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Pew   /pju/   Listen
Pew

noun
1.
Long bench with backs; used in church by the congregation.  Synonym: church bench.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books



... to move My wisdom to docility again; When to my prouder heart they set the pride Of custom and the gossip of the street, And show me figures of myself beside A self diminished at their judgment seat; Then do I sit as in a drowsy pew To hear a priest expounding th' heavenly will, Defiling wonder that he never knew With stolen words of measured good and ill; For to the love that knows their counselling, Out of my ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... pine-apples—the common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a series of remarkable literary fragments, jotted down on stray bits of paper, in old account books and diaries, and even, on one or two occasions, when seized by a sudden inspiration, on a smooth stone, taken from the brook, a fair sheet of birch bark, and the front of a pew in a white-painted country church. Having been subject to these inspirational attacks for many years, I had decided to take them in hand, and, if they must come, derive some benefit from them. An idea suggested itself. Claude Lorraine, it is said, never put the figures in his landscapes, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... Pew and pulpit have fallen over each other for the privilege of hitting Darwin; a Bishop warns his congregation that Emerson is "dangerous"; Spurgeon calls Shelley a sensualist; Doctor Buckley speaks of Susan B. Anthony as the leader of "the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... try. I also was quickened by my college friend, who had seen Charlotte at our house and not knowing it was the girl I had spoken to him about, said to me, "What a nice girl that maid of yours is, I mean to get over her, I shall wait for her after church next Sunday, she sits in your pew I know." I asked him some questions,—his opinion was that most girls would let a young fellow fuck them, if pressed and that she would (this youth was but about eighteen years old), and I left him fearing what he said was true, hating and jealous of him to excess. He set me thinking, why ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... rights of man? Place a black sweeper of crossings in juxtaposition, and the question will very soon solve itself. Why, the free and enlightened citizens will not even permit their black or coloured brethren to worship their common Creator in the same pew with themselves—it is horror, it is degradation! And yet there is a universal outcry about sacred liberty and equality all over the Union. The angels weep to witness the tricks of men placed in a little brief authority. Can such a state of things last as that, where the Irish ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... the big old white church, and every pew was filled. Afterwards they all went down to the piers, where Asa Worthen had spread long tables and loaded them so that they groaned. Alongside lay the Nathan Ross, her decks littered with the last confusion of preparation. Joel showed Priscilla the lumber for the cabin alterations, ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams

... Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as if the exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the second ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... his pew, the first one on the right, close to the choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and Raphaele, Rosa the Jade, and the two pumps occupied the second seat, in company with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... charming idea!—and I the master of Ravenswood! My neighbour for half a year—and often in the Wilderness! Then of course she will come often here again. I will find out who she is. I will sit no longer in the deep recess of an old pew at church, which is hidden from all the rest of the congregation. I will even go down and call on the clergyman. He must surely have observed the most beautiful girl in the world. He can't have been such a mole as I have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... Marse John's djeulin' pistols one Sunday mawnin' right under de Bible layin' on de cushion we cyarried to chu'ch fer ole Miss to kneel on? An' didn' we-all walk plumb up de aisle, an' fix her nice an' easy in her pew, an' den slip out an' go down on de crick whar de gemmens wuz waitin', an' shoot dat young Mister Green in de lung? 'Deed we did," he chuckled again, scratching his head as though the reminiscence were ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... tablet to his memory is erected in the Temple church. On the ensuing Sunday, the Benchers of the Inner Temple caused the staff, or pole, surmounted with the arms of the Inn, carved in silver, and which is always borne before the Benchers into church, and placed at the corner of their pew, to be covered with crape, and the vergers to wear scarves; a tribute of respect which had never before then, I believe, been paid to any but deceased Benchers. They expressed anxiety to pay every honour to the memory of so distinguished a member ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... Oh, this might do! [Pulls curtain, then starts back.] No you don't! One shower bath a day is enough for me. [Cautiously opens them.] No, I guess this is all right, I shall be just as snug in here as in a pew at meeting, or a private box at the Theatre. Hello! somebody's coming. [Goes ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor

... trees that stood by the front door. He had some repairing, paper hanging and painting done, ordered a big stock of groceries from the local dealer, and showed by his every action that his stay in East Harniss was to be a lengthy one. He hired a pew in the Methodist church, and joined the "club." Augustus did the marketing for "Silver-leaf Hall," and had evidently been promoted to ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... at him with questioning in its deep eyes, as if its owner had brought to him a solemn problem to be solved this very hour, or forever left at rest; the other, turned toward him from the Barholm pew, alight with appeal and trust. He stood in sore need of the aid for which he asked in ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned them to the font—a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a churchyard game at cup and ball ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame," sighed Mollie. "If father would ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... her Presbyterian husband into the Established Church and we find Washington crediting him with L33 for pew No. 20 in Alexandria (Christ) Church in January 1773. But the Presbyterian citadel of learning was the choice over William and Mary College when time came for the eldest son, William Jr., to prepare for a professional career. ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie, an apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... diamonds and jacinths which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge. To complete ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... about 'meeting the whole neighborhood,' and that sort of thing; but I intend to establish a family; and I set my face against all promiscuous assemblages of different classes of society. It is bad enough on Sundays, when each man can sit buttoned up in his own pew; but a festival for all sorts and conditions of children,—its is contrary to the genius of our republican institutions." His wife thought quite differently; but the poor thing did not dare say her soul ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker

... the present day. All the actors in the original guilt—if guilt it were—must have been long ago in their graves; some in the churchyard of the village, with those moss-grown letters embossing their names; some in the church itself, with mural tablets recording their names over the family-pew, and one, it might be, far over the sea, where his grave was first made under the forest leaves, though now a city had grown up around it. Yet here was he, the remote descendant of that family, setting his foot at last ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... devoted country clergyman doing his simple duty—trying to lift his congregation to better views of life, partaking their joys and alleviating their sorrows, often a martyr to meddlesome deacons or to pompous trustees, and his wife a prey to the whimsical wives of opinionated pew-owners—such a man I deeply revere; but the longer I live the more I am convinced that the professional revivalist and the sensation preacher are necessarily and normally foes both to religion ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... their pew, and the Twins watched the other worshipers as they came slowly up the aisle and took their places before time for the service to begin. Sandy winked at them most indecorously across the church, but his mother poked him to remind him of his duty, and he sent no more silent messages to the ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... had no library, which accounted for his originality. He was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church; and to see his tall and graceful form as he moved about from pew to pew collecting pence for Home Missions, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an 'old Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... said. "That man in the pew in front of us spoils the service for me. His voice is harsh and he has no idea of a tune. Can't you ask ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... able to listen to his sermon with outward calm. But it was a happiness to Mrs. Churton when Wood End House sent so large a contingent of worshippers to the village church, where the pew in which she had sat alone on so many Sundays—poor Mr. Churton's increasing ailments having prevented him from accompanying her—was so well filled. Glancing about her, as was her custom, to note which of her poor were ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... woven brass, That hides the "Strangers' Pew," I hear the gray-haired vicar pass From Section One ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive something of personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which I cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about, and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an old Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin lamp turned low, whose ray served me for veilleuse through the night. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... that I can. If you will go to my pew at chapel to-morrow morning, I am sure you will like ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... the bridegroom's place. Far back, half sheltered by a pillar, I saw the white head and handsome face of my father, with Kate Daltrey by his side; but though the church was so full, nobody had entered the same pew. His name had not been once mentioned in my hearing. As far as his old circle in Guernsey was concerned, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... —— aristocrat. You might know it from me language—let alone me looks. With a stake in the country, a pew in the church, and a seat in the House of Mammon. Goodbye! God bless our gracious King! And to hell with the rights of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... scholarship of the whole Northwest to the big Eastern university. It had been hard to pack him up and have him go away so far, where she couldn't hope to see him soon, where she couldn't listen for his whistle coming home at night, where he couldn't even come back for Sunday and sit in the old pew in church with them. But those things had to come. It was the only way he could grow and fulfil his part of God's plan. And so she put away her tears till he was gone, and kept them for the old felt hat when Father was out about ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... which did not cease until it resulted in a great flood, the most memorable and destructive in this region for a hundred years. The church was rather cold and damp, and General Lee, during the meeting, sat in a pew with his military cape cast loosely about him. In a conversation that occupied the brief space preceding the call to order, he took part, and told with marked cheerfulness of manner and kindliness of tone some pleasant ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... The Royal Dukes, Sussex, Kent, York, and Gloucester, were each drawn by six horses and escorted by a separate party of the Guards. It took eight horses to drag the Prince himself to divine service, and he, too, was encompassed by soldiers. Arrived at the cathedral, he was marshalled to a kind of pew surmounted by a lofty crimson-and-gold canopy. There he sat alone, worshipped his Creator, and listened to a sermon by the Bishop of Chester. Neither Jean nor Pauline troubled themselves to go out, and indeed it would not have been of much use if they had tried; ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... and mentally contrasting it with many Sunday services when he had occupied a pew with the Nasons at their fashionable church in Boston, "it has been an experience I shall not soon forget. In one way it has been a pleasure, for it has taken me back to my young