will for a moment re-asserted itself. She knew
her lover was at the door, and she knew also
that the feet of doom had been swifter than those
of the bridegroom.... She sprang forward
and threw open the door."
"'I am mad!' she shrieked, in a voice which
pierced to every corner of the old mansion."
Arlo Bates, The Wheel of Fire, (1885).
Dam'ocles (3 syl.), a sycophant, in the court of Dionys'ius the Elder, of Syracuse. After extolling the felicity of princes, Dionysius told him he would give him experimental proof thereof. Accordingly he had the courtier arrayed in royal robes and seated at a sumptuous banquet, but overhead was a sword suspended by a single horsehair, and Damocles was afraid to stir, lest the hair should break and the sword fall on him. Dionysius thus intimated that the lives of kings are threatened every hour of the day.—Cicero.
Let us who have not our names in the Red