ransack their shelves and presses for Cinderella's adornment. But one glance had painted her portrait for him, tall and slender in a long sealskin coat of Yvonne's which was rulled and collared and flounced with fur, her glossy ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... all, a safe might not be necessary. If alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece of furniture, when—and this seemed beyond all reason—I saw something shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... they must not move on peril of their lives. A Tuck was placed at the helm, and the tartane's head turned towards the pirate captor; and all the others, who were not employed otherwise, began to ransack the vessel and feast on the provisions. Some hams were thrown overboard, with shouts of evident scorn as belonging to the unclean beast, but the wine was eagerly drank, and Maitre Hebert uttered a wail of dismay as he saw five Moors gorging ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must versify your very best, To sing how they ransack the East and the West, To tell how they plunder the North and the South For food for the stomach and zest for the mouth! Such savoury stews, and such odorous dishes, Such soups, and (at Calais) such capital fishes! With sauces so strange they disguise the lean meat That you seldom, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Rousseau having equipped him for the study of human society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788—September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... frequently happened in this and other sea port Towns. By this we are cut off from that domestick security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreable. Those Officers may under colour of law and the cloak of a general warrant, break thro' the sacred rights of the Domicil, ransack mens houses, destroy their securities, carry off their property, and with little danger to themselves commit the most horred ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Along with them! Why, their happiness Spread abroad till it grew a joy Universal—It even reached And thrilled the town till the Church was stirred Into suspecting that wrong was wrong!— And it stayed awake as the preacher preached A Real "Love"-text that he had not long To ransack for ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... pull, and ransack the box till he had almost destroyed it was now his natural action. But it ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... his master from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate her. ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... organized that Shakspeare club last winter," said I, "did you occupy your time in discussions of the text? Did you compare manuscripts? Did you investigate the canonicity of Shakspeare's various plays? Did you ransack the past to know the value of the latest theory that there never was a Will. Shakspeare save as a nom de plume for Lord Bacon? Did you inquire into the origin of his several plots, and study to know how much of his work was really his own and how much ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... The thing was necessary; yet I felt as if it were a kind of sacrilege. To disturb the old dust upon the library-shelves and select such books as I cared to keep; to sort and destroy all kinds of hoarded papers; to ransack desks that had never been unlocked since the hands that last closed them were laid to rest for ever, constituted my share of the work. Hortense superintended the rest. As for the household goods, we resolved to keep nothing, save a few old family portraits and my father's plate, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... convenient forms and materials, and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the most ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... mode in which he executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... if the Searchers come, they'll never be so uncivil to ransack thy Lodgings; and we are bound in Christian Charity to do for one another—Some rich Commodities, I am sure—and some fine Knick-knack will fall to thy share, I'll warrant thee —Pox on him for a young Rogue, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... dwarf had done this, and lodged the witch safely at the bottom, they began to ransack her treasures; and the soldier made bold to carry off as much of her gold and silver as he well could. Then the dwarf said, "If you should chance at any time to want me, you have nothing to do but to light your pipe at the blue light, and I will ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... termination which was impending over their festival, and bestowed themselves in safety for a season. A prize of about five hundred prisoners was all which rewarded the sagacity of the enterprise. It is needless to add that they were all immediately executed. It is a wearisome and odious task to ransack the mouldy records of three centuries ago, in order to reproduce the obscure names of the thousands who were thus sacrificed.. The dead have buried their dead, and are forgotten. It is likewise hardly necessary to state that the proceedings before the council ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... poison of misused wine! With freedom led to every part, And secret chamber of the heart, Dost thou thy friendly host betray, And shew thy riotous gang the way To enter in, with covert treason, O'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason, To ransack the abandon'd place, And ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... anything that was reasonable even from the native point of view. We had long since learned the force of the Chinese proverb that, "in order to avoid suspicion you must not live behind closed doors"; and in consequence had always recognized the common prerogative to ransack our private quarters and our luggage, so long as nothing was seriously disturbed. We never objected, either, to their wetting our paper windows with their tongues, so that they might noiselessly ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... have to search your rooms, sir. I am prepared to search every room in the Albany! Our man seems to have gone for the leads; but unless he's left more marks outside than in, or we find him up there, I shall have the entire building to ransack." ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... COLONY AT QUEBEC. Several years later, in 1541, Cartier and others attempted to establish a permanent settlement on the St. Lawrence. As it was hard to get good colonists to settle in the cold climate so far north, the leaders were allowed to ransack the prisons for debtors and criminals to make up the necessary numbers. They selected the neighborhood of the cliffs where Cartier had wintered in 1535, where Quebec now stands, as the most suitable place for their colony. But the settlers were ill-fitted for the hardships of a ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... They were led to this discussion by recalling a witness who, by his own account, had begun to stammer and had gone grey owing to a terrible moment. The jurymen decided that before going to sleep, each one of them should ransack among his memories and tell something that had happened to him. Man's life is brief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast that there have been terrible moments ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to the women who have so generously allowed me to ransack their treasuries, filching here and there as I chose, always modestly declaiming against the existence of wit ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and Robert was drawn into a list. Then, full of joyfulness at being allowed to help, she gathered up her reins, she nodded her pretty little head at him, and was just starting off her ponies at full speed, equally eager 'to tell Harry' and to ransack Churton for the stores required, when it occurred to her to pull ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should persevere in their delusion. What—in the name of the Bend Sinister—have they to do with the earlier Harrys or Edwards, or the charge of the Templars at Ascalon, or the days of the Saxon Heptarchy? Are they called upon by some irrepressible impulse to ransack the pages of English history for a "situation," or to crib from the Chronicles of Froissart? Cannot they let the old warriors rest in peace, without summoning them, like the Cid, from their honoured graves, again to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. "Never mind knives," said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, with ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... grateful for them all the days of my life. If I am able to repay you by avenging you on some proud miscreant that hath done you any wrong, know that it is my office to help the weak, to revenge the wronged, and to punish traitors. Ransack your memory, and if you find anything of this sort for me to do, you have but to utter it, and I promise you, by the Order of Knighthood which I have received, to procure you ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... around him, and confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat! Oftener than I can repeat it has the rogue and villain cheated. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... little. When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, with the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack; the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus enquired into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise my attention ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... but if the Plague spreads—and it looks as if all the City would presently be affected—all will have to run the risk of contagion. There are thousands of women now who voluntarily enter the houses as nurses for a small rate of pay. Even robbers, they say, will enter and ransack the houses of the dead in search of plunder. It will be a shame indeed then if one should shrink from doing so when possibly ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... those things into their hearts for our safety and preservation. The People of the City whence the King fled, ran away also leaving their Houses and Goods behind them. Where we found good Prey and Plunder; being permitted to Ransack the Houses of all such as were fled away ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... provided; And, truth to honour, for that matter, I hold it than a thousand better.' In fresh dispute they sided; And loudly were they at it, when Approach'd a mob of dogs and men. 'Now,' said the cat, 'your tricks ransack, And put your cunning brains to rack, One life to save; I'll show you mine— A trick, you see, for saving nine.' With that, she climb'd a lofty pine. The fox his hundred ruses tried, And yet no safety found. A hundred times he falsified The nose of every ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... happened in this and other sea port Towns. By this we are cut off from that domestick security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreable. Those Officers may under colour of law and the cloak of a general warrant, break thro' the sacred rights of the Domicil, ransack mens houses, destroy their securities, carry off their property, and with little danger to themselves commit ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... the Life-science teach? That if I am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with the Eternal. This is a simple proposition, for Nature is always simple. I take this proposition, and, leaving Nature, proceed to fill it in. I search everywhere for a clue to the Eternal. I ransack literature for a definition of a correspondence between man and God. Obviously that can only come from one source. And the analogies of Science permits us to apply to it. All knowledge lies in Environment. When I want ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... United States, "a few fir-built things with bits of striped bunting at their mast-heads," as George Canning, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, described them. Long before the declaration of war British squadrons hovered off the port of New York to ransack merchant vessels or to seize them as prizes. In the course of the Napoleonic wars England had met and destroyed the navies of all her enemies in Europe. The battles of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar, and a hundred lesser fights had ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... of Nemours proceeded on his march; and as there was nothing left within fifty miles of Paris wherewith to support his famished troops, it may be imagined that he was forced to ransack the next fifty miles in order to maintain them. He did so. But the troops were not such as they should have been, considering the enemy with ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... added dignity of years. I have a motherly interest in you. If you were not married I dare say I should 'ransack the ages' for some one fit and proper, and turn ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... which is the only one whereunder the majority of men are willing or able to live, a service exactly similar to that which Greece, at the time of the great Asiatic invasions, rendered to the mother of this civilization. But, while the service is similar, the act surpasses all comparison. We may ransack history in vain for aught to approach it in grandeur. The magnificent sacrifice at Thermopylae, which is perhaps the noblest action in the annals of war, is illumined with an equally heroic but less ideal light, for it was less disinterested ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which he executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Captain Nemo then said. "You observe this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid out for their type of fishing. It's sheltered from the strongest winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable conditions for diving work. Now let's put on our underwater suits, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... circumcision, both female and male, and other subjects, all of which he utilised when he came to write his Notes and Terminal Essay to The Arabian Nights, particularly the articles on Al Islam and woman. Then, too, when at Bombay and other large towns he used to ransack the bazaars for rare books and manuscripts, whether ancient or contemporaneous. Still, the most valuable portion of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... by inexpert hands. But how to bring herself to make use of these? All's fair in war (and this was a sort of war, a war of wits at least); but one should fight with one's own arms, not pilfer the enemy's and turn them against him. To use these keys to ransack Maitland's desk seemed an action even more blackly dishonorable than this clandestine ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... morning their courage comes again, and arousing themselves they ransack the woods for a mile around till they find that owl, and if they do not kill him they at least worry him half to death and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Well, shall we go in? I have shown you all the wonders of the garden, and told you all the wonders connected with it of which I know aught. No doubt there would be other wonders more wonderful, if one could ransack the private history of all the Claverings for the last hundred years. I hope, Miss Burton, that any marvels which may attend your career here may be happy marvels." She then took Florence by the hand, and, drawing close to her, stooped over and kissed ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... those imprisoned for debt; a third breaks into the Garde Meuble, carrying away valuable arms and armour. Mobs assemble before the hotel of Madame de Breteuil and the Palais-Bourbon, which they intend to ransack, in order to punish their proprietors. M. de Crosne, one of the most liberal and most respected men of Paris, but, unfortunately for himself a lieutenant of the police, is pursued, escaping with difficulty, and his hotel is sacked.—During ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was loath'd, and all the world Ransack'd for gold, which breeds the world['s] decay; And then large limits had their butting lands; The ground, which Curius and Camillus till'd, 170 Was stretched unto the fields of hinds unknown. Again, this people could not brook calm peace; Them ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... simplicity, when fancy, awakened by the sight of interesting objects, was most actively at work. At such moments, sensibility quickly furnishes similes, and the sublimated spirits combine images, which rising spontaneously, it is not necessary coldly to ransack the understanding or memory, till the laborious efforts of judgment exclude present sensations, and damp ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... flew; With busy search thro' ev'ry Class, Thro' ev'ry Rank of Men they pass, In ev'ry Class of Men they find Some Hearts corrupted to their Mind, Ev'ry Profession they explore, Ev'ry Profession gives them more; The higher Functions ransack'd, now Each vulgar Trade, each sweaty Brow Is search'd, and in them all were found, Some hollow, rotten, and unsound. In each depraved Bosom dwell These Sprites, nor miss their native Hell. Hence ev'ry Blockhead, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... for instance, may select an aged gander for its wisdom, knowing that the youthful gosling is proverbially "green." Miss Whiffle selected the aged gander for me, and I gnawed its sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle she appeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints (the locality was rich in fossils), and vegetables that, like eggs, only grew harder the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... frigates, bearing the American colours, were to have been placed under the orders of Paul Jones, and M. de Lafayette was to command the small army intended to descend unexpectedly upon the western coast of England, and to ransack Bristol, Liverpool, and other commercial towns, for the advantage of the American finances. But this expedition was soon considered below the position in which M. de Lafayette was placed, and was abandoned for the plan of a descent on England, which was to be ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... wakes to-morrow and finds it gone—what then? You know this Governor of Cesena well enough to be assured that he would ransack the castle, torture, rack, burn and flay us all ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... relented and bustled out to ransack the pantry. Having demolished a joint and a loaf, young John Spencer Cockrell was in a mood much less melancholy. In fact, when he swung the axe behind the fence of hewn palings, he was humming the refrain of that wicked ditty: "Yo, Ho, with ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... "Chesapeak and Delaware canal," which passes through the old state of Delaware, and unites the waters of the two bays. Here we were handed into a barge, or what we in common parlance would term a large canal boat; but the Americans are the fondest people in the universe of big names, and ransack the Dictionary for the most pompous appellations with which to designate their works or productions. The universal fondness for European titles that obtains here, is also remarkable. The president, is "his excellency,"—"congressmen," are "honorables,"—and every ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in which to walk from Hanover Square to Regent's Park without the chance of cutting across the squares, to look for a man, whose whereabouts you could not determine to within twenty yards or so, to have an argument with him, murder him, and ransack his pockets. And then there was ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... but because he can conceive little. When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labor, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus inquired into the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... ransack old history for examples? How often have our hearts overflowed with good will, yet we could only weep with them that wept—pity sorrows we could not soothe, wants we were powerless to relieve? Tears we might give, but they ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... official papers here," he said, after another short ransack; "there must have been some, if this desk is the one. Have you dared to delude me ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Senhor Don Alfonso stood confused; Antonia bustled round the ransack'd room, And, turning up her nose, with looks abused Her master and his myrmidons, of whom Not one, except the attorney, was amused; He, like Achates, faithful to the tomb, So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause, Knowing they must be settled ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... gets no help, and meanwhile the peasants storm her house, and search and ransack every corner for proofs of her witchcraft, but nothing can be found. Stay! there in the cellar sits a woman, who ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... with a belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to fall in with his little plans. Of coorse we'll mut'ny till all's dry. Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers, ransack the arsenal, and then - Boys, did he tell you what next? He told me the other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we're to join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... him had devoted themselves with indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,—or pretending to ransack,—the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures. As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,— particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would be found, if not of the particular authors wanted, yet of others that would ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... mind; I'll lend you my white silk for evenings." And my sister, who was always good-natured, carried me off to ransack her wardrobe. ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... a particle of sound reason in it. If all the bones in the United States could be saved and applied to the land again, we should still fall short of a supply, and be obliged to do as England did before the introduction of guano; go about and ransack grave yards of great battlefields, for more bones. With all the guano imported, or that will be imported, and all the bones that will be saved, there will still be room for more phosphates in the millions of acres of hungry soil in America. ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... there a month and ransack the islands, the cataracts and volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters, for which they pay as much money as I would get if I stayed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said Captain Nemo. "You see that enclosed bay? Here, in a month will be assembled the numerous fishing boats of the exporters, and these are the waters their divers will ransack so boldly. Happily, this bay is well situated for that kind of fishing. It is sheltered from the strongest winds; the sea is never very rough here, which makes it favourable for the diver's work. We will now put on our dresses, and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... exclaimed Aram, breaking in upon her, "what is this world which we ransack, but a stupendous charnel-house? Every thing that we deem most lovely, ask its origin?—Decay! When we rifle nature, and collect wisdom, are we not like the hags of old, culling simples from the rank grave, and extracting sorceries ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... corpse they have found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in their arms; they are drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and give ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... was aware, of course, that he could easily buy her an English peer or a foreign Prince for husband. But Sir Tancred's rank and birth satisfied his simple tastes; and he was quite sure that he might ransack the English peerage and the Courts of Europe without finding her as good a husband. He did not perceive that his ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... be the end of his strange visit? Was he to start back upon his homeward journey without an opportunity to bid his phenomenal hosts good-bye? He could not bear the thought. Dorothy at all events must be found. He would search the grounds and ransack the house. Surely she must be somewhere within reach of his voice. But then she was so strange, so different from any woman he had ever known. How could he tell, perhaps she had left the old place forever! Henley had not ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... and painful prize! Which quickly drew me to that verdant wood, Doom'd to mislead me midway in life's course; The world I since have ransack'd part by part, For rhymes, or stones, or sap of simples new, Which yet might give me back the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... sleek, voluptuous lord, A hundred dainties smoke upon his board; Earth, air, and ocean ransack'd for the feast, In masquerade of ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... caprice, 310 Nor the false edge of aged appetite, Which made me covetous of girlish beauty, And a young bride: for in my fieriest youth I swayed such passions; nor was this my age Infected with that leprosy of lust[406] Which taints the hoariest years of vicious men, Making them ransack to the very last The dregs of pleasure for their vanished joys; Or buy in selfish marriage some young victim, Too helpless to refuse a state that's honest, 320 Too feeling not to know herself a wretch. Our wedlock was not of this sort; you had Freedom from me ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... theatres. Mr. Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish: he has no more disarmed the Irish than he has resigned a shilling of his own public emoluments. An Irish peasant fills the barrel of his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters up the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from the degraded servitude in which they are held by a handful of their own countrymen, and you will add four millions ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... would ransack the house at their leisure. There was light enough in the attics to explore the treasures hidden there. They found old coal-hods for helmets, and warming-pans for fiery steeds, and they had tournaments in the huge halls. They ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... right honorable friend, the member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Goschen) asks us to-night to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book, find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article, unless the product of the day, in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... said, loftily, "you don't expect to find him in here, I suppose? Of course, if your duty carries you so far as to ransack a lady's room, I will ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... dresser she recommenced that rapid walking to and fro which was working such havoc in the nerves of the man in the room below her. When she paused, it was to ransack a trunk and bring out a flat wallet filled with newspaper clippings, many of them discoloured by time, and all of them showing ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... not, for the life of him, imagine why anyone would want specially to ransack his of all the choice of rooms at Mrs. Clunie's. He had nothing worth stealing, while many of his landlady's boarders were fairly well endowed in the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... to your room, Alice, where we can obtain the necessary articles. Mr. Smilk will naturally want to ransack your room anyhow, so we 'll be saving quite a bit of time. And the police are likely to ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... passages dealing with Samuel Weller, and Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she had discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, she had found. It sent one to the pantry in a sort of trance, to ransack for food—cookies, apples, cold meat, anything. But whatever one found, it always fell short of the succulent sounding beefsteak pies, and saddles of mutton, and hot pineapple toddy ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... to be in the schoolroom with Henry Sympson, whose amiable and affectionate disposition had quickly recommended him to her regard. The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. He began to ransack his tutor's desk for a piece of wax or twine necessary to his work. Moore happened to be absent. Mr. Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a long walk. Henry could not immediately find the object of his search. He rummaged compartment after ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... individual great, except through the general. There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning and say, 'I am full of life, I will go to sea and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:' no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He stands where ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... robbed of their pumps, of their equipment, of their trucks; other pumps, other equipment, other trucks must be put in their place. Otherwise, nothing will prevent that in the future other expeditions will come to ransack other countries. A bold move towards Venice allowed base hands to be laid on the most beautiful works of art humanity had produced. A fortunate descent on the shores of Long Island or of New Jersey would allow the Metropolitan Museum to ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... superior far: They graze the turf untilled; they drink the stream Unbrewed, and ever full, and unembittered With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despair. Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower! No foreign clime they ransack for their robes, No brother cite to the litigious bar. Their good is good entire, unmixed, unmarred; They find a paradise in every field, On boughs forbidden, where no curses hang: Their ill no more than strikes the sense, unstretched By previous dread or murmur ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... did I ransack my memory for the narrative of any traveller who had beheld and described this lake. The red hand-book, beloved of tourists, did not even deign to notice its existence. The more I meditated on the subject, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... what we pleased; ransack her desk and her workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured, she would give us anything ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... mishaps of following events may cause him to blame his providence, can never cause him to eat his promise: neither saith he, This I saw not; but, This I said. When he is made his friend's executor, he defrays debts, pays legacies, and scorneth to gain by orphans, or to ransack graves, and therefore will be true to a dead friend, because he sees him not. All his dealings are square and above the board; he bewrays the fault of what he sells, and restores the overseen gain of a false reckoning. He esteems a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire 690 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... future time we shall ransack the lower floor of the little house on the beach and discover what is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... many people have," she answered. "It's easy enough to pick up imitations in the second-hand shops, or to ransack country houses; but these pieces are all genuine and have been in the family for generations. There are three Chippendales that belonged to my grandfather on my mother's side, Colonel Styles, and this is a Sheraton. That mahogany ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... demanded that a banquet be prepared for them. Though the royal party was masked, the unwilling host knew his guests but too well, and dared not deny their peremptory command. In the midst of the carousal, at a preconcerted signal, the king's followers began to ransack the house, maltreating the occupants, wantonly destroying the costly furniture, appropriating the silver plate, and breaking open doors and coffers in search of money. The next day even Paris itself was indignant at the base conduct ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... what a sorry place it was! She had gathered together some few pieces of her old furniture, which half filled one fine room, and here she lived. There was a tall, handsome chest of drawers, which I should have liked much to ransack. Miss Carew had told us that Miss Chauncey had large claims against the government, dating back sixty or seventy years, but nobody could ever find the papers; and I felt sure that they must be hidden away in ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... he has help'd the Author to a better Name for his Play, and says, The Younger Brother, or, The Fortunate Cheat, had been much properer. [Footnote: Collier, p. 210.] This shews some good will he has to the Comick Trade however; and I doubt not, but if his Closet were Ransack'd, we might find a divertive Scene or two, effects of his idle Non-preaching hours, where Modesty, Wit, and good Behaviour, would be ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... is also illustrated very well in these simple cases. It is an exploratory process, a searching for facts. In a way, it is a trial and error process. If you don't ransack the house, at least you ransack your memory, in search for facts that will assist you. You recall this fact {463} and that, you turn this way and that, mentally, till some fact is recalled that serves your need. No more in reasoning than in motor exploration can ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... this was very various, so that at one time guineas seemed to be dropping out of my pockets, whereas at others I might ransack them through without finding so much as a silver penny. And according to the state of my fortunes, so did I prosper in Marian's regard; and in this ill-state of my affairs I grew reckless, and drank to drive away better thoughts, and so came on rapidly ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... found in old trunks and bureaus, which have gathered dust for untold years in attics and storerooms. Opportunities to ransack old garrets are greatly appreciated by collectors, as the uncertainty of what may be found gives zest to their search. It was of such old treasure trove that the hangings were found to make what Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novel, "The Minister's Wooing," calls "the garret boudoir." ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... because, to use Doctor Johnson's words, the translator "exhibits his author's thoughts in such a dress as the author would have given them had his language been English." That same "indefatigable youthfulness" which converted courtiers into sailors and despatched them into unknown seas to ransack new worlds, urged men of the pen to seek out and to pillage, with an equal ardor of adventure, the intellectual wealth of their contemporaries in other lands and the buried and forgotten stores of the ancients upon their own neighboring book-shelves. A universal ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... upon a six months' voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then, how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack heaps of refuse which have been ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... is a little grove, capitally situated for a halting-place. We might stop there for a little, ransack the chariot to find whatever fragments may yet remain in it of our last stock of provisions, and gathering them all up take our breakfast, such as it may be, comfortably sheltered from this cold north wind on the lee side of the thicket there. The short halt will give the poor old horse a chance ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... for Albany with a small stock of drugs. On September 7 he wrote Potts from Albany that he hoped the small supply that he obtained and the chest of medicines that Morgan had just sent would hold out until he could obtain additional supplies in New England, where he was then headed "to ransack that Country of ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... him at his word and began to ransack the house, while Mordecai and Leah, paralyzed with fear, great beads of perspiration starting from their foreheads, sat idly by and watched the work of destruction. Not an article of furniture was left ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... turned on and Dr. McDill sat up in bed to find himself staring into the muzzles of three revolvers, held by two masked men, who stood looking over the footboard. Bidding them move at their peril, the man with two revolvers remained to guard the doctor and his wife, while the other began to ransack the room. As he did so, he carried on an easy, if not eloquent, dissertation upon the rights of man and the iniquitous conditions which made it necessary for the poor and oppressed to obtain by force, if they obtained at all, any share in the privileges and riches of the wealthy. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... discovered, which has created no small stir in the antiquarian world, and merits a brief description. Nothing was known of its existence previously; and this is an instance of the delightful surprises which explorers have in store for them, when they ransack the buried treasure-house of the earth, and reveal the relics which have been ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... it came in the victor's way, and his mailed heel crushed it as he passed. They had heard that arms were hidden and francs-tireurs sheltered there, and they had swooped down on it and held it hard and fast. Some were told off to search the chapel; some to ransack the dwellings; some to seize such food and bring such cattle as there might be left; some to seek out the devious paths that crossed and recrossed the field; and yet there still remained in the little ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... nothing but human hair. Several of the horizontal loculi contained the bones of men and beasts: I did not disturb them, as all appeared to be modern. The floors sounding hollow, gave my companions hopes of "finds;" but I had learned, after many a disappointment, how carefully the Bedawi ransack such places. We dug into four sepulchres, including the sunken catacomb and the (southern) inscribed tomb. Usually six inches of flooring led to the ground-rock; in the sarcophagi about eight inches of tamped earth was based upon nine ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... called fancy dress. Few people will trouble to discover the most convenient forms and materials, and endeavour to simplify them and reduce them to beautiful forms, while endless enterprising tradesmen will be alert for a perpetual succession of striking novelties. The women will ransack the ages for becoming and alluring anachronisms, the men will appear in the elaborate uniforms of "games," in modifications of "court" dress, in picturesque revivals of national costumes, in epidemic fashions of the most ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... was so strange; he never mentioned no names—never. He used to rave a great deal about two orphans and a will, and he would ransack the bed, and pull up the sheets, and look under the pillows, as if he thought it was there. Oh, he acted very strange, but never mentioned no names. I used to think he had something in his trunk, he was so very ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... answer of France this week. Bussy(169) was in great pain on the fireworks for quebec, lest he should be obliged to illuminate his house: you see I ransack my memory ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... while on a visit at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. Charles North, my kind host drew my attention to some large boxes of manuscripts, which he told me nobody knew anything about, but which I was at liberty to ransack to my heart's content. I at once dived into one of the boxes, and then spent half the night in examining some of its treasures. The chest is one of many, constituting in their entirety a complete apparatus for the history of the parish of Rougham from the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... antiquarians of to-day search the mounds of Assyria for relics of the ancient civilizations of the East, so did the Humanists ransack the libraries of the monasteries and cathedrals, and all the out-of-the-way places of Europe, for old manuscripts of the classic writers. The precious documents were found covered with mould in damp cellars, or loaded with dust in the attics of monasteries. This late search for these ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... jeweller, or goldsmith, allow his priest to come when he pleases, and handle the rich articles of his stores, ransack the desk where his money is deposited, and play with it as ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Else religion would be to every one just what it should be, the most valuable and reliable friend of men. He explained the gospel of the day without fanaticism, yet with a grand simplicity which needed not to ransack the world for its wisdom, its figures of speech, or its scholastic arts. It was no religious study, hurled in its three divisions at the heart of stony sinners; nor was it what some would call a current article of pulpit manufacture. It was no cold, heathen, moral lecture, which sought nothing ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... famous and the infamous, the renowned and the notorious. Great saints, great sinners; great philosophers, great quacks; great conquerors, great murderers; great ministers, great thieves; each and all have had their admirers, ready to ransack earth, from the equator to either pole, to find a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... oneself, bethink oneself; collect one's thoughts; revolve in the mind, turn over in the mind, run over in the mind; chew the cud upon, sleep upon; take counsel of one's pillow, advise with one's pillow. rack one's brains, ransack one's brains, crack one's brains, beat one's brains, cudgel one's brains; set one's brain to work, set one's wits to work. harbor an idea, entertain an idea, cherish an idea, nurture an idea &c 453; take into one's head; bear in mind; reconsider. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with some gratulation on our success, and with some pity on our miscarriages. Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and ransack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk when his meaning is spent, to raise merriment without images, to harass his imagination in quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and his memory in pursuit of narratives which he cannot overtake; observe ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the ordinary pass laws; but if his wife, who has had a better schooling and enjoyed an older civilization than he, were to go and reside in the "Free" State with her daughters, all of them would be forced to carry passes on their persons, and be called upon to ransack their skirt pockets at any time in the public streets at the behest of male policemen in quest of their passes. Several white men are at present undergoing long terms of imprisonment inflicted by the Orange "Free" State Circuit Courts ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of Rousseau having equipped him for the study of human society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788—September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and social customs of the ancient Persians, Scythians, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the carriage, and I'll ransack the city till I find some," cried Belle, growing more resolute with ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... all the methods—the spontaneous, the carefully perfected, the oral, the written—heretofore explained in this chapter. In your final work on a passage you should aim at a faultless rendition, and should spend time and ransack the lexicons rather than come ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, and would ransack her closets and steal her delicacies, which he devoured in secret. Occasionally, when the usual visitors made their appearance he would treat them with civility; but as a general thing his remarks and replies were incoherent. For instance, a lady once asked him, "How do you feel to-day, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... somewhat consoling to him to reflect that he was not expected to acquire ancient MSS. for his institution; that was the business of the Shelburnian Library. The authorities of that institution might, if they pleased, ransack obscure corners of the Continent for such matters. He was glad to be obliged at the moment to confine his attention to enlarging the already unsurpassed collection of English topographical drawings and engravings possessed by his museum. Yet, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... till it grew a joy Universal—It even reached And thrilled the town till the Church was stirred Into suspecting that wrong was wrong!— And it stayed awake as the preacher preached A Real "Love"-text that he had not long To ransack for in the ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... most expensive table at tea-meetings, the most thankless stall at bazaars. She kept open house, too, and gave delightful parties, where, while some sat at loo, others were free to turn the rooms upside-down for a dance, or to ransack wardrobes and presses for costumes for charades. She drove herself and her friends about in various vehicles, briskly and well, and indulged besides in many secret charities. Her husband thought no such woman ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with silver polish one day to please the little tyrant, and which increased their value many times—so many times, in fact, that he hid them every night in fear of burglars. Since he concealed them each time in a different place, he was obliged to ransack his auntie's room every morning, to the great disturbance of Martha, the maid, who was ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... at the estate of a family on terms of friendship with her father. One day the master of the house, a scholar, was thrown into great agitation over the loss of a valuable manuscript. The servants were ordered to ransack every room, but no one was suspected of theft. Clarissa fell by and by into a painful state; she imagined that she was suspected; in every word she felt a sting, in every look a question; she took part in the search with anxious zeal, fevered visions ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus one styles himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a third Polycrates, another Thrasyma-chus, and so on. By the same liberty we may ransack the whole alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come next to hand. It is farther very pleasant when these coxcombs employ their pens in writing congratulatory episdes, poems, and panegyricks, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... hoped they would, cultured men—Speug was just able to cast a longing glance at Thomas John. That no pursuit was easier and more delightful than botany, especially among wild flowers. That on Saturday he proposed to go with as many as would join him to ransack the treasures of Kilspindie Woods. That these woods were very rich, he believed, in flowers, among which he mentioned wild geraniums—at which the school began to recover and rustle. That the boys might dry ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... inflaming popular passion under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... main tenets of the Treitschkean creed. Even after this exhaustive analysis it will be difficult for an English reader to understand how such a system, if we divest it of its rhetoric, of its fervid and impassioned style, and of a wealth of historical illustration, which has been able to ransack every country and every age, could ever have inspired a policy and could have hypnotized so completely a highly ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... there be so now? If Anna had not fortunately heard those men I believe that when they had packed up a few things to give the idea that they were burglars, they would have gone to the library and set to to ransack it and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the air of a man who is longing to sleep, walked over to his master from behind and swiftly stabbed him several times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate her. But as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... the noble conqueror Did to the ladies, when they from him went: But shortly for to tell is mine intent. When that this worthy Duke, this Theseus, Had Creon slain, and wonnen Thebes thus, Still in the field he took all night his rest, And did with all the country as him lest*. *pleased To ransack in the tas* of bodies dead, *heap Them for to strip of *harness and of **weed, *armour **clothes The pillers* did their business and cure, *pillagers After the battle and discomfiture. And so befell, that in the tas they found, Through girt with many a grievous bloody ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... energies to the collection and dispatch of literature, by requesting that a special effort be made to keep him supplied "wi' th' latest bluids." A member of the Committee with a sneaking regard for this type of literature took it upon himself to ransack London for penny dreadfuls, and Tam received a ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... was not there. The intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of it. At ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the very brink of the last scandal, a cold, caught at some Vipont's ball, became fever; and so from that door the Black Horses bore away the Bloomsbury Dame, ere she was yet—the fashion! Happy in grief the widower who may, with confiding hand, ransack the lost wife's harmless desk, sure that no thought concealed from him in life will rise accusing from the treasured papers. But that pale proud mourner, hurrying the eye over sweet-scented billets; compelled, in very ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Asia than Isocrates spent in writing an oration, to bid the Greeks attack Persia, we know what he would have thought of Macaulay's antithesis. He blames Xenophon for a poor pun, and Plato, less justly, for mere figurative badinage. It would be an easy task to ransack contemporaries, even great contemporaries, for similar failings, for pomposity, for the florid, for sentences like processions of intoxicated torch-bearers, for pedantic display of cheap erudition, for misplaced ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... Cat replied, "I do not lack, Though with but one provided; And, truth to honour, for that matter, I hold it than a thousand better." In fresh dispute they sided; And loudly were they at it, when Approach'd a mob of dogs and men. "Now," said the Cat, "your tricks ransack, And put your cunning brains to rack, One life to save; I'll show you mine— A trick, you see, for saving nine." With that, she climb'd a lofty pine. The Fox his hundred ruses tried, And yet no safety found. A hundred times he falsified. The nose of every hound Was ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... no other instance of forced labour and wholesale deportations. If, fifty years ago, the conscience of the world revolted against black slavery, what should its feelings be today when it is confronted with this new and most appalling form of white slavery? We should in vain ransack the chronicles of history to find, even in ancient times, crimes similar to this one. For the Jews were at war with Babylon, the Gauls were at war with Rome. Belgium did not wage war against Germany. She merely refused to betray ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... Shakspeare club last winter," said I, "did you occupy your time in discussions of the text? Did you compare manuscripts? Did you investigate the canonicity of Shakspeare's various plays? Did you ransack the past to know the value of the latest theory that there never was a Will. Shakspeare save as a nom de plume for Lord Bacon? Did you inquire into the origin of his several plots, and study to know how much of his work was really his own and how much ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... Burnside's conduct. Well! Burnside is good-natured—that is all. They forget the example of Canrobert and Pellisier, in the Crimea. Canrobert, after having commanded the army, gave up the command, and served under Pellisier. Oh declaimers! Oh imbeciles! ransack not the world—let Rome alone, and its Punic wars, its Varrus, etc.—Disturb not history, which, for you, is a book with seventy-seven seals. You understand not events under your long noses, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... indigestions, that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks. I will enclose the fatal letter[2] after I have finished this enormous one; to which I will only add, that nothing has interrupted my Sevigne researches but the frost. The Abbe de Malesherbes has given me full power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you, that by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on an original picture of the Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are generally in London in March; I shall be there ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... furtiveness fell upon me. With noiseless steps I went the length of the dim, padded interior corridor to my own room. My belongings seemed undisturbed; a vague idea that Spawn might have seized this opportunity to ransack them had come to me. But it seemed not; though if he had he would ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... to change his clothes; and, the stage being thus left vacant, we hear a latch-key turning in the outer door. A lady in evening dress enters, goes up to the bureau at the back of the stage, and calmly proceeds to break it open and ransack it. While she is thus burglariously employed, Lord Eric enters, and cannot refrain from a slight expression of surprise. The lady takes the situation with humorous calmness, they fall into conversation, and it is manifest that at every word Lord Eric is more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
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