"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entertained them in what she called her "cabinet," a small den of a place adjoining the kitchen, and descending into it by one or two steps. On these steps, by-the-by, I have not unfrequently seen Madame Pelet seated with a trencher on her knee, engaged in the threefold employment of eating her dinner, gossiping with her favourite servant, the housemaid, and scolding her antagonist, the cook; she never dined, and seldom indeed took ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... eccentricities in this aberrant family besides that of parasitism, and in this expectation one is not disappointed. There are two other species of cowbirds in the Argentine country—the screaming cowbird (Molothrus rufoaxillaris) and the bay-winged cowbird (Molothrus badius). The latter is only partly a trencher on the rights of other birds—only half a parasite. Indeed, it sometimes builds its own nest, which is quite a respectable affair; but, as if to prove that it still has some remnants of cowbird depravity ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... War, although it makes for leanness, Not only banishes discordant jars And purifies Berlin of all uncleanness, But places her, beatified by Mars, Upon a pinnacle of mental keenness, Changing the cult of trencher and of bowl To feasts of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... sturdy waiters had just succeeded in depositing safely upon the table an enormous dish, or trencher, containing what I supposed to be the "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." A closer scrutiny assured me, however, that it was only a small calf roasted whole, and set upon its knees, with an apple ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... believe, unparallell'd (sic) all over the world. They are always promised very young; but the espoused never see one another, till three days after their marriage. The bride is carried to church, with a cap on her head, in the fashion of a large trencher, and over it a red silken veil, which covers her all over to her feet. The priest asks the bridegroom, Whether he is contented to marry that woman, be she deaf, be she blind? These are the literal words: ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... as if these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... enough: the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of so great a treasure.' As he repeated these words many times, Brother Maximus made answer: 'Father, how can you talk of treasures when there is such great poverty and such lack of all things needful? Here is neither napkin nor knife, neither board nor trencher, neither house nor table, neither man-servant nor maid-servant.' St. Francis replied: 'And this is what I reckon a great treasure, where naught is made ready by human industry, but all that is here is prepared by Divine Providence, as is plainly set forth in the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Well, I never was more interested; fancy ferreting out Wycliffe, the Black Prince, our friend Sir Walter Raleigh, Pym, Hampden, Laud, Ireton, Butler, and Addison, in one afternoon. I walked about two inches taller in my trencher cap after it. Perhaps I may be going to make dear friends with some fellow who will change the history of England. Why shouldn't I? There must have been freshmen once who were chums of Wycliffe of Queen's, or Raleigh of Oriel. I mooned ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and of a rare flavor withal, this raccoon," said Waldo, "and methinks the King at Westminster hath no better trencher meat. Hath the old savage asked of thee yet our ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... my cousin Sidonia to help my poor father, she said, 'Get me a good maid who will do my business well, and then I shall see what can be done to help him. Now, as no one will take service with her, what else can I do, but play the trencher-woman myself, and thus save ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... soldiers prefer enlisting to starvation. But they are not soldiers, least of all to meet the hot-blooded, thorough-bred, impetuous men of the South. They are trencher-soldiers who enlisted to make war upon rations, not upon men. They are such as marched through Baltimore, squalid, wretched, ragged, half-naked, as the newspapers of that city report them; fellows who ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... still more gratified could she have discovered any symptoms of pining and languishing after her. She might peep at him from under her eyelashes in chapel and in hall; but in the former place his gaze always seemed to be on the minister, in the latter he showed no signs of flagging as a trencher companion. Both mothers thought her marvellously discreet; but neither beheld the strange tumult in her heart, where were surging pride, vanity, ambition, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought for ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hall must also serve For kitchen, boil'd the flesh, and spread the board, And stood behind, and waited on the three. And seeing her so sweet and serviceable, Geraint had longing in him evermore To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb, That crost the trencher as she laid it down: But after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins, Let his eye rove in following, or rest On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, Now here, now there, about the dusky hall; Then suddenly addrest the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... his Bears worry him, that Ape had paid it, What dainty tricks! ——— O that bursen Bear-ward: In his French doublet, with his blister'd bullions, In a long stock ty'd up; O how daintily Would I have made him wait, and shift a trencher, Carry a cup of wine? ten thousand stinks Wait on thy mangy hide, ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... situations of thought and activity, he tested their abilities. But he particularly considered their behavior at the banquet-table. From first to last they were sumptuously entertained, and their demeanor over the trencher-board and ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... her—would be decidedly bettered by this discipline under Mise Fougueiroun: whose name long has been one to conjure with in all the kitchens between Saint-Remy and the Rhone. For the Provencaux are famous trencher-men, and the way that leads through their gullets is not the longest way ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Polly's housekeeping was long remembered in the household. In the first place, the breakfast, though fairly abundant, was plain. A large piece of cold bacon graced one end of the board, a brown loaf stood on a trencher in the center, and when Helen took her place opposite the tea-tray she found herself provided with plenty of milk and sugar, certainly, and a large tea-pot of strong tea, but the sugar was brown. No butter, no marmalade, no jams, no hot cakes, graced the board. The children ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... (1.) Your trencher chaplains, that thrust themselves into great men's families, pretending the worship of God, when in truth the great business is their own bellies; and were notably painted out by Ahab's prophets, and also Nebuchadnezzar's wise men, who, though they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sou{er}aynes bred thow choppe, & at it be newe & able; se all{e} o{er} bred a day old or {o}u choppe to e table; all{e} howsold bred iij. dayes old / so it is p{ro}fitable; and trencher bred iiij. dayes is co{n}venyent ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All in his good time to whom ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... nut alone Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and can, Boat, cable, sail, and needle, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of fellowship. As to the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed by this "curtal fryar," behold are they not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and in the magic pages ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... your Honour,' said old Janet; 'ye were just as ill aff in the feifteen, and got the bonnie baronie back, an' a'.—And now the eggs is ready, and the muir-cock's brandered, and there's ilk ane a trencher and some saut, and the heel o' the white loaf that cam frae the Bailie's; and there's plenty o' brandy in the greybeard that Luckie Maclearie sent doun; and winna ye ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... carboy, vacuum flask, Petri dish, microtiter tray, centrifuge tube. bail, beaker, billy, canakin; catch basin, catch drain; chatti, lota, mussuk, schooner [U.S.], spider, terrine, toby, urceus. plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it. At last he came in, and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr. Fearing. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was laid upon his trencher." In this way the guide tells us his first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in the Interpreter's House. For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward corruption, you would have thought that the Interpreter ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... at a Roman repast, were occasionally brought in, and removed, with the dishes on them; sometimes each joint was served up separately, and the fruit, deposited in a plate or trencher, succeeded the meat at the close of the dinner; but in less fashionable circles, particularly of the olden time, fruit was brought in baskets, which stood beside the table. The dishes consisted of fish; meat boiled, roasted, and dressed in various ways; game, poultry, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... gentle squire would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher-chaplain; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, Whilst his young master lieth o'er his head. Secondly, that he do, on no default, Ever presume to sit above the salt. Third, that he never ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of something like sleep-walking as the soldiers led her through branching corridors to this room, and fetched for her attendant the only woman available, a wench they had taken from trencher-washing in the royal kitchen. She remembered irritably rejecting the woman's clumsy services and sending her to sleep on her pallet, while she herself walked to and fro with her surging thoughts until sheer physical exhaustion forced her to throw herself ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... doe but looke backe to Eighty Eight, That Spanish glasse shall tell you, shew each wrinckle. England that yeare was but a bit pickd out To be layd on their Kinges Trencher. Who were their Cookes? Marry, sir, his Grandees and great Dons of Spaine, A Navy was provided, a royall fleete, Infinite for the bravery of Admiralls, Viceadmirall [sic], Generalls, Colonells and Commanders, Soldiers, and all the warlike ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great poets. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor "a mole here and there as broad as a trencher," and we shrink from a cup of the purest Hippocrene after the critic's solar microscope has betrayed to us the grammatical, syntactical, and, above all, hypothetical monsters that sprawl in every drop of it. When a poet has been so much edited as Milton, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... their love-tokens and festive celebrations. His was in November, and his "party" was usually a picnic. Hers was in May, and was "kept" in the house, with big fires and a tea-table crowned with a three-tiered iced cake, and blind-man's-buff and turn-the-trencher in the evening. She recalled wild contests with an imperious little boy, who could never conquer her except by stooping to it; and the self-conscious silliness of their behaviour to each other when they grew from ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... chairs was polished and gleaming. No trace of dirt was allowed to linger anywhere. When the door to the adjoining kitchen opened, as Caterina passed through, pleasant odors floated in, inciting the two to fresh efforts at the trencher. It was all as it had been when they were young boys living there, attending the school of Alexander McLean and traveling by painful steps along the road to knowledge. In its snugness, its security and the luxury it offered it was a wonderful contrast to the dark forest, where death lurked ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... purple and golden fruit followed, while the half-starved boy warmed his fingers at the blaze, and then ate and drank his fill of such viands as he had never before tasted, even in dreams. But when he could do no more good trencher-service, and the little old woman reminded him of the wish he was to ask the Dwarf-king to grant, he sat a long ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat nigh the cockswain; ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Well, the tidings shall be told when our fellowship is greater; fall-to now on the meat, brother, that we may the sooner have thy tale." As he spoke the blue-clad damsel bestirred herself and brought me a clean trencher—that is, a square piece of thin oak board scraped clean—and a pewter pot of liquor. So without more ado, and as one used to it, I drew my knife out of my girdle and cut myself what I would of the flesh and bread on the table. But Will Green mocked at me as I ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... something, even the indigent; one subscribed a number of sheep; another, nine shillings' worth of cloth; one, a ten-shilling pewter flagon; others, a fruit dish, a sugar spoon, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, one small trencher salt, etc. From such small beginnings did the institution take its start. No rank, no class of men, is unrepresented. The school was of the people." There is nothing in history to parallel the heroic spirit and boldness of these ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker |
