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More "Ostler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a higher degree than this one. The likeness must be perfect, and I can imagine the delight of the Rev. Joseph Spence hobbling into his presence on the 4th of September, 1735, after "a ragged boy of an ostler came in with a little scrap of paper not half an inch broad, which contained the following words: 'Mr. Pope would be very glad to see Mr. Spence at ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and he found incapacity in women exciting and endearing. He watched her with a hard attention that was his kind of tenderness, as she sat humped schoolgirlishly in her shapeless blue overall, averting her face from the light but attempting a proud pose, and keeping her grief between her teeth as an ostler chews a straw. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... jewel—and wouldn't he look the gintleman, every inch of him?" and Sally expatiated greatly on it in the kitchen, and drank both their healths in an extra pot of tea, and Kate grinned her delight, and Jack the ostler, who took care of Martin's horse, boasted loudly of it in the street, declaring that "it was a good thing enough for Anty Lynch, with all her money, to get a husband at all out of the Kellys, for the divil a know any one knowed in the counthry where the Lynchs come from; but every one ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... in a few minutes the mysterious relation in which he stood to the place would be ascertained. "He MUST be known," I continued to repeat to myself; "the first eye that falls on him, will recognize him instantly." We reached the inn; we alighted. The landlord and the ostler came to the coach door, and received us with extreme civility, and the former assisted the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim acquaintance—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent widow, her two daughters, the elder of whom seemed to be about the age of fifteen, and a country lad, who served both as waiter and ostler. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... he rode into the yard of the Morven Arms, and having found a sleepy ostler, gave up his mare: he would be better without her at the castle!—whither he was setting out to walk when the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... elaborate post-office and telephone services will also bring intelligent ingredients to these suburban nuclei, these restorations of the old villages and country towns. And the sons of the cottager within the affected area will develop into the skilled vegetable or flower gardeners, the skilled ostler—with some veterinary science—and so forth, for whom also there will evidently be work and a living. And dotted at every convenient position along the new roads, availing themselves no doubt whenever possible of the picturesque ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the ostler's darkening countenance decided Pitman. 'All right,' he said desperately, 'you drive. I'll tell ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... snatched from under my very nose. So, anathematising Miss O'Donoghue's family-tree, root, stem, and branch—except that most lovely off-shoot I mean to transplant (you will forgive this heat of blood; it was clearing for action so to speak)—I ran out and overtook the ostler whom I had seen putting the finishing touch to the lashing of boxes behind! 'Gloucester!' says he. The word was worth the guinea it cost me, a hundred times over.—In less than an hour I was in the saddle, ready for pursuit, cantering boot to boot with my man—a trusty fellow who knows ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... uneasily passing the Ebenezer chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least stiff or fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he arrived time enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and to present his elbow to the ladies as they alighted ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stable of the Red Dragon three men stooped in conclave over the hind foot of a horse. Deio, the ostler, and Roberts, the farrier, agreed in their verdict for a wonder; and Caradoc Wynne, the owner of the horse, straightened himself from his stooping posture ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... servant is that servant of Captain Jones; but then they all are. Valet, cook, porter, boots, chambermaid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coal-heaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... office, to apply it to that thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that thirtieth boy—been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them, hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the butler from the cellar, and to catch the servants at a junket; so that he was at the age of eighteen a complete master of all the lower arts of domestick policy, had often on the road detected combinations between the coachman and the ostler, and procured the discharge of nineteen maids for illicit correspondence with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the supreme patronage of King James I., whose admiration for the poet and his works was very large and real. James Burbage was owner of "The Theatre," and it was in his time, we may presume, that Shakespeare acted as ostler and call-boy. But he must have risen up from the ranks at no small pace when his gifts became well known, for not only do we find him a regular member of the company, but a friend of the leading members, men like Richard Burbage, son of the proprietor, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... the window, watching him. "Well, now you see what you have to expect, if you try your trade with me," thought Edward, "I am very glad that you have been spying." Having replaced his pistols, Edward paid his reckoning, and went to the stable desiring the ostler to saddle his horse and fix on his saddle-bags. As soon as this was done he mounted and rode off. Before he was well clear of the town the highwaymen cantered past him on three well-bred active horses. "I presume ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... the unused pewter pots shone, too bright for business, on the shelves. I beheld a Punch's Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It was deserted, and there were none to heed its desolation. In Belgrave Square I met the last man - an ostler - sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat, eating straw, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... to see these forty nobles tearing off their clothes and littering the deck with velvets and satins, whilst the squire of each, as busy as an ostler before a race, stooped and pulled and strained and riveted, fastening the bassinets, the legpieces, the front and the back plates, until the silken courtier had become the man of steel. When their work was finished, there stood a stern group of warriors where the light ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the village shoemaker, the strength of whose head had been a boast in the village for many years. On the third occasion the indignant shoemaker was interrupted in the middle of an impassioned harangue on free speech and bundled into the road by the ostler. After ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words "post-chaise," the "great North road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she asked in fluent Spanish, of the ostler, who stared with open-mouthed surprise at this apparition of a fine lady in such a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... has really gone to board at a first-class stable," concluded Miss Belinda. "I call occasionally and leave my card in the shape of an apple, finding Madam Rosa living like an independent lady, with her large box and private yard on the sunny side of the barn, a kind ostler to wait upon her, and much genteel society from the city when she ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... days, every henchman could whistle to him his shabby poet, and every ostler hold court in the stable, with a visdase, or ass face, to keep the audience in a roar, and a nimble-footed trull to set them into ecstasies. But woe betide the honest wayfarer who strolled beyond ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... were eating their corn, or rather were supposed to eat it (for, as the boy was taking care of himself in the kitchen, the ostler took great care that his corn should not be consumed in the stable), Mr Jones, at the earnest desire of Mr Dowling, accompanied that gentleman into his room, where they sat down together ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide- eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on. The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... of Factory Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil notes in Ostler's handwriting ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... in silence, and sucked a straw which he had in his mouth reflectively. Tim looked anxiously up into his face. Would he take a fancy to him? The landlord had now drawn near, and also an inquisitive ostler. The old chestnut-seller ceased to rock herself to and fro, and turned her head towards the group, so that the dog, so lonely a few minutes ago, had suddenly become a centre of interest. He seemed to wonder at this, but he scarcely moved his eyes, with a mute appeal ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... second, and then made a pass at me, sending the steel through my clothes on the right side. I felt a slight sting, but did not mind, and by wrenching myself half round I tore the sabre from his hand. Then I closed, and held him, in spite of his struggles and frothing curses, until the landlord and ostler burst in and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... The ostler of the inn at which we put up, understanding I was bound for London, advised me to take my passage in a collier which would be both cheap and expeditious and withal much easier than to walk upwards of three hundred miles through deep roads ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... of whom had ridden out on horseback: in going over a rail-fence close to the house we were to dine at, the horse I rode struck both hind feet and cast his shoes: as soon as I got into the yard, where some of the party had already dismounted, I inquired for the ostler. A good-humoured, active-looking fellow immediately made his appearance, with whom, being desirous to have my nag's feet looked after before we set out on our return, I was led into the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... was no sign of my companions, but a tall man, dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons like a small country farmer, was tightening the girth of a magnificent black horse, whilst a little further on a slim young ostler was waiting by the roadside, holding the bridles of two others. It was only when I recognised one of the pair as the horse which I had ridden on my first coming to camp that I answered the smile upon the keen handsome face of the ostler, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... conversation he asked me what I intended to do, and I told him frankly that I did not know; whereupon he observed that, provided I had no objection, he had little doubt that I could be accommodated for some time at his inn. "Our upper ostler," said he, "died about a week ago; he was a clever fellow, and, besides his trade, understood reading ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... inseparable friend and ally of William Godwin. Holcroft's vivid and masterful personality stands out indeed as the most attractive among the abler members of the circle. The son of a boot-maker, he had earned his bread as cobbler, ostler, village schoolmaster, strolling player and reporter. His insatiable passion for knowledge had given him a mastery of French and German. He went in 1783 to Paris as correspondent of the Morning Herald, on the modest salary of a guinea-and-a-half a week. It was there that he acquired his ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... a place that would just suit you," the ostler at the Greyhound at Streatham said to him, on the occasion of his third visit there; "but it is let; my old mother is the gentleman's housekeeper. He took the place through me, for he rode up just as you have done, one afternoon, nigh a year ago. ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the profanity, our table would have been sweeter; but the flannel shirts were seldom washed, to prevent shrinking, just as their owners seldom spoke, to avoid swearing; an overpowering smell of horses was emitted by the driver, and of stables by the ostler, while the proprietor exhaled the mixed but indescribable odours combined from his various duties, such as cooking, cleaning up, sleeping in his clothes, and ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... order of his successes, but at this distance of time and places I can keep no chronological count of them. Robson has always alternated the serio-comic burlesque with pure farce, and after Jem Baggs his brightest hits have been in the deaf ostler in "Boots at the Swan" and the discharged criminal in "Retained for the Defence." In the burlesque of "Masaniello," he had an opportunity—which some thought would prove a magnificent one to him—of showing the grotesque side of insanity; but, for some reason or other, the part seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... to survey the scene, the noble Marquis enraged at the blocking of his day's pleasuring belabored the chief ostler with his cane. Smartly the blows rained down on the cowering sufferer, alternate right and left in rhythmic strokes that touched each and several ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... How excellently drawn are the two Rochester steeds: one "an immense brown horse, displaying great symmetry of bone," which was to be driven by Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Winkle's riding animal, another immense horse "apparently a near relative of the animal in the chaise." "He don't shy, does he?" The ostler guaranteed him quiet—"a hinfant in arms might drive him"—"He wouldn't shy if he met a whole waggon-load of monkeys with their tails burnt off." A far more original illustration than anything used by the Wellers, whose ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... have then; but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst—the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of the jetty; some threw us one thing and some another; at length James Nicholson got into a boat, took us in, and landed us safe ashore. I went to a public house, where I got a glass of brandy, and borrowed the ostler's clothes, and I ailed nothing afterwards. The young woman remained at New Holland all night, and took her departure next morning, without leaving behind her even a single expression of verbal gratitude for what ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... that she did not suppose he had really looked, it was only to tease me. But I believe he had—anyway from that moment de la Tremors has been always talking to me. Presently while we were eating our rolls, the garcon, a Parisian (who was also the ostler), came in and said: Would Madame—indicating the Baronne—come up to "Mademoiselle," who wished to speak to her? We could not think who he could mean, as I was the only "Mademoiselle" of the party. The ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... now rests beneath this rail, Who loved his joke, his pipe, and mug of ale; For twenty years he did the duties well, Of ostler, boots, and waiter at the "Bell." But Death stepp'd in, and order'd Peter Staggs To feed his worms, and leave the farmers' nags. The church clock struck one—alas! 't was Peter's knell, Who sigh'd, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Smith, ostler at the Suffolk Hotel Inn, Ipswich; and her brother, Mr. William Freeman, of Stonham Aspal, Suffolk, were both afflicted with Scrofula: Mr. Freeman had suffered for several years with two scrofulous wounds on his face; and Mrs. Smith with scrofulous enlargement of the glands of the neck: after trying ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... horses round to the stable, rub them down and give them food," the marquis said to the ostler who came out. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... disappointment they must often know! The horse backs on to the pavement, into a plate-glass window, just as Maria, for whose sake the poor screw was hired, is passing by. The boys halloo in derision; and some ostler, helpful, but not complimentary, extricates the rider, and says, 'I see you have never been on 'ossback before; you should not have pulled the curb-bit that way!' And when the vulgar dandy, strutting along, with his Brummagem jewellery, his choking collar, and his awfully tight boots which cause ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... ostler and a posse of underlings hastened to give welcome to so fine a gentleman, and a private room above-stairs was placed at his disposal. Before ascending, however, Mr. Caryll sauntered into the bar for a whetting glass to give him an appetite, and further for the purpose of bespeaking ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... all our luggage, will you, ostler?' says one of them to the groom, 'and whatever you do don't ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... in his inn, and took his sip of punch so comfortably, that I, for my part, thought he never would be gone. I was out in the stables and looking at the horses, and talking to the ostler who was rubbing his nags down. I dare say I had a peep into the kitchen, and at the pigeons in the inn-yard, and at all things which were to be seen at "The Bell," while my two companions were still at their interminable punch. It was an old-fashioned inn, with a gallery round ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the ostler; his duty being merely to drive from one stage to another. When off the box, his hands are thrust in the pockets of his greatcoat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded by an admiring throng ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... his dreary vigil in the kitchen, and called to the innkeeper to carry up bread and wine to Fulvia's room. Then he went out to see that the horses were fed and watered. He had not dared to question the landlord as to the roads, lest his doing so should excite suspicion; but he hoped to find an ostler who would give him ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air and abandons the cattle to the care of the ostler, his duty being merely to drive from one stage to another. When off the box his hands are thrust into the pockets of his great coat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... out. 'You are Vargoushoff?' 'I am.' 'Well, you may take her.' The gates opened, and they led her out in her own clothes quite all right. 'Well, come along. Have you come on foot?' 'No, I have the horse here.' So I went and paid the ostler, and harnessed, put in all the hay that was left, and covered it with sacking for her to sit on. She got in and wrapped her shawl round her, and off we drove. She says nothing and I say nothing. Just as we were coming ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the stable where Bunker was housed, chattered with the blue-chinned ostler, and then, for a moment, was alone with the dog. How much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat him? Bunker was tired; he relapsed on to his haunches, wagged his tail, grinned, but in his ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... man's day consumed; and when he mounted his dog-cart, at Dollington, wrapped his rug about his legs, whip and reins in hand, and the ostler buckled the apron across, the sun was setting redly behind the hills; and the air was frosty, and the night dark, as he drew up before his own door-steps, near Gylingden. A dozen lines of one of these pages would suffice to contain the fruits of his day's work; and yet the lawyer ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... it was old Alec Jewler, the ostler at the Tor Cross posting-house—had told me that here and there along the coast, but most of all in Cornwall, near Falmouth, there had once been arsenic mines, now long since worked out. Their shafts, he said, could be followed here and there for some little distance, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... of the two, throwing the reins upon his horse's neck, alighted, and leaving the ostler to take the steed away, he strode quickly into the inn without uttering a word. The young man, however, got off his saddle in a more leisurely fashion, and before he followed his companion he proceeded to the stable to see that the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... at the kitchen-door, which stood ajar. And at last there was such a pressure of air that the doors in the other end of the stable also burst open; and now the west wind rushed triumphantly right through the building, swinging the lantern that hung from the roof, whisking the ostler's cap out into the darkness, blowing the rugs over the horses' heads, and sweeping a white hen off the roost into the watering-trough. And the cock raised a frightful screech, and the ostler swore, and the hens cackled, and in the kitchen they were nearly smothered with ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... was before him; it had no place for idlers, and he must get work. The contents of the basket were not yet exhausted, and he took it to a retired corner to eat his breakfast. While he was thus engaged, Joe Flint, the ostler, happened to see him. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... horse by an ostler and two local sots from the tap-room, his valise was strapped none too securely before him, and with a farewell, which was meant to be gracious but was only foolish, he tittuped into the rain. He was as ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... intellect. I do not believe your habitual customers have their ideas more enlarged than one of your coach-horses. They KNOWS the road, like the English postilion, and they know nothing besides. They date, like the carriers at Gadshill, from the death of Robin Ostler; [See Act II. Scene 1 of the First Part of Shakespeare's Henry IV.] the succession of guards forms a dynasty in their eyes; coachmen are their ministers of state; and an upset is to them a greater incident than a change of administration. Their only ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... surrounding population, who, he said, were all Carlists and friends of the friars. I paid little attention to his discourse, for I was looking at a Maragato lad of about fourteen, who served in the house as a kind of ostler. I asked the master if we were still in the land of the Maragatos; but he told me that we had left it behind nearly a league, and that the lad was an orphan and was serving until he could rake up a sufficient capital to become an arriero. I addressed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a thought for forty years, at the end of which time he repeated them both without missing,—or, as far as he ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Rewtham House (which had just passed into the hands of the Bellamys), and two from Bratham Abbey, and thither Arthur had himself driven. His Jehu, known through all the country round as "Old Sam," was an ancient ostler, who had been in the service of the Rewtham "King's Head," man and boy, for over fifty years, and from him Arthur collected a good deal of inaccurate information about the Caresfoot family, including a garbled version of all the death of ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... is the Ostler, and who is his lad, In fodder-supplying alliance, Who feed the Fire King and his Steed? 'Tis too bad That TRADE should feed Fire, and his henchman seem glad To set wholesome ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... walking across the bowling-green, we will see what has taken place outside the inn. Tom's presentiments of danger were not, it appeared, without foundation. Scarcely had the ostler brought forth our two highwaymen's steeds, when a post-chaise, escorted by two or three horsemen, drove furiously up to the door. The sole occupant of the carriage was a lady, whose slight and pretty figure was all that could be distinguished, her face being closely veiled. The ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... taught, of course, and cockatoos learn to say a few words. So do jackdaws and starlings, but very few. Oh, yes! then there's the raven. Uncle said he knew of one at an old country inn that used to say 'Coming, sir,' whenever anyone called for the ostler. Then there are those Indian birds they call Mynahs. Uncle says that some of them talk beautifully. Hallo! There he goes again! It's just like 'Ahoy-oy-oy-oy!' Plain enough to deceive anyone if it came off the sea. I'll wait till I catch sight of the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... him, I settled at a busy inn on the high-road, where, in return for board and lodging for myself and horse, I had to supervise the distribution of hay and corn in the stables, and to keep an account thereof. The old ostler, with whom I was soon on excellent terms, was a regular character—a Yorkshireman by birth, who had seen a great deal of life in the vicinity of London. He had served as ostler at a small inn at Hounslow, much frequented by highway men. Jerry Abershaw and Richard Ferguson, generally called ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... accident to that gentleman I came in with last night?" he said. "Is it anything serious? Your ostler says—" ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... with the air of a man who lived there, Daniel Granger thought. And he had said that he was staying with a bachelor friend. Mr. Granger rode slowly past the principal part of the hotel to an archway at the end—an archway leading to livery stables, where the ostler was lounging. He stopped opposite this archway, and beckoned the man ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... queer chap," said the ostler, "I'll run and see where he's going," and he followed the stranger, who had awakened a curiosity in every one except Tom. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed, when the ostler rushed into the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... style!" The "scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs unknown to Mr. Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr. Watkins was made much of in the salon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return to the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the mail- coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the ostler said, if my name was Dawson—from Hanbury Court, he believed. I felt it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant by going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... simple sentence Talboys' dormant jealousy contrived to revive. He turned sulky, and would not waste any more tenderness, and presently they rattled over the stones of Royston. Lucy commended her pony with peculiar earnestness to the ostler. "Pray groom him well, and feed him well, sir; he is a love." The ostler swore he would not wrong her ladyship's nag ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... last six well under twenty minutes," said he. "We've time in hand now, and a little water at the Red Lion will do them no harm. Red four-in-hand passed, ostler?" ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found 'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him no more than a shilling. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... rode briskly amain. That I had chosen wisely was proved when some twenty minutes later. I clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before an inn flaunting the sign of a peacock—as if in irony of its humbleness, for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy nor ostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrusted my horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord would be able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so I determined to alight, if it were only to drink a can of wine and ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... quality,—that of personal remembrance; and even at the distance of years he would recall a man to memory, even had the former acquaintance been but casual. Passing through the inn yard, his quick eye detected in the ostler a quondam stable-boy. To avoid the consequences attendant on a fair riot which had ended, "ut mos est," in homicide, the ex-groom had fled the country, and, as it was reported and believed, sought an asylum in the "land of the free" beyond the Atlantic, which, privileged like the Cave ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked Where Tim, the ostler, listened; his face was white and peaked; His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay, But he loved the landlord's daughter; The landlord's red-lipped daughter, Dumb as a dog he listened, and he ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Sundays; and may be compelled to flog the "tired jade" the last three miles back, in order to get it home before midnight; also to prevent the annoying necessity of pulling up in a street adjacent to the livery-stables, to cut off the frayed end of the whip thong, that the ostler may not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... lord, Nodding beside my lady in his carriage. Away! away! 'Fresh horses!' are the word, And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage; The obsequious landlord hath the change restored; The postboys have no reason to disparage Their fee; but ere the water'd wheels may hiss hence, The ostler ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Count in Mazeppa, "Bring forth the steed!" And when the steed was brought, in all the exuberance of (literally) animal spirits, he felt that he was about to be another Mazeppa, and perform feats on the back of a wild horse; and he could not help saying to the ostler, "He ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... landlord was away the ostler helped himself to a quart of the strongest ale, which, by a singular faculty that he had acquired, he poured down his throat without any effort at swallowing, holding his head back, and the jug at a little ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Rome, but, partly because we had to spare ourselves, as we had not been astride of a horse since we crawled through the drain at Villa Andivia, we so humored our horses that we arrived in a condition which the ostler took as a matter of course, and it was then not quite noon, which we both considered a feat ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... was waxing apace—we had lost time in attending to our horses, for ostler there was none—and in musing amongst the simply decorated graves in the humble churchyard;[9] after discussing with great relish our repast of eggs and bacon, and Welsh ale, the best the village afforded, (by the way, we shall not readily forget ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... wreath of peat-smoke; but it was enough to revive our energies and hopes. In response to our united appeals a dishevelled head of red hair cautiously looked down from a half-opened window, and our story had to be told again. Well, this time we were let in and allowed to sit down, whilst the ostler's wife was being roused as well as the servant, for we were told that the tourists' season, being already over, the inn was no longer in trim for customers. This was bad news, for the good effects of the luncheon had passed off, and as soon as we could rest and forget our fatigue we ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to the care of the ostler, and went to visit the fine old church adjacent, where many ancient families lie buried; the principal object of interest was the magnificent chancel, which has been described as "one Gallery of Light and Beauty," the whole ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... knowing whether the next man he should meet would prove good or bad; but seeing an inn of a good appearance, he rode resolutely into the yard; and knowing that respect is often paid in proportion as it is claimed, delivered his injunctions to the ostler with spirit, and entering the house, called ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... excellent footing together. The old lady was seen to come from the best—the parlour we mean to say—of the Mermaid, with very unusual symptoms of good humour on her countenance, considering (as Betsy the "maid of all work" whispered to "Jack Ostler,") that her visage had generally a "vinegar cruet" association; though we would not take upon ourselves to assert that brandy had not a greater share ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... truth itself is seen clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking his lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has cultivated ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... to be true, and she looked up every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine, the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better—the chase. "Nous ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses," ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the publican, as he drew the ostler half a pint instead of a quart, "you're always drinking; ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... declared that the young fellow's name was Humphry Clinker. That he had been a love begotten babe, brought up in the work-house, and put out apprentice by the parish to a country black-smith, who died before the boy's time was out: that he had for some time worked under his ostler, as a helper and extra postilion, till he was taken ill of the ague, which disabled him from getting his bread: that, having sold or pawned every thing he had in the world for his cure and subsistence, he became so miserable and shabby, that he disgraced the stable, and was ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... receipt and of pocket-book. Throwing out a hint that the time of Sam's return should be investigated, he learnt that this had been Edward Anderson's first measure, and that it was clear, from the independent testimony of the ostler at Whitford, the friend who had driven Sam, and the landlord of the Three Goblets, that there was not more than time for the return exactly as described at the inquest; and though the horse was swift and powerful, and might probably have been driven at drunken ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cumberland and Northumberland. The ballad itself was given, in the first edition, from the recitation of a gentleman, who professed to have forgotten some verses. These have, in the present edition, been partly restored, from a copy obtained by the recitation of an ostler in Carlisle, which has also furnished some ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Squire Mountmeadow, an important personage in his way, the terror of poachers, and somewhat of an oracle on the bench, as it was said that he could take a deposition without the assistance of his clerk. Although, in spite of the ostler's lanterns, it was very dark, it was impossible ever to be unaware of the arrival of Squire Mountmeadow; for he was one of those great men who take care to remind the world of their dignity by the attention which ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... should further seek an interview, which, though, now in his power, was so sedulously shunned by the other party, he decided in the negative; and contenting himself with writing upon a slip of paper the hasty words,—"You are known by the villagers,—be upon your guard,"—he gave it to the ostler, with instructions to deliver it instantly to the owner of the horse he pointed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words "post-chaise," the "great North Road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not one jot to him what, or who they were. He could earn their respect and obtain their good-will, if he wished to do so. He demanded of men that they should have done things, or be capable of doing things. They must know everything there was to be known about some one thing; and the ostler, than whom none could groom a horse better, was worthy of being ranked with the best man in the land. He demanded of every man that he should justify his existence, and was logical in his attitude, save in the insignificant particular ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... horse knew his business so well that had I pulled on one rein with all my strength I believe it would have merely annoyed, without convincing, him. He took me into the yard without a mistake, and I gave up the reins to the ostler, thanking Heaven and ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... people. The common ambition of all the younger generation was to get to London by almost any means, and in almost any capacity. There was not a household that had not children or relatives in London. The young ploughman went to London as a carter or ostler; the milkmaid as a servant. The village carpenter was invariably a middle-aged or an old man, secretly despised by his apprentice, if he had one, for his contentment with his lot. One saw very few young people in the village street, except mere children. The ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... Waltham Cross on an affair of a horse that was to be sold there on the nineteenth day of June (as I very well remember, from what happened afterwards); and when he came back he asked if he might speak with me privately. When I had him alone in my room he told me he had news from a Catholic ostler at the Four Swans, with whom he had spoken, that a party had been asking after me there ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... and powerful and much given to divers startings, snortings, and tossings of the head, it thus befell that to every step the diminutive groom marched on terra firma, he took one in mid-air, at which times, swinging pendulum-like, he poured forth a stream of invective that the most experienced ostler, guard, or coachman might well have envied, and all in a voice so gruff, so hoarse and guttural, despite his tender years, as filled the listening rustics with much ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspondence written from Spain, France, Italy, or Denmark: they had their amusing literature, mixed with their grave politics; and a dialogue between "a Dutch mariner and an English ostler," could alarm the nation as much as the last letter from their "private correspondent." That the wildest rumours were acceptable appears from their contemporary Fuller. Armies were talked of, concealed under ground by the king, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Burbadge. John Hemmings. Augustine Phillips. William Kempt. Thomas Poope. George Bryan. Henry Condell. William Slye. Richard Cowly. John Lowine. Samuell Crosse. Alexander Cooke. Samuel Gilburne. Robert Armin. William Ostler. Nathan Field. John Underwood. Nicholas Tooley. William Ecclestone. Joseph Taylor. Robert Benfield. Robert Goughe. Richard Robinson. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience, augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities; then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Jasper's reasonings, concerted with him the whole plan for the next night's operations, and took care meanwhile to pass the brandy. The day had scarcely broken before Cutts was off, with his bag of implements and tracts. He would have fain carried off also both the horses; but the ostler, surly at being knocked up at so early an hour, might not have surrendered the one ridden by Jasper, without Jasper's own order to do so. Cutts, however, bade the ostler be sure and tell the gentleman, before ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the last of your taunts, old man." He turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe. Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... his lodgings. He had not been there above ten minutes, when he came out hastily, and walked quickly to the "White Lion," the principal inn in Barkington. He went into the stable-yard, and said a few words to the ostler: then returned ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... morning Caldigate rode into the town, and as he put his horse up at the inn, he felt that the very ostler had heard the story. As he walked along the street, it seemed to him that everyone he met knew all about it. Robert Bolton would, of course, have heard it; but nevertheless he walked boldly into the attorney's ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... one," said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... examined on this occasion was Mr Ostler, a manufacturer of glass beads and other toys of the same substance, from Birmingham. Several of the articles made by him were placed upon the table, for the inspection of the Committee of the House of Commons, which held its meetings ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... people very civil, with a certain honest hilarity and independent spirit in their manner, which almost made me forget that they were innkeepers, a set of men—waiters, hostesses, chambermaids, &c., down to the ostler, whose cunning servility in England ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose, according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civilized country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lived in it told me, in 1859, that it had been built eighty years before by a then well-known character in those parts, one Stevens, father-in-law of Henslow the Cambridge professor of botany. Stevens, who could only with much difficulty manage to write his name, had begun life as ostler at an inn; had become husband to the landlord's widow; then a brewer; and finally, as he subscribed himself on one occasion, "mare" of Rochester. Afterwards the house was inhabited by Mr. Lynn (from some of the members of whose family Dickens made his purchase); and, before the Rev. Mr. Hindle ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... dark quick eye of uncommon fire; and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in concealing the lower part of the countenance. On descending from the coach, the German with some difficulty made the ostler understand that he wanted a post-chaise in a quarter of an hour; and then, without entering the house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour. While the maid- servant was covering the table with bread, butter, tea, eggs, and a huge round ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the bustle of that once noisy inn to the present death-like silence of its green courtyard! There, a lame ostler crawls about with his hands thrust into the capacious pockets of his jacket, feeding on memory. That weary pair of omnibus jades, and three sorry posters, are all that now grace those stables where ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... horse into the stable, which was a duty that devolved on the guests at this little change-house, from its mistress having no ostler, she entered the only apartment which the house afforded, and demanded some refreshment. "Sit down at the end of that table," said the old woman, "for the best I have to give you is there already; and be pleased, my bonny man, to make as little noise as ye ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... shabby and seedy in his appearance; lodging, too, the ostler told me, over that horrible candle and cheese shop, the smell of which is insufferable twenty yards off—no gentleman could endure it; he must be a traveller or artist, or something ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepcion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this was not ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... remembered the aforesaid rosy-cheeked chambermaid, the obsequious "Boots" and the grinning ostler, I sallied forth into the sunshine, and crossing the green, where stood the battered sign-post, I came to a flight of rough steps, at the foot of which my boat was moored. In I stepped, cast loose the painter, and shipping the sculls, shot out ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... than men. Fielding was coarser, but more manly; he had humour, but no moral purpose at all. The natural result was that Fielding and his set looked on Richardson as a grave, dull, respectable old prig; Richardson on Fielding as a low rake, who wrote like a man who had been an ostler born in a stable, or a runner in a sponging-house. "The virtues of Fielding's heroes," the vain old printer used to say to his feminine clique, "are the vices of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that horse," Rupert said to the ostler; and seeing to the other, they were in the yard as soon ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Clavering, the ostler standing whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms winked to the postilion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the lodge-gates and let the travellers through with a silent shake of the head. All the blinds were down at Fair-Oaks; ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to suit me," I said half aloud, and was proceeding to dismount, when I caught sight of a man staring hard in my direction from the window of the opposite house, and while I was talking to the ostler the stranger had run down and clapped me on the back in the heartiest manner. He looked rather like a soldier of fortune who had fallen on evil times. His finery was distinctly faded, but he carried a good ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... advised. Her eyes were strained, and every now and then she lifted her head from the pillow with an anxious, listening movement. At last it came, the sound for which she had been waiting—the rumble of wheels, the clatter of horses' hoofs, the grunts and groans of the ostler as he lifted the heavy bags to their place. Margot's brown eyes looked ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... scorns to heed The bigot's threat'nings or the zealot's creed; Shook by a dream, he next for truth receives What frenzy teaches, and what fear believes; And this will place him in the power of one Whom we must seek, because we cannot shun." Wisp had been ostler at a busy inn, Where he beheld and grew in dread of sin; Then to a Baptists' meeting found his way, Became a convert, and was taught to pray; Then preach'd; and, being earnest and sincere, Brought other sinners to ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... being a favorite one with Jesuits and their emissaries. She of course denied that any gipsy had been there; and though there were some who thought they had seen such a man come in, none had seen him go out again. On which Amyas took occasion to ask, what had become of the suspicious Popish ostler whom he had seen at the Mariners' Rest three years before; and discovered, to his surprise, that the said ostler had vanished from the very day of Don Guzman's departure from Bideford. There was evidently a mystery somewhere: but nothing could be proved; the landlady was dismissed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... have journeyed north for two days on his road to Horncastle, nor would Ardrey have taken coach to Stafford en route for a lion fight at Warwick, which had taken place several days before. Mr. Platitude's reappearance is extremely artificial, and the ostler's tales of Abershaw and Co. are obviously reminiscences of Borrow's 'Celebrated Trials.' But the Horncastle story is weaker still. The 'Lord'-Lieutenant, so free and young,' is pilloried, because eighteen ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... know a gentleman of the name of Tom, who officiates in the capacity of ostler. We have enjoyed a long acquaintance with him—we mean an acquaintance a long way off—i.e. from the window of our dormitory, which overlooks A—s—n's stables. We believe we are the first of our family, for some years, who has not kept a horse; and we derive a melancholy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked Where Tim, the ostler, listened; his face was white and peaked; His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay, But he loved the landlord's daughter; The landlord's red-lipped daughter, Dumb as a dog he listened, and he ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Priscilla Fritzing had urged pushing on without a stop, and Priscilla made no objection. This is how it came about that the ostler attached to the Ullerton Arms found himself driving to Symford in the middle of the night. He could not recollect ever having done such a thing before, and the memory of it would be quite unlikely to do anything but remain fixed in his mind ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the steed was brought, in all the exuberance of (literally) animal spirits, he felt that he was about to be another Mazeppa, and perform feats on the back of a wild horse; and he could not help saying to the ostler, "He ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... symmetry of bone," which was to be driven by Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Winkle's riding animal, another immense horse "apparently a near relative of the animal in the chaise." "He don't shy, does he?" The ostler guaranteed him quiet—"a hinfant in arms might drive him"—"He wouldn't shy if he met a whole waggon-load of monkeys with their tails burnt off." A far more original illustration than anything used by the Wellers, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... King are walking across the bowling-green, we will see what has taken place outside the inn. Tom's presentiments of danger were not, it appeared, without foundation. Scarcely had the ostler brought forth our two highwaymen's steeds, when a post-chaise, escorted by two or three horsemen, drove furiously up to the door. The sole occupant of the carriage was a lady, whose slight and pretty figure was all that could be distinguished, her face being closely veiled. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that concealed all of the upper part of his face, except a dark quick eye of uncommon fire; and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in concealing the lower part of the countenance. On descending from the coach, the German with some difficulty made the ostler understand that he wanted a post-chaise in a quarter of an hour; and then, without entering the house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour. While the maid- servant was covering the table with bread, butter, tea, eggs, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of life in which they were placed—at any rate, a great shaking among the dry bones. One summer morning an awe fell on the parish as it ran from one to another that the guard of the Yarmouth and London Royal Mail had left word with the ostler at the Spread Eagle that George the Fourth was dead; then a certain dull sound as of cannon firing afar off had been wafted across the German Ocean, and had given rise to mysterious speculations on the subject of Continental ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... open; and round its courtyard runs an open balcony, and from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit against a bedroom window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots, and kitchen herbs in boxes, flourish on the pavement, where the ostler comes to wash his carriages, and where the barber shaves the poodle of the house. Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if they have seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they are conducted with some ceremony to a large room on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... endearing. He watched her with a hard attention that was his kind of tenderness, as she sat humped schoolgirlishly in her shapeless blue overall, averting her face from the light but attempting a proud pose, and keeping her grief between her teeth as an ostler chews ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... about seventeen, dressed like an ostler, with leather cords and gaiters. He lay upon his back, his knees drawn up, a terrible cut upon his head. He was insensible, but alive. A glance at his wound told me that it had not ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by our office, to apply it to that thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that thirtieth boy—been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them, hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... an inn; the horses were changed; the flight was resumed. Wogan had not moved during this delay, neither had Misset nor O'Toole come to the door. But an ostler had flashed a lantern into the berlin, and for a second the light had fallen upon Wogan's face and open eyes. Clementina, however, did not cease; she sang on until the lights had been left behind and the darkness was about them. Then ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... was Thomas Holcroft, the inseparable friend and ally of William Godwin. Holcroft's vivid and masterful personality stands out indeed as the most attractive among the abler members of the circle. The son of a boot-maker, he had earned his bread as cobbler, ostler, village schoolmaster, strolling player and reporter. His insatiable passion for knowledge had given him a mastery of French and German. He went in 1783 to Paris as correspondent of the Morning Herald, on the modest salary of a ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... had not returned, and Sadie sat in the office at the hotel, making futile efforts to fix her attention on a newspaper. The guests had gone to bed and the building was very quiet, but she had kept the ostler up. He might be needed and she could ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... out first. Two minutes later appeared the ostler and chambermaid, who were man and wife. The inn, as has been stated, was a quaint old building, and as inflammable as a bee-hive; it overhung the base at the level of the first floor, and again overhung at the eaves, which were finished with heavy oak barge-boards; every atom in its substance, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Mehetabel obeyed the summons. There was a bright flush of pleasure in her cheek as she mounted to her place in the little cart, assisted by Joe Filmer, the ostler at the Ship, and folded her shawl about the living morsel that was all the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... joyous sun rose over the white cliffs Of Devon, sparkled through the poplar-tops, And broke the death-like slumber of the Hall. The keeper fetched their breakfast to the hounds; The smart, young ostler whistled in the stalls; The pretty housemaid tripped from room to room; And grave and grand behind his master's chair, But wroth within to have the partridge spoil, The senile butler waited for his lord. But neither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... see what you have to expect, if you try your trade with me," thought Edward, "I am very glad that you have been spying." Having replaced his pistols, Edward paid his reckoning, and went to the stable desiring the ostler to saddle his horse and fix on his saddle-bags. As soon as this was done he mounted and rode off. Before he was well clear of the town the highwaymen cantered past him on three well-bred active horses. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... actually passing down Cheapside on his way to the Tower. When at last Anthony came to the thoroughfare the crowd was as dense as for a royal progress. He checked his horse at the door of an inn-yard, and asked an ostler that stood there ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... himself so brisk and handy that the roomy chaise stood at the door in a surprisingly short time, with a smiling little ostler at Duke's head ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... he worthy of it, the handsome jewel—and wouldn't he look the gintleman, every inch of him?" and Sally expatiated greatly on it in the kitchen, and drank both their healths in an extra pot of tea, and Kate grinned her delight, and Jack the ostler, who took care of Martin's horse, boasted loudly of it in the street, declaring that "it was a good thing enough for Anty Lynch, with all her money, to get a husband at all out of the Kellys, for the divil a know any one knowed in the counthry where the Lynchs ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... yard long, and six inches in circumference. The blacks frequently extract the teeth of these reptiles, even those of the most venomous species, a process which renders them harmless. In the evening we returned to Freetown. The black ostler, who is generally a Krooman, performs in this country a double duty, for he not only attends the horse in the stable, but accompanies him on his journey, keeping pace with the animal at whatever rate his master pleases to ride. This would be a very good punishment for some of our ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Yealmpton, where the coachman and guard usually had their last drain before arriving at their destination, being a cold night, they kindly sent Mrs. Cox a drop of something warm. The servant-girl who brought out the glass, not being able to reach the lady, the ostler very imprudently left the horses' heads to do the polite. The animals hearing some one getting on the coach, doubtless concluded that it was the coachman; at the same time finding themselves free, ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, and from this point followed him—always with extreme caution—back to the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... itself was given, in the first edition, from the recitation of a gentleman, who professed to have forgotten some verses. These have, in the present edition, been partly restored, from a copy obtained by the recitation of an ostler in Carlisle, which has also furnished some ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... in 1859, that it had been built eighty years before by a then well-known character in those parts, one Stevens, father-in-law of Henslow the Cambridge professor of botany. Stevens, who could only with much difficulty manage to write his name, had begun life as ostler at an inn; had become husband to the landlord's widow; then a brewer; and finally, as he subscribed himself on one occasion, "mare" of Rochester. Afterwards the house was inhabited by Mr. Lynn (from some of the members of whose family Dickens made his purchase); and, before the Rev. Mr. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... do you, and fancy that fifteen miles, up and down, in a trifle under two hours, has earned you a spell, a bit of a feed, and something of a washing? And you are right. Take charge, Mr. Blackfellow-ostler, and while you do your duty let me amuse myself with my notebook. After all, memory is even-handed. It keeps us in remembrance of many things we would fain never think of more; but it performs similar service for others that are pleasant to ponder over. Out of the saddle bag I have taken ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... pound: if you doubt it I'll count it to you after supper; but be sure you lay it where I may have it at a minute's warning; for my affairs are a little dubious at present; perhaps I may be gone in half an hour, perhaps I may be your guest till the best part of that be spent; and pray order your ostler to keep my horses always saddled. But one thing above the rest I must beg, that you would let this fellow have none of your Anno Domini, as you call it; for he's the most insufferable sot—Here, sirrah, light me to ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... on the list, and as it was well known that he was an ostler at a little auberge in the middle of the square, a corporal and a couple of soldiers was despatched to the house of entertainment to capture him; and the trio soon found that they would not have far to search, for Peter was standing at the gate of the inn yard, and with him three or four ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... been carrying on betwixt them was a joint ejaculation, "Lord guide us, an this weather last, what will come o' the lambs!" The hint was sufficient for my Landlord, who, advancing to take the horse of the principal person, and holding him by the reins as he dismounted, while his ostler rendered the same service to the attendant, welcomed the stranger to Gandercleugh, and, in the same breath, enquired, "What news ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... was not of the same nature, but it made as great an impression on the King's mind. It was a duel I had with Coutenau, captain of a company of the King's Light-horse, brave, but wild, who, riding post from Paris as I was going there, made the ostler take off my saddle and put on his. Upon my telling him I had hired the horse, he gave me a swinging box on the ear, which fetched blood. I instantly drew my sword, and so did he. While making our first thrusts ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... threw down a Napoleon on the table and desired me to take that for what he had himself taken, and to give the servants something out of it; he meant the whole of the servants, for when he got into the chaise the ostler asked him for something, and he said he had ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... and a woman who was alone in the kitchen came up to him and whispered, "The boys (the rebels) are hid in the potato furrows beyond." He was rather startled at this intelligence, but took no notice. He found an ostler who lent him a wheel, which they managed to put on, and we drove off without being stopped by any of the boys. A little farther on I saw something very odd on the side of the road before us. "What is that?"