"Auction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breakfasted punctually at nine o'clock, and I drove afterwards with the Governor to see a collection of furs which were to be sold by auction. They were chiefly from Tasmania, and comprised a good many excellent specimens. From the fur-shop we went to the Exhibition buildings, where we were met by Sir Herbert Sandford (the British Commissioner), Sir Samuel Davenport, Mr. Jessop, and others. The building is light, airy, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... overturned this arrangement by a decree of the people, and not only burdened the province, which had hitherto been almost free from taxation, with the most extensive indirect and direct taxes, particularly the ground-tenth, but also enacted that these taxes should be exposed to auction for the province as a whole and in Rome— a rule which practically excluded the provincials from participation, and called into existence in the body of middlemen for the -decumae-, -scriptura-, and -vectigalia- of the province of Asia an association of capitalists of colossal magnitude. A ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... entire strangers to any other gratification arising from the society of women, than the indulgence of the sensual appetite. Even the grave Herodotus mentions, in the highest terms of approbation, the custom of Babylon of selling by auction, on a certain fixed day, all the young women who had any pretensions to beauty, in order to raise a sum of money for portioning off the rest of the females, to whom nature had been less liberal in bestowing her gifts, and who were knocked down to those who were ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... he failed to visit the Circle Cross. Instead, he appeared to Potter in the office of the Kicker with copy for a poster announcing the sale by auction of a thousand of Dunlavey's best cattle. He ordered Potter to print it so that he might post copies throughout the county within a week. The night following the issue of the Kicker containing the ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dispose of the whole of her furniture by public auction, and to retire from a residence in which she has suffered so much. Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct the sale, and the transcendent abilities of the literary gentlemen connected with his establishment are now ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... February 4, 1576, the Grand Duke wrote that the Florentine visit of that fellow, 'whether to call him a mad or an amusing and astute spirit, I hardly know,'[23] had been throughout a ridiculous affair; and that nothing could be less convenient than his putting the Gerusalemme up to auction among princes. One year later, he said bluntly that 'he did not want to have a madman at his Court.'[24] Thus Tasso, like his father, discovered that a noble poem, the product of his best pains, had but small substantial value. It might, indeed, be worth something ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... though in Paris, in the anterooms of the emperor and his minister Talleyrand, a market-booth had been opened, in which dice were being thrown for German states and German crowns, or where they were sold at auction to the highest bidder! [Footnote: Enormous bribes were paid by the German princes to win the favor of the prominent functionaries of the French empire, in order to be saved by their influence from ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... so many applicants for the privilege of marrying the little king that it was decided to put him up at auction, in order that the largest possible sum of money should be brought into the kingdom. So, on the day appointed, the ladies gathered at the palace from all the surrounding kingdoms—from Bilkon, Mulgravia, Junkum and even as far away ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... country except himself: 'He pretended to be a great judge of paintings, but only admired those done a great way off, and a great while ago; he could not bear any thing painted by any of his own countrymen. One day being in an auction-room where there was a number of capital pictures, and among the rest an inimitable painting of fruits and flowers, the connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture until he had examined his catalogue; when, finding it was done by one ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... I reckon our sale went pretty well. Just before closing time we held a rubbish auction, with Ginger in the chair. Ginger would make an absolute Napoleon among auctioneers. He can bully, lie, despair, wheedle and take you into his confidence in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... property, and lives, as volunteers—thus saving to the crown an enormous expense. The procurator asks that these services be duly rewarded by the crown, and recommends that for this purpose the magistracies in the islands be kept for rewarding such worthy citizens, and not sold, as heretofore, at auction. But chiefly he urges the importance to them of the trade with Nueva Espaa which is chiefly based on that which Manila carries on with China and India. Efforts have been made in Spain to suppress the former commerce, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... God, I'd sink her in harbor rather than take away this child!" The multitude experienced a quick change of feeling and applauded the sentiment. As the judges and officers trudged away with gloomy faces, Provided Southwick descended from the auction-block, and brother and sister went forth into the town ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... proceed thus to the new land of the Jews. The lots in provinces and towns will be sold by auction, and paid for, not in money, but in work. The general plan will have settled on streets, bridges, waterworks, etc., necessary for traffic. These will be united into provinces. Within these provinces sites for towns will be similarly sold by ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... "a feller what runs a chance on auction pinochle ain't near the gambler like a feller what is willing to run a chance on his business burning out and don't carry ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the middle-aged stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along in the voyage Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a little game of auction bridge for small stakes in order to while away the tedium of travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr. X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... single day there was a stir about the place, with noise corresponding, when the chattels were being disposed of by public auction. Then the household gods of the decayed Irish gentleman were knocked down to the highest bidder, and scattered throughout the district. Rare books, pictures, and other articles, telling of refined taste, with some slight remnants of bijouterie, were ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... conquest. The joy which this great success excited in Rome had its echo in the Roman custom, continued down to a late age, of concluding the festal games with a "sale of Veientes," at which, among the mock spoils submitted to auction, the most wretched old cripple who could be procured wound up the sport in a purple mantle and ornaments of gold as "king of the Veientes." The city was destroyed, and the soil was doomed to perpetual desolation. Falerii and Capena ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... clause in its constitution prohibiting the African slave-trade. The quick eye of Davis had detected in it a mode of evasion, for cargoes of captured slaves were to be confiscated and sold at public auction. The President had exposed this adroit subterfuge in his message vetoing the bill, and the slavery-at-any-price men had not