days." Then he added a little sadly, "It has also been a pain, for it recalled my mother and how she used to ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... McRae and showed him to his seat this morning with a happy bustle, for his pride and joy in the Lad's return was only second to his own father's. Roderick sat beside his father in their old pew near the rear of the church, gazing about him happily at the familiar scene. The people were filling up the aisles, with a soft hushed rustle. There was Fred Hamilton and his father, and Dr. Archie Blair and his family. Dr. Blair was ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us, he offered some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on which we had been cooking chocolates on the steam ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... prose, as perhaps these verses intimate less decidedly, the transient idea of Miss Cecilia Stubbs passed from Captain Waverley's heart amid the turmoil which his new destinies excited. She appeared, indeed, in full splendour in her father's pew upon the Sunday when he attended service for the last time at the old parish church, upon which occasion, at the request of his uncle and Aunt Rachel, he was induced (nothing both, if the truth must be told) to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... her aunt was obliged to remain at home. The walk to church through the crowded streets was a pleasant change, and Grace was in high spirits when she ensconced herself at the top of Margery's seat—which was a much better observatory than her aunt's pew—where every thing could be seen that was interesting and amusing within the four walls. Besides, there were small amenities connected with a seat in nurse's pew which had great attractions for Grace when she was a little girl, ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... saint, and Madame Faubourg St. Germain shaken up together! Fancy her listening with well-bred astonishment to a critique on the doings of the unregenerate, or flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder's square pew of a Sunday! Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting, which of course she will contrive some fine French subtilty for admiring, and find revissant. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... best pews in the house, well forward in the middle aisle, and they had it all to themselves. There was not another pew in church that morning which seemed to attract so large a share of the attention of the congregation. Mrs. Myers and Almira were several pews behind, and on the other side of the house; and there had been no opportunity to capture ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... who felt the words more deeply than all the others. This was Nellie, who sat straight upright in her pew, and watched her father's every movement. She did not shed a tear, but her hands were firmly clasped in her lap and her face was as pale as death. As soon as the service was over she hurried into the vestry, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-So's pew." Farther on, at the spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... It was too much of a novelty, and the vibrations touched his supersensitive nerves annoyingly. After a while he grew more accustomed to it, but he did not like it, and he said so loudly enough to bring him a stern glance from his father and smiles from some of the people in the pew ahead. During the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... same. There was a good deal of free inquiry at Homerton Academy, which, however, Mr. Fox assured me, gradually subsided into the right amount of orthodoxy as the time came for the student to exchange his sure and safe retreat for the fiery ordeal of the deacon and the pew. My father and Johnson Fox had been fellow-students, and for some time corresponded together. The correspondence in due time, however, naturally ceased, as it was chiefly controversial, and nothing can be ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... was quite a feature of the Communion Service to see the state and ceremony with which the Holy Eucharist was carried down the aisle to the Bray's family pew, where the old lady sat, huddled and alone in one of the corners, like a dead body covered clumsily with a black pall. One of the parishioners, who had not that good fortune of being personally acquainted with Lady Bray declared that she really almost objected ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... ear for music—moved the old castaway strangely. His thoughts wandered back to the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... rich voice, inexpressibly touching and sweet in all its modulations, ever won her rapt, undivided attention. She attended the church where he officiated; and though the Erminstouns had a sumptuously-decorated pew there, it was not to that the young widow resorted; she sat amid the poor in the aisle, beneath a magnificent monument of the Treherne family, where the glorious sunset rays, streaming through the illuminated window, fell full upon her clustering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... she had to wait a long time, but when once she had taken her seat in a pew, there was plenty to look at. The prince stood at one end of the church, and Mary noticed how often he looked at his watch. At the other end by the door were six little girls dressed all alike in primrose colour, and Mary could not help ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb

... bugle, (being the signal for the gate having been blown in,) the artillery, under the able directions of Brigadier Stevenson, consisting of Captain Grant's troop of Bengal Horse Artillery, the camel battery, under Captain Abbott, both superintended by Major Pew, Captains Martin and Cotgrave's troops of Bombay Horse Artillery, and Captain Lloyd's battery of Bombay Foot Artillery, all opened a terrific fire upon the citadel and ramparts of the fort, and, in a certain degree, paralysed ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... Dr. Livesey drawing at their pipes in the oak-pannelled dining room, and Black Dog outside the door, and Pew coming tapping along the road with his stick!" cried Hugh John, turning off a sketchy synopsis of his ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... in the West, Mr O'Joscelyn," said the other parson. "There are usually two or three in the Kelly's Court pew. The vicarage pew musters pretty well, for Mrs Armstrong and five of the children are always there. Then there are usually two policemen, and the clerk; though, by the bye, he doesn't belong to the parish. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... bear, and he really did want to behave well. So he folded his arms and sat like a statue, with nothing moving but his eyes. They rolled to and fro, up and down, from the high red pulpit to the worn hymn-books in the rack, recognizing two little faces under blue-ribboned hats in a distant pew, and finding it impossible to restrain a momentary twinkle in return for the solemn wink Billy Barton bestowed upon him across the aisle. Ten minutes of this decorous demeanor made it absolutely necessary for him to stir; so he ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... saw Donald and Elsie in the courts of Zion, and great peace was upon their brows. When I ascended the pulpit stairs, they were already in their ancestral pew, now the property of Hector Campbell, who had abandoned it with joy, only asking that he be given one in the gallery from which he ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... of the family had been taught to be punctilious in contributing to the collection at church. One Sunday morning, when the boxes were being passed, James, aged six, ran his eye over those in the pew, and noticed that a guest of his sister had no coin in her hand. "Where is your money?" he whispered. She answered that she hadn't any. But James was equal to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... the last pew. When Nina came in on Johan's arm there was a murmur of admiration. She looked exquisitely in her bridal gown, and as she turned round before descending the altar steps and threw back her veil she was a vision of beauty, and I am sure she will be a "joy for ever." All Rome ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... lost myself in the Red Sea, and the chosen people entered the Promised Land without me. At such times, when my thoughts went wandering, my eyes followed them, and most frequently they went right over to Mr. Jacob Allen's pew. I could not well help it, indeed, for his was a wall pew, directly opposite ours. Mr. Allen seldom came to meeting, being old and rheumatic, but his wife and girls came, and his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... was Sunday. After breakfast Frank went with the family to church, as was usual; and there, as usual, he saw Mary in Dr Thorne's pew. She, as she looked at him, could not but wonder why he had not answered the letter which was still at Silverbridge; and he endeavoured to read in her face whether it was true, as his mother had told him, that she was quite ready to give him up. The prayers ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... you didn't see no light.' 'Captain Tin,' I says to him, 'I have got the greatest respect for you as a man, and I would favor you in all ways possible if 'twas so 'st I could; but if I was to testify the way you want me to I would go against conscience. I wouldn't feel that I could go on paying my pew tax. These people here want to know the truth and I am going to give it to them.' Yes, sir, I saw the light as plain as plain, and I pointed it out to Fred, but the devil and Tom Walker couldn't have prevented them ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... earnestly, "let us go! We belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space in any church to kneel upon; but let us go to some place of worship, even if we stand in the broad aisle. Poor and forsaken as we are, some pew-door will be ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things. But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. He is just the man to tell us all about the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial an' magnificent Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the Quane happens to be takin' a ride. 'Women an' priests!' sez I. 'Your father's son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin's. Six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins—not ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... today, are endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God and pay your pew-rent. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... endowed with splendid natural gifts, which he had improved by assiduous cultivation. In the pulpit he rose to an almost divine eloquence and passion, and a light would shine over his face as if reflected from the Holy Spirit itself. My father took a pew in his church, and sent me to sit in it every Sunday; he never went himself. He was resolved, I suppose, if there was any religion in me, to afford it an opportunity to come out. Now, I had a religious reverence for divine things, but no understanding ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... his coat, like a bursting magnolia bud, Colonel Starbottle began. The present associations were, he might say, singularly hallowed to him; not only was Pineville—a Southern centre—the recognized nursery of Southern chivalry, Southern beauty (a stately inclination to the pew in which Miss Sally and Julia Jeffcourt sat), Southern intelligence, and Southern independence, but it was the home of the lamented dead who had been, like himself and another he should refer to later, an adopted citizen of the Golden State, a seeker of the Golden Fleece, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... and general was the silence, though all of one accord turned round towards the place whence the voice issued: a female form at the same moment was seen rushing from a pew, who glided out of the church ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... him in a flash: the village church, and the swinging oil-lamps above the pews; he and Jane together in Miss Abingdon's pew, and Mrs. Wrottesley playing the old hymn-tunes on the little organ. He could not remember ever attending very particularly to the evening service. He used to follow it in a very small Prayer Book, and it was quite sufficient for ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... assent to everything the curate, or, if you are rich enough, the rector, or even the dean, may say, shewing your knock-knees in the naked deformity of white kerseymeres, to an admiring bevy of the servants of both families, laughing and tittering from the squire's pew in the gallery. Then the parting!—The mother's injunctions to the juvenile bride to guard herself from the cold, and to write within the week. The maiden aunts' inquiries, of, "My dear, have you forgot nothing?"—the shaking of hands, the wiping and winking of eyes! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various

... passage in which he, with all his delightful gusto, dilates upon the oddity of the scene where a withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what are you about taking ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his return home, "I've secured a good pupil for your son-in-law." Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Riley felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. Riley knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... been into the church before, and was struck with the fine windows, and the monuments of the Guiscards, and the famous tomb of the Crusader in the wall of the chancel pew where they sat; and all through the service she gazed at his carven face, so exactly like Tristram's, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... American Consul. We were not totally unacquainted, having met occasionally in bygone days, when both of us were in the United States Navy. The surprise was mutual, and the awkward silence was interrupted by my saying "Apparently I am in the wrong pew." "Evidently," he replied, and ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... aisle of the church, without well knowing how we got there. The grand old fane was transmogrified into something between a forest and a flower-garden, and I then began, for the first time, to surmise where all our shrubs and flowers had betaken themselves; every pew was closely packed with quiet, well-dressed people; and the organ was pealing forth some grand old masterpiece which filled the church ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... adjusted. How the carriages rattle up, and deposit their richly- dressed burdens beneath the lofty portico! The powdered footmen glide along the aisle, place the richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each other through their glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the few shabby people in the free seats. The organ peals forth, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... picture of Gen. Grant with festoons of evergreens, conjuring him the while not to disappoint our hopes, but to take Richmond. Alas! you may know, by this time, that he can't; but in lack of news since a week ago, I can but hope for the best. I've taken a pew and we contrive to squeeze into it in this wise: first a child, then a mother, then a child, then an Annie, then a child, the little ones being stowed in the cracks left between us big ones. Mr. R., the parson, looking fit to go straight into his grave, was up here to get a wagon as he ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... sat to the rear of the church in the company of the early arrivals. In fact the entire Allison family occupied the same pew, pressed, indeed, for room on account of the multitude which crowded its way into the church and into the small aisles. Round about them on every side sat the congregation, some of whom were already familiar to them, the majority of whom, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... night and longer journeys by day; but I do not remember that while doing so I ever made acquaintance with an American. To an American lady in a railway car I should no more think of speaking than I should to an unknown female in the next pew to me at a London church. It is hard to understand from whence come the laws which govern societies in this respect; but there are different laws in different societies, which soon obtain recognition for themselves. American ladies are much given to talking, and are generally ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... an old heart young to see him march up the aisle of the church on Sunday in all the glossy splendour of his wedding suit, his curly black head held high and his round boyish face shining with happiness, stopping and turning proudly at his pew to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... house is an excellent one, and the accommodations are first-class. It bears a very appropriate name. After partaking of a hardy supper, I walked out to "take a look at Europe!" At 6:45 p.m., I entered St. Peter's Church, and was conducted to a pew. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the young and the old of both sexes occupy the same seat together. One of the little boys of the family occupying the same pew with me, gave me a hymn-book. A part of the exercises consisted in chanting psalms. The eagle ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... powerless to dispute them; besides, he hoped to sell the landlord his colt and cutter, and he did not care to prejudice that matter. Some bills from storekeepers, which he thought he had paid, were handed to him by the landlord, and each of the churches had sent in a little account for pew-rent for the past eighteen months: he had always believed himself dead-headed at church. He outlawed the latter by tearing them to pieces in the landlord's presence, and dropping the fragments into a spittoon. It seemed to ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... a front pew, sat Miss Emily, she of a bass voice and the "notion" store. Her Paisley shawl was folded tightly around her broad, bony shoulders, and made the lower half of a diamond down her back, the pattern exactly in the middle. If the pattern had not been exactly in the middle ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... full; there seemed not to be another space for a human being. People who were not much given to frequenting the house of God on a week-day evening, had certainly been drawn thither at this time. Sadie Ried sat beside Ester in their mother's pew, and Harry Arnett, with a sober look on his boyish face, sat bolt upright in the end of the pew, while even Dr. Douglass leaned forward with graceful nonchalance from the seat behind them, and now and then addressed a ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... scruples in the foregoing page in the pew, and commended (so far as it was lawful) Tetty, dear Tetty, in a prayer by herself, then my other friends. What collects I do not exactly remember. I gave a shilling. I then went towards the altar that I might hear the service. The communicants were more than I ever saw. I kept back; used again ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... meeting-house was scantily furnished. A high, octangular wooden pulpit with a precentor's pew in front of it stood at the far end. The place was bare of hanging or cupboard which could have been used as a hiding-place. The men tramped about, upsetting the benches and cursing ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... although Theodore had been for years a member of the same Sabbath-school with this young lady, and had seen her sitting in the Hastings' pew in church on every Sabbath day, still this was the first time that he had met her face to face, near enough to speak to her, since that evening so long ago when they conversed together on a momentous subject. Theodore's knowledge of the world and social distinctions ...
— Three People • Pansy

... walked quietly into St George's Church yesterday and asked for the Duke of Devonshire's pew. They have all been at Oxford where the Prince was with them and was ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... came to pass that the village bored the new-comer; bored her to death. She became restless and quarrelsome, had a coolness with the vicarage regarding a pew, with Mrs. Tremenheere at the Park about a housemaid, and actually cut Mrs. General Finch "dead" in the village post office, owing to a mislaid visiting-card. At the end of three years Lucilla Shafto had embroiled herself with almost everyone in her immediate vicinity, and found her true ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... his family were in their pew and the minister was speaking. Prescott paused a few moments at the entrance to the aisle. No one paid any attention to him; soldiers were too common a sight to be noticed. He felt in the inside pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the sealed envelope. Then he slipped softly ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... forgave her the clerkship, forgave her even her undoubted success in making money, on account of Mrs. Greymer. It had watched Therese grow from a slim girl, with black braids hanging down her white neck as she sat in the "minister's pew" of the old brick church, into a beautiful pale woman in a widow's bonnet. Therese went now every Sunday to the same church where her father used to preach. The countess accompanied her most decorously. She was a pagan at heart, but it pleased Therese. In church she spent her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... filling it. Visitors and the Hospital officials sit in transverse pews of an old-fashioned shape, which run down the sides of the walls. The organ, presented by Major Ingram in 1691-92, is in a gallery at the west end, and immediately beneath the gallery on the right-hand side is the Governor's pew. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... wearisome. Her Sunday-school class had never been so tiresome nor so soaked in hair-oil. In church she was shocked to find herself watching, from her pew in the chancel, the entry of late comers—of whom He was not one. No afternoon had ever been half so long. She wrote up her diary. Thursday and Friday were quickly chronicled. At "Saturday" she paused long, pen in hand, and then wrote very ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... suddenly stood before me as a huge fox in gown and bands. His voice sounded like a sort of a bark, and his long snout opened and shut again in such a funny fashion that I came near laughing aloud. But, fortunately, I checked myself and looked for a moment at a couple of old maids in the pew opposite. And, whether you will believe me or not, they looked exactly like two dressed-up magpies, while the stout old gentleman next to them had the appearance of a sedate and pious turkey-cock. As he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—I mean his bill—the laughter again came ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... to churches, toll you in With chiming verse, till the dull plays begin; With this sad difference though, of pit and pew, You damn the poet, but the priest damns you: But priests can treat you at your own expence, And gravely call you fools without offence. Poets, poor devils, have ne'er your folly shown, But, to their cost, you proved ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... idols to be worshipped. By a ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall's stuttering through the prayer for the King's Majesty—and this long before the late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields beside us, but in company with those who walked them ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... sat side by side in the Milo pew at St. Giles; and after Sue's sixteenth birthday, though Wallace might have to be left at home with his father, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to accept invitations, even to the home of a girl friend, unless she herself was included. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... Chapel, at the corner of Tremont and School streets, is a most interesting landmark, which was completed in 1753. Entering, you find a decidedly old-fashioned atmosphere in the high-backed, square pews and handsome decorations. George Washington's pew will ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... apparel by their own hands. At the time of the decease of this thrifty pair, their cottage contained a large store of webs of woollen and linen cloth, woven from thread of their own spinning. And it is remarkable that the pew in the chapel in which the family used to sit, remained a few years ago neatly lined with woollen cloth, spun by the pastor's own hands. It is the only pew in the chapel so distinguished; and I know of no other instance of his conformity to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... however reverently, the same prayers and ceremonies Sunday after Sunday! Could the great mountain up which my soul had sweated, and which each soul must climb—could it be climbed by kneeling in a pew in church? No; a total change of character was needed, and Christ Himself was necessary for this change—Jesus Christ gliding into the heart and mind and soul, and biding there because of that heart's, that ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley

... in answer to the formal invitation which they had received, Tinkleby and his friends filed into the room, looking very good and demure, and occupied the desk against the end wall, which they entered as though it had been a pew in church. The usual preliminaries were gone through, and the chairman called on "our worthy friend the secretary" to open the debate by moving, "That this house is of opinion that the moral and physical condition of mankind is in a state ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... chimes! Were such musical bells duplicated in adjacent cities? or was I, indeed, near our old, beloved church, in which memory so distinctly revealed our ancient, velvet-lined pew, my father's bowed head, and the venerable pastor rising white-robed and saintly in his pulpit to bid all the earth keep silent before the Lord! Conjecture was ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... on coming to Philadelphia, had at first attended the Episcopal church, but finding that most of their New England friends held to the Rev. W. H. (now Dr.) Furness, an Unitarian, they took a pew in his chapel. After fifteen years they returned to the Episcopal faith, but allowed me to keep the pew to myself for one or two years, till I went to college. In Dr. Furness's chapel I often heard Channing and all the famous ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... family were High Church Episcopalians, and the second Mrs Lawrence slipped gracefully into the pew vacated by the first, and became a much more important feature in the congregation, owing to her good health and extreme desire for popularity. Mabel and Alice were devout believers in the orthodox dogmas ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... But the Pew-Holders were not tickled. They could Understand everything he said, and they began to think he ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... 'em," murmured Laxdale as the door was unceremoniously pushed open and another of the "One Pip" officers made his appearance. "Look alive, Danvers, and don't stand there looking in the air. Walk in and take a pew, ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... The squire's pew was one of the old-fashioned high ones, and Milly's head did not reach the top of it. Very quiet and silent she was during the service, and very particular to follow her uncle's example in every respect, though she nearly upset his gravity at ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre

... improving; but there is some manna in the wilderness, my lord. Hem! On Friday night the widows' mites dropped in. "Forty scavengers, three and fourpence. An aged pew-opener of St Martin's parish, sixpence. A bell-ringer of the established church, sixpence. A Protestant infant, newly born, one halfpenny. The United Link Boys, three shillings—one bad. The anti-popish prisoners in Newgate, five and fourpence. A friend in Bedlam, half-a-crown. Dennis the hangman, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... twinkling and shifting in the wind and the sunlight. Below grew a thin screen of underbrush, through which we had no difficulty at all in pushing, but which threw about us face-high a tender green partition. The effect was that of a pew in an old-fashioned church, so that, though we shared the upper stillnesses, a certain delightful privacy of our own seemed assured us. This privacy we knew to be assured also to many creatures besides ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... this sin and misery to sink in the sea. . . . I wish father would come on to Boston, and preach on the Fugitive Slave Law, as he once preached on the slave-trade, when I was a little girl in Litchfield. I sobbed aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another. I wish some Martin Luther would arise to set ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... consternation was in the pew where the Stubbles sat. They were all there except Ben, and the sisters were dressed in their finest. For once they forgot about their clothes, and stared with undisguised wonder upon the white-robed man before them. Simon Stubbles stood like a statue. It had taken him only ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest. Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... herself seated between Mother Mayberry and the Doctor on the end of the pew, and out of the corner of her eye she essayed a view of his magnificence, but caught him in the act of making the same pass in her direction. They both blushed, and her smile was wickedly tantalizing, though she kept her eyes fixed on the Deacon's face as he began to read the words of ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... to be after the picturesqueness of the camp in general, and Chaldea in particular, for Mother Cockleshell looked like a threadbare pew-opener, or an almshouse widow who had seen better days. Apparently she was very old, for her figure had shrivelled up into a diminutive monkey form, and she looked as though a moderately high wind could blow her about like a feather. Her face was ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... are not "in a language understanded of the people." Sir Richard Philliter, Q.C., might be known in private life to his friends as Sir HORACE DAVUS (Non Oedipus). Mr. CATHCART's Pedgrift, parish clerk and sexton, is an excellent little character-sketch, as is also that of Mrs. Hornutt, the pew-opener. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... soon as he found himself in white, by clerical and theological zeal. These feelings impelled him to produce a creaking of the heavy vestry door, a well-known signal for his daughter to slip out of the chancel pew ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... I rather guess that nobody hereabouts doubts the Judges generosity. Does he know whether the sheriff has fairly made up his mind to have a reading desk or a deacons pew under the pulpit? I have not heard my cousin speak on that subject, lately, replied Marmaduke. I think its likely that we will have a pretty dull court on't, from what I can gather. I hear that Jotham Riddel and the man who bought his betterments ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... reference. The objectionable Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel." Or, again, where John himself says, "there was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat was Flint's. The devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well, now, I will tell you. I'm not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ears, but so divided his flock that it was now composed almost exclusively of women. The men stayed at home and nursed their wrath. And it was good for them that they did, for the women had things all their own way generally, and Warren Holbrook, ill-favored and formed, was their idol. The pew rents ran up, however, and the contributions of a Sunday increased nearly double. Indeed, the Chapmans felt that they were now on the road to fortune, and Mrs. Chapman's ambition ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... called in the accounts "church works."[275] As the sum given by each was often noted down in "quarter books" or "Easter books,"[276] and was, on denial, occasionally sued for before the official (together with dues for other purposes—clerk's wages, pew rents, etc., presently to be noticed), an "offering" might become ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware

... made manifest by words alone. Be the weather what it might, the Deacon was always in his pew, both morning and evening, in time to join in the first hymn, and on every Thursday night, at a quarter past seven in winter, and a quarter before eight in summer, the good Deacon's cane and shoes could be heard coming solemnly down the aisle, bringing to the prayer-meeting ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... long-nosed man, with a hard smile slightly curving his thin black moustache. "Drop that rifle, you other kid. Back up the side of that hollow, both of you, and scoot. You're in the wrong pew. This happens ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... around. In every place where she no more was found; The seat at table she was wont to fill; The fireside chair, still set, but vacant still; The garden walks, a labor all her own; The latticed bower, with trailing shrubs o'ergrown: The Sunday pew she filled with all her race— Each place of hers, was now a sacred place, That while it called up sorrows in the eyes, Pierced the full heart, and ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... Lord for it! Every one of our members of the "American" Society (so called heretofore) has already taken sittings in the newly enlarged chapel, and all things appear to be harmonious and encouraging. Every pew in the body of the chapel has already been taken by our brethren and intimate friends; and, notwithstanding the new chapel will hold more than both the old ones, we are not likely to have enough sittings to meet the applications that ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... further could be mentioned—if there was anything to mention—they arrived at the porch of the church, passed under it without speaking, walked up the aisle and took their places in the family pew, Maria occupying the comfortable corner ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... excuse her being a foreigner, and not having, I suppose, a shilling in her pocket—bless her handsome face!—but to be worshipping images in her room instead of going to the parish church, that will never do. But you think you could talk her out of the Pope, and into the family pew?" ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... there he knocked at the gate and was let in, and he alighted and was led unto a chamber, and soon he was unarmed. And there he had right good cheer all that night; and on the morn he heard his mass, and in the monastery he found a priest ready at the altar. And on the right side he saw a pew closed with iron, and behind the altar he saw a rich bed and a fair, as of cloth ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... calm and sunny Sunday morning. The church windows were wide open, and a butterfly came in and set the choir boys to giggling. At the end of my pew a stained-glass window to Carlo Benton—the name came like an echo from the forgotten past—sent a shower of colored light over Willie, turned my blue silk to most unspinsterly hues, and threw a sort of summer radiance over Miss Emily herself, in ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Greenwood's voice among the singers, but at the close of the second verse it rose above all others. "Lads and lasses of the chapel singing-pew," he cried, "we will better that kind of stuff. Sing up to the tune of Olivet," and to this majestic melody he started in a clarion-like ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... Sunday, augmented by a cold, and Halcyone stayed at home to rub her poor knee with hot oil, so she did not see the Wendover party, several of whom came to church. Miss La Sarthe occupied the family pew alone, and was the source of much amusement and delight to the smart inhabitants of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... oldest which remains, sir," said the clerk, and he pointed with his finger to a tablet-stone over a little dark pew on the right side of the oriel window. There was an inscription upon it, but owing to the darkness I could not make out a letter. The clerk, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... in a long low room up-stairs; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved for mates and similar good company. About the room, some amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... rather than the man without. He turned from his position at the altar (where he was fulfilling his duties as best man to Sir Nigel Merriton) and glanced back over the curve of his shoulder to where a girl sat, bending forward in the empty pew, her face alight, her eyes, beneath the curving hat-brim, swimming with tears.... She nodded as he saw her, and smiled, the promise of their future together curving the sweet lips into gracious, womanly lines. Behind her, on guard as usual, and gay in a gorgeous garment of black-and-white ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... pitched there, in preparation for the reviews; and when the gala is ended, I would have them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the school-masters in our locality I bequeath one golden augustus. Item, to the Jews of this place I bequeath my pew in the high church.—As I would wish that my will should be divided into clauses, this is considered ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... was something strangely impressive to him in this simple worship out in what to him was a vast wilderness. He felt more of the true spirit of worship than he had ever felt at home sitting in the handsomely upholstered pew beside his mother and sister while the choir-boys chanted the processional and the light filtered through costly windows of many colors over the large and cultivated congregation. There was something about the words of these people that went straight to the heart more than all the intonings of ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... days are hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own Trail, the far Trail, Dig out, dig out on the old trail— The ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford



Words linked to "Pew" :   bench



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