War club

“ After much parleying the doctor's desire for hog and hominy overcame all his fears, and the club marched to breakfast. Here two servant girls armed with long fans, fought a cloud of the famished varmints, while the club swallowed hoe cake covered with a copious lather of the flies of the season. At length our appetites or rather we ourselves, were conquered, and retired in disgust, leaving our foes to bury their dead and divide the spoils of war. ”

“ The Big Flat, from a model boarding-house became a very bad tenement, and the boarders’ club dissolved, to the loss and injury of a posterity that was distinctly poorer and duller, no less for the want of the club than for the possession of the tenement.
The boys’ club was born of the struggle of the community with the street, as a measure of self-defence. It has proven a useful war-club too, but its conquests have been the conquests of peace. It has been the kernel of success in many a philanthropic undertaking, secular and religious alike. ”

“ This chief got up, walked to the end of the circle, and there brought the club down on the ground with a resounding thud. Then he passed the club to Big Tree. In a solemn and dignified manner every chief duplicated Half Town's performance with the club.
Isaac watched the ceremony as if fascinated. He had seen a war-club used in the councils of the Hurons and knew that striking it on the ground signified war and death.
"White man, you are a killer of Indians," said Cornplanter in good
English. "When the sun shines again you die." ”

“ When all was settled between the young people, War Club told his parents that he wanted to marry. The old people were glad to hear it, for they like their ancient and honorable names and houses to be kept up, just as well as lords and dukes do; so they collected everything they owned for the purpose of buying Walking Wind. Guns and blankets, powder and shot, knives and trinkets, were in requisition instead of title-deeds and settlements. So, when all was ready, War Club put the presents on a horse, and carried them to the door of Walking Wind's wigwam. ”

“ The "war-club" occurs pretty frequently. But it is usually introduced as a special weapon of a special hero, who fashions a gold-headed club to slay one that steel cannot touch, or who tears up a tree, like the Spanish knight in the ballad, or who uses a club to counteract spells that blunt steel. The bat- shapen archaic rudder of a ship is used as a club in the story of the Sons of Arngrim.
The "spear" plays no particular part in Saxo: even Woden's spear Gungne is not prominent. ”

“ You see my medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It contains all my medicines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all colors. As soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head. When it is free from my body, take it, place its neck in the sack, which you must open at one end. Then hang it up in its former place. Do not forget my bow and arrows. One of the last you will take to procure food. The remainder, tie in my sack, and then hang it up, so that I can look towards the door. ”

“ Those men who are armed with war clubs, which are held vertically before the person, indicate (in accordance with a similar custom among other branches of the Dakota Nation, in which, however, the pipe is held instead of the club) that the man has at some time led war parties on his own account. ”

“ At the first word 154spoken the stone-bitted war-club descends with terrible finality and the victim lapses into a slumber from which he never wakens. The deed is done quietly, with every precaution taken to guard against the awakening of the rest of the kampong. In many instances several small shacks have been erected for the convenience of the visitors and the victims are lured into these to be murdered.
Some of the girls of the place may take a liking to the visitors, in which case there may be one or two men and a like number of girls in the shacks of the strangers. ”

“ But for a few communities in the world that individual club has become a national armory, with human energies perfecting the most destructive machinery of warfare, that aggression may be carried on against neighbors, and territory expanded for purposes of national government and the increment of national wealth.
The twentieth century has been distinguished by a call to the humanities; a summons to a larger brotherhood. ”

“ Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons, [Pg 154]
10And the war-cry was forgotten. ”

“ The day has passed when one Englishman was worth ten foreigners. Modern science in warfare has altered all that. All the rifle-clubs in England could not stop one German battalion, because the German battalion is trained and disciplined in the art of war, while our rifle-clubs are neither disciplined nor trained. Were every able-bodied man in the kingdom to join a rifle-club we should be no nearer the problem of beating the German invaders if once they landed, than if the spectators in all the football matches held in Britain mobilised against a foreign foe. ”

“ In the meantime Americans living in England had organized to do everything in their power [Pg 106] to make the lives of the seamen of the destroyer fleet comfortable. Plans were at once formulated and work begun on a club, the United States Naval Men's Club at the American base. This club, which is now completed, contains dormitories, shower-baths, a canteen, and a billiard room with two pool-tables. There is an auditorium for moving-picture shows and other entertainments, reading-rooms, and in fact everything that would tend to make the men feel at home and divert their leisure hours. ”

“ I have heard that the club-men had their origin in the days of the civil war, when the people, finding themselves robbed and plundered by two rival armies without hope of redress or compensation, resolved to defend themselves from such attacks, and refuse to allow their property to be taken from them by either party. ”

“ There’s first the Athenæum Club; so wise, there’s not a man of it
That has not sense enough for six—in fact, that is the plan of it.
The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical,
[49] And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical.
Then opposite the mental club you’ll find the regimental one—
A meeting made of men of war, and yet a very gentle one.
If uniform good living please your palate, here’s excess of it.
Especially at private dinners, when they make a mess of it. ”

“ Some of them are short, used for one hand, and made just like the steel maces of European chivalry. Others are almost exactly like the club No. 1, figured on page 949. The example which is given in the illustration entitled “Club,” on page 1018, is drawn from a specimen in my collection, and belonged to the same chief who owned the war mat and feather headdress which have been described. It is five feet in length, and very heavy, so that none but a very powerful man can use it. As it has seen much work, it has been battered about, the wood of the head cracked, and the carving defaced. ”

“ We have been threatened with them sometimes, but they have always been nipped in the bud. It is curious to see how fiercely this tolerant, liberal, large-headed creature, Man, has waged war against the slightest attempt to establish a club on the part of the gentler sex. From the Parisian malecontents of the first revolution, who broke into the lady assemblies of the Jacobines and Tricoteuses, and broke up the clubs in question by the very expeditious process of turning the fair members into the street, after subjecting them to a castigation whose use is ordinarily confined to the nursery ”

“ A post-African task was the building up of rifle clubs, for I was enormously impressed by the power of the rifle as shown in the recent war. A soldier was no longer a specialized creature, but every brave man who could hold a rifle-barrel straight was a dangerous man. I founded the Undershaw Club, which was the father of many others, and which was inspected by Lord Roberts, Mr. ”

“ The Veterans' Club, for which the Lord Mayor is to hold a meeting at the Mansion House on Thursday, June 22nd, at 3.30, is the nucleus of a movement to offer the chance of rest and convalescence to those who have fought and suffered in defence of their country; to secure suitable employment for those whose service is finished, and friendly help in the hour of need. ”

“ One cries out, “This is my club!—the club that never yet was false!” The next, “This army moves to-morrow; then you shall eat dead men till you are surfeited!” A man striking the ground violently with his club, boasts, “I cause the earth to tremble; it is I who meet the enemy to-morrow!” “See,” exclaims another, “I hold a musket and a battle-axe; if the musket miss fire the hatchet will not!” A fine young man stepped quietly towards a king, and, holding a pole used as an anchor for a canoe, says, “See, sire, the anchor of Natewa (the name of the locality threatened) ”

“ His mind ranged over those pathetic, prosperous, sonless men who filed into the club late in the afternoons, and over the last editions and whisky-and-sodas fought their futile warfare, their battle-ground a newspaper map, their upraised voices their only weapons.
On parade days, when the long lines of boys in khaki went by, they were silent, heavy, inutile. They were too old to fight. The biggest thing in their lives was passing them by, as passed the lines of marching boys, and they had no part in it. ”

“ Because of all these conveniences, our comrades the artillery officers, and some of the infantry, liked to assemble at our battery, and called this place “The Club.”
It was a beautiful evening, the best players had come, and we were playing Gorodki. I, Ensign O⁠⸺, and Lieutenant O⁠⸺, lost two games running, and to the general amusement and laughter of the onlooking officers, and of soldiers and orderlies who were watching us from their tents, we twice carried the winners piggyback from one end of the ground to the other. ”

“ Most of the men were at the bandstand in the public gardens—from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes—or on the polo-ground or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters' return. From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. ”

“ But club tactics has existed in Germany for decades, and has even yet not wholly disappeared. But it is not laborers and also not socialists with whom the club counts as the ultima ratio, the conclusive argument. It is the tactics of the noblest of the nation, the national liberals, who in the middle and southwestern portions of Germany organized battalions of brawling club heroes, and thereby sought to retain their political domains through a brutal terrorism. But the advancing social democracy has well nigh stamped them out. ”

“ The Club is the shelter of henpecked man; a friend’s house, or Marshall and Snellgrove’s, the refuge of a cockpecked woman. On the stormiest domestic debate, the advent of a visitor intervenes, throwing temporary oil on the waters, and compelling the belligerents to put off their quarrels and put on their smiles; and, when the unconscious peacemaker has departed, it is often found difficult, if not impossible, to take up the squabble just where it was left off. ”

“ Human nature seems always to be the same. Establishment of clubs seems inherent to the Anglo-Saxon nature. Ten or more persons would combine together and erect a sort of wooden shed against the brick walls of a barrack, hire some poorer person to put on a white jacket and be addressed as "steward," put in the shed a few deck chairs and a table and enjoy the sensation of exclusiveness and club life thereby given. ”

“ The great club was full uplifted in the air, when the combatants saw him suddenly waver and stagger, then saw the deadly weapon drop, a stream of spouting blood from the wounded breast gush over the white garment, and that tall figure and ghastly face sink downward to the earth, one last long yell, wilder and more fearful than any that had preceded it, sounding the signal of his death, and the battle again going on over the trampled body. ”

“ Club the impudent foe and burn his towns! May the ‘Teeth-of-the-Yangona’ fight bravely, and all come back alive. May none of them be clubbed! May every arrow of the enemy fly wide of the mark! May the young men live and be strong to kill in the battle! May they beat back all our foes, spoil all their plots, and fill our ovens with flesh that the gods may have plenty to eat, and once more bring us peace and rest. ”

“ At the same time, if you will make him the present, untrammelled by conditions, he will accept it; as by thrusting a tough stick up one of the barrels the revolver may be converted into a handy club, with which a man may kill his enemy in such a way that half a glance will show the manner of his death.
The club, then, is the universal weapon among the utterly savage; it is a weapon which may be procured without trouble; a round stone lashed to the end of a stick, the thigh-bone of a buffalo,—anything in fact of a handy length and with a heavy knob to it will suffice. ”

“ If it is not possible to form a foot-ball club, why should not these young men who have adopted this new-born country for their motherland, why I say, do not they form themselves into a rifle club, so at any-rate they may be some day called upon to aid their adopted land against a tyrant's band, that may some day 'pop' upon us when we least expect a foe at our very doors. ”

“ Clubs are poor weapons to keep the face of a square, and the formation was quickly broken, and, fighting like lions, our friends were driven backward to the hill, every one of them fairly drenched with blood, and almost all wounded, whilst their number now totalled something under a hundred men. ”