sufficient influence in Congress to override the veto, though they muttered against ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... money. The war broke nearly all of them. The very worse thing I ever knowed about it was some white men raised hands to sell like they raise stock now. It was hard to have your child took off and never see or hear tell of it. Mean man buy it and beat it up. Some of them was drove off to be sold at auction at New Orleans. That was where some took them cause they could get big money ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... of Tillotson; Leslie's Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True Son of the Church 1695; Hickes's Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695; Catalogue of Books of the Newest Fashion to be Sold by Auction at the Whigs Coffee House, evidently printed in 1693. More than sixty years later Johnson described a sturdy Jacobite as firmly convinced that Tillotson died an Atheist; Idler, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... handicapped with loaded dice. In principle, it is a device older than stock exchanges themselves, and is put to use elsewhere than on the floor. For instance, four genuine buyers want a particular animal worth $200 at a horse auction. Its owner's pal starts the bidding at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be "hinky-dinked" as much as the moth loves to play tag with the candle ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... most of Congreve's books remained until about 1930, when the eleventh Duke of Leeds sold his English estates and authorized Sotheby's to auction off "aSelected portion of the Valuable Library at Hornby Castle." Among the 713 items advertised for sale on June 2, 3, and 4, 1930, were ten books containing the signature of William Congreve. These ten, along with a few others that have been discovered here and there with Congreve's name on ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... shipmates, some few of whom have already got engagements and gone off. A considerable party of settlers and agents are now busily at work trying to hire the people they severally want; while the poor bewildered immigrants find themselves treated as though they were goods in an auction-room, and scarcely know whether they are standing on their ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... appears to have been employed in laying out the park and gardens at the Duke of Marlborough's magnificent seat at Blenheim. A member of his original papers and receipts were lately disposed of by auction at Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's. (See the sale catalogue of July ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... hundred dollars had been taken in for guesses, it was found that the senator had forgotten the name he had given it. When the laughter over this incident had subsided, Henriette suggested that it be put up at auction, which plan was immediately followed out, with the result that the handiwork of the duchess of Snarleyow was knocked down for eight thousand six hundred and seventy-five dollars to a Cincinnati brewer who had been trying for eight years to get his ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Alleghany Mountains then were further than the Rocky Mountains are now from the Atlantic seaboard], and bought at an egregious price by a young engineer, who with fifteen others went out there upon some railroad construction business, were bidding for it at auction in that wilderness, where they themselves were gazed at, as prodigies of strange civilization, by the half-savage inhabitants of the region. That touched and pleased me very much.... We are going to act here ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... traders. There were also lines of brigs and schooners running to New York, Boston, Salem, Newburyport, and the West Indies. Two principal articles of import were sugar and molasses, which were sold at auction on the wharves. Business in these staples has been entirely superseded by the coal and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo entertainments, in 'The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures', 1747-8 (see his comedy 'Taste'), were the precursors of 'Mathews at Home', and a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often "spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living persons. Among his ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... terrible crisis the country had ever seen, when old and established houses were breaking all around him, he was carrying on a thriving business. His cash sales averaged five thousand dollars per day. Other houses, to save themselves, were obliged to sell their goods at auction. Thither went Stewart regularly. He bought these goods for cash, and sold them over his counters at an average profit of forty per cent. On a lot of silks for which he paid fifty thousand dollars he cleared twenty thousand ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and Mrs. Bunting were sitting in a very nice room and in their time—how long ago it now seemed!—both husband and wife had been proud of their carefully chosen belongings. Everything in the room was strong and substantial, and each article of furniture had been bought at a well-conducted auction held in ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dimensions, affections, passions.'" But lottery tickets were not the only things offered-for sale at Garraway's. Wine was a common article of sale there in the early days, and in the latter career of the house it became famous as an auction-room for land ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... appropriate remark for a torn pocket," said Mr. Bullfinch. "Did you say you'd ever been to an auction?" ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... treasure with him. When I mentioned that I should like to have you see it, immediately, in most generous fashion, he suggested that I bring it home and show it to you. It is almost priceless and of course I demurred; but he insisted. He had just bought it at an auction in New York and was, I fancy, glad to find some one who was interested and would appreciate it. It is not complete; if it were it would be very valuable. It is just a few stray sheets from an ancient psalter. Nevertheless its workmanship is exquisite and ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... sent to you to-day for this reason—the books you purchased are again seized, and, as matters stand, had much better be sold at once by public auction.[99] I wish to see you to return your bill for them, which, thank God, is neither due nor paid. That part, as far as you are concerned, being settled, (which it can be, and shall be, when I see you to-morrow,) I have no further delicacy about the matter. This is about the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you should have one, on the precariousness of the profession ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... to have clasped his hands and exclaimed, "Hip, hip, hurrah!" adding only as an afterthought, "The Lord's will be done." But midsummer was his great opportunity. Then took place the rouping of the seats in the parish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the seats being put up to auction were knocked down to the highest bidder. This sometimes led to the breaking of the peace. Every person was present who was at all particular as to where he sat, and an auctioneer was engaged for the day. He rouped the kirk-seats ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... lamentable business, the bourgeoisie plays the same role as the pioneers of America," continued Clousier. "It buys up great estates, which the peasantry could not otherwise acquire. It cuts them up and then sells, either at auction or in small lots at private sale, to the peasants. Everything is judged by figures in these days, and I know none more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million acres, which, subtracting highways, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... five o'clock stage. Mrs. John had been there three days now, and John's father and mother were almost packed up—so Mrs. John said. The auction would be to-morrow at nine o'clock, and with John there to see that things "hustled"—which last was really unnecessary to mention, for John's very presence meant "hustle"—with John there, then, the whole thing ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... and years ago by the fust settlers of Virginny to carry live hogs to market in. The best carriage I saw in the entire collection was used by Pockyhontas, sum two hundred years ago, as a goat-pen. Becumin so used up that it couldn't hold goats, that fair and gentle savage put it up at auction. Subsekently it was used as a hospital for sick calves, then as a hencoop, and finally it was put on wheels and is now ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... belong to myself, exactly as much as any man. The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the slightest property rights in me is as preposterous, as ridiculous, as—what shall I say?—as the notion of your being taken out with a chain on your neck and sold by auction as a slave, down on the canal bridge. I should be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any other thought were ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to the most wonderful city in the world. If possible, we'll buy the very lot where we lived, and build a little house. Many of those who lived in the neighborhood, my old patients, will return, and so I shall have a practice begun. I shall start for Chicago in the morning. You can make an auction of the few traps we have here, and follow as soon as possible. You'll find me at Mrs. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... disavowed by Taylor, but not till after many thousand copies had been sold. I dare say many people believe still that he was the author of this pamphlet. All his effects either have been or will be sold by auction. The funeral took place a fortnight after his death. Nothing could be managed worse than it was, and except the appearance of the soldiers in the chapel, which was extremely fine, the spectacle was by no means imposing; the cold was intense, and it is only marvellous that more ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... reader, perhaps, has seen, or, it may be, possesses one of those old libraries, of which the general public occasionally have a glimpse at auction rooms, composed of standard authors, and beautifully and solidly bound, which had adorned the studies of the fathers of our country. They contain all that was best in the French and English literature of the last century—history, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... "Let's auction it off," exclaimed Daae. "I will be the auctioneer, and this key to the graveyard will serve me ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... near the Quiet Woman Inn, a lone roadside hostel on the lower verge of the Egdon Heath, since and for many years abolished. In stepping up towards it Car'line heard more voices within than had formerly been customary at such an hour, and she learned that an auction of fat stock had been held near the spot that afternoon. The child would be the better for a rest as well as herself, she ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Ann, Soho, dealer" appears in the bankrupt list of The London Gazette of November, 1772; and in December of the same year, this temple of festivity, and all its gorgeous contents, were thus advertised to be sold by public auction:— ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... called clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Praetorian guards. "Julian was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not agreeable to the course ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... France and Germany in the eleventh century. In those days the Emperor of Germany assumed the right of naming or appointing Bishops throughout his Empire. This sacred office was commonly bestowed on very unworthy candidates, and very often put up at auction, to be sold to the highest bidder, as is now the case with the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... traffic, will make haste to desert the iron rails. Railroad freights everywhere, will fall to zero. Short railroads—branches and feeders to main lines—will become useless and worthless. Many of them will be sold at auction, for less than the cost of the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... days later, that the Imperial wish was gratified, the occasion being an auction for the benefit of the American Red Cross Fund held one afternoon in the gold ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Tea was served with music by the Philadelphia orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and the tickets ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... mentioned, and which he must literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it; his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the back part of his grammar, made poems from it for years, and appeared in many transfigurations, as this and that god and demigod and hero upon imagined occasions in the Boy's Town, to the fancied admiration of all ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... which all precious things flow into our hearts and lives. If Ladysmith is, as I suppose it is, dependent for its water supply on one lead pipe, the preciousness of that pipe is not measured by what it would fetch if it were put up to auction for its lead, but by that which flows through it, and without which Death would come. And my faith is the pipe by which all the water of life comes sparkling and rejoicing into my thirsty soul. It is the opening ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Kennedy. They b'long to Master John Kennedy. I was raised round Aberdeen, Mississippi but they come in there after freedom. I heard em talk but I couldn't tell you much as where they come from. They said a young girl bout got her growth would auction off for more than any man. They used em for cooks and house women. I judge way they talked she be fifteen or sixteen years old. They brought $1,600 and $2,000. If they was scared up, where they been beat, they didn't sell off good. I knowed Master ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... he had amassed enabled him to gratify this devilish desire. He opened his bags of gold and unlocked his coffers. No monster of ignorance ever destroyed so many superb productions of art as did this raging avenger. At any auction where he made his appearance, every one despaired at once of obtaining any work of art. It seemed as if an angry heaven had sent this fearful scourge into the world expressly to destroy all harmony. Scorn of the world was expressed in his countenance. His tongue uttered nothing ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and on which no dirt will stick, go for little or nothing, while Lot 8, "a very considerable quantity of Interest at Court," excites brisk bidding, and is finally knocked down for one thousand pounds. From the excellent fooling of the auction, the action suddenly changes to combined satire on the Ministry and on the two Cibbers, father and son. The Ministry are ingeniously implied to have been damn'd by the public; to give places with no ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... which was advertised in the Sydney Gazette for sale by auction, Mr. Lord, the auctioneer, setting forth that he ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... services which is hardly in their power to reward according to their worth. If I were to give my judgment with regard to this country, I do