Sir Joshua Reynolds pleasantly observed, that it was a scene for a comedy, to see a penitent get into a violent passion and belabour his confessor.

Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour, when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie, and, looking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little boy.

Though only the first and the last man of the chain had a hand free, their business was to surround and seize thrice the future Green Wolf, who in his efforts to escape belaboured the brothers with a long wand which he carried.

In stern and solemn silence our force was marshalled for the attack, and then, without any word of warning, each one began belabouring with all his might the recumbent figures of the foe.

I have belaboured the Government from all points of attack.

Follow me not, lest I belabour you, You half-fac'd groat, you thick-cheek'd chittyface; You Judas-villain!

While the mahouts in front rained a shower of blows on the elephants head, and the spear-men pricked him up from behind with their jhethas, the occupant of the pad, turning round with his face to the tail, belaboured the poor hathee with the auctioneer's hammer.

He dealt him blows with some hard instrument, belabouring his head, while with his left hand he throttled his throat so that he could not scream.

To thus belabour a horse on its hinder-parts would seem to be equivalent among the horse-breeding fraternity to chucking a buxom milkmaid under the chin.

This man, returning and crying out: "So it is not the rats who plunder my larder!" began to belabour the hunchback, till the body rolled over and lay still.

Then Beltane laid on with the flat of his heavy sword and soundly belaboured these hard-breathing knaves, insomuch that one, hard-smitten on the crown, stumbled and fell, whereupon his comrades, to save their bones, leapt forthwith a-down the steepy bank and, plunging into the stream, made across to the farther side, splashing prodigiously, and cursing consumedly, for the water they liked not at all.

Sancho bore it for some time, but at length, starting up, he bade the physician avaunt, saying, "By the sun's light, I'll get me a good cudgel, and beginning with your carcase, will so belabour all the physic-mongers in the island, that I will not leave one of the tribe.

Listening for a moment, I heard this distinguished general exclaiming vociferously, and belabouring the poor negro heavily with a raw-hide whip; most likely venting the spleen he felt at his non-success against the Indians, the expedition having hitherto been unsuccessful.

But, intimidated, most probably, by the tremendous blows with which the larger bull continued to belabour the ocean, the smaller animal sheered away in time to avoid a collision, though he now began to circle the spot where his dreaded monarch lay.

Whoever reasons with the Hindus when they mercilessly belabour the progeny of the cow with their sticks?

Their huge leathery ears flapped lazily, and ever and anon one or other would seize a mighty branch, and belabour his corrugated sides to free himself of the detested and troublesome flies.

See, O chief of the celestials, yonder cruel husbandman is belabouring my weak son with the wooden stick, and oppressing him with the (weight of the) plough, in consequence of which my child agitated with agony is falling upon the ground and is at the point of death.

He belaboured the small table; he rose on tiptoe and fell upon his heels; often he seemed to fling his words with a rapid jerk of his right arm as one hurls a pebble.

At that the servants, seeing the danger their master was in, belaboured the silly Ass with sticks and cudgels, and drove him back to his stable half dead with his beating.

She, therefore, without ceremony, raised a broom, with which she belaboured the astonished Tom, who ran frantically from under one chair to another till he ensconced himself in a small closet, from which he pertinaciously refused to be dislodged.