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Coffin   Listen
noun
Coffin  n.  
1.
The case in which a dead human body is inclosed for burial. "They embalmed him (Joseph), and he was put in a coffin."
2.
A basket. (Obs.)
3.
A casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie. "Of the paste a coffin I will rear."
4.
A conical paper bag, used by grocers. (Obs.)
5.
(Far.) The hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.
Coffin bone, the foot bone of the horse and allied animals, inclosed within the hoof, and corresponding to the third phalanx of the middle finger, or toe, of most mammals.
Coffin joint, the joint next above the coffin bone.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books



... John." Billy Louise bit her lips against a sudden impulse to tears. It was not Ward, but the crude sympathy of this old halfbreed was more to her than all the expensive flowers that had been stacked upon mommie's coffin. She had felt terribly alone in Boise. But her chilled soul was beginning to feel the warmth of friendship in these two half-savage servants. Even without Ward, her home-coming was not absolutely ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... nature and the good impulses that underlie it. And did I not overhear Church, another pilgrim, say he did not care who went or who staid, he would stand by me till I walked out of Damascus on my own feet or was carried out in a coffin, if it was a year? And do I not include Church every time I abuse the pilgrims—and would I be likely to speak ill-naturedly of him? I wish to stir them up and make them healthy; that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... comes before the Easter recess," he went on, "the first nail can be hammered in on the motion for adjournment. And if the right man does it in the right way, I'll lay my life 'twill be a nail in Sefborough's coffin." ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... grave was reached, those who dug it—who were also of those who carried the bier—were surprised to find the bottom of the coffin-box strewn and hidden with wild flowers and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... in the night; but early in the morning a neighbouring undertaker, with two other men, and Mr Grigg, the landlord, who lived on the ground-floor, carried away the light burden of the coffin which contained Meg's mother. She waited until all were gone, and then she locked the door carefully, and with baby in her arms, and Robin holding by her frock, she followed the funeral at a distance, and with difficulty, through the busy streets. The brief burial service was ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton

... while in a seizure and put it in his hand, which stopped (?) the attack. In Berkshire a piece of silver collected at the communion service and made into a ring was specific, but in Devon a ring made of three nails from an old coffin was preferred. Lupton says: "A piece of child's navel-string borne in a ring is good against ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... a mixed assortment of decaying glories—among them, a pair of lovers on a seat, a Christmas family party, a rosebush, a railway accident on Bank Holiday, a rake's deathbed, a battlefield, an oak tree in its pride, and the same oak in process of being converted by an undertaker into a coffin for the poet's only friend. All these and many more the poet "saw" and buried in his fallen leaves, assuring the world that his bosom heaved with woe untold for ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... advocating the use of white troops upon the coast instead of West Indian regiments, when written to by Sir Garnet Wolseley for his advice as to articles of outfit, replied that the only article which he could strongly commend would be that each officer should take out his coffin. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... ancestors, will bring you back. And Joseph also made his brethren swear, That they would not inter his body there. And thus he ended his life's pilgrimage, Being an hundred and ten years of age; And was embalm'd, and in a coffin laid, In Egypt, till he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... face. Her hands twitched nervously over the prayer-book that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and the clergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presence of death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him by firmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. She stood serene, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... own; and even the callous wreckers were softened, for the moment, by a sight so full of pathetic beauty. The next day, borne upon their shoulders in a chest, which one of the sailors gave for a coffin, it was buried in a hollow among the sand heaps. As I stood beside the lonely little mound, it seemed that never was seen a more affecting type of orphanage. Around, wiry and stiff, were scanty spires of beach-grass; near by, dwarf-cedars, blown flat by wintry winds, stood like grim guardians; ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... alive, was now willing to come to any terms, and agreed to accept the offer to fight; but Humphries refused him, exclaiming, 'No, you don't, you cowardly skunk! you shall die in your hole, like a varmint as you are; and the tree which has been your house shall be your coffin. There you shall stay, if hard chunks and solid wood can keep you, until your yellow flesh rots away from your bones. You shall stay there until the lightning rips open your coffin, or the autumn winds tumble you into the swamp.' So saying, he left him, and went back ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... more difficult than many suppose to know what were the habits concerning funerals in Umbria in the thirteenth century. However that may be, it was certainly necessary to put Francis's body into a coffin. He being already canonized by popular sentiment, his corpse was from that moment a relic for which a reliquary was necessary; nay more, a strong box such as the secondary scenes in Berlinghieri's picture shows it to have been. Without such a precaution the sacred body would have been reduced ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... the Ariel once, and it is to be deeply regretted that that thrifty buccaneer hadn't made mince-meat of her, because she is a miserable tub at best, and hasn't much more right to be afloat than a second- hand coffin has. I do not know her proprietor, Mr. C. Vanderbilt. But I know of several excellent mill privileges in the State of Maine, and not one of them is so thoroughly "Dam'd" as he was all the way ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same coffin. That famous Steiner—primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese race—often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades! Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. The briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall be ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... been narrow, that which we now entered was worse. It was so narrow that the wall on each side seemed about to close in and crush us, like those frightful sliding walls that became a living coffin for the victims of medieval cruelty. Always one was confronted by solid brick walls; and to turn back was to meet others seemingly risen to cut off all escape. For this passage follows the simple and yet intricate pattern of the Greek ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... way of courage, few men were his equals. As I have said before, he only feared spooks, or Dutch ghosts; for the awe he had of me was so blended with love, as not to deserve the name of fear. In general, unless the weather happened to be cold, his face was of a deep, glistening black; coffin-colour, as the boys sometimes called it; but, I observed, notwithstanding his nerve and his keen desire to be revenged for the cruel treatment bestowed on his companion and brother, that his skin now assumed a greyish hue, such as is seen only in hard frosts, as a rule, in the people of his race. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... more curious now for the odds and ends I've been able to pick up here and there for my old friend," Vanderdecken declared; "I got him the horn of Hernani, the harpoon with which Long Tom Coffin pinned the British officer to the mast, the long rifle of Natty Bumppo, the letter A in scarlet cloth embroidered in gold by Hester Prynne, the banner with the strange device 'Excelsior,' the gold bug which was once used as a plummet, Maud Muller's rake, and the jack-knives of ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... surprise, a gag being in his mouth, and his hands manacled behind him, with a stout canvas bag containing two 18-pound shot lashed to his feet. We took the body on board the Daphne, and it was at once conveyed below to his own cabin, pending the construction of a coffin, the ensign being at the same time hoisted half up to ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... full of interest from beginning to end, and there are thousands of old boys, and girls too—from one to four score in years—who will read it with all the zest of youngsters. Mr. Coffin is an admirable story-teller for old and young, and understands how to draw a lively picture of the scenes he describes. His book presents a vivid personal and battle history of our Revolution, and it is profusely ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. Two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping—Hannah and the black woman Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... sir," I replied. "So narrow was it that they had my coffin all ready built for me. I have managed to weather upon Yellow Jack this time, however, thank God; and now, if I could only get to sea again, I believe I should soon pull round and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... natives in Yucatan in the dance forming part of the worship of the sun. The Egyptians enclosed the brains, entrails and viscera of the deceased in funeral vases, called canopas, that were placed in the tombs with the coffin. When I opened Chaacmol's mausoleum I found, as I have already said, two stone urns, the one near the head containing the remains of brains, that near the chest those of the heart and other viscera. This fact would tend to show again a similar custom among the Mayas and ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... open air") was published on the day of Browning's death. He died in Venice, and his body was brought to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year. The Abbey was invisible in the fog, and, inside, dim yellow fog filled all the roof, above the gas and the candles. The coffin, carried high, came into the church to the sound of processional music, and as one waited near the grave one saw the coffin and the wreaths on it, over the heads of the people, and heard, in Dr. Bridge's setting, the words: "He giveth his ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... gratification to me to render her those last services. There was nothing convulsed which gave the idea of pain in her look; on the contrary, but for the continual motion of the head, she gave one the idea of a beautiful statue, and even now, in her coffin, there is such a sweet, serene air over her countenance as is quite pleasant ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... the West against the Byzantine empire; and of executing the design which he inherited from the lessons and example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine: and, if we may credit a tale of the princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin. [3] But his reception in France was dignified by the public applause, and his marriage with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since the bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... veterans, by a forest of banners, by the envoys of three hundred towns, by everything which represents the power and the glory of a people, it arrived before the august temple where the tomb awaited it. At that moment twelve cuirassiers removed the coffin from the car. At that moment Italy bade her last farewell to her dead king, to her old king whom she had loved so dearly, the last farewell to her soldier, to her father, to the twenty-nine most fortunate and most blessed years in her history. It ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... Wilmet anxiously asked after Mother, the others, in a sort of sad elation, told of the crowds present, the number of clergy—Mr. Ryder, too, came home from his holiday on purpose—the sobbing people, and the wreaths of camellias and of holly, that loving hands had made, and laid upon the coffin. And then the last hymn had been so sweet and beautiful, they all seemed refreshed and comforted except Edgar, who, coming fresh back to the desolation of the house, was in another paroxysm ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... being enclosed between two small canoes, was placed upright on the ground, and protected by an enclosure bearing wooden images of their gods, and the whole was painted bright red, so as to be conspicuous from afar. Her gown was fastened to the coffin, and her hair being cut off was cast at its foot. The relatives of the family had torn the flesh of their arms, bodies, and faces, so that they were covered with clotted blood; and the old women looked most filthy, disgusting objects. On the following day some ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... narrow door, but there was time for only one to get out. Craven was ahead, but drew to one side, saying, "After you, pilot." As the pilot leaped through, the water rushed in, and Craven and all his crew, save two men, settled to the bottom in their iron coffin. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... Perhaps amongst all the populous nations of the grave not one was ever laid there, through whose bones so mighty a thrill of shuddering anguish would creep, if by an audible whisper the sound of earth and the memories of earth could reach his coffin. Yet why? Was he not himself a child of earth? Yes, and by too strong a link: that it was which shattered him. For also he was a child of Paradise, and in the struggle between two natures he could ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... long-deceased father a more fitting burial. The body was exhumed. Surrounded by his court, Pavel Petrovitch took the imperial crown from the altar, placed it on his own head, then laid it reverently on his father's coffin. When Peter III. was transferred immediately afterward, with magnificent ceremonial, to the Winter Palace, there to lie in state by the side of his wife, Katherine II., and to accompany her to his proper resting-place among the sovereigns ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... glitters in the faint moonlight against a dark background of blue; moon invisible; on the outside of web a star, in the center a spot of light, underneath a coffin filled with stones. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for that paper from using "over and above (for 'more than'); artiste (for 'artist'); aspirant; authoress; beat (for 'defeat'); bagging (for 'capturing'); balance (for 'remainder'); banquet (for 'dinner' or 'supper'); bogus; casket (for 'coffin'); claimed (for 'asserted'); collided; commence (for 'begin'); compete; cortége (for 'procession'); cotemporary (for 'contemporary'); couple (for 'two'); darky (for 'negro'); day before yesterday (for 'the day before yesterday'); début; decrease (as a verb); democracy ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... expedition. He asked his friend's advice as to what relics they should endeavour to secure. Hildwall told him that interred in the cathedral were the bones of St Apothemius, a bishop, of whom nothing was known save that he was a saint. His bones lay in a stone coffin which had a heavy lid. Hildwall added that several monks had attempted to steal the relics, but in vain. Convoyon and his monks bided their time for three days, and then on a dark night, armed with crowbars, they set ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... "why we hadn't just as well turn here and go up Artichoke road, and git baited at Coffin's, 'stid er stoppin' to see 'em on the way home. I'm feelin' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... return with this trifle for which I have stooped to beg! return to see my mother dying! I would rather fly to the world's end. [Looking at the money.] What can I buy with this? It is hardly enough to pay for the nails that will be wanted for her coffin. My great anxiety will drive me to distraction. However, let the consequence of our affliction be what it may, all will fall upon my father's head; and may he pant for Heaven's forgiveness, as my poor mother —— [At ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... diploma from the Middlesex Mechanics Association. He served as a journeyman for two years, when, feeling that his education was not adequate to his wants, he left the mechanic's bench for the student's desk, entering the classical school of Professor Coffin at Ashfield, in the western part of the same State. Subsequently he resumed his mechanical labors, which he continued until 1833, part of the time as a journeyman, but during the greater part as a manufacturer on his own account. At that date ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... impression steals upon and overshadows her that from this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed—there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... almost overpowered them, but they could still hear the voice which seemed nearer. Feeling the walls carefully with their hands, they found that a sharp turn to the right, led along in a direct line toward the sound. This passage was also dark, and as narrow almost as a coffin. They continued crawling for several yards more, sometime cutting their arms with the broken stones which covered the bottom, and sometimes placing one of their hands upon some cold substance which moved and felt as if it might be a lizard or a sleeping snake. They neither called ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul

... served with the troops. Others, disdaining the toy-soldiering of their friends, seized the chance to join the regular army, and fought in it throughout the war, or until their deaths. Such men were John Coffin, Leverett Saltonstall, and the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... of our village parlors, sometimes in the guest-chambers, when there had been many deaths in the family, hung the framed coffin-plates and faded funeral wreaths of departed dear ones. Now and then there was a wreath of wool flowers, a triumph of domestic art, which encircled the coffin-plate instead of the original funeral garland. Mrs. Jameson set ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of the heart wear into the life and happiness of Dumb Kate. One pleasant spring day, the neighbors having been called by a notice the previous morning, the old churchyard was thrown open, and a coffin was borne over the early grass that seem'd so delicate with its light green hue. There was a new made grave, and by its side the bier was rested—while they paused a moment until holy words had been said. An idle boy, call'd there by curiosity, saw something lying on the fresh earth ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... on the plantation; a poor young fellow was taken off, after a few days' illness, yesterday. The attack was one to which the negroes are very subject, arising from cold and exposure.... We went to his burial, which was a scene I shall not soon forget. His coffin was brought out into the open air, and the negroes from over the whole island assembled around it. One of their preachers (a slave like the rest) gave out the words of a hymn, which they all sang in unison; after ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... havin' no time at all. I couldn't live my proper life. I al'ays knew I should come to that, so I'd raked an' scraped, an' put into the bank, till I thought I'd got enough to buy me a mite o' flour while I lived, an' a pine coffin arter I died; an' then I jest set up my Ebenezer I'd be as free's a bird. Freer, I guess I be, for they have to scratch pretty hard, come cold weather, an' I bake me a 'tater, an' then go clippin' out over the crust, lookin' at the bare twigs. Oh, it's complete! If I could ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... the Loire stream, on signal given, the gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with all her cargo. 'Sentence of Deportation,' writes Carrier, 'was executed vertically.' The Ninety Priests, with their gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is the first of the Noyades, what we may call Drownages, of Carrier; which have ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... them say so plainly, eh? for that is what God has given us tongues for, to say this thing or that. The mistress knows very well who I am, as I know that I owe to her the shirt on my back, and the bread I eat to-day, and the first pea I sucked after I was weaned, and the coffin in which my father was buried when he died, and the medicines and the doctor that cured me when I was sick; and the mistress knows very well that if she says to me, 'Caballuco, break your head,' I will go there to the corner ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... struck against a stone. He dug round it with the spade, and came to a layer of black burnt ashes of bones. Beneath these, which he scraped away, was the large flat stone on which his pick had struck. It was a wide slab of red sandstone, and Randal soon saw that it was the lid of a great stone coffin, such as the ploughshare sometimes strikes against when men are ploughing the fields ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... garden-flowers, which only raise images of people in new black crape and white handkerchiefs coming to tend them; or wheel-marks, which remind us of hearses and mourning coaches; or cypress-bushes, which make a parade of sorrow; or coffin-boards and bones lying behind trees, showing that we are only leaseholders of our graves. No; nothing but long, wild, untutored grass, diversifying the forms of the mounds it covered,—themselves irregularly shaped, with no eye to effect; the impressive presence of the old ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... rubbish was cast, and where the bodies of the few malefactors who were ever brought to justice, as well as those of dogs and other animals, were deposited, they had ordered our poor friend to be interred. He had been placed there, fastened up in a piece of canvas, without a coffin and without ceremony of any sort. We stood with mournful countenances and with hearts full of bitterness and indignation over the foul spot, discussing among ourselves whether we ought not to dig up the body and carry it to the churchyard of Ou Trou, there to bury it among others who at all ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... As popular "superstition" again quite rightly supposes, the easiest and most effectual remedy in such a case is to exhume and burn the body, thus depriving the creature of his point d'appui. When the grave is opened the body usually appears quite fresh and healthy, and the coffin is not infrequently filled with blood. Of course in countries where cremation is the custom vampirism of this ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... occurred in his household, his only thought was how to prevent its spreading in his parish. He forbade all intercourse; and as his servants, wife, and children died one after the other, he hoisted a flag, as a signal when he wanted a coffin, which, as he had no one to send to fetch it, he managed to convey on a wheelbarrow, and he himself buried all his household. But that the people should not be without hearing God's word, he preached ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... the funeral rite as prescribed in the Roman Ritual. The corpse is borne in procession with lights to the church. The parish priest assists in surplice and black stole; the clerks carry the holy water and cross; the coffin is first sprinkled with holy water and the psalm De Profundis recited; then the corpse is carried to the church while the Miserere is said.... Candles are lighted round the coffin, and the office and Mass of the dead, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... almost gone. Midnight will find you weaker still, and but little removed from the point of death. A few hours later a kind hand will close the lids of your half-shut eyes, which never again will behold the light. The coffin will inclose your body, and the last earthly journey begin. Now," the spirit continued, "you shall all use my sight instead of your own." The walls of the cave seemed to expand, till they resembled those of a great ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... lapse of thirty centuries, the modern country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin did of land in general; a house may be well enough for incidental purposes, but for a "stiddy" residence give him a "kerridge." If he is classified in the Linnaean scale, he must be set down thus: Genus Homo; Species Rotifer infusorius, the wheel-animal ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... been well trained by her father. She knew exactly what should be done with money, and so, when nobody was looking, she tip-toed to the coffin and slipped the threepenny-piece into Brien's hand. That hand had never refused money when it was alive, it did not reject it either ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... sobbed Lydia. "I can't. Seems sometimes if I couldn't have little Patience again I'd die! That's the way she looked in her coffin, you remember? 'F-fresh from the hand of God—not one who h-had lived and s-suffered death.' O ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... beside her at the open grave, and supported her there, too, as the rattling sand and gravel rained down upon the coffin. The grave had been set round with evergreen sprays, and the raw mound of earth beside it had been concealed in the same kindly fashion. But Jane, in a self-inflicted penance, would spare herself no pang; she clutched Brower's arm and stood ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... University, was allowed to be open: all had to follow the body to San Domenico, since the duke intended to be present. And, in fact, 'the first of the house of Este who attended the corpse of a subject' walked, clad in black, after the coffin, weeping, while behind him came the relatives of Casella, each conducted by one of the gentlemen of the court: the body of the plain citizen was carried by nobles from the church into the cloister, where it was buried. Indeed this official sympathy with princely emotion first came ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... I sent the simple King to hell, Without or coffin, shroud, or passing bell: To me what are divine and human laws? I court no sanction but my own applause! Rapes, robberies, treasons, yield my soul delight, And human carnage gratifies my sight: I drag the parent by the hoary hair, And toss the sprawling infant on the spear, While ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... The short day's sped,— My Day of Rest! That beating in my head Hammers on still, like coffin-taps. He likes, Our lynx-eyed chief, to see us brisk and trim On Monday mornings; and though brains may swim, And breasts sink sickeningly with nameless pain, He cannot feel the faintness and the strain, And what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various

... of the 10th we returned from Dresden. The Emperor's arrival put an end to most singular rumors which had been circulated there since the remains of Grand Marshal Duroc had passed through the city. It was asserted that the coffin contained the body of the Emperor; that he had been killed in the last battle, and his body mysteriously concealed in a room of the chateau, through the windows of which lights could be seen burning all night. When he arrived, some persons perfectly infatuated with this idea went ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... up. They brought with them the makeshift coffin. They had cut a log, split it, and stripped off its bark in two half-cylinders. They led him to the other side of the wagon, out of sight. Then they placed the strips of bark around the body, bound them with hickory withes, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... laughed, had I come coffin'd home, That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, And ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... squire, after a question as to where the coffin could be temporarily placed, and a direction to the driver of the wagon, asked the publican: "We had word in Virginia that Greenwood was sold by the state; ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... mental effort, could he understand what it was that was right. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next; closing the dead man's eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the knowledge the dying man had now ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... interesting sketch of an ancient dwelling-house and of a family which has inhabited it for several generations, was furnished by a distinguished friend, Thomas Coffin Amory, Esq., of Boston, who traces his ancestry on the maternal side to the family in question. Nor, in producing this highly interesting sketch, could I overlook Joshua Coffin, the historian of Newbury and a resident of that town, from the originally ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... wagons, apparently not destined to receive living men, but the remains of the dead. The broad and heavy wheels were not surmounted by ordinary carriage-boxes, but by immense iron trunks, large enough to enclose a coffin or a corpse; and these trunks were covered with heavy blankets, the four corners of which contained the imperial crown of Austria in beautiful embroidery. Every one of these strange wagons was drawn by six horses, mounted by jockeys in the imperial livery, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... couch slowly, in single file; each officer pausing, in his turn, to press respectfully the frozen hand of the dead. On the 8th, his household, the governor, the admiral, and all the civil and military authorities of the place, attended him to the grave—the pall spread over his coffin being the military cloak which he wore at Marengo. The road not being passable for carriages, a party of English grenadiers bore Napoleon to his tomb. The admiral's ship fired minute guns, while Vignali read the service of his church. The coffin then descended amidst a discharge ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... 16th day of July, 1863, and two days later his remains were buried. As he had been personally known to every man, woman and well-grown child in the village, the funeral, as the local newspaper phrased it, "was largely attended." In accordance with a custom of the time and place, the coffin was opened at the graveside and the entire assembly of friends and neighbors filed past, taking a last look at the face of the dead. And then, before the eyes of all, Silas Deemer was put into the ground. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... smiling fairy bark, A fragile, precious-freighted ark, Out on life's ocean drear and dark. And I prayed to God as I never before, To shield this back from the tempest's roar, To spare me this—but it could not be, A tiny coffin came back to me— Came back from my ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... her mind is poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead, in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... however, the position offered to her and her son by the Act of Settlement, and appears to have become gradually reconciled to it, and even, as she sank into years, is said to have expressed a hope many times that the name of Queen of England might be inscribed upon her coffin. She came very near to the gratification of her wish. She died in June, 1714, being then in her eighty-fourth year—only a very few days before {5} Queen Anne received her first warning of the near approach ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... from the women's retreat in the hills? By dint of threat and show of arms and promises, Captain Charles Clerke, who was now in command, induced the islanders to deliver the remnants of Cook's body. In an impressive silence, on Sunday the 21st of February 1779, the coffin containing the great commander's bones ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... considerably closed in. The grave-digger, whose patience had been exhausted in waiting, was not in the least willing to accept of Captain G——'s (the chief mourner) apology for delay. After looking about him he put the anxious question, "But, Captain, whaur's Miss Ketty?" The reply was, "In her coffin, to be sure, and get it into the earth as fast as you can." There, however, was no coffin; the procession had sojourned at a country inn by the way—had rested the body on a dyke—started without it—and had to postpone ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... before that other genius whose glory survived the overthrow of his work, who was as great in extreme adversity as in success." The eighteenth bulletin said of this tomb: "The great man's remains are enclosed in a wooden coffin covered with copper, and are placed in a vault, with no ornaments, trophies, or other distinction recalling his great actions." The Emperor presented to the Invalides in Paris Frederick's sword, his ribbon of the Black Eagle, his general's ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... Mohunes all adrift in their coffins, and jostling one another in the dark. I pictured them to myself, the many generations, old men and children, man and maid, all bones now, each afloat in his little box of rotting wood; and Blackbeard himself in a great coffin bigger than all the rest, coming crashing into the weaker ones, as a ship in a heavy sea comes crashing down sometimes in the trough, on a small boat that is trying to board her. And then there was the outer darkness of the vault itself to think of, and the close air, and the black putrid water ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... fountain lone, With thoughts and hopes thou dar'st not own; Whose heart within leap'd wildly glad When most his brow seem'd dark and sad; Hie thee back, thou find'st not here Corpse or coffin, grave or bier; The Dead Alive is gone and fled— Go thou, and join the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... affairs, is an old man vigorous in his octogenarianism, a power, though out of power, a figure to be a monument in personal history, a great man. But a few years ago the whole world stood with bowed head while into the soil he loved was lowered the coffin of one who has bound the nations together in sympathy for Les Miserables of the earth. In a home on the continent broods watchfully a bald-headed giant in cavalry boots, one who has dictated arbitrarily, as premier, the policy of the empire he has largely ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... the stones of which are seldom more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... their side. The insurgents, therefore, demanded to have his tomb transferred to their side, which was vehemently opposed by the others, and war ensued between them: But both parties growing weary of the war, it was agreed that the coffin of Daniel should remain one year on one side of the river, and next year on the other. This treaty was observed for some time, but was cancelled in the sequel by Sanigar-Shah, son to the great shah of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... himself, because the knowledge of the Greek tongue was then altogether lost in the West. After many a long-drawn groan, he took the book, and kissing it, laid it in the iron chest like a beautiful dead woman in her coffin. Then he asked the good Fra Sisto to give him the Manuscript of the Speeches of Cicero, which he read, till the shades of evening, glooming down on the cypresses in the Cloister garden, spread their batlike wings over the pages of his book. For you must know Messer Guido ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... tell you my family was very respectable; an' my 'usband, 'e earned twenty-five shillings a week, an' was in the sime plice seventeen years; an' 'is employers sent a beautiful wreath ter put on 'is coffin; an' they tell me they never 'ad such a good workman an' sich an 'onest man before. An' me! Well, I can sy this—I've done my duty by the girl, an' she's never learnt anythin' but good from me. Of course I ain't always been in wot yer might call flourishing circumstances, ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... my grandfather, that were a boy when they laid, and was glad to lay, the exciseman deep as they could dig; for the sight of his sooty face in his coffin was worse than a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... is, and always will be, a large proportion of merchant ships under sail, even in nations like our own where steam is in most general use. In war, a wooden ship without steam and without armour would be a mere floating coffin. The fighting Temeraire, and the saucy Arethusa, and Nelson's Victory itself, would be