not think the great efficient offices of the state to be overpaid. The service of the public is a thing which cannot be put to auction and struck down to those who will agree to execute it the cheapest. When the proportion between reward and service is our object, we must always consider of what nature the service is, and what ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday an Eastern apologue, as richly colored as the Tales of Scherezade; on the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyere; on the Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hard things I sometimes said on that tour. I tak' back nothing that was deserved; there were toons, and fine they'll ken themselves wi'oot ma naming them, that ought to be ashamed of themselves. There was the book I wrote. Every nicht I'd auction off a copy to the highest bidder—the money tae gae tae the puir wounded laddies in Scotland. A copy went for five thousand dollars ane nicht in ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... auction-block seeing their children sold away from them into slavery have flamed out some of America's most stirring speeches. True, the mother did not have any knowledge of the technique of speaking, but she had something greater than ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... myself on constantly at home. Come on, come on, do please say "Done!" (after a pause, formally) In the event of no party making a better offer, more satisfactory to myself and associates, I'll knock myself down to you—on my own terms—just as if I was selling an estate by auction. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... old Tuan Hakim, or chief justice, pointing to the gold plate off which we were dining, "is the famous Ellinborough plate that once belonged to that strange woman, Lady Ellinborough. His Highness attended the auction of her things in Scotland. Do you see the little Arabic character on the rim of each? It is the late Sultana's name. His Highness telegraphed to her for the money to pay for it, and she telegraphed back two hundred thousand dollars, with ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... long life, contributed to form a very large collection of venerable lumber, which, though beyond all price to the collector himself, is of no value to his heiress but so far as it is marketable. She designs to bring the whole to auction, but for this purpose a catalogue and description are necessary. Her father trusted to a faithful memory, and to vague and scarcely legible memorandums, and has left a very arduous task to any one who shall be named to the office. It occurred to me, that the best means of promoting your ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... on to his destination, the home of the Winnsboros in Greenwich, but he arrived late, and the house guests were too profoundly absorbed in their games of auction to make a fit audience for such a story. So Prissy saved it for a correct moment, though he nearly burst with it. He slept ill that night from indigestion ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hurried out in quest of the desired pillow. It proved almost an unattainable luxury; but at last, after a long search, she secured an air-cushion, a down cushion about twelve inches square, and one old feather pillow which had come from some auction, and had apparently lain for years in the corner of the shop. When this was encased in a fresh cover of Canton flannel, it did very well, and stilled Amy's complaints a little; but all night she grew worse, and when Dr. Hilary came next day, he was forced to utter ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... taken down, the house purified from the auction-mob—every thing changed; a new name occupied the doctor's place in the "Court Guide"—and in three months the family seemed as completely forgotten amongst those of whom they once formed a prominent part, as if they had never existed. When one sphere ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... landing, a bazaar was held on the boat for the benefit of the French hospitals. This was a very successful affair; contributions were made or supposed to be made by all the passengers. Among other things, I donated a quart bottle of champagne. This was sold at auction, the first bid was one dollar, made with the understanding that the last bid was to be no higher, but was to get the champagne. These bids continued until the bottle finally brought seventy-five dollars. It turned out to be a very ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... expenses. The bonds which were found proved to be so many worthless pieces of parchment. The jewellery of recent workmanship consisted of a set of valueless shirt-studs and a watch that would not have fetched ten florins at auction. Of silver there was a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a ladle, and two or three pieces of tableware, bent, crooked, and broken, hardly worth the mentioning. Of horses there were two lean and decrepit-looking animals, and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... of sport," declared Kendale. "But that isn't what I sent for you to discuss. What I meant to say is that there's a fellow from Newport gone all to smash. His fine yacht, the Daisy Bell, is to be sold at auction to-day, likewise the contents of his stables. There are two of his animals that are flyers—the Lady Albia and Sterling. Why, the Lady has a record better than 2.05 1-2, open gaited, warranted sound, both of 'em, and no end of traps, tea carts, and ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... what a valuable cargo the corsair had brought back; and the joy was all the greater because of the twelve white prisoners, for white slaves are reckoned very valuable in those parts, and there hadn't been any taken for a very long while. We were all put up to auction, and the man who bid highest got the man he fancied. A big Moor from the back-country took a liking for me, for I was a fine strapping youngster then, although you mightn't think it to look at me now. Well, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a week for you," the woman answered. "Bring me the money by then and you shall have them. If I don't hear anything of you, they'll go to the auction mart." ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... health; Yet I must own, he looked a little dull, And now and then a tear stole down by stealth; Perhaps his recent loss of blood might pull His spirit down; and then the loss of wealth, A mistress, and such comfortable quarters, To be put up for auction ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Park. Great progress is being made by the Commissioners of the Metropolis Improvements in the formation of the new street at the West-end. The new street leading from Oxford street to Holborn has been marked out by the erection of poles along the line. Last week several houses were disposed of by auction, for the purpose of being taken down. Some delay has arisen in respect to the purchase of the houses which have formed the locality known as Little Ireland. Among the buildings to be removed is the chapel situated at the top of Plumtree street. In this ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... were the first wives of your daughters' husbands, and for the children whom such men abandon and forget! In leading your innocent daughters to courts and receptions you are only leading them to the auction-room; and in dressing and decorating them you are preparing them for the market of base men. Last week some titled philanthropist had hauled up a woman in the East End of London for attempting to sell her daughter. How shocking! everybody said. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... offered to go to Lao by land at my own expense, in search of the king of Camboja, for I knew that that way led thither. Accordingly, as soon as we arrived in Cochinchina, the captain sent Diego Belloso and myself to Lao, and Captain Gregorio de Vargas to Tunquin. Meanwhile he held an auction among the soldiers of everything valuable from the Chinese ships, and of what else he had taken from the soldiers; but the men were all without a real, and so he had everything bought for himself, at whatever price he was pleased ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... show that it was the glorious roe of Walter. It was eaten at the Criterion by a stockbroker, and it might have been anybody's roe. Meanwhile the mutilated frame, the empty shell of Walter, was squashed flat in a wooden box with a mass of others and sold at an auction by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... relative or intimate friend of two sisters of this school, well known about Glasgow, an odd account of what it seems, from their own statement, had passed between them at a country house, where they had attended a sale by auction. As the business of the day went on, a dozen of silver spoons had to be disposed of; and before they were put up for competition, they were, according to the usual custom, handed round for inspection to the company. When returned into the hands of the auctioneer, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... rapidly in the mother's mind; and, with her fear of losing an admirer for her Phoebe, the value of that admirer suddenly rose in her estimation. Thus, at an auction, if a lot is going to be knocked down to a lady, who is the only person that has bid for it, even she feels discontented, and despises that which nobody covets; but if, as the hammer is falling, many voices answer to the question, Who bids more? then her anxiety to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... they had sat down to luncheon—three men and two women—by the time she arrived. They had all been, or had wanted to go, to an auction sale of objets d'art that had taken place the night before. They were discussing it, praising their own purchases, and decrying the value of everybody else's when Adelaide ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... a pension of one dollar a day during the lives of the seller and his son. Quite recently one of Correggio's most beautiful works was discovered under the canvas of a worthless picture acquired at a public auction in Rome for a few dimes, at the sale by a princely family of discarded pictures, and resold by its fortunate discoverer for fifteen thousand dollars, although the original proprietor instituted a suit against him for its recovery, but without success. In Florence, within ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sky. Here are a few butchers and open-air cooks who fry suspicious-looking bundles of animal intestines for the epicurean Arabs; a little saddlery; half a camel-load of corn; a broken cart-wheel and rickety furniture put up to auction; one or two halfa-mats of admirable workmanship; grinding-stones; musty pressed dates, onions, huge but insipid turnips and other ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... proverbs, "it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into a connected discourse prefixed to the Almanack of 1757, as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make a greater impression. The piece being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the American Continent, reprinted in Britain on a large sheet of paper to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... detention of the ship, and the owners refused to deliver the box unless I would pay thirty guineas damages. This I declined, and the box was taken to the custom-house, where it has lain these six weeks unopened. After the expiration of nine months it will be opened, and the contents sold at auction by order of the officers of the customs. I shall write to the bookseller, Mr. White, to employ his own agent here to look to the box as his property. This trifling tale would not have been told but to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... are anxious to clear out their stock at any old price. The wise wife—and Johnnie's missus is one—waits until this hour before making her large purchases. For now excellent joints and rabbits and other trifles are put up for auction. The laureates are wonderful fellows, many of them, I imagine, decayed music-hall men. A good man in this line makes a very decent thing out of it. The usual remuneration is about eight or ten shillings for the night and whatever beer they want. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Downstairs the auction was over, the drawling monologue was succeeded by a babel of voices, and glancing through the blinds, I saw the real estate men untying their horses from the young maples. A swirl of dust laden with the scent of the catalpa blew ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... and produced a large number of instruments, but a far greater number are attributed to him than he could possibly have made. His usual price for a violin was about twenty dollars, (Haweis says fifty dollars), but a fine specimen from his hand now sells in the auction room for hundreds of dollars. In 1888, a Stradivarius violin brought the large sum of five thousand dollars, and double this sum was paid a few years since for the celebrated "Messie" violin, made by Stradivarius ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... the North country. But I'd rather buy a young wife, for the young niggers are more roguish than a lot o' snakes, and al'a's eat their heads off afore they're big enough to toddle. They sell gals here for niggers whiter than you are, Manuel; they sell 'em at auction, and then they sell corn to feed 'em on. Carolina's a great region of supersensual sensibility; they give you a wife of any color or beauty, and don't charge you much for her, providing you're the right stripe. What a funny thing it would be to show the Glasgow folks a bright specimen of a ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... York, who reported that a vessel had been captured and brought to that city, in which was contained a present from the Queen of France to Mrs. Washington, as "an elegant testimonial of her approbation of the, general's conduct," and that it had been sold at auction for the benefit of the captors. This intelligence was so confidently affirmed from such a respectable source, that General Washington had requested the Marquis de Lafayette to make inquiry as to the truth of it through the medium of Madame de Lafayette.—Writings ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... bargains of prickly pears spread open on the ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not. There were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful humorist was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders by having his left hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling dialogue with it; when it did not respond to his liking he beat it with his right hand, and every now and then he rang a ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... kinds of bridge; one, known as Auction Bridge is for three players. Ordinary bridge is for four players. In the former game, one depends largely upon luck. But skill is a very necessary requisite to the one who wishes to play and win in ordinary bridge. Writers ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... shall be seized when in possession of coasters, and sold at public auction for the use of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the presence of James T. Duncan, who looked like a dignified red-mustached Sunday-school superintendent, but who traveled for a cloak and suit house, gambled heavily on poker and auction pinochle, and was esteemed for his straight back and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... new house, and particularly of my CANONICAL—[James Brydges, duke of Chandos, built a most magnificent and elegant house at CANNONS, about eight miles from London. It was superbly furnished with fine pictures, statues, etc., which, after his death, were sold, by auction. Lord Chesterfield purchased the hall-pillars, the floor; and staircase with double flights; which are now in Chesterfield House, London.]—pillars. My bust of Cicero is a very fine one, and well preserved; it will have the best place in my library, unless at your return you bring me over ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... back he would go to his dingy room, in that part of our capital where English is seldom spoken, to supplicate little idols of his own. And when Pombo's simple, necessary prayer was equally refused by the idols of museums, auction-rooms, shops, then he took counsel with himself and purchased incense and burned it in a brazier before his own cheap little idols, and played the while upon an instrument such as that wherewith men charm snakes. And still the idols clung to ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... cows over to the shire and auction them off for what they'll bring. You can sue this town and recover the real value of the cows, along with interest at twelve per cent. That is to say, you can get judgment against the town for ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... of exceptionally popular tickets, such as those to Brighton, a strictly limited number of impressions to be struck off, which will be disposed of by public auction to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... some dealer, "is such a jumble and so dark that nobody can see what he's got. Ought to be very grateful to me that I put 'em where people could see 'em. If I can pay for 'em, all right, and if I can't, let him take 'em back. He always knows where to find 'em. I'm not going to have an auction." ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... after we had returned on board with our sad report, an auction was held of the poor man's effects. The captain had first, however, called all hands aft and asked them if they were satisfied that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was any use ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Mrs. Fischlowitz! In that chest over there by the wall I got yet a jacket from Rivington Street. Right away it got too tight for me. Like new it is, with a warm beaver collar. At auction one day he got it for me. Like a top it ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... rarities, regardless of expense, the historic associations of the jewelled collar would enhance the intrinsic value of the stones; and, this view prevailing, it was announced that the necklace would be sold by auction a month later in the rooms of Meyer, Renault and Co., in the Boulevard des Italians, near the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... of the raw gold is effected as follows: Each Monday morning there is held an auction at which are present all the representatives of home or foreign banks who may be in the market for gold. These representatives, fully apprised of the amount of the metal which has arrived during the preceding week and which is to be sold, know exactly ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... outrageous violence;—they called upon the magistrates to justify their conduct, and would not suffer them to be heard by counsel. These men, who had allowed the prostituted electors of Shoreham counsel to defend a bargain to sell their borough by auction, would not grant the same indulgence to the lord mayor of London, pleading for the laws of England, and the conscientious discharge of his duty. Accordingly they committed him to the tower for not violating his oath. The most sacred obligation of morality and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for you,' said Mr Felix quietly, affably. 'I gave precisely five pounds for it, at an auction, and I warn you that it is worth just thrice that sum. Still, if you would prefer ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do,—he felt in his breeches pocket—'here are the five sovereigns, and—once more— go ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... declares himself a Babe of Grace, and free from the bonds of sin; or, as he more simply, but truthfully and characteristically expresses it—a beautiful specimen indeed of his simplicity of views—'he is replevined from the pound of human fraility—no longer likely to be brought to the devil's auction, or knocked down to Satan as a bad bargain.'—For ourselves, we cannot help thinking that this undoubted triumph of religious truth, in the person of Darby O'Drive, is as creditable to the zeal of Mr. M'Slime, as it is to his sincerity. Encouraged by this great success, Mr. M'Slime, seconded ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... it to be a duty to support missions and to subscribe to missionary societies, to attend meetings, and to make clothes for the native children in India. At that very time she was reading a large thick book about missions, which she had bought at the auction of the Nearminster book club. She read a portion every evening and kept a marker carefully in the place. She was sure that she, as well as the dean, was deeply interested in foreign missions. If she could have made them attractive to Pennie also, it might take the place of Kettles and Anchor ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... Finally, it was iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction, and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... when the spring was quite set in, and the avalanches were down, and the passes well open, she would certainly try that place, if they could devise any plan, in the course of the winter, for moving 'the books.' The whole library will be sold by auction here, when they are both dead, for about a napoleon; and some young woman will carry it home in two journeys ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the greater part of the communal lands, instead of being directly divided among the inhabitants, is substituted for taxation. The commonable alps are let by auction for a term of years, and, in opposition to ancient principles, strangers may bid for them. Some of the Glarus communes sell the right to cut timber in the forest under the superintendence of the guardians. ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... wider till its sprawling street Enclosed her and her footfalls beat On hard stone pavement, and she felt Those throbbing ecstasies that melt Through heart and mind, as, happy, free, Her small, prim personality Merged into the seething strife Of auction-marts ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... bought at Earl Mountnorris's sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by Mr Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after partly copying it, and endeavouring in vain to place it in some public or private library in England or the United States, threw it into auction, where it was sold by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854, for 44, as lot 474, Sir Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The manuscript still adorns the Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a copy of this most suggestive volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... years after the disappearance of her husband, while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the house of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk like a ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... auction in a general way, is good. If you hear the auctioneer crying his sales, it means bright prospects and fair ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... name," said Bellingham, passing his hand over the shrivelled head. "You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his case. That was his number in the auction at which I ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lay within those rosewood receptacles that lined the fatal lair of the sleek usurer; to seize on the very house in which now moved all the pomp of a retinue that vied with the valetaille of dukes; to advertise for public auction, under execution, "the costly effects of the Right Hon. Audley Egerton." But, consummate in his knowledge of the world, Egerton felt assured that Levy would not adopt these measures against him while he could ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... do anything cruel to you, Daddy. You are too old; your grey hairs will protect you. Why, Daddy, you would not fetch a bid if they found out who owned you, and put you up at auction to-morrow," she says, with seeming unconsciousness. She little knew how much the old man prided in his value,—how much he esteemed the amount of good work he could do for master. He shakes his head, looks doubtingly ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... probable price of Butter, I would state it as my opinion that it is likely to command about 14d. A considerable quantity of Irish Butter has already arrived and more is expected. A number of firkins have this day been sold at public auction at 1s. per lb.,—the quality is said to be very fair. Please say to Mrs. Wells that I have received her letter of the 24th inst., and shall do as she requests. Mrs. Black and family are well, and join me in best regards to Mrs. Trueman, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... one comfort. He had his old umbrella, which he loved, in the lamp cabin. At last he took his stand on the chair, and was at the top in a moment. Then he handed in his lamp and got his umbrella, which he had bought at an auction for one-and-six. He stood on the edge of the pit-bank for a moment, looking out over the fields; grey rain was falling. The trucks stood full of wet, bright coal. Water ran down the sides of the waggons, over the white "C.W. and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... on the cold still face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—worse than Orleans slaves. Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... as they could carry; and next day they went on their way rejoicing. They settled in Cincinnati, where they lived happily, until the mob drove them with others, to the Wilberforce settlement, where they are in no danger of the auction block, or of a Southern market; and are as much devoted ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... was no hot-house flower, and the hand that gripped the ax was strong and brown and capable. Back home she had been known to the society reporters as "an out-door girl," by which it was understood that rather than afternoon auction at henfests, she affected tennis, golf, swimming, and cross-country riding. She could saddle her own horse, and paddle a canoe for hours on end. Even the ax was no stranger to her hand, for upon ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my Negroes produce if sold at public auction to-morrow. I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favor; nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me—the laws and customs of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Think what Weyler paid: all the money that his country could beg or borrow; then his own reputation as a soldier, as a statesman, and as a man; ending with a series of monstrous mortgages on his own soul. For which, when it is finally sold at auction, there will not be bid so much as one breath ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... betrayers of public trusts; the one naturalized the gaming-table and the keeping of mistresses as customs of Irish society; the other sold or allowed the highest offices and honours of the state—from a weighership in the butter market to an earl's coronet—to be put up at auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder. How cheering in contrast with the shameful honours, flaunted abroad in those shameful days, are even the negative virtues of the Whig patricians, and how splendid the heroic constancy of Charlemont, Grattan, Curran, and their devoted ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of ad valorem duties, the English exporters got their goods through the United States custom-house by such under valuation as gravely diminished even the protection afforded by the tariff of 1824; and the unloading of large quantities of woolen goods by auction sales brought a cry of distress from New England. This led to an agitation to substitute specific duties in place of ad valorem, and to apply to woolens the minimum principle already applied to cottons. At the same time sheep-raisers ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... prop of his position; and it should be added that his pride, all the habits of thought of a conqueror of women, had been shocked by that stupefying rejection of him, which Cecilia had intimated to her father with the mere lowering of her eyelids. Conceive the highest bidder at an auction hearing the article announce that it will not have him! Captain Baskelett talked of it everywhere for a month or so:—the girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly! and he requested the world to partake of his astonishment. Chronicles of the season in London ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The room in which the sales are conducted is not a large one, and usually not more than a hundred people, buyers, pressmen, etc., are present. Not a single cacao bean is visible, and it might be an auction sale of property for all the uninitiated could tell. The cacao is put up in lots. Usually the sales proceed quietly, and it is difficult to realize that many thousands of bags of cacao are changing hands. The buyers have perfect ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... Public auction is the fate said to be destined by the Exposition company for these wonderful pictures. It is not to be blamed for this. It is a business corporation, and these paintings are assets on which it may be necessary to realize. But if the company finds itself ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... price; but intending buyers preferred to pay more. By and by even this label was taken off and she became a remnant of stock for which there was no convenient space—being moved from shelf to shelf, always a little more shop-worn, a little more out of style. What was really needed was an auction. ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... settlers defeated a band of hostile Indians, or occasionally were massacred by them; but in either case the Simpson house looked, to quote a Riverboro expression, "as if the devil had been having an auction ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... auction of the corner building, man, woman and child were knocked down to the highest bidder, for the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... dwell on the familiar auction pool, with its close, stifling, dingy room; its crowd of solemn, stupid, wide-awake gentlemen seated in chairs before a platform, backed with a blackboard, on which are inscribed the names of the horses expected to start; and its alert, chattering auctioneer, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... and equipages, as in former days, at his door, while genteel and rich people, with cold, apathetic countenances, were entering his house as they had done of yore. Formerly they came to Gotzkowsky's splendid dinners, now they had come to the auction. The fauteuils and velvet-covered sofas, the carpets and gold-embroidered curtains, the chandeliers of bronze and rock crystal, the paintings and statuary, the silver table-ware, and the costly porcelain service, all these were ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... best of paper, for a few loose thousands which the Judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in vain. Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an auction of real estate, including a portion of the old Pyncheon property, originally belonging to Maule's garden ground. It has been alienated from the Pyncheons these four-score years; but the Judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small demesne still left around ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Noblestone," he rejoined. "First and last I bet you I am out five thousand dollars on Vesell. That feller got an idee that there ain't nothing to the cloak and suit business but auction pinochle and taking out-of-town customers to the theayter. Hard work is something which he don't know nothing about at all. He should of been ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... established him in a small store of his own on the northwest corner of High (Wisconsin Avenue) and First (N) Streets. Again, two years later they all purchased a two-story brick house on the corner of Bridge (M) and Congress (31st) Streets and commenced a wholesale auction ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... unusual; it had been employed notably by the townsfolk of Orleans when, some time previously, to furnish forth Jeanne with munition of war, they had bought from a certain citizen a quantity of salt which they had put up to auction in the city barn. The townsfolk of Bourges sold by auction the annual revenue of a thirteenth part of the wine sold retail in the town. But the money thus ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... answered Helmsley, with emphasis. "Honest to your womanly instincts, and to the simplest and purest part of your nature. I should have proved for myself the fact that you refused to sell your beautiful person for gold—that you were no slave in the world's auction-mart, but a free, proud, noble-hearted English girl who meant to be faithful to all that was highest and best in her soul. Ah, Lucy! You are not this little dream-girl of mine! You are a very realistic modern woman with whom a man's 'ideal' has ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of the gunner was followed by consequences which may be regarded as the beginning of troubles that in the end proved fatal. It appears that it was the custom in those times, when a man died at sea, to sell his clothes to the crew by auction. In one respect, Hudson violated this custom, and probably gained no little ill will thereby. The gunner had a gray cloth gown or wrapper, which Henry Greene had set his heart upon possessing; and Hudson, wishing to gratify his favorite, refused ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... are full of delightful glimpses of the town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet show, the auction, even the cockpit; we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden—it will be called Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr. Addison?—not the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... receives yearly 10,000 dollars. Of all sheep or goats, he is entitled to a fifth. On the sale of every slave, he has, in addition to the head-money, a dollar and a half, which, at the rate of 4,000, gives another 6,000 dollars. The captured slaves are sold by auction, at which the sultan's brokers attend, bidding high only for the finest. The owner bids against them until he has an offer equal to what he considers as the value of the slave; he has then three-fourths of the money paid to him, while ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Mellee, which includes many large districts and provinces, but the particular district is Furra. This is a flat and sandy place, "not a stone," say the merchants, "is to be seen." The mines of Furra, if such they may be called, are sold by auction, and the lot of land is a lot of fortune, some plots producing nothing, others gold in abundance. When the gold arrives at Timbuctoo, it is converted into women's ornaments, mostly ear-rings. I have seen very few ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... said. "I thought I was gone, sir. I was feeling along with my left hoof, when my right suddenly give a slip on a bit of rock as seemed like glass, and there it was slithering away more and more. If you hadn't ha' held on, you might ha' told 'em to sell off my kit by auction when ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... manner," said Frau von Morien. "She is insupportably arrogant and self-sufficient. What do you think of this pretentious manner of announcing our names as if we were at an auction where they sold titles?" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the money'll go to the child, and aren't we the proper ones to look after it for her. If the old woman dies and there's an auction—there'll be good bids for it, and whoever buys the quilt'll get the two hundred crowns as well. You'd better go over and have a talk with her, and make ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... land the expense is greater, as, after an application being made, the land is put up to public auction, and may fetch a very low or higher price according to the bidding. The land secured, contracts are made with natives of the lower class to clear the forest and plant cinchona. The contracts are often sublet to Indians. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... auction, as above; also praising any thing above its merits, from interested motives. The art of puffing is at present greatly practised, and essentially necessary in all trades, professions, and callings. To puff and blow; to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... off this exhibition by showing us a collection of pottery famous in England, that had belonged to the fifth duke, his father. Every piece of it, by the way, afterwards brought an enormous sum at auction. Supper was served in a warm little room of oak. The game was from Derresley Manor, the duke's Nottinghamshire seat, and the wine, so he told us, was some of fifty bottles of rare Chinon he had inherited. Melted rubies it was indeed, of the sort which had quickened the blood of many a royal gathering ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fishmongers, receive quite an income from persons who wish their cards attached to the various commodities in which they deal. Thus, a person receiving a fish, a loaf, or a piece of meat, finds the advertisement of a dealer in silks and satins attached to the tail of the fish; that of an auction sale of domestic flannels wrapped around the loaf; and perhaps flattering notices of a compound for the extermination of rats ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... days gone by it had flourished, and been a source of riches to the colonel and his wife, the only members of the household. The slaves had numbered sixty-five, all able-bodied, and all worth five hundred dollars each at the auction block in Memphis. Now all but six of the slaves had run away, the plantation was neglected, and what there had been of stores had been given to the Confederate forces, simply from the fact that, had they not been given up, friend or foe would have confiscated them as one of ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... is vint, the national card-game of Russia and the direct ancestor of auction bridge, with which it ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... that the following are the correct and highest prices realised at my sales by Public Auction during the above Siege, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... over with a cloth to avoid contact with the outer air, which is apt to turn them brown. They are then placed in baskets that contain twenty-three to twenty-five pounds and sent to market, where they are sold at auction as they arrive. Or they may be sent to preserved-vegetable manufacturers, who contract for them at an ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer |
