"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sphere and the opportunity for the enterprising middleman. He appeals to a tuft-hunting instinct so deep in human nature that the mere surface difference of republic or monarchy hardly touches it. In a London church you will see a pew full of ladies' maids, and presently there is a great crowding and squeezing, and a low whisper of "make room for Lady Philippa." It is only another lady's maid joining her friends; but they all get titles by reflection. Turn from this ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... to the last prelate who filled it. Some fine old monuments, and warlike trophies of neighbouring wealthy families, adorned the walls, and within the nave was a magnificent pew, with a canopy and pillars of elaborately-carved oak, and lattice-work at the sides, allotted to the manor of Read, and recently erected by Roger Nowell; while in the north and south aisles were ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fashionable wife and daughter; also, young Dr. Simon Bellamy who, while obedient to the flashing of Miss Fanny's black eyes, still found stolen opportunities for glancing at the fifth and last remaining member of the party, filing up the aisle to the large, square pew, where old Judge Howard used to sit, and which was still owned by his daughter. Mrs. Hetherton liked being late at church, and so, notwithstanding that the Colonel had worked himself into a tempest of excitement, had ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... amiss came about midway in the hymn before the sermon, with old Squire Martin's setting down his book and dropping into his seat very sudden. Few noticed it, the pew being a tall one; but the musicianers overlooking it from the gallery saw him crossing his hands over his waistcoat, which caused one or two to play their notes false; and Nance Julian in the pew behind heard him groan: "I can't sit it out! Not for ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the pulpit, In the elder's cushioned pew, And all through the congregation There are slackers not a few. There are slackers in the workshop, There are slackers on the farm, And slackers down in Parliament Whose ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... to say, in all relations of life not pertaining to eating—Mr. Port was very much what was to be expected of him from his birth and from his environment. Every Sunday, with an exemplary piety, he sat solitary in the great square pew in St. Peter's which had been occupied by successive generations of Ports ever since the year 1761, when the existing church was completed. Every other day of the week, from his late breakfast-time for some hours onward, he sat at his own particular window ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... our choristers, the vows were exchanged and the blessing pronounced that gave Lisbeth and her future into my keeping; yet I think we were both conscious of those two small figures in the gloom of the great pew behind, who stared ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... great-grandfather. When Sabbath morning came I went to the church; reached it just a little after the minister in charge had commenced the service. Seeing that I was a stranger, with somewhat of a clerical appearance, he came out of the pulpit to the pew where I was sitting, and said, among other things, 'We are going to have the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to-day, and I would be glad to have you stay and assist,' which I did. At the close of the service I remarked to the minister that I was very much ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... mother was at church, but the matter was so urgent that he went straight to the pew and brought her out, which caused even the minister to pause in his sermon and made all the congregation look surprised. Kit took her home, packed her box and bundled her into the coach which the Stranger brought, and away they went ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of the stock company. Mr. S—- was a constant church-goer, as many actors and actresses are, although those who do not know them fancy they cannot be either good or religious—a great mistake. Mr. S—- was accommodated by a friend, who had a very handsomely fitted up pew in St. A—-'s Church, with the use of it, and Mr. S—- occupied it so long that he quite considered it to be his own; and it was a standing joke amongst his intimates that on all occasions "my pew" was referred to. Being out one night rather late, with some "jolly companions," he and they found, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... I am not rich enough to pay interest on twenty-five thousand francs for which I have no use. All that I can do for you is to place that sum, in my name, with the notary Dupuis. He is a religious man; you can see him every Sunday in the warden's pew in our church. Notaries, you know, never give receipts, therefore I could not give you one myself; I can only promise to leave among my papers, in case of death, a memorandum which will secure the restitution of the money into your ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... grumbled at first, but in the end he got a bottle-green Sunday-coat out of the oak-press that matched the bedstead, and put the house-key into his pocket, and went to church too. Now, for years past he had not failed to take his place, week by week, in the pew that was traditionally appropriated to the use of the Darwins of Dovecot. In such an hour the sordid cares of the secret panel weighed less heavily on his soul, and the things that are not seen came nearer—the house not made with hands, the treasures that rust and moth corrupt ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... their father, the sisters lived at peace and held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were ornaments of jet, they worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a wreath of wax flowers and a thick layer of gravel on their mother's grave. They tore a gap in the ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... hearing the advance sounded by the 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 ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... lines. She was a princess in rank, and a queen in looks. Thirty hours before the first shell burst into the Place Verte—Monday morning, it was—this fellow rapped at my door. He had wandered into the wrong pew, for his words were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... his view went to church, not because they believed in anything or wished for instruction or spiritual consolation, but because it looked respectable, which was exactly why he did so himself. Even then nearly always he sat alone in the oak box, his visitors generally preferring to occupy the pew in the nave which was frequented by Lady ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... is an important part of worship. It is not an impertinence, but stands in the line of duties along side of prayer and singing. To give money each time you go to church, and in the appointed way will bring blessings from God. Pew rent is not "giving" in this sense, any more than paying the butter bill or for a seat at the opera house. We refer to the offering to God for religious or charitable purposes, regularly through the Offertory in church. So your alms will go up with your ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... that well-remembered spot came laden with so many sweet and early associations, that the memory of by-gone hours swept thrillingly across my heart-strings, and it was not until after I had taken my accustomed seat in the old-fashioned high-backed pew, that I was roused from my busy wanderings in the "shadowy past," by the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... came, her courage almost failed her. The church was but a few yards from her own gate, and she walked there without any attendant. She had, however, sent word to the sexton to say that she would be there, and the old man was ready to show her into the family pew. She wore a thick veil, and was dressed, of course, in all the deep ceremonious woe of widowhood. As she walked up the centre of the church she thought of her dress, and told herself that all there would know how it had been between her and her husband. She was ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... very strong down 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. I borrowed ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... driver take us to the temple. That is the distinctive name of a Protestant church in these Roman Catholic lands. The morning service was in progress when we entered the square and austere little chapel. Every pew was occupied, the men and women taking different sides of the one stone-paved aisle. A gentle-looking old man was reading from a book with much clearness and expression, and in a singularly pleasant voice, what we soon found to be an excellent sermon. At its close ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... scoulded at all, at all, but Misther Peter N—- and John L—-, an' he held them up as an example to the whole church. 'Peter N—-' says he, 'you have not been inside this church before to-day for the last three months, and you have not paid your pew-rent for the last two years. But, maybe, you have got the fourteen dollars in your pocket at this moment of spaking; or maybe you have spint it in buying pig-iron to make gridirons, in order to fry your mate of a Friday; and when your praste comes to visit you, if he does not see it itself, he ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... homes and hearts many and many a well-fed, sleek, self-satisfied, well-dressed man, with a high salary and well-established social position, with a luxurious home and money in the bank, goes to church and sits down in a softly cushioned pew to listen to the preaching of the Gospel, while within hearing distance of the services an express train or a freight thunders by upon the road which declares the dividends that make that man's wealth possible? On those trains are groups of coal-begrimed human beings who never ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... that evening that the Mayor's office of Glendale had reeked of brimstone, for hours, and the next Sunday Aunt Augusta sat in their pew at church, militantly alone, while he occupied a seat in the farthest limits of the amen corner, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... All three horses reared at the report and flash, and Mr. Fraser fell dead on the ground. Karim galloped off, followed at a short distance by the trooper, and the two peons went off and gave information to Major Pew and Cornet Robinson, who resided near the place. They came in all haste to the spot, and had the body taken to the deceased's own house; but no signs of life remained. They reported the murder to the magistrate, and the city gates were closed, as the assassin had been seen to enter the city ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a distinctly inferior order of creation. At hotels and places of public resort they were refused entertainment. On railroads and steamboats they were herded off by themselves in mean and uncomfortable cars. If welcomed in churches at all, they were carefully restricted to the negro pew. As in the Southern States to-day, no distinction was made among them in these respects by virtue of dress or manners or culture or means; but all were alike discriminated against because of their dark skins. Some of Douglass's abolition friends, among whom he especially mentions Wendell Phillips ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... in the neighborhood in which she resided, and many were the guesses (many of them wide of the mark) which were made about her past history. But they could only talk vaguely and shrug their shoulders at the mention of the lady's name; for she lived very circumspectly, had a pew in St. Paul's Church, and stood well with the minister and leading church people; her children too were models of neatness and propriety, and though as unlike as children having one common parent could well be ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Queen Anne; the pavement too was damp and mossy; and there were green patches down the white walls where the rains had got in. So the handful of people that came to church were glad enough to get the other side of the screen in the chancel, where at least the pew floors were boarded over, and the panelling of ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... groom receives the bride from her father's hand. The latter steps back a few paces, but remains near enough to "give away the bride." When this point in the ceremony has been passed, the father quietly joins the mother in the front pew. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Greek religion pray standing,—the interior of the church is always devoid of pew, bench, or chair; but in every church there is a place set apart for the Emperor to stand in, which is raised above the floor, and ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... crowd which closed and swayed above their heads, and piloted by the stout lady close behind, they were swept into the church and up the aisle, and when they came again to themselves were in the inner corner of a pew near the front. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... You may have taken it for granted that I have been regular in my attendance at the sanctuary. Certainly I have never been a scoffer; but, on the other hand, I must confess that somehow it has come to pass since Josephine and I plighted our troth that our pew has stood empty on the Lord's day oftener than the orthodox consider fitting. And the worst of it is I used to attend service about every other Sabbath before I became a benedict, and Josephine taught a Sunday-school class up to within six ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Cam. Pew wew, sir; tell me not Of planets nor of Ephemerides. A man may be made cuckold in the day-time, When the ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... about twenty-four years old Mueller came over to England, and settled at Teignmouth as pastor of a small church. He refused to have any regular salary or to receive pew rents, taking only such offerings as his congregation wished to give him. Sometimes he had no money left at all; at others he had only just enough food for one meal, and knew not where the means were coming from for ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... malicious rumour. When the prayers were ended Mr Adams stood up, and with a loud voice pronounced, "I publish the banns of marriage between Joseph Andrews and Frances Goodwill, both of this parish," &c. Whether this had any effect on Lady Booby or no, who was then in her pew, which the congregation could not see into, I could never discover: but certain it is that in about a quarter of an hour she stood up, and directed her eyes to that part of the church where the women sat, and persisted in looking that way during the remainder of the sermon ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... that evening; he preached from half a text, after the manner of curates. "For they shall see God"—he repeated it in a poignant undertone—he, tall and young and priestly in his vestments, seen against the dim glory of a stained window—and Mr. Newman, attentive in his pew, leaned forward suddenly to hear, like ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... were spent in Newfane, Vt., and Amherst, Mass. My lovely old grandmother was one of the very elect. How many times have I carried her footstove for her and filled it in the vestry-room. I have frozen in the old pew while grandma kept nice and warm and nibbled lozenges and cassia cakes during meeting. I remember the old sounding-board. There was no melodeon in that meeting-house; and the leader of the choir pitched the tune with a tuning-fork. As ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... family worship morning and evening, but he did not pray extempore, as did the elect, and contented himself with reading prayers from a book called "Family Devotions." The days were over for Eastthorpe when a man like Mr. Furze could be denounced, a man who paid his pew-rent regularly, and contributed to the missionary societies. The days were over when any expostulations could be addressed to him, or any attempts made to bring him within the fold, and Mr. Jennings therefore called on him, and religion was not mentioned. It may seem extraordinary ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... intervening inch of shirt were visible. He was standing inside the window on the steps, hanging up the last strip of his background from the brass rail along the ceiling. Within, the Manchester shop window was cut off by a partition rather like the partition of an old-fashioned church pew from the general space of the shop. There was a panelled barrier, that is to say, with a little door like a pew door in it. Parsons' face appeared, staring with round eyes ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... acknowledgment of the title of the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioner as a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving the Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who disapproved of the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the old church, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the old vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a conventicle, a conventicle, too, which was not protected by the Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ourselves. On the other side of the screen of broad leaves we sensed ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... April afternoon when General Wilks, judge of the circuit court, left the bench and personally beat a drum on the court-house steps to summon volunteers to avenge the firing upon Sumter had anything quite touched the dramatic heights of this incident. And Mrs. King's pew in Center Church was Number 2 on ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... land of my rest— There where the Ganges and other gees wander, And uncles and antelopes act for the best, And all things are mixed and run into each other In a violet twilight of virtues and sins, With the church-spires below you and no one to show you Where the curate leaves off and the pew-rent begins! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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. It was said—and in praise ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... 