—"Look to the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... on the morning of October 3rd, Modestine was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two days' repose, according to the ostler; but I was now eager to reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civilized country of stage-coaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill of St. Pierre, spread ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Eglan. (to the ostler) Well, Dick, what sort of a stud, hey? any thing rum, a ginger or a miller, three legs or five, got by Whirlwind out of Skyscraper? Come, fig out ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... my clothes on the right side. I felt a slight sting, but did not mind, and by wrenching myself half round I tore the sabre from his hand. Then I closed, and held him, in spite of his struggles and frothing curses, until the landlord and ostler burst in ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... creed; Shook by a dream, he next for truth receives What frenzy teaches, and what fear believes; And this will place him in the power of one Whom we must seek, because we cannot shun." Wisp had been ostler at a busy inn, Where he beheld and grew in dread of sin; Then to a Baptists' meeting found his way, Became a convert, and was taught to pray; Then preach'd; and, being earnest and sincere, Brought other sinners to religious fear: Together ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... chap," said the ostler, "I'll run and see where he's going," and he followed the stranger, who had awakened a curiosity in every one except Tom. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed, when the ostler rushed into the room, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... said the ostler, who was harnessing the animal. "You'll find he ain't such a screw as you think. You'll need to keep a steady hand on him all the way, pertikler on the road home, or he'll screw you ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the application; and the wheelbarrow after a little delay came forth. The trunk was bestowed on it by the united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... her head!" cried he to the ostler, and with a snap, a crack, and a jingle, away we went ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the mail- coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the ostler said, if my name was Dawson—from Hanbury Court, he believed. I felt it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant by going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother had intrusted ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... no more an inn but an hotel, the archway was blocked up with two hand-trucks piled with trunks and portmanteaus, the property of commercial gentlemen and just about to be conveyed to the station. What with the ostler and the 'boots' and the errand-boys, all hanging about for their fees, it was a push to enter; and the waiters within seemed to equally occupy the passage, fetching the dust-coats and walking-sticks and flourishing coat-brushes. Seeing a door marked 'Coffee-room,' I ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Egmont highway. There I was to leave my bottle-basket, asking (or, rather, handing over a written request) for it to be filled with bottles of the very best gin. After paying for this, I was to direct it to be sent aboard the schooner by the ostler (who was waiting at the door with a horse) the last of those ordered by the captain. I was then to walk the horse along the Egmont road, till I saw or heard an open carriage coming behind. Then I was ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ease in his inn, and took his sip of punch so comfortably, that I, for my part, thought he never would be gone. I was out in the stables and looking at the horses, and talking to the ostler who was rubbing his nags down. I dare say I had a peep into the kitchen, and at the pigeons in the inn-yard, and at all things which were to be seen at "The Bell," while my two companions were still ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... everybody, and wait for nobody. The master of the house introduced the newly arrived guest as Michael Kis, Esq., lord of the manor of Nadudvar, who, "like a jolly good fellow," had come disguised as an ostler to the Whitsun Kingship competition, and there acquitted ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... was to see these forty nobles tearing off their clothes and littering the deck with velvets and satins, whilst the squire of each, as busy as an ostler before a race, stooped and pulled and strained and riveted, fastening the bassinets, the legpieces, the front and the back plates, until the silken courtier had become the man of steel. When their work ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not last long! About noon the landlord, Greenfield, rapped at my door and told me that the Blue Cliffs carriage had come, and that the ostler was watering the horses while the coachman was taking a glass of beer at ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... his horse he took off his hat with a sweeping bow. Then he set out at a gallop and did not draw rein until he reached the "Red Cow" at Hammersmith. Apparently he was well-known, for in response to his shout an ostler ran from the yard and at his imperious order took his horse to the stables. Then the highwayman ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... into the stable, which was a duty that devolved on the guests at this little change-house, from its mistress having no ostler, she entered the only apartment which the house afforded, and demanded some refreshment. "Sit down at the end of that table," said the old woman, "for the best I have to give you is there already; ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... little conversation he asked me what I intended to do, and I told him frankly that I did not know; whereupon he observed that, provided I had no objection, he had little doubt that I could be accommodated for some time at his inn. "Our upper ostler," said he, "died about a week ago; he was a clever fellow, and, besides his trade, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... O'Donoghue's family-tree, root, stem, and branch—except that most lovely off-shoot I mean to transplant (you will forgive this heat of blood; it was clearing for action so to speak)—I ran out and overtook the ostler whom I had seen putting the finishing touch to the lashing of boxes behind! 'Gloucester!' says he. The word was worth the guinea it cost me, a hundred times over.—In less than an hour I was in the saddle, ready for pursuit, cantering boot to boot with my man—a trusty fellow who ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... drove through Clavering, the ostler standing whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms winked to the postilion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the lodge-gates and let the travellers through with a silent shake of the head. All the blinds were down ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... which Mrs Greenow might be able to give him. He waited, on this occasion, for the coming of no market-day; indeed, the journey into the city was altogether special, and he was desirous that she should know that such was the case. He drove at a great pace into the inn-yard, threw his reins to the ostler, took just one glass of cherry-brandy at the bar, and then marched off across the market-place to the Close, with ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... and she looked up every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine, the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better—the chase. "Nous ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses," says Pascal. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... likely. Thanky, ma'am. I'll look up the concern and try my chance. Would you call it too great a come-down to have father an 'ostler after being first rider in the 'Great Golden Menagerie, Circus, and Colosseum,' hey Ben?" asked Mr. Brown, quoting the well-remembered show-bill ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Mr. Mountjoy should have troubled himself to write the letter at all. "If he knows the young lady who is staying at the doctor's house," she said, "why doesn't he call on Miss Henley?" She handed the letter back to her daughter. "There! let the ostler take it; he's got ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... stood to the place would be ascertained. "He MUST be known," I continued to repeat to myself; "the first eye that falls on him, will recognize him instantly." We reached the inn; we alighted. The landlord and the ostler came to the coach door, and received us with extreme civility, and the former assisted the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... wood of Pitmurkie, that is a' fou of black firs, as they say.—I ken the wood, but the firs may be black or white for what I can tell.—At the entry of the wood there is a wild common, and on the edge of the common, a little lonely change-house, that was keepit then by an ostler-wife, they suld hae caa'd her Tibbie Faw, and there puir Steenie cried for a mutchkin of brandy, for he had had no refreshment the haill day. Tibbie was earnest wi' him to take a bite of meat, but he couldna ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... one Squire Mountmeadow, an important personage in his way, the terror of poachers, and somewhat of an oracle on the bench, as it was said that he could take a deposition without the assistance of his clerk. Although, in spite of the ostler's lanterns, it was very dark, it was impossible ever to be unaware of the arrival of Squire Mountmeadow; for he was one of those great men who take care to remind the world of their dignity by the attention which they require ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the girl is kin, if a man have eyes in his head." And he would have argued the point longer with Jeanne, but he had no time left, for the riders had already turned into the courtyard, and were giving their horses in charge to the white-headed ostler Benoit. Benoit had served in the Golden Pear for a quarter of a century. He had served Victor Dubois's father in Normandy, had come with his young master to America, and was nominally his servant still. But if things had gone by their right names at the Golden Pear, old Benoit would not have ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... widow had been committed to gaol on the testimony of her neighbors that she was "lewde, malitious, and hurtful to the people." An ostler, after he had refused to give her relief, had suffered a pain. So far as the account goes, this was the sum of the evidence against the woman. Unhappily she waited not on the order of her trial but made voluble confession and implicated five others, three of whom were ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... d'Or,'" said Aylward, as they pulled up their horses at a whitewashed straggling hostel. "What ho there!" he continued, beating upon the door with the hilt of his sword. "Tapster, ostler, varlet, hark hither, and a wannion on your lazy limbs! Ha! Michel, as red in the nose as ever! Three jacks of the wine of the country, Michel—for the air bites shrewdly. I pray you, Alleyne, to take note of this door, for I have a tale ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... happenings at Kirkcudbright had given them so wholesome a fear of his speech and presence as to cause them to misdoubt their own wit, which is saying a deal of Scotchmen. But when the bargain had been struck and John Paul gone with the 'ostler to see to his chests, mine host thought it a pity not to have a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to Dorothea. Her brothers had dismounted and handed their horses over to the ostler who waited by the porch daily to lead them to the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... moment, pert) you are Warden here. It is your duty, even your privilege, to GUARD. Is it not? Well, I grant you the adage that it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn't know—won't even 'inquire' whether—the horse HAS ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... himself to the little memorandum book in which he kept the records of these interesting duties, and entered a claim against his employer for a conveyance to Nuncombe Putney and back, including driver and ostler; and then he wrote his letter. After that he had a hot supper, with three glasses of brandy and water, and went to bed with a thorough conviction that he had earned ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the "tired jade" the last three miles back, in order to get it home before midnight; also to prevent the annoying necessity of pulling up in a street adjacent to the livery-stables, to cut off the frayed end of the whip thong, that the ostler may not detect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... hopes. In response to our united appeals a dishevelled head of red hair cautiously looked down from a half-opened window, and our story had to be told again. Well, this time we were let in and allowed to sit down, whilst the ostler's wife was being roused as well as the servant, for we were told that the tourists' season, being already over, the inn was no longer in trim for customers. This was bad news, for the good effects of the luncheon had passed off, and as soon as we could ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... other robbed me of my little savings as soon as I reached London, and I had to make shift to pay my fare down here. It is a long story to tell how I found you out. I went to the old place first, and they sent me on here. I had a drop of beer and a crust at the Three Loaves, and old Giles, the ostler, knew me and told me a long ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Colonsay," she said, "ye ha'e no less nor made up yer min' to pass yer days in yer ain stable, neither better nor waur than an ostler at the Lossie Airms, an' that efter a' 'at I ha'e borne an' dune to mak a gentleman o' ye, bairdin' yer father here like a verra lion in 's den, an' garrin' him confess the thing again' ilka hair upon the stiff neck o' ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... musical entertainment at Burley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the "fire laddies," at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the Robins Nest Again," and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Jo," a selection which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... musquitoes, but having no one attraction to call for the halt of a minute. By half-past seven I had reached my quarters for the night; saw my horse well taken care of under the superintendence of a good-humoured Irish boy, who was ostler, and, as he informed me, deputy waiter, besides having a "power of other things to be doin';" next, partook of a comfortable supper, and, after a short walk about the village, to bed; my purpose being to reach Bordenton next morning ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... old captain's farm was about four miles from the large and flourishing town of Z——, and here the captain spent most of his time. Riding in on "Bonny Doon," in the morning, and hitching her to the sign-post, the poor beast would stand there—unless taken in by the ostler or others—until midnight, while the captain swigged whiskey, and smoked his pipe in the tavern. Yet "Bonny Doon's" affection for her old master did not flag; she waited patiently until he came—her mane and long tail would then switch about, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... where, in the 'parlour' of a public house, the ceremony was performed. Mr. Hone's correspondent sends a copy of the old initiation song, which varies considerably from our version, supplied to us in 1851 by a very old man (an ostler) at Highgate. The reciter said that the COPY OF VERSES was not often used now, as there was no landlord who could sing, and gentlemen preferred the speech. He said, moreover, 'that the verses were not always alike—some said one way, and some another— some made ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the brush to begin polishing the buttons, now in a neat row, when a couple of hands were passed round him—one taking his jacket and button-stick, the other the brush, which was briskly applied, accompanied by a loud, hissing noise, such as an ostler makes, to blow away the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... was there at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found 'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then he an' the ostler began fighting on account ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... past year the old seaman had been severely tried. Misfortune had followed upon misfortune; until the hardy veteran looked like the spectre of his former self. His only daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen, was engaged to marry the ostler at the Crown Inn, a fine-looking young man, who had lately come from London. He saw Nancy Jarvis, became enamoured of the fisherman's daughter, told his tale of love, and was accepted. The old man was rather averse to the match; for, in his eyes, no man was ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... a wide berth. It would be no joke to have old Murdock topple over on to you. I left them 'wug-an-tooreying,' and went out to look after the trap, which was ordered to be at the door at half-past ten. I found Murdock's ostler very drunk, but sober compared with that rascally help whom we had been fools enough to take with us. They had got the trap out and the horses in, but that old rascal Satan was standing so quiet that I suspected something wrong. Sure enough, when I came ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... began, with a glance at the hotel ostler, who was standing near cleaning a bit in industrious and sarcastic silence, "it is a fact, no doubt, that I mentioned here this morning that this young mare was of the Government hackney stock. But, according as I understand from this poor man that owns her, he ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the town, he rode into the yard of the Morven Arms, and having found a sleepy ostler, gave up his mare: he would be better without her at the castle!—whither he was setting out to walk when ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... a few shillings in money which were given me at Richmond, and after travelling nearly twenty-four hours from the time I crossed the line, I ventured to call at a tavern, and buy a dinner. On reaching Carlisle, I enquired of the ostler in a stable if he knew of any one who wished to hire a house servant or coachman. He said he did not. Some more colored people came in, and taking me aside told me that they knew that I was from Virginia, by my pronunciation ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... entered—entered with the air of a man who lived there, Daniel Granger thought. And he had said that he was staying with a bachelor friend. Mr. Granger rode slowly past the principal part of the hotel to an archway at the end—an archway leading to livery stables, where the ostler was lounging. He stopped opposite this archway, and beckoned ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe. Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him jet black, with one white hoof (instead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... good sinful Innkeeper, will that corruption, thine Ostler, look well to my gelding. Hay, ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... landing-place outside the door, just now, I should be disposed to say that the dog had retreated growling beneath some article of furniture, and was keeping the professors at bay. This conjecture is confirmed by the testimony of the ostler, who, after peeping through the keyhole, assures me that he distinctly saw Professor Nogo on his knees, holding forth a small bottle of prussic acid, to which the animal, who was crouched beneath an arm-chair, obstinately declined to smell. You cannot imagine the feverish ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... his hands upon the table began to whisper in Welsh to his professional adviser. Not wishing to hear any of their conversation I finished my breakfast as soon as possible and left the room. Going into the inn-yard I had a great deal of learned discourse with an old ostler about the glanders in horses. From the inn-yard I went to my own private room and made some dottings in my note-book, and then went down again to the parlour, which I found unoccupied. After sitting some time before the fire I got up, and strolling ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... manly; he had humour, but no moral purpose at all. The natural result was that Fielding and his set looked on Richardson as a grave, dull, respectable old prig; Richardson on Fielding as a low rake, who wrote like a man who had been an ostler born in a stable, or a runner in a sponging-house. "The virtues of Fielding's heroes," the vain old printer used to say to his feminine clique, "are the vices of a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nigh washed out o' the buggy, besides losin' my way and gettin' inter ditches and puddles, and I hed to stop at Staples' Half-Way House and put up for the night. In the mornin' I riz up early and goes into the stable yard, and the first thing I sees was the 'ostler. 'I hope ye giv' my hoss a good scrub down,' I sez, 'as I told ye, for his color is that delicate the smallest spot shows. It's a very rare color for a hoss.' 'I was hopin' it might be,' sez he. I was a little ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... be alone; but the bare, roomy house seemed lonely after her father and his party had set out. She wandered to the kitchen where the two old women-servants were preparing, with the aid of a turnspit, the early supper; there she learned that only old Simon, the lame ostler, was left in the stables, which stood on either side of the courtyard. This was not re-assuring news: the more as Madeline knew her father might not return for another hour. She went thence to the long eating-room on the first floor, which ran the full depth ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... not foure by the day, Ile be hang'd. Charles waine is ouer the new Chimney, and yet our horse not packt. What Ostler? Ost. Anon, anon ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... after a week's sojourn or so at the Ipswich Inn, made a mutual discovery. This was, that not only were the landlady of the Inn, her son and the ostler all of English origin and descent, but that the entire village appeared to be populated by people of English extraction. The butcher was a Englishman, the blacksmith was a Cockney answering to the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler was from South ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before an inn flaunting the sign of a peacock—as if in irony of its humbleness, for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy nor ostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrusted my horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord would be able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so I determined ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... of the ostler's darkening countenance decided Pitman. 'All right,' he said desperately, 'you drive. I'll tell you ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... startings, snortings, and tossings of the head, it thus befell that to every step the diminutive groom marched on terra firma, he took one in mid-air, at which times, swinging pendulum-like, he poured forth a stream of invective that the most experienced ostler, guard, or coachman might well have envied, and all in a voice so gruff, so hoarse and guttural, despite his tender years, as filled the listening rustics with much apparent awe ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of the stables connected with the mails. This whole corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often surrebribed; a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested election; and a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... post-office and telephone services will also bring intelligent ingredients to these suburban nuclei, these restorations of the old villages and country towns. And the sons of the cottager within the affected area will develop into the skilled vegetable or flower gardeners, the skilled ostler—with some veterinary science—and so forth, for whom also there will evidently be work and a living. And dotted at every convenient position along the new roads, availing themselves no doubt whenever possible ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... he's getting on.' 