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Gallows   Listen
noun
Gallows  n. sing.  (pl. gallowses or gallows)  
1.
A frame from which is suspended the rope with which criminals are executed by hanging, usually consisting of two upright posts and a crossbeam on the top; also, a like frame for suspending anything. "So they hanged Haman on the gallows." "If I hang, I'll make a fat pair of gallows." "O, there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses!"
2.
A wretch who deserves the gallows. (R.)
3.
(Print.) The rest for the tympan when raised.
4.
pl. A pair of suspenders or braces. (Colloq.)
Gallows bird, a person who deserves the gallows. (Colloq.)
Gallows bitts (Naut.), one of two or more frames amidships on deck for supporting spare spars; called also gallows, gallows top, gallows frame, etc.
Gallows frame.
(a)
The frame supporting the beam of an engine.
(b)
(Naut.) Gallows bitts.
Gallows tree, or
Gallow tree, the gallows. " At length him nailéd on a gallow tree."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gallows" Quotes from Famous Books



... informer if he could help it, because of the ill-usage they always receive from the mob: yet it is dangerous to trust too much; and when safety and a good part of the reward too are on one side and the gallows on the other—I know which a wise man ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... said to me once: "Well, but look at the results; they're not so bad." Great heavens! not so bad—when the supreme concern of mankind is to perfect their instruments of slaughter! Not so bad—when the gaol and the gallows are taken as a matter of course! Not so bad—when huge filthy cities are packed with multitudes who have no escape from toil and hunger but in a wretched death! Not so bad—when all but every man's life is one long blunder, the result of ignorance ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... heaven!" said Prince John to Hubert, "and thou suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!" ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the Rabenstein?—their gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... said, "would not bear a favourite, nor any one man who should out of his ambition engross to himself the disposal of the public affairs." "No honest man would undertake that province; and for his own part, if a gallows were erected, and he had only the choice to be hanged or to execute that office, he would rather submit to the first ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... consequence, she most guilty, that she might be hanged, and he pardoned." Had Berkeley had one atom of gallantry or chivalry in his nature, he would have treated this unfortunate woman with courtesy. Even though he condemned her husband to the gallows, he would have raised her from her knees and palliated her grief as best he could with kind words. That he spurned her with a vile insult shows how little this "Cavalier" understood ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... one priest hauling the rope taut over the gallows, while another holds a crucifix ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... of the jara canallis (revenue officers) have hissed about my ears without injuring me, for I carried the bar lachi. I have twenty times done that which by Busnee law should have brought me to the filimicha (gallows), yet my neck has never yet been squeezed by the cold garrote. Brother, I trust in the bar lachi, like the Calore of old: were I in the midst of the gulph of Bombardo (Lyons), without a plank to float upon, I should feel no fear; for if I carried the precious ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... please, Sir Reginald," answered Thornton, grinning, "do as you please. It's not a long walk from hence to Bow-street, nor a long swing from Newgate to the gallows; do as you please, Sir Reginald, do as you please!" and the villain flung himself at full length on the costly ottoman, and eyed Glanville's countenance with an easy and malicious effrontery, which seemed to say, "I know you will struggle, but you ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... will come out of it yet,' said Mrs. Grubb gloomily, 'if I am not freed from the shackles that keep me in daily slavery. The twins are as likely to go to the gallows as anywhere; and as for Lisa, she would be a good deal better off dead than ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... annual convention in the town Symphony Hall—the citizen who, for any logical reason, opposes such a proposal—on the ground, say, that Miss Anthony never mounted a horse in her life, or that a dozen leopards would be less useful than a gallows to hang the City Council, or that the Structural Iron Workers would spit all over the floor of Symphony Hall and knock down the busts of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—this citizen is commonly denounced as an anarchist ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... West. Many Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque and the Irishman understand each other—they speak the old Punic jargon; add to this the intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic Spain—relations such that they terminated by bringing to the gallows in London one almost King of Ireland, the Celtic Lord de Brany; from which resulted the conquest of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, 'If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.' You laugh! Perhaps you think, 'You'll throw no more bombs'; but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and, when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... "She'll learn. So are you—you'll learn. And remember this, my boy, always respect old legends. A disregard for them will so unsettle you that finally you will find yourself—at the foot of the gallows in all human probability. I suppose," sadly, "that you are even so far gone in scepticism as to doubt the glorious truth of the moon's ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... that Toozle attended the trial of Bumpus, entered his cell along with him, slept with him during the night, accompanied him to the gallows in the morning, and sat under him, when they were adjusting the noose, looking up with feelings of unutterable dismay, as was clearly indicated by the lugubrious and woe-begone cast of his ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... what will become of them while you are following your trail of blood—the trail you so fondly imagine will terminate in the death of Lapierre, but which will, as surely and inevitably as justice itself, lead you to a prison cell, if not the gallows?" ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... marks of one; for he steals upon man cowardly, plucks him by the throat, makes him stand, and fleeces him. In this they differ, the thief is more valiant and more honest. His walks in term times are up Fleet Street, at the end of the term up Holborn, and so to Tyburn; the gallows are his purlieus, in which the hangman and he are quarter rangers—the one turns off, and the other cuts down. All the vacation he lies imbogued behind the lattice of some blind drunken, bawdy ale-house, and if he spy ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... spoke thus vaguely, having no wish to finish his days on the gallows; as men had done ere now, for little more than a hint that the reigning Sovereign might ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... harrowing thoughts. Here he was anchored to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows; and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody; she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar with a brute like his landlord; she ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... milking was over, the old man selected a fat kid, caught it by the hind leg and dragged it, bleating in wild terror, to a gallows behind the house, where he hung it up and skilfully cut its throat, leaving it to bleat and bleed to death while he wiped his knife and went on talking volubly with his guest. The occasional visits of Ramon were the most interesting events in his life, and he always killed a kid to express ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... to be amateurs within the home, or of allowing them to earn a living in a factory or office, or of allowing them to share in the responsibility for taking the lives of condemned murderers, or of allowing them to exercise the coercion which is government, which is a sort of pyramid, with a gallows on top, the ultimate resort of coercive power. And in these alleged indecencies (the word is not altogether my own) lies Chesterton's whole case against allowing any woman to vote. Into these propositions ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... systematic trials with gliders. Encouraged by Colonel J. E. Capper, who was in charge of the factory, and assisted by Sir Hiram Maxim, he devised a biplane glider with a box-kite tail, which when it was suspended from a kind of revolving gallows at the Crystal Palace attained a speed in the air of seventy miles an hour and rose to a height of seventy feet. Later on the experiments were transferred to Blair Atholl in Perthshire, where the power-driven Dunne aeroplane was produced and flown. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... surely all know that Spurius Maelius was whipped for adulterating flour, and that Spurius Cassius was hanged for passing bad money. Now, a robe arranged on a dummy would look just like the toga of Cassius on the gallows. Accordingly, Mr. Smith is right in the drapery-hanger which he has chosen: he has been detected in the attempt to pass bad circles. He complains bitterly that his geometry, instead of being read and understood by you, is handed over to me to be treated after my scurrilous fashion. It ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... hour after hour, where he would hang it, and in the early morning an inspiration came to him—he would try the pump! So he rose softly and fixed the handle of the pump high in the air, so that it stuck out like a gallows, and tied a rope with a noose to the end of it. Then he got Tricky to perch on the top of the pump, tied the rope round his neck, and all was ready. The shepherd had heard that the object of hanging was to break the neck of the criminal by a sudden 'drop,' ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... row can you make that will not bring you to the gallows, you clumsy fool!' answered John. 'It is very certain that you will not set foot inside the monastery. I don't want to find myself mixed up in a criminal trial; for they would discover what you are in an ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... work was only beginning. The streets were trenched and barricaded; every dwelling was converted into a fortress; for twenty days the French were forced to besiege house by house. In the centre of the town the popular leaders erected a gallows, and there they hanged every one who flinched from meeting the enemy. Disease was added to the horrors of warfare. In the cellars, where the women and children crowded in filth and darkness, a malignant pestilence broke out, which, at the beginning of February, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... all other sounds of the night the sharp reports rang out. That peaceful, sleeping sea awoke to an hour the like to which Ken's Island will never know again. We cast the glove to Edmond Czerny and powder spake our message. Henceforth it was his day or ours, life or death, the gallows or the sea. ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... disdainfully. "As villanous a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one as generally draws his last breath where he drew the first—in a ditch or jail; and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society, finds his noblest earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a nuisance, though, having him pay this trifling debt of Nature—nobody but Nature would trust him—in my house. There must be an inquest and a commotion. The whole thing is an insufferable bore. Ritchie has given him up, and gone to bed, leaving ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... taken in its affairs, he could easily believe it;) he felt that his partners had thrown the odium of the present application upon him, not having courage to take it upon themselves; and he had an indistinct apprehension that this very act of borrowing money would lead to transportation or the gallows, should the business go to rack and ruin, as he could see it shortly would. All these considerations went far to stultify the otherwise weak and feeble Mr Brammel; when, in addition, he endeavoured to arrange in his mind the terms ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... (God knows why A lover so should sue) He slew her, on the gallows high Died pious—and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... revolver, in a place where a mysterious crime has just been committed. As to the Highland costume, he may urge that, like many Southrons, he had bought it to wear on a Highland tour, and was trying it on. How can you keep him? You have no longer the right of Pit and Gallows. Before what magistrate can you take him, and where? The sheriff-substitute may be at Golspie, or Tongue, or Dingwall, or I don't know where. What can we do? What have we against the man? "Loitering with intent"? And here Logan and I have knocked him down, and tied him up, and Logan wanted ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... and made of the cross a throne from which to rule the hearts of men. The cross was a gallows far more hideous and cruel than the hangman's gallows. It was the symbol of crime, of shame, of degradation. He transformed it. It is today the symbol of love, of purity, of virtue. His dream came true. Once only did a man dream that by dying upon a cross would He ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... summary vengeance upon the "Traitors:" and the eloquence of members was uttered between walls which were guarded, during the whole session, by all the military force that Edinburgh could command. The Duke of Queensbury was obliged to walk "as if he had been led to the gallows,"[39] through two lanes of musqueteers, from the Parliament House to the Cross, where his coach stood; no coaches, nor any person who was not a member, being allowed to enter the Parliament Close towards evening: and he was conveyed in his carriage ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... he repeated in a low voice that frightened her. "I'll rot in a gaol first!—I'll swing on a gallows!—I'll die in a ditch! Take care as you don't give me something to swing for! Yes, you, with your pale face, and your high-handed ways, and your cold, cruel heart that can send a poor devil to the other end o' the earth with a 'pleasant trip, and here's your ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... of fire burn him, let the moon light him to the gallows, let the stars in their courses fight against the atheist, let the force of the comets dash him to pieces, let the roar of thunders strike him deaf, let red lightnings blast his guilty soul, let the sea lift up ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... 23, 1499, that Bobadilla's ship entered the mouth of the little river on which San Domingo was situated; and on seeing on either side of the settlement a gallows, and on either gallows the body of a high-born Spaniard lately executed for rebellion, the sight did not incline him to feel kindly toward the low-born governor who had executed them. Columbus and his brother Bartholomew were in the interior at the time, and Bobadilla had ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... what means have you To keep me from the galleys, or the gallows? My father prov'd himself a gentleman, Sold all 's land, and, like a fortunate fellow, Died ere the money was spent. You brought me up At Padua, I confess, where I protest, For want of means—the University judge me— I have been fain to heel my tutor's stockings, At least seven years; conspiring ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... only for a Sessions or two longer upon his Good-behaviour. Harry Paddington, a poor petty-larceny Rascal, without the least Genius; that Fellow, though he were to live these six Months, will never come to the Gallows with any Credit. Slippery Sam; he goes off the next Sessions, for the Villain hath the Impudence to have Views of following his Trade as a Tailor, which he calls an honest Employment. Mat of the Mint; listed not above a Month ago, a promising sturdy Fellow, and diligent in his way; somewhat ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... of a distressing scene. The engineers and workmen who had been engaged at the mouth of the pit were completely unnerved by this unexpected disaster, and were weeping like children. The second explosion had driven the "cage" completely out of the shaft, and it hung in a wrecked condition in the gallows-like scaffolding which surmounted the pit. There was thus no means of descending the shaft, even if anyone had been courageous enough to do so. This renewed explosion was, I ought to say, almost unprecedented ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... colonial times, as abject slaves to superstition as could well be imagined. The Waites of Salem were famous persecutors of witches, and Sinai Higginbotham (Captivity's great-great-grandfather on her mother's side of the family) was Cotton Mather's boon companion, and rode around the gallows with that zealous theologian on that memorable occasion when five young women were hanged at Danvers upon the charge of having tormented little children with their damnable arts of witchcraft. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... be able to enjoy his company to-morrow night, as I purpose taking my passage for the Isle of Man in Ingram's boat."—"Nonsense, Willy, nonsense; ye wadna make yoursell 'hail, billy, weel met,' wi' gallows-birds and vagabonds—though, as for Paul himsell"——"My dear sir, you know I have my passport, and need not care for the reputation of my hired servants; besides, sir, you know how fond I am of excitement of all sorts, and the rogue ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... it heaves, with cheers and groans, Harsh drums of battle in the distance, Frightful with gallows, ropes, and ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the sea of death and destruction, as the fish that swim and sport for a while in Jordan, are carried down into the Dead sea of Sodom, where they are presently suffocated and extinguished,(210) or, as a malefactor is carried through a pleasant palace to the gallows, so men walk through the delights of their flesh, to their own endless torment ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... brewhouse, and granary, excepting the brother in charge, and he was not to dare to touch the bread and beer, since it was "most unfitting that persons with such a malady, should handle things appointed for the common use of men." A gallows was sometimes erected in front of the houses, on which offenders were summarily despatched from this world, for breach ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope

... discovered, and the golden ornaments decorating houses, temples and shrines, they were not a little alarmed in the contemplation of the large population over which the Inca reigned, and of the power of his government. The spectacle of the gallows also at ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... him, but refused even to let her see her son, and caused the sentinels to put her out of the camp by force. Next day young McKay and four other prisoners were taken out of the rail pen in which they had been confined. By Brown's order they were hanged upon a gallows until they were nearly strangled. They were then cut down and turned over to the tender mercies of the Indians, by whom they were mutilated, scalped, and finally murdered in ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... verdict, whether Guilty or Not Guilty. If guilty he shall be hanged to a studding-sail boom, rigged out eight feet upon the fore-yard, but if found not guilty, Smith and Kidder, shall be hung upon the aforementioned gallows!" But the doom of Humphreys had been sealed the night before, and kept secret except from the jury, who returned a verdict of Guilty.—Preparations were immediately made for his execution! His watch was taken from him, and he was then ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay

... idea of rarin' a family, it ain't mine. Why, can't you hear the parson's everlastin' preaching and giving examples how taking a pin has been the start of a feller coming to the gallows; and this is a much worse beginning than a pin! If the only way of rarin' them not to steal was to put 'em where there was no possibility of stealing nothink, a pretty sort of honesty that would be; you ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the host was lifted up, there came as it were a whisper of air which breathed upon our faces as we knelt; and there came a sweet, soft sound of music." They had not long, however, to wait, for their refusal to answer was the signal for their doom. Three of the brethren went to the gallows; the rest were flung into Newgate, chained to posts in a noisome dungeon, where, "tied and not able to stir," they were left to perish of jail fever and starvation. In a fortnight five were dead and the rest at the point of death, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... common even to vulgarism, to hear the remark that the same gallows-tree ought to bear as its fruit the arch-traitor and the leading champion of aggressive liberty. The mob of Jerusalem was not satisfied with its two crucified thieves; it must have a cross also for the reforming Galilean, who interfered so rudely with its conservative traditions! It is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Hangman of Schonburg!" they shouted, "come out, murderer of a defenceless prisoner. Come out, before we drag you forth, for the rope is waiting for your neck and the gallows tree is waiting ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... thus grew up in ignorance. He associated with bad boys, and learned to swear and to lie, and to steal. He became so bad that his parents could do nothing with him. Every body who knew him, said, "That boy is preparing for the gallows." He was the pest of the neighborhood. At last he ran away from home, without letting his parents know that he was going. He had heard of the sea, and thought it would be a very pleasant thing to be a sailor. But nothing is pleasant to the wicked. When he came to the sea-shore, where ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... over her work all day, and David went about his with the face of a man who is going to the gallows without benefit of clergy. When he came in to supper at sunset his expression was so woe-begone that Josephine had to dodge into the pantry to keep from laughing outright. She relieved her feelings by pounding the dresser with the potato masher, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to find him were searching the city, others built a gallows in the palace square for his execution; we having determined that his execution should be the first to strike terror into those who had ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... to yourself there," cried Ezra, catching his father's arm and half dragging him along the beach. "Don't you understand that there's a hue and cry out after you, and that we'll be hung if we are taken. Wake up and exert yourself. The gallows would be a nice end to all your preaching ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... my hand, I looked around at the shining fields and up at the blue sky, where a lark was singing as if he had just found out that he could sing, with something like the despair of a man going to the gallows and bidding farewell to the world. We had to cross a little stream, and when we reached the middle of the foot-bridge, I tugged yet again at my imprisoned hand, with a half-formed intention of throwing myself into the brook. But my efforts were still unavailing. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... different vices, and addiction to one kind of "upsetting sin" does not imply addiction to an unrelated kind. Doubtless a rake is a liar in so far as is needful to concealment, but it does not follow that he will commit perjury to save a horsethief from the penitentiary or send a good man to the gallows. As to lying, generally, he is not conspicuously worse than the mere lover, male or female; for lovers have been liars from the beginning of time. They deceive when it is necessary and when it is not. Schopenhauer says that it is because of a sense of guilt—they contemplate the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... work. For careless, sleazy, or fraudulent work he had no patience. He was greatly amused at the story of Dr. Francia ordering an army contractor who had cheated the government of Paraguay to be promenaded for an hour under the gallows, and he wished that more of them might be treated in that manner. He thought the torrent of mendacity which accompanies our presidential elections must have a bad influence on the morals ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... you are to-night! were you in yon gloomy and thick edifice (pointing to the prison which frowned in perspective before them), with irons on your hands, and with the prospect through its narrow-grated loopholes, of the gallows-tree, at every turning before you, it might be matter of wonder even to yourself that you should have needed any advice by which to avoid ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... conspirators were decapitated in front of Newgate, and the Westminster boys had a special holiday to enable them to see the sight, which was thus described by an eye-witness, the late Lord de Ros: "The executioner and his assistant cut down one of the corpses from the gallows, and placed it in the coffin, but with the head hanging over on the block. The man with the knife instantly severed the head from the body, and the executioner, receiving it in his hands, held it up, saying in a loud voice, 'This is the head of a traitor.' He then dropped it into ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... upon the floor and a trap-door fell away beneath Wilbur's feet like the drop of a gallows. With the eyes of his undrugged self Wilbur had a glimpse of water below. His elbow struck the floor as he went down, and he fell feet first into a Whitehall boat. He had time to observe two men at the oars and to look between the piles that supported the house above him and catch a glimpse ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... the streets of London, another puts his portrait in the British Museum, and a future generation may possibly give him a place in Westminster Abbey. Such is the uncertainty of the human character. Yesterday, a common soldier—to-day, the ruler of an empire—to-morrow, suspended upon the gallows. In an adjoining room I saw a portrait of Baxter, which gives one a pretty good idea of the great Nonconformist. In the same room hung a splendid modern portrait, without any intimation in the guide-book of who it represented, or when it was painted. It was so much like one whom ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... Morgan; and that to this effect he would be pleased to give his word to let the fleet of pirates freely pass, this being the only way to save both the lives of them that came with this petition, as also of those who remained in captivity; all being equally menaced with the sword and gallows, if he granted them not this humble request. But Don Alonso gave them for answer a sharp reprehension of their cowardice, telling them, "If you had been as loyal to your king in hindering the entry of these pirates, as I shall do their going out, ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... fellows attend to yon scum," he told his squire. "The camp marshal will have fruit for his gallows. The sweepings of all Europe have drifted with us to England, and it is our business to make bonfire of them before they breed a plague.... See to the wounded man, likewise. He may be one of the stout house-carles who fought with Harold at Stamford, and to ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... Wood, the Weed, the Wag: The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree; The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag; The Wag, my ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... When the Audiencia examined that clause, March 31, 1841, it ordered the prisoner to be liberated. In Inglaterra, that violator of his own daughter, and the domestic thief would have been given the death sentence on the gallows. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... the hammering between decks grew louder. The pirates were smashing the chests that held the gold, and to us in our prison the noise of their work was ominous—as if they were building a gallows and we ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... poison, or to sell them to enemies for slaves? Let me intreat you to consider, will the mother be pleased, when you represent her as deaf to the cries of her children? When you compare her to the infamous miscreant, who lately stood on the gallows for starving her child? When you resemble her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespear, (I cannot think ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... his stupor, bent over him and tore away his shirt; we then saw that he had stabbed himself to the heart with his great knife. "Ho! ho!" cried Madoc, with a sinister smile, "our Dean has cheated the gallows. You others stay here while I go and notify the bailiff." He picked up his hat, that had fallen off during the melee, and left without another word. I remained opposite the ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian

... longer, but went home, and all night long a continuous series of fearful images passed before his eyes— condemned cells, ropes, gallows and the actual fall of the victim, down to the contortion of his muscles. He made up his mind on the following day that he would see Caillaud before he died, and he told his wife he was going. She was silent for a moment, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... dark court, as hard at work as an aching head and a bloodless system would afford. The said court was off the narrowest part of a long, poverty-stricken street, bearing a name of evil omen, for it was called the Widdiehill—the place of the gallows. It was entered by a low archway in the middle of an old house, around which yet clung a musty fame of departed grandeur and ancient note. In the court, against a wing of the same house, rose an outside ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... the gallows for the decapitation decreed by the first judge, inasmuch as the latter punishment was reserved for criminals of noble birth, while hanging was inflicted on ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... minds to do, even if you prove to them that they're wrong, even if it hurts them more than it does any one else. He's just got it into his head that Jimmie ought to confess, and he'd let him go to the gallows before he'd back down." ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... Meg, "and what was your grandmother, or, for the matter of that, how do you know who was your grandfather? Country house! The old Red Mill, where you hide goods out there in the swamp, is likely to be your only country house. Village church? Village gallows more likely. No, don't you look nasty at me, for I won't stand it, you dirty little liar. I have done things, I know; but I wouldn't have got my own aunt burned for an Anabaptist, which she wasn't, in order to earn ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... the slender body of the old man became like a little gnarled tree. Then it became a thing suspended in air. It swung back and forth like a body hanging on the gallows. The face beseeched me to believe the story the lips were trying to tell. In my mind everything concerning the relationship of men and women became confused, a muddle. The spirit of the man who had killed his wife ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... are schools and prisons! And gallows and electric chairs! And I'm for schools! They've tried their jails and gallows for whole black hideous centuries! What good have they done? If they'd given Joe back to the school and me, I'd have had him a fireman in a year! I know, because I studied him hard! He'd ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... the decisions of the Roman Senate, and who are for the most part scoundrels and villains. There certainly never were more gods than there are now; and among those of whom the myths tell us things strange enough to bring those who worship them into contempt, or to the gallows, is the countless swarm of good and evil daimons. Away with your Olympians! They ought to reward virtue and punish vice; and they are no better than corruptible judges; for you know beforehand just what and how much will avail to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... the sentence being carried into execution, he contrived to commit suicide in the prison by cutting his throat with a razor. On Monday morning, according to the then custom, his body was brought out from Newgate in a cart; and after Jack Ketch had exhibited to the people a small model gallows, with a razor hanging therefrom, in the presence of the sheriffs and city authorities, he was thrown into a hole dug for that purpose. A stake was driven through his body, and a quantity of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... only came out of Tommy. Never was there a softer heart. In London the old lady who sold matches at the street corner had got all his pence; had he heard her, or any other, mourning a son sentenced to the gallows, he would immediately have wondered whether he might take the condemned one's place. (What a speech Tommy could have delivered from the scaffold!) There was nothing he would not jump at doing for a woman ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... several books he did not want her to see. But the girls had gone to some of the old places, where witches had been taken from their homes and cast into jail, the Court House where they had been tried, and Gallows Hill, that most ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... cross-beam had been erected, towering high above the heads of the people with its bare, gaunt poles. This was the gallows on which all people convicted of theft are executed; murderers being put to death in a different manner, having their throats cut from ear to ear in the same way that sheep are killed. This punishment is carried out by the side ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... law reforms,—especially the removal of the death penalty for small offences, more than two hundred of which were punishable with death. Numerous were the instances where men and boys were condemned to the gallows for stealing a coat or shooting a hare; but the sentences of judges were often not enforced when unusually severe or unjust. Moreover, large charities were voted for the poor, but without materially relieving the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... reformers, whose opinions were extravagant, and whose language was intemperate, but who had never dreamed of subverting the government by physical force, were indicted for high treason, and were saved from the gallows only by the righteous verdicts of juries. This severity was at the time loudly applauded by alarmists whom fear had made cruel, but will be seen in a very different light by posterity. The truth is, that the Englishmen who wished for a revolution were, even in number, not formidable, and in everything ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... imagination, in regard to his own exploits, that he should speak of an expedition in which he had no command, and was even a prisoner, in this style: "I remained," and "my men." He goes on: "Such factions here we had as commonly attend such voyages, and a pair of gallows was made, but Captaine Smith, for whom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them; but not any one of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into his power, to determine of at his pleasure, whom with much mercy he favored, that most basely ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... corps were drawn up around the gallows, forming three sides of a square: the 1st Regiment of Cavalry, the 20th, 39th, and 69th Regiments of Native Infantry, Major Pew's Light Field Battery, and a strong party of police. On ascending the scaffold, the Nawab manifested ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Norwich has just passed through. But maybe you are the surgeons. She's not dead—or wasn't by last accounts. You may be in time to save her yet—though it be for the gallows." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... begin opposite the Tower: two or three great three-masted vessels are shown: and two or three smaller ships of the kind called ketch, sloop, or hoy. Along the river front of the Tower are mounted cannon. The ditch of the Tower is filled with water. On Tower Hill there stands a permanent gallows: beside it is some small structure, which is probably a ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... love? You know she dies struggling, but it is on the heights, where, Goethe tells us, "lies repose." There are many and many women martyrs who go to their graves unknown, suffering no pangs of the Inquisition, the gallows, or the guillotine, but tortured by unrequited affections,—by a love which it was not possible to gratify without a loss of principle or a sacrifice of conscience. Is it not better to break one's heart than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... loaded the air with their blasphemies and imprecations. The day broke slowly and doubtfully upon the scene; a dense yellow, murky fog floated round the spot, wrapping in its opaque folds the hideous gallows and the frowning mass of masonry behind. An hour passed, and then a hoarse murmur swelled upwards from the glistening rows of upturned faces. The platform was no longer empty; three pinioned men, with white caps drawn closely over their faces, were standing ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... keer so much," she added, "ef I'd caught that aggravatin' boy. I'd go fifty miles to see him hung. He'll die on the gallows, jest as sure's I ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... would have belonged to the king, had the man been condemned, and hung on the gallows as he deserved; but he was not, and therefore I think that it does not belong ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of letting the tongue feed the gallows. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... his burdensome load, Tread the dewy track among tribes unfriendly 30 Amid foreign foemen. Few are alive To welcome the wanderer. The woeful face Of the hapless outcast is hateful to men. One shall end life on the lofty gallows; Dead shall he hang till the house of his soul, 35 His bloody body is broken and mangled: His eyes shall be plucked by the plundering raven, The sallow-hued spoiler, while soulless he lies, And helpless to fight with his hands in defense Against the grim ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... strange attraction for the child: one was a large marble slab on the wall near his house, which he gradually made out to be a decree that Jews converted to Christianity should never return to the Ghetto nor consort with its inhabitants, under penalty of the cord, the gallows, the prison, the scourge, or the pillory; the other was a marble figure of a beautiful girl with falling draperies that lay on the extreme wall of the Ghetto, surveying ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... act against the person represented, but from an instinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in the image. Any one who analyzes the matter will find it impossible to separate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinary scenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resulted from the identification of the image with the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... "Your daughter, gallows bird! Your daughter is in Trymalcion's hands, and it is upon her he will wreak his revenge on you. He rejoices over the circumstance in advance. He sometimes is taken with savage caprices, and is ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... don't see why we never hear what becomes of the pirate's lady friends. Surely any decent, self-respecting pirate who is an honor to his profession, should have a woman somewhere to either mourn his loss or—as I suggested—go to the gallows and ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... mate, now took the matter up, being justly indignant, as well as the whole ship's crew, at a speech evincing so base a degree of heartless atrocity. He spoke plainly, seeing himself upheld by the men, told the captain he considered him a fit subject for the gallows, and that he would disobey his orders if he were hanged for it the moment he set his foot on shore. He strode aft, jostling Block (who turned pale and made no answer) on one side, and seizing the helm, gave the word, in a firm voice, Hard-a-lee! The men flew to their ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... overwhelming majority, "Not he; Barabbas, not he! Him, and what he is, and what he deserves, we know well enough: a reviler of the Chief Priests and sacred Chancery wigs; a seditious Heretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind: To the gallows and the cross with him! Barabbas is our man; Barabbas, we are for Barabbas!" They got Barabbas:—have you well considered what a fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque flunkyism grown truculent and transcendent; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for the eternal ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... and I have never since returned to London; but when I got back to the place I had so foolishly left I found it sadder than before. Many friends were gone away or dead. Some honest lads, with whom I had jested at fair-times, hung withering on the ghastly gallows by the wayside; others lay in unknown graves; others languished in gaol or on board ship. My father's own brother, though his life was spared, had been sent away to the plantations to be sold, and to work as ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... and unadulterate coin, And other topics, ultra-radical; 200 And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise, And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills, Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina, And married her to the gallows. [1] ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... like a prisoner en route to the gallows, Isabelle walked from among them. She was disgraced, but, Isabelle-like, she wore her shame like a rose in ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... trembling, as well as the throbs of a torturing anguish, in a stolen grave, lest the proprietor of the spot, or any of his servants, should surprise them in the act. Even criminals dropping straight from the gallows have an undisputed claim to six feet of ground on which to rest their criminal remains, but under the cruel operation of the Natives' Land Act little children, whose only crime is that God did not make them white, are sometimes denied that right ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Mr. Archer Wavy hair dancing wave ... Morris dance Mr. Morrison Black eyes white ... snow ... pure as snow Mr. Virtue Retreating chin retiring ... home-bird Mr. Holmes High instep high boots ... mud ... peat Mr. Peat Crooked legs broken legs ... crushed Mr. Crushton Apprehension suspension ... gallows Mr. Galloway Sombre sad ... mourning ... hat-band Mr. Hatton Music stave ... bar Mr. Barcroft Violinist violin ... high note ... whistle Mr. Birtwistle Painter paint ... colored cards ... whist Mr. Hoyle ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... which it was indebted to Governor Macquarie. As time passed the criminal sewage flowing from the Old World to the New greatly increased in volume under milder and more humane laws. Many now escaped the gallows, and much of the overcrowding of the gaols at home was caused by the gangs of convicts awaiting transhipment to the Antipodes. They were packed off, however, with all convenient despatch, and the numbers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... snuffbox of tortoise shell and gold. He opened it deliberately. "If he does, you'll admit that he will hang on the gallows that he has built himself—although intended for another. I'faith! He's not the first booby to be caught in his own springe. There is in this a measure of poetic justice. Poetry and justice! Do you know, Ruth, they are two things I have ever loved?" And ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... talked to me so before," said Dick. "They just called me Ragged Dick, and told me I'd grow up to be a vagabone (boys who are better educated need not be surprised at Dick's blunders) and come to the gallows." ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger

... arms; but their intelligence was so uncommonly good by their influence over the common people, that not one party that ever went out in quest of them was successful. Government offered large rewards for informations, which brought a few every year to the gallows, without any radical cure for the evil. The reason why it was not more effective was the necessity of any person that gave evidence against them quitting their houses and country, or remaining exposed to their resentment. At last their violence arose to ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... silent, when a witching noise rose upon the air, and all the worn, half-sleeping men sat up to listen. Surely there was the sound of church bells, and there was a rush towards the pleasant noise. It was only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have rung in any village ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... are at work upon him all the time." Once asked by Rudyard Kipling whether he was ever going to write another story about Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain replied that he had a notion of writing the sequel to Tom Sawyer in two parts, in one bringing him to high honour, and in the other bringing him to the gallows. When Kipling protested vigorously against any theory of the sort, because Tom Sawyer was real, Mark Twain replied with the fatalistic doctrine of 'What is Man?': "Oh, he is real. He's all the boy that I have known or recollect; but that would be a good way of ending the book—because, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... others came springing forward. This was but a remnant of Castilla's collection. He was passionately devoted to hunting, and generally kept from 200 to 300 greyhounds, with which he rode out daily. A bell was rung at certain hours to collect the light-footed tribe to their meals. A gallows was erected in the court, where the intractable underwent capital punishment as a warning to the rest. One day when Castilla went out to hunt, he was joined in the chase by an Indian, who brought ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... to be their living condemnation, he must take heed to his goings. A climber on a glacier has to look to his feet, or he will slip and fall down a crevasse, perhaps, from which he will never be drawn up. Heedlessness is folly in such a world as this. '"Don't care" comes to the gallows.' The temptation to 'go as you please' is strong in youth, and it is easy to scoff at 'cold-blooded folks who live by rule,' but they are the wise people, after all. A great element in that heedfulness is a quick insight into the special duty and opportunity of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... vision—dream within a dream—there was a view of the Via Appia, with gaunt grim gallows set along it in a row and on them a regiment's commander crucified along with ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... thank God, we have at last seen Jesus as a man among men, a human being with no halo round his brow, no radiance not of this world marking him off apart from the rest of his fellow-men, but simply Jesus, the Galilean, gibbeted on the gallows of his time, side by side with the ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... one can arrive is that the custodians of the law in the fifteenth century were half-hearted in the discharge of their duty, that there was a secret admiration for the wild outlaw in their hearts, and that they were reluctant to see the scion of a brave and ancient house brought to the gallows. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... yard arm, like a common buccaneer. He was tried with the greatest ceremony, and sentenced to death by the Lord Chief Justice himself. That was a great feather in his cap. But when they tried to hang him the crowd around the gallows liked him so well that they started a riot, and in the excitement he got away, and a year later he was back on the Spanish Main, pirating again, with all of his old crew who were still alive,— ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... before the weak consciousness of Yanson, filled him with terror. Still not daring to realize it clearly, he already felt the inevitability of approaching death, and felt himself making the first step upon the gallows, with ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... rogues usually do upon such occasions) by peaching his partner; and being extremely forward to bring him to the gallows, Jack* was accused as the contriver of all the roguery. And, indeed, it happened unfortunately for the poor fellow, that he was known to bear a most inveterate spite against the old gentlewoman; and, consequently, that never any ill accident happened to her but he was suspected ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... the courtyard. A small gate opened in the wall with a creaking sound. All walked through it. And beyond the wall Elisaveta already caught a glimpse of a flat, endless field of snow, and of a whole row of gallows that stretched into the invisible distance. They were approaching these nearer and nearer—to ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... the Icelanders are staunch Protestants, and, by all accounts, the most devout, innocent pure-hearted people in the world. Crime, theft, debauchery, cruelty, are unknown amongst them; they have neither prison, gallows, soldiers, nor police; and in the manner of the lives they lead among their secluded valleys, there is something of a patriarchal simplicity, that reminds one of the Old World princes, of whom it has been said, that they were "upright ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... disbelieved, everyone who had come in contact with Merriton had formed an instant liking for him. No one wished to see him condemned as guilty—save those few who seemed determined to send him to the gallows. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... story, and my name, and assured her, by such other tokens as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or less, than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate; the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her belly, and the same that she left in such-and-such hands ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... Gallows, n. Explained in quotation. Common at all stations, where of course the butchering is done ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... which in plot is identical with Lanier's poem, except that the former begins with the speech of the flogged henchman, here named Evan, and ends by telling us that the bodies were found and that of Evan was hanged on a gallows-tree. The poem is too long for quotation, but may be found in any edition of Mackay or in Garrett's 'One Hundred Choice Selections: Number Nine' ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... of divers kinds of gold and of silver; and on one side thereof was Our Lady, with Her Son in Her arms; on the other side was the Eagle, with the Lion beneath its feet.... Thereafter for further dispite they set up a pair of gallows over against the gate of Florence, and hanged thereon ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... least they would despoil me of the treasure after I had found it, if not before. For all these reasons, I require that a trusty and loyal Spaniard should accompany me, a man whose life shall be in my power, and whom I can send to the gallows with half a word; a man, in short like you, Juan Falgueira, who, after all, have gained nothing by robbing and murdering, since you are now toiling here like a donkey, when with the millions I am going to procure you, you can go to America, to France, or ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged up by the heels. All the court went to gratify their eyes with the sight, and Charles, unconsciously imitating the language of Vitellius, said, as he drew near the offensive corpse, "The smell of a dead enemy is always sweet." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... Jews: Mordecai's grief, and repeated applications to Esther: she goes in to the king, is accepted: invites the king and Haman to a banquet: mortification of the latter at Mordecai's continued neglect: orders a gallows to be built for the disrespectful Jew: the honour conferred by the king upon Mordecai for his past zeal in his service: Haman's indignation: is fetched to a second banquet: Esther tells her feelings and accuses Haman: ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... business, found means to make profit from it. All the accused were convicted and fined. The more strenuous of their judges were for sending them to jail, and Rous was to have been sentenced to "sit an hour upon the gallows with a rope about his neck;" but the governor and council objected to these severities, and the Assembly forbore to impose them. The popular indignation against the accused was extreme, and probably not without cause.[89] ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... Boston told of effigies of certain persons being burned, or hung on the gallows, and from the reports I think it safe to say there has been quite as much excitement in that city over the Stamp Act as in Portsmouth. People who a few weeks ago denounced the Sons of Liberty as seditious persons, now ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... whose condemnation was deemed unjust by the people, so that they rescued him to try him themselves; whereupon, they, as it turned out, found him even guiltier than the court had done, and forthwith proceeded to execution; so that the gallows presented the truly warning spectacle of a man ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... poor Leigh, facing round upon his son, glad to find any one on whom he might vent his ill-humor; "are you too against me, with a murrain on you? And pray, what the devil brought Cuthbert Mayne to the gallows, and turned Mr. Trudgeon (he was always a foolish hot-head) out of house and home, but just such treasonable talk as Mr. Parsons must needs hold in my house, to make a beggar of me and my children, as he will ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... looking upon them till one o'clock in the morning, and so Sir W. Pen and I went away, and I to bed. This day the Parliament voted that the bodies of Oliver, Ireton, Bradshaw, &c., should be taken up out of their graves in the Abbey, and drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried under it: which (methinks) do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... said to be presuming upon any power, but rather by his presumption rose into power, and by the honor he found in the city, became the scandal of it. He, at this time, thought himself far enough from the ostracism, as more properly deserving the slave's gallows, and made account, that one of these men being dispatched out of the way, he might be able to play a part against the other that should be left, and openly showed his pleasure at the dissension, and his desire to inflame the people against both of them. Nicias and Alcibiades, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... glanced from the lady, who, poor thing, had hidden her face in her hands, to the gallows, and from the gallows ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... Market, a stone's throw from here, that Ridley and Latimer were burned. Over this spot the smoke of martyr fires hovered. And I pray for a time when they will hover again. Aye, that is what we need! the rack, the gallows, chains, dungeons, fagots!" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... such as it was I valued it. Never criminal walked to the gallows with as heavy a heart as I followed the school messenger across the quadrangle and past the fated gymnasium ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... since what a dreadful walk that was. He can remember it vividly across all the intervening years, and he declares that no criminal on his way to the gallows could have suffered from more agonising apprehensions. He pictured his reception in a thousand dismal forms. He saw himself knocking at the door; the moment's suspense; the servant facing him. What ought he to say? "Is Lady Charlton at ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... outlines are quite definite enough from the beginning to the end to those who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those who complain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile of attitudes,—his ears revealed through a white nightcap,—would be satisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... in a small way. He used to say that they were fools who did not always manage to keep the rope below their shoulders, by which he meant, that it was not advisable to commit a robbery, or do anything which could bring you to the gallows. He was all for petty larceny, and knew where to put his hand upon any little thing in England, which it was possible to steal. I submit it to the better judgment of the Romany Rye, who I see is a great hand for words and names, whether he ought not to have been called old Filcher, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... They approached, they banged, they smashed to atoms. It was the most appalling collision that had ever been heard of, and the Guard and Engine-Driver, as well as the Ticket-Collectors and Directors of the Company, were all executed by the Government the very next day from gallows that an angry London built in half an hour on the top of St. Paul's ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other articles of clothing of the commonest description, completed the history. A prison, and the sentence—banishment or the gallows. What would the man have given then, to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... thief to the gallows," says Rosalind. It is true. The days have an uncanny way of racing by. I see my little allotted span of life shrinking visibly, like the peau de chagrin. I must bestir myself, or my last day will come before I have ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... hands of the enemy—having for that purpose tampered with and seduced Thibault Sanchez, Seneschal of the Castle, Tristan de la Fleche, and certain others, who, having confessed their crime, have received their deserts, by being hung on a gallows—upon which same gallows it was decreed by the authority of the Prince, Duke and Governor of Aquitaine, that the shield of Fulk de Clarenham should be hung—he himself being degraded from the honours and privileges of knighthood, of which he had proved himself unworthy—and ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and that the quane of thim ud jist give us a call, till I'd ask her if she'd iver a pipe and its full of tobacky about her,—or, failin' that, if she'd hoppen to have a knife in her pocket, till I cut out the ould divil Jeff on the gallows, and give him what he'd git, if we iver put our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... impossible for any one to be saved without them, then tell us, Dr. Major, how can a man be saved who all his life till his last breath has led a sinful life, but now when about to die, desires to apprehend Christ (as is the case with many on their death-bed or on the gallows)? How will Major comfort such a poor sinner?" The poor sinner, Flacius continues, would declare: "Major, the great theologian, writes and teaches as most certain that no one can be saved without good works, and that good works are absolutely necessary (ganz ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... disgusting scenes which the mass of spectators exhibit on these occasions, as if this were quite decisive of the question. That ragged children, who have never thought of death at all, play their usual pranks at the foot of the gallows—that pickpockets ply their trade in this as in every other gaping crowd—what has all this to do with the impression produced on the mind of every man and woman throughout the kingdom, by the knowledge that if he, through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... boy. Speak not so wildly; nor think that I will touch a penny of your good father's gold. I am not sunk so low as that. Did he ever speak to you of Captain Jack, whom he once saved from the gallows?" ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... one child, the hobby-horse, the doctor, the foreign gentleman, the executioner, and the devil, all were here. Their owners had evidently come to that spot to make some needful repairs in their stock, for one of them was engaged in binding together a small gallows with thread, while the other was intent upon fixing a new ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... object in the picture remains to be described, but yet it is necessary to its completion. This was a gallows of unusual form and height, erected on the summit of a gentle hill, rising immediately in front of the abbot's lodgings, called the Holehouses, whose rounded, bosomy beauty it completely destroyed. This terrible apparatus of condign punishment ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... they were seized by the Whigs, tried, and condemned to be hanged. Roberts's wife and children went before Congress and on their knees begged for mercy; but in vain. One November morning of 1778 the two men were marched to the gallows, with halters round their necks. At the gallows, wrote a spectator, Roberts's behaviour 'did honour ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... advanced in pregnancy, hourly expecting to give birth to a child. If a convicted murderess is in that condition, the law delays the execution of its ghastly sentence till the baby is born, whom the gallows orphans soon. The poor negro woman's counsel begged for delay that the child might be born in Pennsylvania and so be free,—a poor boon, but too great for a fugitive slave bill judge to grant. The judge who inherits the name of the first murderer, disgraced the family of Cain; ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... his own hero. I was with him when he died and when he died again and a hundred miles to the south is another eagle forgotten and all the prairies, green once more, will be as they were before men insulted them. O eagle forgotten. O stained prairie, O gallows, thirsty mob, knife, torch, revolver. Contumely, parochialism, the shortvision forever gone; and the long vision too, the eagle forgotten is the national bird, the great merging with the greater, so gained too late a vision and saw the hope ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... that improving and delightful work, Mr. Charles Whibley has, well observed: "A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed." This high standard, the hall-mark of the artist in crime, Mary Blandy admittedly ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... is the tiny Russian cranberry, and grows accordingly. Another French author quite recently contributed an item of information which Russians have adopted as a characteristic bit of ignorance and erected into a standard jest. He asserted that every village in Russia has its own gallows, on which it hangs its own criminals off-hand. As the death penalty is practically abolished in Russia, except for high treason, which is not tried in villages, the Russians are at a loss to explain what the writer can have mistaken for a gallows. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... should be tried by combat. The parties being assembled in a field, with a crowd of people around, the dog on one side, and the soldier, armed with a stick of a cubit's length, on the other, the murderer was at length overcome by the victorious dog, and suffered an ignominious death on the common gallows. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis



Words linked to "Gallows" :   gallows bird, hangman's rope, gallows tree, hempen necktie, gallows-tree, hangman's halter, plural



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