nothing but targets for deadly fire from active and irresistible foes. The odds would be about the same as the odds of javelins and crossbows against modern fire-arms. Steam alone had made ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... information. With all these last he made appointments, and rode on. His way lay past Monsieur Revel's door; and it happened to be at the very time that the funeral (an affair of hurry in that climate) was about to take place. At the sight, L'Ouverture stopped, opposite the door. When the coffin was brought out, he took off his hat, and remained uncovered till it moved on, when he turned his horse, and followed the train to the corner of the street. There were many present who saw his face, and by whom its expression of deep sorrow was never afterwards forgotten. When he again ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... Julia slipped into her place in St. Anne's, she saw, two feet away from her, on an undraped trestle, a narrow coffin, and in the coffin the rigid form of a girl who had been prayed for a few mornings earlier as very ill. There was not a flower on the still, flat young breast, and no kindly artifice beautified the stern face or the bare, raw little hands that protruded from the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... entered, with ten sailors, six musicians, and myself. We found horses and mules waiting for us on the shore, and we soon reached the house of death, before which a great many tar barrels were burning, and in the centre stood a bier, upon which the coffin was placed. A number of mourners, among whom were twelve or fifteen ladies, now greeted us. We returned their salutations and entered the brilliantly lighted saloon, hung with black, where sat the mother and daughter of the dead man, dressed in the deepest ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... covered by a battalion commanded by Major Majoribanks, which was posted in a thicket, in a line forming an obtuse angle with the main body. The left flank was protected by the cavalry commanded by Major Coffin, and by a body of infantry held in reserve. A detachment of infantry was pushed forward about a mile, with a field piece to employ the Americans until ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... right, and the other mourners on the left, forming a circle, the outside of which was protected by the Marshals and undertaker's attendants. Here the remainder of the service was completed, and the sexton, placed in the crypt below, at the proper period, let fall some earth, as usual, on the coffin. After the funeral-service was ended, the chief mourners and executors, accompanied by most of the other mourners, went into the crypt, and attended the corpse to its grave, which was sunk with brick-work under the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... the prophet Esdras; then he entered Persia and sojourned at Chuzestan, a large town, partly in ruins, which the river Tigris divides into two parts, one rich the other poor, joined by a bridge, over which hangs the coffin of Daniel the prophet. He went to Amaria, which is the boundary of Media, where he says the impostor David-el-roi appeared, the worker of false miracles, who is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ, but called among the Jews of that part by the former name. Then he went to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech virtually closed the case, although Macdonald strove to prove ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... but he never had Russell's advantage in numbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only give two more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made his captains "like a band of brothers," which made the bluejackets who carried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most precious relics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; secondly, the very different kind of "Nelson touch" he gave his fleet when handling it for battle, that last touch of perfection in forming it up, leading ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... afterwards, I do not know exactly how long, that my father took me by the hand and led me upstairs into the big room which had been my mother's bedroom. There she lay, dead in her coffin, with flowers in her hand. Along the wall of the room were arranged three little white beds, and on each of the beds lay one of my brothers. They all looked as though they were asleep, and they all had flowers in their hands. My father told me ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... questions, no doubt, an answer can be found, and it is partly given, and very awkwardly, by the incessant introduction of narrative. The confused and melodramatic scene in the banquet-hall between Nils Lykke and Skaktavl is of central importance, but what is it about? The business with Lucia's coffin is a kind of nightmare, in the taste of Webster or of Cyril Tourneur. All these shortcomings are slurred over by the enthusiastic critics of Scandinavia, yet they call for indulgence. The fact is that Lady Inger is a brilliant piece of romantic ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... merchant, a man who has been able to escape death, or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... Mr. Coffin graduated from Fisk University in 1885, and has held important positions as a teacher ever since graduating. He has also bought about $250 worth of books on one of the special courses of study established by the Illinois Wesleyan University, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various

... to secretly give orders," replied Mrs. Yu, "to get things ready; but for that thing (the coffin), there's no good timber to be found, so that it will have to be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... now brooded like a gentle spirit over the violin, and the music eddied into a mournful tone; another year intervened; a little coffin sat by an empty cradle; the prints of baby fingers were on the window panes; the toys were scattered on the floor; the lullaby was hushed; the sobs and cries, the mirth and mischief, and the tireless little feet were no longer in the way to vex and worry. ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... forty feet in length, and was constructed of a hollowed-out tree raised upon with large planks forming a long coffin-like box, closed with high end boards elegantly carved and painted. Two rows of carved fishes ran along the sides, and both ends were peaked, the bow rising higher than the stern, and, like it, but more profusely, decorated with carving painted red and white, streamers ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... the American packet service perhaps greater strides than these even have been achieved. Prior to 1840 the vessels carrying the mails across the Atlantic were derisively called "coffin brigs," whose tonnage was probably about 400. At any rate, as will be seen later on, a packet in which Harriet Martineau crossed the Atlantic in 1836 was one of only 417 tons. On the 4th July 1840, a company, which ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... the road towards them came a party of men carrying a coffin, and followed by a hired conveyance full of tearful relatives. They were on their way to the Jewish cemetery. It was a grim and silent funeral. The men with their hooked noses and rapacious eyes were all as like one another ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... and knew the uniform, and was kind and tender with it because of its dress, 'for you see, sah, we darkies is all Union folks'; how he had brought it up in the night, for fear of his Secesh master, and made a coffin for it, and buried it decently. After that he took us out to a little spot of fresh earth, covered with leaves and twigs, and, digging down, we came to a rough pine box made as well as the poor fellow knew how to put it together. Opening it, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... on the coffin loud and long I strike—the murmur sent Through the gray chambers to my song, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping his own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Sturgeon magnanimously said: "Professor Henry has been enabled to produce a magnetic force which totally eclipses every other in the whole annals of magnetism; and no parallel is to be found since the miraculous suspension of the celebrated Oriental imposter in his iron coffin."* ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... of Miss Anna Coffin occurred at her home in Haverhill, Mass. At the age of 18 she was graduated from the Salem Normal School. Having a desire to serve the needy colored people, she accepted a commission from the American Missionary Association to teach in Burrell School, at Selma, Ala. She threw herself into the work ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various

... political canvass superinduced an illness, which terminated in pulmonary consumption. During a voyage he had undertaken to Barbadoes for the recovery of his health, he died at sea on the 10th October 1833. His remains, placed in an oaken coffin, which he had taken along with him, were buried in the deep. He bequeathed a sum, to be applied, after accumulation, in erecting a building in Glasgow for scientific purposes. A monument to his memory has been erected in the Glasgow Necropolis. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... declared divorced, but with the proviso that the latter should never marry again, and the former not during his divorced wife's lifetime. Thus the coffin-lid was closed on the young wife, who was, as it were, buried alive; but in falling it had caught and held fast the bridal veil of the Marchioness Caldariva, who could not now hope to be led to the altar so long as the princess remained alive. Had there been in this some malevolent ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... roses are, for they remind me of poor Helen, and the first work I did with David was arranging flowers like these for a dead baby's little coffin." ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... six feet, which "was imagined to be that of a woman," but on what grounds I cannot discover, as it does not seem to have been carefully examined, and is therefore probably mere conjecture, based upon its juxtaposition to the larger coffin. In the account of the excavation a "macabre" incident is recorded. One of the workmen, seizing the shin-bone of the giant, placed it against his own leg, and found that it reached halfway up his thigh; whereupon, taking up the lower jawbone, he fitted it easily over his own ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... Donald Stewart, otherwise Daaga, was brought to a court-martial. On the 21st William Satchell was tried. On the 22d a court-martial was held on Edward Coffin; and on the 24th one was held on the Yarraba chief, Maurice Ogston, whose country name was, I believe, Mawee. Torrens was ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... with Lord Roberts leading, the Admiralty Board, the great officers of Army and Navy, dismounted troops, Indian officers. These preceded the plain gun-carriage on which rested the Royal remains, the coffin covered with a white satin pall and the Royal Standard, on which rested the Crown, the Orb and the Sceptre. Drawn by eight magnificent black horses and flanked by the King's Company of the Royal Grenadiers the bier was followed by King ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... ill on the road and died within a few hours; at least so declared the physician in attendance and the nurse who had been sent to take care of him. They brought his coffin back in great state, and buried it in the mausoleum ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... and little white clouds flying aloft in the sunny blue. The church was full of well known faces, upturned, listening, expectant, critical. The hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over all dead hopes, and write Te Deums on their coffin lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... him off at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot six is the most ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... should have thought your honour was to maintain your cause. You'll not do that from a prison or coffin." ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... coffin plate once at an auction over to the Ridge for almost nothin' and your pa was as mad as a wet hen. There was a name on it, but it could have been scraped off, and the rest of it was perfectly good. When you need a coffin ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... ye bide, auld Death?" "I bide in ilka breath," Quo' Death. "No i' the pyramids, An' no the worms amids, 'Neth coffin-lids; I bidena whaur life has been, An' whaur's nae ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... no matter what hardship to royalty it involves. Neither has any other station a modern copy of a Queen Eleanor's Cross, but this is doubtless because no other station was the last of these points where her coffin was set down on its way from Lincoln to its final restingplace in Westminster. You cannot altogether regret their lack after you have seen such an original cross as that of Northampton, for though the Victorian piety ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... evening, with considerable difficulty, I prevailed on the mother, to suffer the clerk of the parish to convey the mortal remains of the little infant in a neat coffin, and deposit ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... a woman who was hastily buried while her husband was away, and on his return he ordered exhumation of her body, and on opening the coffin a child's cry was heard. The infant had evidently been born postmortem. It lived long afterward under the name of "Fils de la terre." Willoughby mentions the curious instance in which rumbling was heard from the coffin of a woman during ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Chuzinji, about nine miles from Nikko. Nine hundred years later the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty sent two officials to Nikko to select a site for the mausoleum of his father. They chose a site near Nikko, on a hill called Hotoke-iwa, and in the spring of 1617 the tomb was completed and the coffin was deposited under it with ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... forward and troublesome, not to speak of complicating me with pa, who didn't approve of him the least bit, and who used to regale me with little talks beginning: "I would rather see you lying dead in your coffin," and winding up with, "Now, won't you promise your poor old dad?" till I was all broken up. But, as I said before, Lewis Wentz had only to toot for me to forget my old dad ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... and refinement as well. The latter church in particular was the object of veneration of the patrons of America's only Saint, the beneficent Pedro Claver, whose whitened bones now repose in a wonderful glass coffin bound with strips of gold beneath its magnificent marble altar. In the central plaza of the city still stands the building erected to house the Holy Inquisition, so well preserved that it yet serves as a dwelling. Adjacent to it, and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... with honor in a mausoleum erected by imperial decree. So the generals of the Celestial and August sought after the nameless grave and found it, and had the earth taken up, and made ready to remove the coffin. ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... o'clock in the afternoon. They first sit round the tables and eat and drink in silence, and when the first batch have satisfied their appetites they move away and make room for others. After this meal all walk round the coffin, and repeat, one after another, 'Twas een goed mensch,' ('He or she was a good man or woman,' as the case may be). Then the lid of the coffin is fastened down with twelve wooden pegs, which the most honoured guest is allowed to hammer in, and the coffin is forthwith placed on an ordinary ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... foot! you speak as if a man Should know what fowl is coffin'd in a bak'd meat Afore you cut ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... wreaths, made entirely of rosebuds and lilies of the valley, as part of the solemnities of a burial service; and a young girl who died in the flowerless season was not only shrouded in blossoms, but as her coffin was carried to the bosom of the wintry earth, a white pall of the finest material was thrown over it, with a great cross of double forced violets, almost the length of the coffin, laid on it. I have had as many as a dozen huge ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept on firing at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... the coin and sent for his attorney. His soul passed away, mourned by Little Thunder until the will was read, when his lamentations ceased; he soundly berated Mynheer, the Patroon, in his coffin and refused to go to his burying. Then he became an ardent anti-renter, a leader of "bolters," a thunderer of the people's cause, the devoted enemy of land barons in general, and one patroon in particular, the foreign ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... in her daintiest clothes. She welcomed me with a glad face and put her wee hand in mine; then the villagers—all those not in the procession— began to arrive, and very soon we were in the middle of a throng; then, as the six coffin-bearers came slowly toiling up the many steps, and the singing all at once grew loud and swept as a big wave of sound over us, the people were shaken with emotion, and all the faces, even of the oldest men, were wet with tears—all except ours, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... "Coffin-stools!" ejaculated Arthur, feeling that it was unpleasant to have little details connected with one's latter end brought thus abruptly into notice. "What the deuce are ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... the body seated upon a throne with crown on head and sceptre in hand is generally regarded as legendary. The sarcophagus was once more opened by Frederick I in 1165, when the remains were transferred from the princely marble where they had hitherto rested and placed in a wooden coffin. Fifty years later, however, Frederick II had them placed in a splendid shrine. The original sarcophagus may still be seen at Aix, and the royal relics ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... ancient village church, with its square grey tower surmounted by moss-grown turrets, with its venerable Saxon stone cross in the churchyard—where the turf graves rise humbly by twos and threes, and where the old coffin-shaped stone stands midway at the entrance gates, still used, as in former times, by the bearers of a rustic funeral. Appearing thus amid the noblest scenery, as the simple altar of the prayers of a simple race, this is a church which speaks of religion ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the potter's field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... whispered Hitty to her child, as Keery's peaceful, shrouded face was hidden under the coffin-lid and carried away to Greenfield Hill. Pitiful whisper! happily all-unmeaning to the child, but full of desolation to the mother, floating with but one tiny plank amid the wild wrecks of a midnight ocean, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe—gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased to utter exclamations ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... a doctor M. Poulain is!" cried La Cibot, for Pons' benefit. "He will bring you through, my dear sir, for he pulled me out of my coffin! Cibot, poor man, thought I was dead.... Well, Dr. Poulain will have told you that while I was in bed I thought of nothing but you. 'God above,' said I, 'take me, and let my dear Mr. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the dead commander's remains—from which all flesh had been burned. On Sunday, the 21st, the entire bay was tabooed. Not a native came out of the houses. Silence lay over the waters. The funeral service was read on board the Resolution, and the coffin committed to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... be nothin' for anybody to go round an' look at; there won't be any coffin—Ann, you ain't goin' to have any coffin when he ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... superstitious homage for the exiled dynasty, and gave them—every thing but her money. She once made a sort of pilgrimage to visit the body of James, and pretended to shed tears over it. The monk who showed it, adroitly observed to her, that the velvet pall which covered the coffin was in rags, but her sympathies did not reach quite so far, and she would not take the hint, and saved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... his head to hear The Burial Office read, Nor, while the terror of his soul Tells him he is not dead, Cross his own coffin, as he moves ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde

... Turner had to refuse, for we were in a dangerous corner and no one could be spared. Lieutenant Drummond, his brother-in-law, was permitted to attend. Captain Duguid, the quartermaster, with the assistance of the engineers, had a metallic coffin made for him and they buried him in ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... we are here, while yet we may: Hour after hour, alas! Time thins our numbers; One pines afar, one in the coffin slumbers; Days fly; Fate looks on us; we fade away; Bending insensibly to earth, and chilling, We near our starting-place with many a groan.... Whose lot will be in old age to be filling, On this Lyceum-day, his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... had produced some influence, slapped his hand on the table with great force, and said, in a stern voice, "There's a bloody debt due by that family, and they will pay it one day—The banes of a loyal and a gallant Grahame hae lang rattled in their coffin for vengeance on thae Dukes of Guile and Lords for Lorn. There ne'er was treason in Scotland but a Cawmil was at the bottom o't; and now that the wrang side's uppermost, wha but the Cawmils for keeping down the right? But this warld winna last lang, and it will be time to sharp the maiden* ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Coffin" :   sarcophagus, set, lay, pose, place, box



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