'I explained,' the Commander tells us, 'that Australia was a big country, and asked him if he had any idea of the name of the place his son had gone to. He had not.' As soon as Commander Gambier arrived at Newcastle, in New South Wales, he met an exceptionally ragged ostler. As the ostler handed him his horse, Mr. Gambier felt an irresistible though inexplicable conviction that this was the old cabman's son. He felt absolutely sure of ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... fellow's name was Humphry Clinker. That he had been a love begotten babe, brought up in the work-house, and put out apprentice by the parish to a country black-smith, who died before the boy's time was out: that he had for some time worked under his ostler, as a helper and extra postilion, till he was taken ill of the ague, which disabled him from getting his bread: that, having sold or pawned every thing he had in the world for his cure and subsistence, he became so miserable and shabby, that he disgraced ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... second-hand 'tis ten to one thou wert A Jew's possession, got in honest barter; Next, John the ostler's; last of all, past doubt A vagrant's hat; the equitable purchase Of an ill-sung song. Till quite worn out With rain, and wind, and sleet, and other 'ills Thy race is heir to,' the beggar cast thee From his plebeian pate—and here ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... broad High Street we dismounted in front of the Blue Boar inn, and handed our tired horses over to the ostler, to whom Saxon, in a loud voice, and with many rough military oaths, gave strict injunctions as to their treatment. He then clanked into the inn parlour, and throwing himself into one chair with his feet upon another, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strength of whose head had been a boast in the village for many years. On the third occasion the indignant shoemaker was interrupted in the middle of an impassioned harangue on free speech and bundled into the road by the ostler. After this ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... post, but I found men with coaches who did as well, and I agreed with one of them to take me to Trevisa in an hour and a quarter. The horses were put in in three minutes, and with the idea that Father Balbi was behind me I turned round to say "Get up," but he was not there. I told an ostler to go and look for him, with the intention of reprimanding him sharply, even if he had gone for a necessary occasion, for we had no time to waste, not even thus. The man came back saying he could not find' him, to my great rage and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of a place that would just suit you," the ostler at the Greyhound at Streatham said to him, on the occasion of his third visit there; "but it is let; my old mother is the gentleman's housekeeper. He took the place through me, for he rode up just as you have done, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, the tall ostler, was polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... introduction, waved us in and across her threshold. As for Major Favraud, he had turned to leave us on the door-sill, to see to the comfort and safety of his horses; not liking, perhaps, the appearance of the superannuated ostler, who lounged near the stable of the inn, if such might be called this rustic retreat without ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a singular quality,—that of personal remembrance; and even at the distance of years he would recall a man to memory, even had the former acquaintance been but casual. Passing through the inn yard, his quick eye detected in the ostler a quondam stable-boy. To avoid the consequences attendant on a fair riot which had ended, "ut mos est," in homicide, the ex-groom had fled the country, and, as it was reported and believed, sought an asylum in the "land of the free" beyond the Atlantic, which, privileged like ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... business so well that had I pulled on one rein with all my strength I believe it would have merely annoyed, without convincing, him. He took me into the yard without a mistake, and I gave up the reins to the ostler, thanking ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on this occasion was Mr Ostler, a manufacturer of glass beads and other toys of the same substance, from Birmingham. Several of the articles made by him were placed upon the table, for the inspection of the Committee of the House of Commons, which held its meetings in one of ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... speake: And now when all the Muses out of their Approved modesty silent appeare, This Play of Fletchers braves the envious light As wonder of our eares once, now our sight. Three and fourfold blest Poet, who the Lives Of Poets, and of Theaters survives! A Groome, or Ostler of some wit may bring His Pegasus to the Castalian spring; Boast he a race o're the Pharsalian plaine, Or happy Tempe valley dares maintaine: Brag at one leape upon the double Cliffe (Were it as high as monstrous ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... he should further seek an interview, which, though, now in his power, was so sedulously shunned by the other party, he decided in the negative; and contenting himself with writing upon a slip of paper the hasty words,—"You are known by the villagers,—be upon your guard,"—he gave it to the ostler, with instructions to deliver it instantly to the owner of the horse he pointed out, and ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as he was, a vague consciousness of the truth, connected as it was with his earlier observation, flashed across the old man's mind, and when, in answer to his loud hallooing, a factotum, on whom devolved all the numerous offices of the inn, from waiter down to ostler, made his appearance, Sampson added to his loudly expressed demand for Silvertail's corn, a whispered injunction to return with a light. During the absence of the man he commenced trolling a verse of "Old King Cole," a favorite ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... visored caps, were shouldering favoured 'ostlers from the different noblemen's stables; and there was a liberal sprinkling of the characters who attended the cock mains in Drury Lane and at Newmarket. At the moment of my arrival the head 'ostler was rubbing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... advantage of costing nothing but 63 cents for the pony, and 12 cents for turnpikes. Not that we had the temerity to drive through London. We always left the pony two miles before we reached town, with strict orders to the civil ostler to whose care we confided him to great care of him, and be sure and give him a "good feed." We then proceeded on our way in a cab, which cost us no more than we should have paid for ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience, augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities; then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head which the head ostler at the castle had given him that ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... to be sold there on the nineteenth day of June (as I very well remember, from what happened afterwards); and when he came back he asked if he might speak with me privately. When I had him alone in my room he told me he had news from a Catholic ostler at the Four Swans, with whom he had spoken, that a party had been asking after ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... where Trevis the Pharisee was expected; and I had scarce got into my room, before the victorious mob of his enemy, who had routed his advanced guard, broke open the gates of our inn, and almost murdered the ostler-and then carried him off to prison for being murdered. The cathedral is pretty, and has several tombs, and clusters of light pillars of Derbyshire marble, lately cleaned. Gothicism and the restoration of that architecture, and not of the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... determined to know all about it in the morning. "I was pretty sure at the first sight, said he, that thee wert Jack Meadowcroft; but still I was not quite certain till I heard thee chattering with the folks at breakfast: so being ostler, I called thee out to the stable to speak to thee in private: for I'll tell thee what Jack, I will not betray thee." Hodgkinson then told him that though he loved music and acting, and should be glad to be a good player (at which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... manner, he made this proposal to me: "John, I have a brother living in Risterstown, four miles off, who keeps a tavern; I think you had better go and live with him, till we see what will turn up. He wants an ostler." I at once assented to this. "Well," said he, "take something to eat, and I ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... memory very extraordinary. The waiter laughed me to scorn, with that quiet insolence which a well-fed waiter feels for a customer who pays twenty shillings a week for his board and lodging. The packet had been given to a very respectable messenger, the waiter made no doubt. As to whether it was the ostler, or one of the boys, or the Boots, or a young woman in the kitchen who went on errands sometimes, the waiter wouldn't take upon himself to swear, being a man who would perish rather than inadvertently perjure himself. As to my packet having been tampered with, that was ridiculous. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst—the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... nine. I heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there you are! Now, my ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... animal in silence, and sucked a straw which he had in his mouth reflectively. Tim looked anxiously up into his face. Would he take a fancy to him? The landlord had now drawn near, and also an inquisitive ostler. The old chestnut-seller ceased to rock herself to and fro, and turned her head towards the group, so that the dog, so lonely a few minutes ago, had suddenly become a centre of interest. He seemed to wonder at this, but he scarcely moved his eyes, with a mute appeal in them, from his first ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... ushered into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the door ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... days used to set off from the George, Mr. Foker flung the coffee-room window open, and called the guards and coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking about their respective families, and imitating with great liveliness and accuracy the tooting of the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the horses' cloths off, and the carriages drove ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... letters that were worked in nails on the top of Sir John's trunk; the letters were P. O'M. Our hero, whose eyes were at least as quick as the Scotchman's, was alarmed lest this should lead to a second detection. He called instantly, with his usual presence of mind, to the ostler, and desired him to uncord that trunk, as it was not to go with him; raising his voice loud enough for all the yard to hear, he added—"It is not mine at all; it belongs to my friend, Mr. O'Mooney: let it be sent after me, at leisure, by the waggon, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... mental flash we linked the Crinoline with the powder puffs on Wenus. Approaching it more nearly, we heard a hissing noise within, such as is made by an ostler, or Mr. Daimler ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... the outward appearance of the premises we did not expect the best accommodation, we thought anything better than being exposed longer to the fury of the storm, so giving our horse and waggon to the charge of the ostler, we entered Mr. Orton's tavern, and demanded to be shown into a private room, which request we found it was out of the power of mine host to comply with, seeing he had only one apartment, which answered the treble purpose ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... bitter terms of the surrounding population, who, he said, were all Carlists and friends of the friars. I paid little attention to his discourse, for I was looking at a Maragato lad of about fourteen who served in the house as a kind of ostler. I asked the master if we were still in the land of the Maragatos, but he told me that we had left it behind nearly a league, and that the lad was an orphan, and was serving until he could rake up a sufficient capital to become ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... But, alas for justice, "I—the victor—had a black eye, while he—the vanquished—had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not." A dozen years later he ran across this lad in Sydney, acting as an ostler, a transported convict who had, moreover, undergone more than ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... found myself once more at the gate of the Boulogne Camp. There was no sign of my companions, but a tall man, dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons like a small country farmer, was tightening the girth of a magnificent black horse, whilst a little further on a slim young ostler was waiting by the roadside, holding the bridles of two others. It was only when I recognised one of the pair as the horse which I had ridden on my first coming to camp that I answered the smile upon the keen handsome face of ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
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