"Ferryman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grim boatman answered, "Never!" He seized an oar, mickle and broad, and smote Hagen (soon he rued it), that he staggered and fell on his knees. Seldom had he of Trony encountered so grim a ferryman. Further, to anger the bold stranger, he brake a boat-pole over his head, for he was a strong man. But he did it to ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... streams, where fording was impossible and traffic was perforce carried by ferry, the canoe and the keel boat of the earliest days gave way in time to the ordinary "flat" or barge. At first the obligation of the ferryman to the public, though recognized by English law, was ignored in America by legislators and monopolists alike. Men obtained the land on both sides of the rivers at the crossing places and served the public only at their own convenience and at their own charges. In many ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... you, Father. They saw two vagabonds by the river. Their clothing was torn and dirty, for they'd been in the water. And when it came to paying the ferryman, they'd no money. Now they're drying their clothes in the ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... belongs to the science of hydraulics, for it is not such a boat as can be propelled by steam or wind. I had occasion recently to cross the Mississippi on a similar ferry, early in the morning, and before the ferryman was up. The proprietor of it was with me; yet neither of us knew much of its practical operation. I soon pulled the head of the boat towards the current, but left down the resistance board, or whatever it is called, at the bow as well as at ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... scrap of a song I once heard in the early dawn in the midst of the din of the crowd that had collected for a festival the night before: "Ferryman, take me ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... with us (ah! what gentlemen, what noblemen of nature they seemed), and they hurried off with me; leaving Kate and Anne on a crag of ice; and clambered after me over the rocks at the foot of the small Fall, while the ferryman was getting the boat ready. I was not disappointed—but I could make out nothing. In an instant I was blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. I saw the water tearing madly down from some immense height, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... have found cursory mention of that. But I doubt if the group of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north to capture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. The old Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry the homecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony Green and his fellow officers, sent to apprehend the colonial major, found him inexplicably murdered; and by dawn they were back at the Bowling ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... later, Old Michael, the ferryman, drove by, breaking a track along the blotted road. His ancient corduroys, known to every river-man from Bismarck to Baton Rouge, were hidden beneath layers of overcoats. Through the wool cap pulled ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... convince himself he was wrong; he bothered himself, so he didn't at last know right from wrong. If other folks had talked freely, they would have met him on the road, and told him, 'You have lost your way, old boy; there is a river a-head of you, and a very civil ferryman there; he will take you over free gratis for nothing; but the deuce a bit will he bring you back, there is an embargo that side of the water.' Now let me alone; I don't talk nonsense for nothing, and when you tack this way and that way, and beat the 'Black ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... If you were ferryman at Charon's ford, And I came down the bank and called to you, Waved you my hand and asked to come aboard, And threw you kisses ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... The ferryman took his oars, and the unwieldy barge, as it advanced, disturbed the sleeping stars upon the water and set them into a mad dance, which gradually calmed down after they had passed. They touched the other shore and disembarked ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... together with a kettle and provisions, are still placed in the graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... years of age, it happened that, in a cavern in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could lie down) a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The companion of my transit was M.A.C., with whom I had been long in love, and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well. We were a party, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the time when the celebrated Convent of St. Thomas over Andernach existed in its pristine magnificence, that late on an autumnal night the ferryman from that city to the Devil's House on the other side of the river, who lived on the edge of the bank below the ruins of the ancient palace of the kings of Austrasia, was accosted by a stranger, who desired to be put across just as the man was about ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Pedee river, at Cashway Ferry, I observed that the ferryman had no hair on either side of his head, I asked him the cause. He informed me that it was caused by his master's cane. I said, you have a very bad master. 'Yes, a very bad master.' I understood that he was once a number of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Baron cries; "Whatever boon he craves, I swear, by Christ, that man shall win, My ferryman who saves!"— ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... with harvests, and brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely on the rock-strewn hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across; again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach still plies over the hills ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... The ferryman screwed his head around on his neck as though he had not heard correctly. "Did you say ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the ferryman at Henderson's Ferry at this time. Now you know, Henderson's Ferry is on the Enoree just above where it empties into the Broad. Henderson's Island is in the middle of Broad River in full sight of where old Enoree goes into the channel of ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... normal trade a fisherman; but as his house, built of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was a big, black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... his father had not yet returned, and his mother asked him a hundred questions about the steamboat disaster, as she set the table for supper. When the meal was ready, Mrs. Wilford went to the door and blew a tin horn, which was intended to summon the ferryman to his tea. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... and made several unavailing attempts to cross the Bidassoa. The ferryman, acting under instructions from the gendarmes, refused to take passengers. By the evening train a delegate from the Paris Society for the Succour of the Wounded arrived from Bayonne with a box of medicine and surgical appliances. He, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... been any Mormon preachers in that country. They said there had not been any there. The young women were modest and genteel in behavior. I passed on to the Cumberland River, was set over the river by the ferryman, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... to the conclusion as they walked that it would be too late to attempt to get on that night beyond Burnham. The storm was as wild as ever, and although the passage was a narrow one it was as much as the ferryman could do to row ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... by the Sibyl, after a great sacrifice, AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sibyl, however, made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sibyl threw him a cake of honey and of some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... say that having naught To pay the ferryman, the churl refused To ferry him across the swollen stream, When he was raised and wafted through the air. What matter whether that all-powerful Love Which moves the worlds, and bears with all our sins, Sent him a chariot and steeds of fire, Or moved the heart of some poor fisherman ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... called this plant the "Chaplet of the Infernal Gods," because of its [142] narcotic effects. Nevertheless, the roots of the asphodel were thought by the ancient Greeks to be edible, and they were therefore laid in tombs as food for the dead. Lucian tells us that Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of the departed over the river Styx, said: "I know why Mercury keeps us waiting here so long. Down in these regions there is nothing to be had but, asphodel, and oblations, in the midst of mist and darkness; ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... bridge is our pride. I must laugh always When I think back of the olden days, And all the trouble and misery That with the wretched boat would be; And many cheerful Christmas nights I spent at the ferryman's house—the lights From our windows I'd watch and count them o'er, And could not reach ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things—the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... very game, and when they rise to the surface make a terrific splashing. At one place on the Hastings River, called Blackman's Point, a party of four of us took thirteen fish, the heaviest of which was 62 lb. and the lightest 9 lb. Next morning, however, the Blackman's Point ferryman, who always set a line from his punt when he turned in, showed us one of over 90 lb. When they grow to such a size as this they are not eaten locally, as the flesh is very often full of thin, thread-like worms. The young fish, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... foreboded the overflowing. These circumstances, added to the preceding ones, increased the probability of the fiction; and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these inventions, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... night the travelers reached the ferry at Cartersville. Darkness and silence prevailed there. Loud and continued shouts brought no ferryman, and eager searchings revealed no boat. The depth of the water being a thing unknown and not easily found out, it was obviously prudent ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... high noon on the Merrimac The ancient ferryman Forgot, at times, his idle oars, So fair a freight ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... poetry by contact with them. The hut was crowded by a party of provincials,—a simple and merry set, who had spent the afternoon fishing near the Falls, and were bartering black and white bass and eels for the ferryman's whiskey. A greyhound and three spaniels, brutes of much more grace and decorous demeanor than their masters, sat at the door. A few yards off, yet wholly unnoticed by the dogs, was a beautiful fox, whose countenance betokened ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to secure his independence. Among the passengers frequently crossing the ferry was Mr. Canvass White, U. S. Engineer, at that time superintending the construction of public works in various parts of the country. Mr. White took a strong fancy to the juvenile ferryman, and was so much impressed by the interest the boy manifested in construction, that he applied to Stillman's father for permission to take the lad and educate him in his own profession. The permission ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... grandmother, indignantly, though she had herself misgivings on the subject; "sure there was Phil Doolan, the ferryman, that seen black Ann Scanlan in his own boat, and what harm ever kem ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Desiring to start life again where his former insanity would be unknown, he made his way to Deadborough, the village of his birth. Arrived there, after a forty miles' walk, he refreshed himself with a glass of beer and a penn'orth of bread and cheese, and proceeded at once to Farmer Ferryman in quest of work. The farmer, who was, as usual, in want of labour, sent him to Snarley Bob to "put the measure on him." Snarley's report was favourable. "He seemed a bit queer, no doubt, and kept laughin' ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... picture it is with the cold blue river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses that grow along its banks. There are signs of a trodden slope and a ferry, and there's a rough old wooden shelter where passengers can wait; a bell hung on the top with which they call the ferryman. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... begged him to ask the Dragon, how it was he couldn't get clean water in his well?—how another had bidden him ask, what had become of his daughter, who had been lost many years since?—and how a queen had begged him to ask the Dragon what had become of her gold keys?—and, last of all, how the ferryman had begged him to ask the Dragon, how long he was to stop there and carry folk over?? When he had done his story, and took hold of the sword, he could lift it; and when he had taken another drink, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... logs of wood and large boulder stones. Up this causeway you walked until you came to the overhanging shore which on the left hand was cut away to admit the causeway continuing up into the land. There was a small thicket of trees on the rock-top and a patch of garden which belonged to the ferryman. The only house visible was a farm-house which stood on the spot where the (Gough's) Woodside Hotel may now be found. It had a garden enclosed by a hedge round it. The road to Bidston was a rough, rutted way, and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... they crossed the Ocmulgee, this time in safety, and passed into Houston County. The Federals believed Toombs already abroad and had ceased to look for him in Georgia. After the passage was made General Toombs said: "Charlie, that ferryman eyed me very closely. Go back ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... came to the telegraph line, about four miles from Big Stone Lake. Thence I followed that line until I came to the trail at the elbow of the North Saskatchewan leading to Battle River. Where the telegraph crosses the South Saskatchewan I found an excellent ferry scow, and a ferryman placed there by the Public Works Department. I arrived at the ferry about noon on the 20th, and though a high wind rendered it difficult to manage the scow, the horses, with the vehicles and their contents, ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... do," said she. "The only other time that I was ever really saved was by a ferryman, and father gave him some money, which was all right for him, but wouldn't do for you two, you know; and another time there wasn't really any danger, and I'm sorry the man got anything; ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... any bridge over the Thames, people crossed in a ferry which was run by a certain John Overs. This man naturally became rich, as very many people were always paying him for taking them across the river, but he was a great miser. The ferryman had one fair daughter about whom he was as miserly as he was with his money,—keeping her shut up out of reach of her lover. One day, John Overs thought he would like to save the cost of providing food for his household, so he pretended ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... ample leisure for studying the river after leaving Saint-Martin, for I stood upon the bank waiting for a ferryman until I lost all the patience I had brought with me. He was taking a couple of oxen harnessed to a cart across the stream, and the strong wind that was blowing sent the great flat boat far out ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker |
