"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... House. This on point of being agreed to when COOKE again appeared on scene; with increased impressiveness of manner argued against BEACH's proposal. Prince ARTHUR began to look uneasy; no knowing where this sort of thing would end if it spread. What with SEXTON on one side correcting grammar of Ministerial Resolutions, and RADCLIFFE COOKE on the other amending their procedure, it really seemed time to go to the country. Something like condition of paralysis stealing over Treasury Bench ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... has the grave revealed its secrets to observant men? Dr. Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a sexton turn up a skull. He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull, and had the murderess hung. She was safe from the sexton and the rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer. Well, the day you were blown up, I observed something, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... bones were left to moulder among those of other pauper strangers in the burial-ground of Shoelane workhouse. We attach no credit to the story of the exhumation of his body, and its mysterious reinterment in Redcliff. His fathers were sextons; and he, too, was in some sort a sexton also—but spiritually and transcendantly. He buried his genius in the visionary grave of Rowley, "an old chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... striped cloth or burel, which was laid down under the king's feet as he went from the hall as far as the pulpit of the Church of Westminster; and that part of the cloth that was within the Church always fell to the sexton in whatever church the king was crowned; and all that was without the church was distributed among the poor, by the hands of William the almoner." The ancient records contain many other particulars respecting the ceremonies which graced the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of the great apartment look into the inner court. The prospect was left to the servants. Here I had two adventures. I could find nobody to show me about. I saw a paltry house that I took for the sexton's, at the corner of the close, and bade my servant ring, and ask who could show me the Castle. A voice in a passion flew, from a casement, and issued from a divine. "What! was it his business to show the Castle? - Go look for somebody ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... remains firmly shut. Surely 'tis time for the groom and his best man to appear there; one minute of eight and no sign. Who in all that crowd could dream that Ray and Blake have vainly stormed the vestry door and found it locked? By some unaccountable error the sexton has barred their entrance as well as that of the intrusive uninvited whom he ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Suddenly the little dapper sexton, with his broad smile and bustling gait, came out of the church. His eyes rested a moment upon the young wistful face and on the ragged garments, and then he beckoned ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... clergy to the influence of his aunt, the Carmelite nun, Madame Louise. During the life of her father, Louis XV., she nearly engrossed all the Church benefices by her intrigues. She had her regular conclaves of all orders of the Church. From the Bishop to the sexton, all depended on her for preferment; and, till the Revolution, she maintained equal power over the mind of Louis XVI. upon similar matters. The Queen would often express her disapprobation; but the King was so scrupulous, whenever the discussion fell on the topic of religion, that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dead of night, it would ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why. All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton came ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... passage beneath, being very similar. The church has been restored and is in capital preservation. As there were so many objects of interest, chiefly connected with the great St. Savin himself, we sent for the verger, sexton, bellringer, parish beadle, or whatever the "goitreux" individual called himself, and paid great attention to all he had to say. Although a good deal was quite unintelligible, the following are some of the most interesting facts. Entering at the small side door, immediately ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... harnessed immediately, glad that further responsibility was taken from him and he had only to carry Toni as far as the railway. But the Pastor sent down to his sexton, an older, kindly man, who had given him a helping hand for years in many matters of responsibility. He was commissioned to take Toni with all care to the great sanitarium in Bern and to give the letter to the doctor there, ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him throughout his investigation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... acquaintance. However, he accosted without hesitation a short, stout person arrayed in a wrinkled frock coat and wearing the white tie and gold spectacles that invariably garb the members of such quasi-clerical professions as a Shadchen, a sexton or the collector of subscriptions for a charitable institution. Indeed, as Rashkind combined all three of these callings with the occupation of a real-estate broker, he also sported a high silk hat of uncertain vintage and a watch-chain bearing a Masonic emblem approximating ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... for the sexton; people laughed in his face. There was no longer a sexton. He inquired to whom he should go for the keys. They replied that the captain of the gendarmerie had them. The captain was not far off, for the cloister adjoining ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... I., were discovered in a butcher and a toll-gatherer; that the great grandson of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the Duke of Clarance, sank to the condition of a cobbler at Newport, in Shropshire; and that among the lineal descendants of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III., was the late sexton of St George's, Hanover Square. It is understood that the lineal descendant of Simon de Montfort, England's premier baron, is a saddler in Tooley Street. One of the descendants of the "Proud Percys," a claimant of the title of Duke of Northumberland, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... influence in New York at the opening of the Civil War position in the Mason and Slidell case sustains Stillman in matter of passports his manner of making appointments dispatch from, to Stillman at Crete consents to Stillman's recall, which, however, is revoked Sexton, Samuel, portrait painter, teacher and friend of Stillman Shawnik Shefket Pasha, inaugurator of the "Bulgarian atrocities" defeated by Lazar Socica recalled Sheridan, Irish patriot Sigourney, Mrs., contributes to The ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... more antique Doric style; and the ridges by which these are separated,—each from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in length, and from five-and-twenty to thirty feet in average height,—resemble those burial mounds with which the sexton frets the churchyard turf; with this difference, however, that they seem the burial mounds of giants, tall and bulky as those that of old warred against the gods. They are striking enough to have caught the eye of the children of the place, and are known among them as the Giants' ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... her answer was insulting, and a real lady never humiliates any one. After reading it Taylor told Amy to meet him at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they would be married in the church with no one present but his brother (the only relative Taylor has in town is a bachelor brother), and the sexton, the minister, and me. She met and the ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... goney. Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ... engineer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and by, with the sexton behind him. He stood high up above the grave, and drew his long cloak about him and lifted an old pomander-box to his face. He was not more foolish than his fellows; in that evil hour men took to charms and to saying of spells. Below the grave and apart, for the curse rested upon them, ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed with the sexton, the undertaker's men and ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Old Shon, the sexton, was already digging the little grave in a corner of the churchyard relegated to such unconsidered and unwelcomed beings as this. However, it was a sunny corner, sheltered from the sea-wind, and the docks and nettles grew ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... fellows, hired for silence, "spoke all." No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must titter. The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon, Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon. The final Sexton (smile he must for him) Could hardly get to "dust to dust" for him. He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood, Only with simp'ring at his lively mood: Provided that they fresh and neat came, All jests were fish that to his net came. He'd banter ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... partner Cawly adopted a working beam, that is, a beam working on a centre or trunnion. At one end of the beam was the pump, at the other was an iron cylinder with an iron piston in it; both ends of the beam were arched or sexton-shaped, and had a chain on each, one connected to the pump rod, the other to the piston rod. When about to start work, the piston being up near the top of the cylinder, steam was let in under it and a jet of water was let in which soon condensed the steam and created ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... dark when they found him down in a little dell upon a patch of greensward. Considering that he was a joiner, and not a sexton, he had made remarkable progress with a very creditable grave, which, he explained, was to receive the dead with which the woods were distributed. He added that it was a disgrace to leave so many corpses lying ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... crying her best, she at last managed to open the top of the chair, and by dint of great exertions succeeded in forcing the door, and at length freed herself from bondage. She was leisurely groping her way round it in the dark, when her lamentations, being heard without, woke up the old sexton of the chapel,—for it was there we placed her,—who, entering cautiously with a light, no sooner caught a glimpse of the great black sedan and the figure beside it than he also took to his heels, and ran like a madman ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was Sir Joseph Barley,—in the flesh,—and in a good deal of it, too;—Sir Joseph Barley, full to overflowing with talk and compliments. He had long planned a journey to America, and a surprise to his Fellow-Sexton in Foxden. The trip had been necessarily postponed from week to week, and then from month to month. Always expecting to leave by the next steamer, he had never thought it worth while to write. Had been on shore exactly nine hours, was delighted with the country, and had already ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog Speed. It was four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes; for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood there too, in his black slippers and white nightcap, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... cemetery, necropolis; burial place, burial ground; grave yard, church yard; God's acre; tope, cromlech, barrow, tumulus, cairn; ossuary; bone house, charnel house, dead house; morgue; lich gate^; burning ghat^; crematorium, crematory; dokhma^, mastaba^, potter's field, stupa^, Tower of Silence. sexton, gravedigger. monument, cenotaph, shrine; grave stone, head stone, tomb stone; memento mori [Lat.]; hatchment^, stone; obelisk, pyramid. exhumation, disinterment; necropsy, autopsy, post mortem examination [Lat.]; zoothapsis^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... teacher was a poor sexton, whose name was Mr. Hobby. There is a story that he had been too poor to pay his passage from England, and that he had, therefore, been sold to Mr. Washington as a slave for a short time; but how true this is, I ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... benediction in common, they assorted themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... old and ripe enough to die, isn't he?' said the incorrigible George. 'Remember what the old Scotch sexton said to the weeping mourners, "What are ye greeting aboot? If ye dinna bring them at eighty, when wull ye bring them?" My Scotch accent is bad,' added Captain Pendle, 'but the story itself is ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... followed after him and seated herself close beside him. As he came back, holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation! The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white man's pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge's children there. "Oh," he said, "they will not stay there without me." But, as he could not enter, we instinctively followed him to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to finish on the previous evening. Observing Barnet, he went up to him, and recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the completion of the inquiry, left a Draft Report recommending that a special grant, amounting to two millions a year, should for the future be allocated to Ireland. The other six members, dividing into two groups of three, under Lord Farrer and Mr. Sexton respectively, and stating their views in two different Reports, all agreed that a form of Home Rule giving financial independence to Ireland was the only ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... have been away during the three years that you have been in the habit of visiting us,—and partly because Mr. Axtell, and his sister, too, I think, have a very decided way of avoiding us. What induces Mr. Axtell to perform the office of sexton is more than any one in the congregation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... dainty sight, He limps infect by park and quai, Voicing (for those that hear aright) His hunger-world, the dark Marais. Sexton of all we waste and fray, He bags at last pour tout de bon Our trappings rare, our braveries ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the family held by a tenure, not of lives, but of deaths, renewable for ever. So that my uncle, who was a man of an anxious temperament, had little trouble in satisfying himself of the meerings and identity of this narrow tenement, to which Lemuel Mattocks, the sexton, led him as straight and confidently as he could ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... thought it strange that Madame Graslin was buried beside the body of Jean-Francois Tascheron. She had not asked it; but the old mother, as the last act of her tender pity, had requested the sexton to make the grave there,—putting together those whom earth had so violently parted, and whose souls were now ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... poet, was born at Bristol on the 20th of November 1752. His pedigree has a curious significance. The office of sexton of St Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, one of the most beautiful parish churches in England, had been transmitted for nearly two centuries in the Chatterton family; and throughout the brief life of the poet it was held by his uncle, Richard Phillips. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Leonard Rousselet, Pere Rousselet, as he was generally called, was an old peasant who, disheartened with life, had made various efforts to get out of his sphere, but had never succeeded in doing so. Having been successively hairdresser, sexton, school-teacher, nurse, and gardener, he had ended, when sixty years old, by falling back to the very point whence he started. He had no particular employment in M. de Bergenheim's house; he went on errands, cared for the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... school when he was five years of age. A man by the name of Hobby lived in one of his father's tenements, and he served the public in the double capacity of parish sexton and school-master. It is claimed that he was a wounded soldier with a wooden leg, a kind, Christian gentleman, whose very limited education may have qualified him to dig graves and open the house ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... it even he could not stop the tears from rolling down his bronzed cheeks? And so Harry sat in the window-seat, quite unable to understand the meaning of all the sorrow, and looked out of the window at the farmer's wife nursing her last baby in the orchard, and then at the old sexton in the churchyard throwing up the red earth, and wondered why he always whistled such a jovial tune, while he himself felt ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... manlier withal: to confirm the idea one had only to compare this new one with the racket photograph now relegated to a rear rank. The round-eyed look was gone. Had I here yet another memorial of yet another buried boyhood? If so, I felt I was the sexton, and I might be ashamed, ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... step the amiable Moor passed on. With a much more stately port Peter the Great followed him, but as he did so he bestowed on Foster a momentary look so ineffably sly, yet solemn, that the latter was obliged to seize the spade and dig like a very sexton in order to check his ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... way in which, as the story proceeded, Tupper of Swinsthwaite winked at Ned Hoppin of Fellsgarth, and Long Kirby, the smith, poked Jem Burton, the publican, in the ribs, and Sexton Ross said, "Ma word, lad!" spoke more eloquently than ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... is Anne-Marie! now we shall have the news. And how is Mr. Such-an-one, the priest? How is the Vicar So-and-So? Does he still look as well as ever? and Mr. Jacob, of such a place. And the old sexton, Niclausse, does he still ring the bells at Dann, and at Hirschland, and Saint Jean? He must ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... would not wonder that the hard work at which they found him was almost too much for him. He was," he said, "a priest, and had been employed above twenty years as Cure in a small parish on the river side, between St. Florent and Chaudron. The other man, who was working with him, had been his sexton. He had, like other Cures, been turned out of his little house by the Republic, but had returned to his parish when he heard that the success of the Vendean arms seemed to promise tranquillity to the old inhabitants of the country. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... in, week out, from morn till night. You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like sexton ringing the village bell When the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... clerk shall sing, And the good old wife shall winds us; And the sexton shall lay our bodies in the clay, Where ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... bottles for you." The flesh-coloured coat was then Moiselet. I followed him into his room, and we began to drink with all our might. Two other bottles arrived; we only went on in couples. Moiselet, in his capacity of chorister, cooper, sexton, &c. &c. was no less a sot than gossip; he got tipsy with great good-will, and incessantly spoke to me in the jargon I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... the movement to be the work of invisible hands, his nervous system received such a shock that he fell in a fit, and was found where he fell, by the sexton, ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... of ten. The sexton rung a merry peal from the sweet-toned bell, which was the pride of the inhabitants of Mason's Corner. Within the church the ushers, having attended to the seating of the audience, stood just within the door awaiting the ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Grenard, must have flown away with it," said the sexton of the parish, "for I was there when they seized the poor lad, and he had not a ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word for ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... of bay-leaves or laurel doubtless indicates "Victory." Not only is this an early and well-accomplished effort, but it is remarkable for the presence of a lower jaw, which is seldom seen on a gravestone. The skull turned up by the sexton is usually the typical object, and to that we may presume the nether jaw is not often attached. It is found, however, on a headstone of a somewhat weak ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... plain as a marlin-spike, you ain't used to snakes and wimmen. In that partiklar your education's been shamefully neglected. Never kill a rattlesnake arter he's shut in his fangs and turns on his back for mercy—its sneakin' business. Never think a woman is dead till the sexton sends in his bill. Snakes and feminine wimmen is hard to kill. Now any landshark, as has his eyes out of his heart, could see that Miss Lina's only took a faintin' turn, that comes after a skeer like hers, axactly as sleep ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... absorbed in his reflections that he seemed to forget his surroundings and stood above the grave, pointed out to him by River Andrew, oblivious to the cold wind that blew in from the sea, deaf to the clink of the sexton's inviting keys, forgetful of his companion who stood patiently waiting within the porch. The Marquis was a little bent man, spare of limb, heavy of shoulder, with snow-white hair against which his skin, brown and ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the shambling sea is a sexton old, And well his work is done. With an equal grave for lord and knave, He ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... please, to take away this deathly feeling." I drew her into a pew and forced her to lie down, crushing thereby a most elegant toilet. But I was afraid she was dying, she looked so pale; then, rushing to the vestry, I found the sexton. He looked somewhat startled at ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... for the sustentation of tomb-stones and monuments, appears to have prevailed for many generations; and may be very naturally accounted for, by the repugnance which most men would feel, to the idea of having their bones knocked about by the sexton's spade, and then wheeled off to the bone-house, if there happens to be a bone-house, or shot into the neighbouring river, or on a farmer's dung-heap, if there is no such convenience as a bone-house at hand. It was this feeling that induced the celebrated ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... manners into one of our most venerable cathedrals. When, accompanied by a masculine escort, she entered the sacred edifice, the gentleman (?) demurred to removing his hat. While in dispute on this point of etiquette, Madam's pet dog attempted to join her. On being informed by the sexton that such canine companionship was inadmissible, her anger was aroused and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... PROPHECY[1] "About three months ago, at Windsor, a poor knight's widow was buried in the cloisters. In digging the grave, the sexton struck against a small leaden coffer, about half a foot in length, and four inches wide. The poor man, expecting he had discovered a treasure, opened it with some difficulty; but found only a small parchment, rolled up very fast, put into a leather case; which case ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sexton walked up and down the aisles, closing such of the pew doors as were open. Then he shut off the gas, and after looking around to see that nothing was forgotten, went out, apparently satisfied, and locked the outer ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... time Barnum attended Smith's exhibition, the latter gave him a sly wink from the stage at the moment of his describing a scene in the golden chamber of St. Ursula's church in Cologne, where the old sexton narrating the story of the ashes and bones to the eleven thousand innocent virgins, who, according to tradition, were sacrificed on a certain occasion. One of the characters whom he pretended to have met several times on his trip to Mont Blanc, was a Yankee, whom he named "Phineas Cutecraft." ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... viii., p. 338.).—The sexton of my parish, John Poffley, a man worthy of a place in Wordsworth's Excursion, was telling me but a few days ago, that his mother was the parish clerk for twenty-six years, and that he well remembers his astonishment as a boy, whenever {432} he happened to attend a neighbouring ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... into the church-yard by being acquainted with the sexton, who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously—for he was a good and sensible man—that it was indeed their business and duty to run all hazards, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... that you see yonder comes from the window of old Andrew, the sexton, and inside sits his grandson, little Roger, eating his supper of porridge. The kitchen is in apple-pie order, chairs and tables have been scrubbed as white as snow, the tins on the dresser shine like silver, the hearth is swept clean, and Grandfather's ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... impression of his own dignity, and did not quite like leaving his pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr Arabin's allusion to his severity, and hastened to put matters right by observing that 'Sexton Clodheave looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there maybe a thought too much stick going on during sermon.' Mr Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon; and he smiled to himself as he observed how ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not fight an uphill battle, who went over to the enemy. Real leaders of our party fought, suffered, and starved, but they never deserted the flag. Christianity could not convert a Bradlaugh or a Holyoake; it could only bribe or allure a Sexton or a Gordon, or others of the "illustrious obscure" in Mr. Whitmore's fraudulent catalogue. In short, the "conversions" to Christianity so trumpeted are mostly dubious, generally insignificant, and all ancient. If the prophecy which Dr. Hitchens preached from ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... thickly crowding on the mind, which banish for the moment, all feelings of the drear realities of life; if one may be pardoned for being sometimes romantic, it is surely on such occasions as these. We descended the tower—"Please remember the Sexton——!" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... ordered his sexton to eat the bell-rope from knot to knot whenever the latter awakened him too early for the sermon. This preacher has also a rope around his neck—make him also eat it up before he ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... trustees of the church the use of some part of the premises subject to recall of the privilege on sufficient grounds; and—a consideration never to be slighted although often hard to get—the good-will and co-operation of the sexton. With the sexton against him, no pastor can make a church boys' club succeed. The club will make no mistake in paying the church something for the heat ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... hour, Mrs. Willoughby had quieted all Maud's present troubles, and the whole family left the house to repair to the chapel. Michael, though he had no great reverence for Mr. Wood's ministrations, had constituted himself sexton, an office which had devolved on him in consequence of his skill with the spade. Once initiated into one branch of this duty, he had insisted on performing all the others; and it was sometimes a curious spectacle to see the honest fellow, busy about the interior of the building, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... and as we were in the rear of the church, we could see the yellow fog between ourselves and him. There were fourteen persons in the audience, and we were all huddled together in a cowardly way in the pews nearest the door: three old men, four women, and four children, besides ourselves and the sexton, a deaf little old ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... seamen used to say, like the Merrydun, of Dover, which took seven years in veering, and when she did so the fly of her ensign swept two flocks of sheep off Beachy Head, while her jib-boom knocked down the steeple of Calais church and killed the sexton. Cruising on this Siberian ground was horribly monotonous work. We sincerely wished the French fleet alongside of us, or in a warmer place. On one dark night we were caught in a heavy gale from the westward. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... lord? Good news should be welcomed with good wine. Frank, send down to the sexton, and set the bells a-ringing to cheer up all honest hearts. Why, my lord, if it were not for the gravity of my office, I could dance a galliard ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... into messuages and building-lots; then, after changing his coat again, back to our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering around him as it does on the old folios that fill the shelves all round the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... once a poor man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years and a half, no matter how stormy the weather, the faithful animal made the graveyard his home, only leaving ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... the funeral, you know. And don't forget to thank your mother for the cheese. It looks real good, and Georgie doos like it the best of anything for breakfast. I guess I'll get on my bonnet, and go to see Abel Mound, the sexton." ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... of about six cottages and as many bigger houses; a damp, mouldy place, that always impressed the children with a sense of hunger and death. They rarely saw anyone about but the sexton, and he seemed to be perpetually at work digging graves in the churchyard. Then, too, there was no shop, and they had no friends in the village, and after the long walk from home all that could be hoped for was a turnip out of the fields. The church, ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... brighten and enliven her as it usually did. The warm, moist wind that came in gusts from the south was not invigorating, and she went slowly up the church-steps, glad that her walk was over. There was no one in the church. Even the sexton was not visible; and Christie placed herself in her accustomed seat under the gallery, near the door, glad to rest in the pleasant stillness of the place. How quiet and peaceful it seemed! The sound of the moaning wind seemed to come from far-away, and the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... be the sexton of a country parish on the northern shore of Lake Maelaren who had devised this means of eking out his probably limited professional income. The ensuing correspondence had proved quite satisfactory. The mother was evidently pleased. It was almost as good ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... something more," Barefoot resumed, moving on to another cow; "the sexton is an enemy of my master's—I want you to know that in case he tries to get hold ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... an entertainment by a gentleman bearing the delightfully sepulchral name of Dr. Sexton, whose mission in life it is to "expose" the tricks of Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke. How those gentlemen are to be "exposed," seeing they only claim to deceive you by legerdemain, I cannot comprehend; but they made the Spiritualists very angry ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... and dreadful sepulchre there is little more to tell. From monarch to monarch we marched on till at length we grew weary of staring at bones and gold. Even Quick grew weary, who had passed his early youth in assisting his father, the parish sexton, and therefore, like myself, regarded these relics with professional interest, though of a different degree. At any rate, he remarked that this family vault was uncommonly hot, and perhaps, if it pleased her Majesty, as he called Maqueda, we might take the rest of the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Helen had her house almost full, and did not want to go again: there was so much to be done! But her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more: the servants were doing so well! he said. She yielded. He rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were floating about in them. But the floor of the church was above the water: ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the women in another. We read one or two of the names, and they were quaint and strange: "Anne Rypheria Hurloch;" "Anna Benigna La Trobe;" and one was especially interesting, James Gillray, forty years sexton to this simple cemetery, and father of Gillray, the H. B. of the past century. One thing pleased us mightily, the extreme old age to which the dwellers in this house seemed to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... origin. Though rebuilt a hundred years ago, on the site of an earlier church, it has remained loyal to its history, and is the true child of the eighteenth century. Is it not fitting that the communion-plate presented by Queen Caroline should be treasured here? That the sexton should still show you, even with a cold indifference, the stately prayer-books which once contained prayers for the king? That a bell, captured at Louisburg by Sir William Pepperell, should summon to the worship of God a people long forgetful of that proud achievement? Such ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the secret places of her warm heart by the way in which those who had known her from her childhood were proud and glad of her success. All round about the news had spread; strangers came "from beyond Burnley" to see her, as she went quietly and unconsciously into church and the sexton "gained many a half-crown" for pointing ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent tombstones at three jumps—the fourth took us over a wall five feet high within and about fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, in a cabbage-garden, enclosed on the other three sides by a house and a holly-hedge. The house was the sexton's, who, apprehending the stramash to proceed from a resurrectionary surgeon mistaken in his latitude, thrust out a long duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and swore to blow out our brains if we did not instantly surrender ourselves, and deliver up the corpse. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... in the depth of a great cleft of the hill, had survived the catastrophe. These were William Guy, Patterson, Roberts, Coyin, Trinkle, also Forbes and Sexton, since dead. As for Tiger, they knew not whether he had perished in the landslip, or whether he had escaped. There existed in the right side of the hill, as well as in the left, on either side of the fissure, certain winding passages, and it was by crawling along ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... of an old church was a beautiful chime of bells, which for many years had rung out joyous peals at the touch of the sexton's hand upon the rope. ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... of April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... church, stained to imitate marble. Then they all examined the Decalogue over the altar, written in the ancient letters, and done in England in 1714. Mrs. Tracy wished that the old high pulpit and sounding-board had never been replaced by the desk which she now saw there. The sexton showed them the old English Bible, which he said had been in use there about one hundred and twenty-five years. They noticed the little organ, which was very old, and also sent over from England. As they came out of the church, they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... fine thing, I sat down. I wish now I had done that earlier. I wish now I had sat down before I got up. I was the last man out of the church—and I hurried. But they beat me out—all nine of them. When I went out the door, the old sexton said as he jiggled the key in the door to hurry me, "Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse than that. You're all right, bub, but you don't know ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... I am not one who replies with invective, when sinking under the weight of argument; I am not a man who denies the necessity of parliamentary reform, at the time that he approves of its expediency, by reviling his own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not, to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon it when ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... looks antique, many of them have spurs. The restorations of 1640 and 1712 have obliterated all appearance of antiquity. Bishop Giuseppe Maria Bottari, the last restorer, used so many inscribed slabs in repairing the interior and building the campanile that he was nicknamed "the sexton of inscriptions." There was a cruciform baptistery to the west, the remains of which were destroyed in 1850 in connection with the harbour works. To the north of the cathedral is the communal cistern, which covers a great part of the site of the early church of S. Thomas. In 1860 some ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... outside a group of stragglers recognised him, and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... SEXTON, M.P., who was howled down at a meeting at St. Helens recently, said he refused to bow the knee to a lot of body-snatchers who wanted him to sacrifice his manhood and conscience to satisfy their inclinations. A self-respecting sexton could do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... 'Lobsters neither bark nor bite; and they know the secrets of the sea!' His dreams simply overflowed into his daily existence. He had the courage of his dreams. Do you remember his declaring that the sun never appears in dreams? How true! But the moon does, 'sexton of the planets,' as the crazy poet Lenau called it—the moon which is the patron sky-saint of men with brains. Ah, brains! What unhappiness they cause in this brainless world, a world rotten with hypocrisy. A poet polishes words until they glitter with beauty, charging ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... personages whom tradition told about; and here, mixed up with successive crops of native-born Americans, had been ministers, captains, matrons, virgins good and evil, tough and tender, turned up and battened down by the sexton's spade, over and over again; until every blade of grass had its relations with the human brotherhood of the old town. A hundred and fifty years was sufficient to do this; and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first hole was dug among the difficult roots of the forest trees, and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sexton's bench in the left hand corner. Sitting there he could see her better and ran less ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and requires a long apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, the ringers form a guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772. It is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in the room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up they bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that tells the passing minutes. At last it gives a click; and now they ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Grove, the waggoner, and Stevens, the Sexton, all saw Everard going on the upland path to Swaynestone. But the blacksmith swore to seeing him in the village street at the same hour. A keeper saw him going to the copse at the same time that a shepherd met him on the down going in another direction. At five o'clock two rectory maids ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Green? Moreover, if a stranger did come on any lawful business, he might ask his way at the shop. Most of the inhabitants were long-lived, early deaths (like that of the little Miss Jessamine) being exceptional; and most of the old people were proud of their age, especially the sexton, who would be ninety-nine come Martinmas, and whose father remembered a man who had carried arrows, as a boy, for the battle of Flodden Field. The Gray Goose and the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who kept their ages secret. Indeed, Miss Jessamine never mentioned any ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Evening came. The sexton rang the bell of the church,—not soberly and steadily, but he tugged with all his might at the rope, throwing the bell over and over,—ringing as if the whole town was in a blaze. The farmers out on the hills heard it, and came driving furiously ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... were by this time concluded, and nothing now remained but the last summons of the sexton. At this juncture, while the coffin was being lowered into its resting place, my eyes, accidentally, it may be said, but in reality by some fatal instinct, fell full upon the lid, on which I instantly recognised ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... have it yo' own way. Ef you won't hearken an' you won't heed, go ahaid!" stated Uncle Bill, with a wave of his hand. "You ain't too young to die, even ef you is too ole to learn. Only I trust an' prays dat you won't be blamin' nobody but yo'se'f 'bout this time day after to-mor' evenin' w'en de sexton of Mount Zion Cullud Cemetery starts pattin' you in ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... there appears something touching as well as humorous in that primitive marriage-party on the grey October morning, with the autumn sunbeams, silver not golden, faintly brightening the yellowing vine, over the sexton's house, and the orange and grey lichens, the only ornaments outside the solid old church, with its low, heavy Saxon arches. The Vicar bowed with ceremony, and with a dignified and deliberate air, as he recognised ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... pays for the wedding cards, pays the florist and the caterer, the expense of opening the church and the service of the sexton; the music, carriages for the bridal party, in short, the bills are for the family to pay. Where a wedding is very elaborate, the details are sometimes turned over to a "manager," who sees to everything, and receives a fat fee ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... I love, but it is a necessary reaction; and what at this moment chiefly makes me grateful to it is that my pocket is full enough to let me have a holiday on a liberal scale, without thinking of small economies. I may give pennies to tramps or children, or a shilling to a sexton for showing me a church. I may travel what class I choose, and put up at a hotel without counting the cost; and oh! the blessedness of that. I would rather have a three-days' holiday thus than three weeks with ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... say!" he roared in a voice of thunder. The sexton, pulling the ropes in the middle of the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... with walks; the tombstones were of every possible strange device, and crowded together in a way which would have been far from pleasing to some of the more aristocratic inhabitants in their lifetime; but the monkish sexton in his own graveyard read the lesson to visitors, often uttered before, that death is a leveller of all ranks, and no respecter ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... Protestant churches to expect or to receive fees for conducting funerals, yet it is in perfectly good taste to offer him a fee. In the Roman Catholic Church the rate of fees for funerals is fixed. There are, besides, fees for the sexton, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... Dickens wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn facing the church—such a lovely ride—such forest scenery—such an out-of-the-way rural place—such a sexton! I say again, Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place; and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... churchyard on this particular freezing December evening, with his hands behind his bank, and his eyes intent for any envious husband who may be "with a rush retiring," monumentally counselled, after reading the Epitaph, Judge SWEENEY suddenly comes upon Father DEAN conversing with SMYTHE, the sexton, and Mr. BUMSTEAD. Bowing to these three, who, like himself, seem to find real luxury in open-air strolling on a bitter night in midwinter, he notices that his model, the Ritual Rector, is wearing a new hat, like Cardinal's, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... Wardle. 'About an old sexton, that the good people down here suppose to have been ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... NED the Sexton," replies he, "and come to know whether the Doctor left any orders for a Funeral Sermon? and where he is to be laid? and whether his grave is to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... moment the sexton came in, to say that the church-yard was full of men; women and children; that the whole parish had assembled when they saw Mr. Hunt drive up to the church; and that the men all said, "if Squire Hunt would be their captain they would enroll their ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... had left the room but the treasurer of the festival, who was counting the receipts, and the sexton, who was covering the tables, preparatory to closing for ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... beyond His narrow verge of being, and provide A decent residence for its clayey shell, Endear'd to it by time. And who would lay His body in the city burial-place, To be thrown up again by some rude sexton, And yield its narrow house another tenant, Ere the moist flesh had mingled with the dust, Ere the tenacious hair had left the scalp, Exposed to insult lewd, and wantonness? No, I will lay me in the village ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... undergo this ordeal; clad only in her shift, she thrice crossed the King's Highway and was thus married to avoid payment of her first husband's debts. It is not far from the old Church Foundation of St. Paul's of Narragansett, and the tumble-down house of Sexton Martin Read, the prince of Narragansett weavers in ante-Revolutionary days. Weaver Rose learned to weave from his grandfather, who was an ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... have green rails round their graves; and give his yellow breeches and blue waistcoat to Timothy Foord the shepherd, and he wore them o' Sundays for many a year after that. I left farming the same day as old master was put underground, and come into Cullerne, and took odd jobs till the sexton fell sick, and then I helped dig graves; and when he died they made I sexton, and that were ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... a grave that was newly made, Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade; His work was done, and he paused to wait The funeral train at the open gate. A relic of bygone days was he, And his locks were white as the foamy sea; And these words came from his lips so thin: "I gather them in: I ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... sparingly decorated with ex-table-d'hote roses, until it resembled the mortuary chapel of a Mulberry Street undertaker; and this effect was, if anything, heightened by four dozen camp-chairs that had been procured from the sexton of ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Parliamentary Committee of the British Trade Union Congress, at that moment emerged from the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the situation, and he persuaded the young lady to permit us to pass in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr. James Sexton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of Liverpool, arose and called the attention of the Conference to this situation, and declared that the American Federation of Labor delegates refused to sign any such document. He said it was not an Inter-Allied Socialist Conference, but an ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... after a young fellow through the fields like this," and forthwith he seized hold of the youngest by the hand to drag her away, but hardly had he touched her when he too was obliged to run after them himself. Not long after the sexton came that way, and seeing the respected parson following at the heels of the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... among the dead, W[alpo]le among the living, and even Vol[pon]e shall feel some remorse." How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of blushing or remorse in either, though some very good opportunities have offered, if they had thought fit to accept them; so that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... who described a visit to Stratford in 1694, {273} these verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.' Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, the sexton would not have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire to be ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee |
