United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
How can the women of Cradley Heath engaged in wielding huge sledge-hammers, or carrying on their neck a hundredweight of chain for twelve or fourteen hours a day, in order to earn five or seven shillings a week, bear or rear healthy children? What "hope of our race" can we expect from the average London factory hand? What "home" is she capable of making for her husband and her children?
In the meantime a new and fierce attack was heard upon the outer gate of the Correction-house, which, battered with sledge-hammers and crows, was soon forced. The keeper, as great a coward as a bully, with his more ferocious wife, had fled; their servants readily surrendered the keys.
All sorts of weapons of destruction were now produced by the mob. Some had sledge-hammers in their hands, others axes, and others bludgeons; while ladders, handspikes, and ropes and blocks were brought into the church. Immediately they went to work.
Indeed, he felt a good deal of satisfaction at the prospect of being engaged in a scrimmage. Of course, he expected to come off a victor. He was a considerably larger man than Richard Dewey, with arms like flails and flats like sledge-hammers, and he had no sort of doubt that he could settle his smaller antagonist in less than five minutes. But there was one thing of which he was not aware.
These doors the men proceeded to attack with sledge-hammers, while the rest of the gang, sheltered by the 'midship-house, showed that it stood ready for the rush when the doors were battered down. Inside, the steward guarded one door with his hacking knife, while with his spear Wada guarded the other door. Nor, while I had dispatched them to this duty, was I idle.
In the dead of the night a party of Dahis Cavasses would surround a house, drive open gates and doors with sledge-hammers; the awakened and affrighted inmates would rush to the windows, and seeing the court-yard filled with armed men with dark lanterns, the shrieks of women and children were added to the confusion; and the unhappy father was often murdered with the half-naked females of his family clinging to his neck, but unable to save him.
The buffalo now broke into several small bodies, scampering over the hills in different directions, and I lost sight of Shaw; neither of us knew where the other had gone. Old Pontiac ran like a frantic elephant up hill and down hill, his ponderous hoofs striking the prairie like sledge-hammers.
At their head, and taller than the others, fought two men, whose arms worked with the systematic precision of piston-rods, and before whom men fell on either hand as if struck with sledge-hammers. "Hottawa a moi!" cried the Ottawa champion again, and the relieving party faced in his direction. "I say," said the lieutenant, "that first man is uncommonly like your Glengarry friend."
"And left us and, abune a', me, mysell, locked up in the tolbooth a' night!" exclaimed the Bailie, in ire and perturbation. "Ca' for forehammers, sledge-hammers, pinches, and coulters; send for Deacon Yettlin, the smith, an let him ken that Bailie Jarvie's shut up in the tolbooth by a Highland blackguard, whom he'll hang up as high as Haman"
A wild shout succeeded, and then the work which seemed delegated to a comparatively small number of the assembled crowd, went on with incredible celerity. Some were armed with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge-hammers; others brought ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers.
Word Of The Day