"Huckster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the red glow dying behind Acro-Corinthus. Torches gleamed amid the trees where the multitudes were buying, selling, wagering, making merry. All Greece seemed to have sent its wares to be disposed of at the Isthmia. Democrates idled along, now glancing at the huckster who displayed his painted clay dolls and urged the sightseers to remember the little ones at home. A wine-seller thrust a sample cup of a choice vintage under the Athenian's nose, and vainly adjured him to buy. Thessalian easy-chairs, pottery, slaves kidnapped from the Black ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and huckster's goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with her own spittle; and, who knows but some fine lady of St James's parish might admit into her delicate mouth those very cherries, which had been rolled and moistened between the filthy, and, perhaps, ulcerated chops of a St Giles's huckster — I need not dwell upon the pallid, contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then presented with the worst milk, thickened with the worst flour, into a bad likeness of cream: but the milk itself should not pass ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... student: he lived in a garret, and nothing at all belonged to him; but there was also once a regular huckster: he lived on the ground floor, and the whole house was his; and the goblin kept with him, for on the huckster's table on Christmas Eve there was always a dish of plum porridge, with a great piece of butter floating in the middle. The huckster ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... was not dead after all! I was not a murderer! And to complete the wonder, he was also alive. A man passing along the bank of the river, as I discovered afterward from Nighthawk, who ferreted out the whole affair—a man named Swartz, a sort of poor farmer and huckster, passing along the Nottoway, on the morning after the storm, had found the woman cast ashore, with the boat overturned near her; and a mile farther, had found Mortimer, not yet dead, in the grave. Succored by Swartz, they had ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the smallest was that of the Sister Cadiere, a retail dealer, or huckster. There was no entrance but by the shop, and only one room on each floor. The Cadieres were honest pious folk, and Madame Cadiere the mirror of excellence itself. These good people were not altogether poor. Besides their small dwelling in the town, they ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... EGGS ARE MARKETED The Country Merchant The Huckster The Produce Buyer The City Distribution of Eggs Cold Storage of Eggs Preserving Eggs Out of Cold Storage Improved Methods of Marketing Farm-Grown Eggs The High Grade Egg Business Buying Eggs by Weight The Retailing of Eggs by the Producer The Price ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... lady's angry words, and told her that he was no huckster. He then begged her to don her garments, as he desired to have speech with her. After her women had attired her, Graelent took her by the hand and, leading her a little space away from her attendants, told her that he had ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... but something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables, took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came along, trailing her parasol with one gloved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... did not get down on your knees and beg my pardon. You will be sorry that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotton egg fiend, you villian that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... each its story of sunrise thrift and industry as it cried to you the early peas or the wood or the melons of the season. You may remember, too, how perplexing, how fantastic, many of those cries were, making it impossible for you to understand what they meant, or why a wood-huckster, for example, should give vent to such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... success. At length she resolved to rent a small room, and put into it a bed, a table, and a few chairs, with some other necessary articles which she still had, and then buy some kind of vegetables with about five dollars that were due her, and go to market as a huckster! Let not the sentimental and romantic turn away in disgust. When humanity is reduced to a last resource, be it what it may, the heart endures pains, and doubts, and fears of a like character, whether the resource be that offered to a noble lady, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... question, and repetition are all effective aids in the presentation of argument. The speeches of great orators are replete with expressions of this sort. Burke, in his Speech on Conciliation, says, "Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster"; "The public," he said, "would not have patience to see us play the game out with our adversaries; we must produce our hand"; "Men may lose little in property by the act which takes away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle on ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... liked it. Northern merchants were in favor of it—it 'would conciliate the South.' Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty aid,—he went through the land a huckster of Slavery, peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great cities of the North executed the bill. The leading Journals of Boston ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... one of the most agreeable things in modern literature. The whole scene at Montfermeil is full of the charm that Hugo knows so well how to throw about children. Who can forget the passage where Cosette, sent out at night to draw water, stands in admiration before the illuminated booth, and the huckster behind "lui faisait un peu l'effet d'etre le Pere eternel?" The pathos of the forlorn sabot laid trustingly by the chimney in expectation of the Santa Claus that was not, takes us fairly by the throat; there is nothing in Shakespeare ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friend had a good share of them in his custody, and I remember that one evening when our domestic arrangements heaped up for us insurmountable difficulties, this pile of printed matter was fortunately disposed of as waste paper to a huckster. During the days immediately following we lacked none of the ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the army and the people. The rebellion began in the camp of the Janissaries, and the ringleader was one Halil Patrona, a poor Albanian sailor-man, who after plying for a time the trade of a petty huckster had been compelled, by crime or accident, to seek a refuge among the mercenary soldiery of the Empire. The rebellion was unexpectedly, amazingly successful. The Sultan, after vainly sacrificing his chief councillors to the fury of the mob, was himself dethroned ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... be some mistake; but when he becomes convinced of its reality, his resolution is instantly taken, and the transaction irrevocably closed. Like the merchant rejoicing in his fortune is a believer who has found peace with God: henceforth he is rich. He does not need now to huckster in small bargains between his conscience and the divine law every day, and struggle to diminish the ever-increasing amount of guilt by getting small entries of merit marked on the other side of the page. All this is ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... is reading his sermon, and Mrs Prothero is nursing the mendicant Gladys, an event is passing in the neighbouring country-town, involving matters of interest to her, and those belonging to her. In a small bedroom over a little huckster's shop, an old man lies dangerously ill. By his side is seated a middle-aged woman watching. In a dark corner, behind the bed, stands a man, who is so deep in shadow that you scarcely know whether he ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as thus. Our sexton has ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... here! And when for once he actually had a shilling in hand, then it was sure to take to its heels under his very nose, directly he began to rack his brains to decide how it could most usefully be applied: on one such occasion, for example, he had seen, in a huckster's window, a pipe in the form of a boot-leg, which ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... one is a bookman because he has many books, for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which a gentleman's library is not complete. And in the present imperfect arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... notorious principles of war, familiar to all who have read books about war, is that a merely defensive attitude is a losing attitude. This truth is as true of games and boxing, or of traffic and bargaining, as it is of war. Every successful huckster is thoroughly versed in the doctrine of the initiative, which he knows by instinct and experience, not by the reading of learned treatises. A man who knows what he wants and means to get it is at a great advantage in traffic with another man who is thinking only of self-defence. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the Lemon, when it taketh form, * Catch rays of light and all to gaze constrain; Like egg of pullet which the huckster's hand * ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... chuckle. "And I think we are very well rid of him, Adhelmar. Holy Maclou! that I should have taken the traitor for a true man, though! He would sell France, you observe,—chaffered, they tell me, like a pedlar over the price of Normandy. Heh, the huckster, the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a sordid age, it is to find One Abdiel to enticement bravely blind, One class not thrall to Plutus. But, hurroo! England rejoice aloud, for thou hast two. Sweet are the uses of—Advertisement, To huckster souls, whose god is Cent-per-cent. The Mart, the Forum, and—alas!—the Fane. Self-trumpeting, in type, cannot restrain; The leaded column and the poster smart Seduce the Histrio; e'en the thrall of Art Bows to the modern Baal of Pot and Paste, That deadly foe of Modesty and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... Sunday-Society Cockney for picking my primroses. Custom-houses indeed! It's Chinese. There are things a Great Country mustn't do, Stephen. A country like ours ought to get along without the manners of a hard-breathing competitive cad.... If it can't I'd rather it didn't get along.... What's the good of a huckster country?—it's like having a wife on the streets. It's no excuse that she brings you money. But since the peace, and that man Chamberlain's visit to Africa, you Imperialists seem to have got this nasty spirit all over you.... The Germans do ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... been faithful in a very little; have thou authority over ten cities.' Now I do not need to spend a word in dwelling on the contrast between the two pictures of the huckster with his little shop and the pound of capital to begin with, and the vizier that has control of ten of the cities of his master. That is too plain to need any enforcement. We are all here, all us Christian ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... for it. If the payment is made in a free State, where slavery is not tolerated, the title would not pass at all. I submit to our friends from the South, whether they wish to have the Government become a slave-trader, to set it up as a huckster of slaves in the shambles. My amendment imposes the responsibility upon Congress. I have no doubt Congress will legislate properly ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... mechanics, who had suddenly dropped their needles, their hammers, and their lasts, and slunk out from behind their shop-counters; those who had never aspired beyond the constable of the parish, were now seated in the council of state; where, as Milton describes them, "they fell to huckster the commonwealth:" there they met a more rabid race of obscure lawyers, and discontented men of family, of blasted reputations; adventurers, who were to command the militia and navy of England,—governors of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... vii: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing." [Matt. 7:15] Such are all who wish with their many good works, as they say, to make God favorable to themselves, and to buy God's grace from Him, as if He were a huckster or a day-laborer, unwilling to give His grace and favor for nothing. These are the most perverse people on earth, who will hardly or never be converted to the right way. Such too are all who in adversity ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... jump your head across hedges and ditches, my little fellow. It won't do, in these confounded days, to have you clever all at the wrong end. In my time, good in the saddle was good for everything; but now you must get your brains where you can—pick here, pick there—and sell 'em like a huckster; some do. Nature's gone—it's damned artifice rules, I tell ye; and a squire of our country must be three parts lawyer to keep his own. You must learn; by God, sir, you must cogitate; you must stew at books ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... past, in which this horror is not known to have been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon negroes only; the Edinburgh Review, in a recent number, gave the hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are necessary under it?—and if they are not necessary and are yet done, is ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... really the secret of my pre-eminence. I never develop. I was born epigrammatic, and my dying remark will be a paradox. How splendid to die with a paradox upon one's lips! Most people depart in a cloud of blessings and farewells, or give up the ghost arranging their affairs like a huckster, or endeavouring to cut somebody off with a shilling. I at least cannot be so vulgar as to do that, for I have not a shilling in the world. Some one told me the other day that the Narcissus Club had failed, and attributed the failure to the fact that it did not go on paying. Nothing ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... is sore indeed," answered Aziel, "and if you think your words be wise, their medicine does not soothe, Phoenician. You may have laboured for my welfare and for that of the lady Elissa, or, like the huckster that you are, for your own advantage, or for both—I know not, and do not care to know. But this I know, that you, and Issachar also, are striving to snare Fate in a web of sand, and that Fate will be too strong for it and you. I love this woman and she loves me, because such is ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... this libell was some vagabond huckster or pedler, and had gone particularly into many corners of Island to vtter his trumpery wares, which he also testifieth of himselfe in his worthy rimes, that he had trauailed thorow the greatest part of Island, whereupon ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... manner more patronising, if he had been Saul and I the humble David; but a man who is trying to earn three thousand pounds must put up with a great deal. Finding that the minister was prepared to play the huckster, I employed no ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... nothing. He had been for a good many years taking in a daily landscape of stubble-field, orchard and straight country roads. His experience had taught him that a red two-story hay press was a big building. To him the huddle of huckster stands at the county fair made a pretty lively spectacle. Then he was rushed into Chicago. With the roar of wheels still in his ears and the points of the compass hopelessly mixed, he found himself being fed into the Exposition gate with a lot of strange people. ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... would have me Cozen, intrigue, and cheat, and play the huckster, As your republicans, peace on their lips And subtle scheming treaties, till the moment When it is safe to spring? Would you have me cringe To the ignorant mob of churls, through whose sweet voices The road to greatness lies? Nay, nay; I am A King's son, and ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Do you think I'd be offering her that way to any huckster in Carrick that wanted a hundred pound;—or that she would put up with the like of that?—Bad as we are, we an't come ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... that I'm a man what pays his way," said the boy, "and don't keep a huckster's stall to sell carrion by star-light; but live in a two pair, if you please, and has a wife and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... after the fashion of Punch and Judy, to the music of the trumpet; and another pole made its appearance, with a piece of bacon on it, and a placard bearing the inscription of "Treasury bacon," all which Tom Durfy had run off to procure at a huckster's shop the moment he heard the waggish answer, which he thus turned ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... tokens in circulation in the early part of the present century being something wonderful, as many as 4,000 different varieties having been described by collectors, including all denominations, from the Bank of England's silver dollar to a country huckster's brass farthing. More than nine-tenths of these were made in Birmingham, and, of course, our tradesmen were not backward with their own specimens. The Overseers issued the well-known "Workhouse Penny," a copper ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... near my price, and strove to make me take the gold. But what is bred in the bone will out; I am a gentleman born, not a huckster, and the book I gave him freely. May it profit the good knight in his devotions! But now, come, they are weary waiting for us; the hour waxes late, and Elliot, I trow, is long abed. You ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... You have it in you to work determinedly and, when it's necessary, to do things that men with less courage would shrink from; but I'm doubtful whether yours is the temperament that leads to success. You haven't the huckster's instincts; you're not cold-blooded enough; you wouldn't cajole your friends ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss |