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 rarely ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... cabbages are not always the best. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have with the vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary to the expectations of society. Society expects every man to have certain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tired garden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrows when he observes, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dim pulpit at the other end a man was speaking. Elizabeth dropped breathlessly and embarrassed into the pew nearest the door. She had no idea what this gathering was for or who the speaker was. Mrs. Jarvis attended the regular Sunday morning services in St. Stephen's, whenever a headache did not prevent, and Elizabeth accompanied her. But beyond this the girl had not the slightest ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... among his congregation. One, from among the old men and women in the free seats, looked up 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
... her constant customer. He was called Cadwallader by the frequenters of Moll's." It is not surprising that Moll was often fined for keeping a disorderly house. At length, she retired from business—and the pillory—to Hempstead, where she lived on her ill-earned gains, but paid for a pew in church, and was charitable at appointed seasons, and died in peace ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... luetin be introduced beneath the skin of a child who has inherited the disease, or of a person who has suffered from its obscurer symptoms, there may be produced a "reaction." This may take the form of "a large, indurated, reddish papule" which in a pew days become of a dark, bluish-red colour; or the inflammation may be of a severer type, resulting in a "pustule." A positive result is more frequently obtained when the disease is of long standing, or comparatively inactive. But may not this "reaction" occur in every case, whether or not the individual ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... attracted notice, and no sooner had they taken their seats than Duncan and Llewellyn began to titter. The ladies' bonnets, which were of white, trimmed with long green leaves and flowers, just peered over the top of the boys' pew, and excited much amusement. But Eric had not yet learnt to disregard the solemnity of the place, and the sacred act in which they were engaged. He tried to look away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded, although, seated as ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... and family attended this church during his Administration. The pew that they occupied is still preserved in its black walnut trimmings, though the rest of the sanctuary has ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... 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 ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... was Saturday; and, on Sunday, everybody wondered whether or not the fair unknown would profit by the vicar's remonstrance, and come to church. I confess I looked with some interest myself towards the old family pew, appertaining to Wildfell Hall, where the faded crimson cushions and lining had been unpressed and unrenewed so many years, and the grim escutcheons, with their lugubrious borders of rusty black cloth, frowned so sternly from the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the services at Plymouth Church. They come not only from Brooklyn, but from New York, and even from Jersey City and Hoboken. The yard and street in front of the church are quickly filled with the throng, but the doors are guarded by policemen, and none but pew-holders are permitted to enter the church until ten minutes before the hour for service. Without this precaution the regular congregation would be crowded out of their ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... her S. O. S. into the air and with supreme confidence that it would reach Martin wherever he might be, left the window, went to the pew in which Gilbert had arranged the cushions and sat down... Martin had grown tired of waiting for her. She had lost him. But twice before he had answered her call, and he would come. She knew it. Martin was like that. He was reliable. And even if he held her in contempt now, he had loved her once. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... if, as a married man, I were allowed to do so, for it has been pulled down to make room for the Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. When I did not dine there, I attended a quaint survival of last century's coffee-houses in Glasshouse Street: Tall, pew-like boxes, wooden tables without table-cloths, panelled walls; an excellent menu of chops, steaks, fried eggs, sausages, and other British products. Once the resort of bucks and Macaronis, Ford's coffee-house I found frequented ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... curtain on window, L. E.] 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. ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... the better under the light of later experience—were attributed by Mr. Sarrazin to the exhilarating influence of his happy domestic circumstances and his successful professional career. His essentially English wife; his essentially English children; his whiskers, his politics, his umbrella, his pew at church, his plum pudding, his Times newspaper, all answered for him (he was accustomed to say) as an inbred member of the glorious nation that rejoices in hunting the fox, and believes in ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the meadows, Shadow'd by the spreading yew; There's the quaintly-carven pulpit, And the olden oaken pew. Changed the scene, and on the ocean Sails a ship amid the spray; 'Tis the one you watch'd departing, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... thin, long-nosed gentleman that used to sit in President Averill's pew at church. Nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. The college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw. Nobody knew who he was but the President, 'cause he could speak all the foreign tongues—one about as well as another; but the President he knew his story, and ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... replied, saying, "They had done right to guillotine Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and all the family." The indignation increased, and the men from Bois-de-Chenes, and especially their wives, wanted to get into the pew to knock him down, but just then Sirou came up, crying "Room! room!" and old Koekli in his red gown threw himself before the man, who escaped into the sacristy, raising his hands to heaven and declaring that he was converted, and that he renounced the devil and all his works. Then ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... it once was. The old-fashioned family pew is a thing of the past in too many cases. In other days the father, the mother, and the children attended divine worship in the house of God. They sang the hymns of the church together; they worshipped God with the same ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... Sunday after Charley's appointment, Archer, seated in his pew, searched all the chapel for the fulfilment of Sara's part of the agreement, namely, her presence. But he could see her nowhere. The fact was, her promise was so easy that she had scarcely thought of it after, not suspecting that Stephen ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... remote pew, hidden under a gallery of the transept, two persons looked on with especial interest. The number of strangers who crowded in after them forced them to sit closely together, and their low whispers of comment were unheard ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... land, on the ground that a former possessor has abandoned it, or has not fulfilled the conditions of the grant. The word is also used in the United States, but it is very common in Australia. Instead of "you have taken my seat," you have jumped it. So even with a pew. a man in England, to whom was said, "you have jumped my pew," would look astonished, as did that other who was informed, "Excuse me, sir, but ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and 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 ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... 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 in the country, and as secretly as might be; and ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of man, if he draw near inquiringly ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... met him frequently in the woods, and down by the brook where he went to fish. They had thus become pretty well acquainted, and from him Emma had learned the name of the pretty girl who sat in the pew in front of their own at church—the little girl who wore a black ribbon upon her bonnet, and whose manner in the house of prayer was both quiet and devout. Edwin had told her that the name of this pretty girl was Mary Palmer; that just ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... opposite to them all the way to the church, but without accomplishing his object. He followed them in and placed himself in a pew on the other side of the aisle, and a little nearer the front than Miss Stanhope's, so that, by turning half way round, he could look into the faces of its occupants. But Elsie kept hers partly concealed by her veil, and never once turned ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... much of her life. Far back in the past she could just remember a charming Surrey village with a pretty vine-covered church where Daddy used to preach. She could recall exactly how her fat legs dangled helplessly from the high pew seat. Directly behind sat a stout farmer with four sons. The boys made faces at Edith on the sly; their mother sometimes ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... many flowers and feathers, and to finish off her costume, her gloves and shoes and sunshade were white. As these cool colours rather toned down the extreme red of her healthy complexion, she really looked very well; and when Gabriel saw her seated in a pew near the pulpit, behaving as demurely as a cat that is after cream, he could not but think how pretty and pious she was. It was probably the first time that piety had ever been associated with Bell's character, although she ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Ruth guided the Duchess through another maze of long corridors, and ushered her into the tapestried room which is behind the palace gallery. Her Highness gazed with displeasure at the luxurious furnishing of the Ducal pew, its gilded armchairs, red silk cushions, soft red silk praying hassocks, and the gilt casement looking down into the church. The church itself, designed by the Italian Papist, Frisoni, showed ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... is splendid. My husband is in the churchwarden's pew; he left before me; he is becoming a fanatic—he speaks of ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... in surplice and stole. They had felt that his attire on the previous Sundays had been a little too informal. And when, at the time usually allotted to the sermon, Gissing climbed the pulpit steps, unfurled a sheaf of manuscript, and gazed solemnly about, they settled back into the pew cushions in a comfortable, receptive mood. They had a subconscious feeling that if their souls were to be saved, it was better to have it done with all the proper formalities. They did not notice that he was rather pale, and that his ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... desired to attain his age, let them not smoke. He had been a total abstainer, moreover, from his seventieth year; let them, if they would rival his longevity, follow his example. The good man closed with a feeling allusion to the relatives, in the front pew, mourning like the disciples of John the Baptist after his "beheadment" Another hymn ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... beholding her admirer (for that everybody admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt) in the next pew to her at St. James's Church last Sunday; and the manner in which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon—though from under his fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... stopping with some friends in Dublin, and I met her early one morning and took her to St. Patrick's. You will find it all right in the register—Matthew Robert O'Brien and Olive Carrick. There were only two witnesses: an old pew-opener, and a friend of mine, Edgar Boyle. Boyle is dead now, poor chap! but you will find his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to 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 came ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... happened that 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 ...
— Three People • Pansy
... disclaimed the extravagant views some of them take, then hankered after what he denied, and then partly unsaid that too. While the poor man was trimming his sails, I slunk behind a pillar in the corner of my pew, and fell on my knees, and prayed (a) against the stream of poison flowing on the congregation. Oh, I felt like Jeremiah ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Catholics had attained sufficient power to suppress Protestantism. Mr. Mayor was therefore informed that the declaration would not be read. On Sunday morning (August 11) when the omission had been made, the Mayor left his pew, and, stick in hand, walked up the aisle, seized the minister, and caned him as he stood at his reading-desk. Scenes of such a nature did not occur every day even in 1688, and the storm of indignation and excitement among the members of the congregation ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... "that the idea of having a few chairs about in which you can sit continuously for ten minutes, not so much in comfort as without fear of contracting a bed-sore or necrosis of the coccyx, appeals to me. Compared with most of the 'sitzplatz' in this here villa, an ordinary church pew is almost voluptuous. The beastly things seem designed to ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... mighty, powerful wave of sound. Drew's hard, calloused hands closed on the back of the pew ahead. Hearing Boyd's voice break, Drew knew that within them both something had loosened. The apathy which had held them through these past days was going, and they were ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... That excellent grand tyrant of the earth, That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,— Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.— O upright, just, and true-disposing God, How do I thank Thee that this carnal cur Preys on the issue of his mother's body, And makes her pew-fellow with ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... restrained. But his efforts failed miserably; Robin seemed worried and his thoughts were evidently far away, Clare was occupied with the impertinence of some stranger who had thrust himself into the Trojan pew at the last moment, and Garrett was repeating complacently a story that he had heard at the Club tending to prove the unsanitary condition of the lower classes in general and the inhabitants of the Cove in particular. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Thomas Paine. The best minds of the orthodox world, 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
... less popular, and he was near his presidentship, he left me, making a kind of apology, from the members of the principal Presbyterian Church having offered him a pew there. He seemed to interest himself in my favour against M. Volney, but did not subscribe to my Church History ... I suppose he was not pleased that I did not adopt ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... anything left but bedsteads and washstands and bureaus,—the very things that make up-stairs look so very bedroomy. And we wanted pretty places to sit in, as girls always do. Rosamond and Barbara made a box-sofa, fitted luxuriously with old pew-cushions sewed together, and a crib mattress cut in two and fashioned into seat and pillows; and a packing-case dressing-table, flounced with a skirt of white cross-barred muslin that Ruth had outgrown. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and I felt it to be so suitable to my friend, that I determined to insert it. My heart's desire is, that it may be blessed to all who read it.—As I passed the Centenary Chapel this evening, a gentleman thus accosted me: 'You don't know me.' I answered, 'No sir.' He rejoined, 'I sat in your pew about nine years ago. Mr. Curnock preached about Noah's Ark; and a word you spoke to me afterward, forcibly impressed my mind. You said, 'Get into the Ark,' and now I have got into the Ark.' I had no remembrance of the circumstance, but am thankful ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle, I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... He attended the Episcopal worship every Sunday and great holiday, wearing inevitably the ancient tile, which often of itself drew audience more than the sermon. He gave a very small sum of money and took a cheap pew, and read from his prayer-book many admonitions he ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a pew at one end of the church, which had belonged to his people for generations, and which was not altered when the rest of the church was restored. It was large enough now to hold his wife and himself and the seven ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... rich a harvest of instructive association and elevating thought. Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself comparatively alone, in rambles of this kind. I went one morning into St. Martin's,—once "in-the-fields," now at the busy center of the city,—and found there only a pew-opener, preparing for the service, and an organist, practising music. It is a beautiful structure, with graceful spire and with columns of weather-beaten, gray stone, curiously stained with streaks of black, and it is almost as famous for theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... to take the License and the Ring with you.—The fee to a clergyman is according to the rank and fortune of the bridegroom; the clerk if there be one, expects five shillings, and a trifle should be given to the pew opener, and other officials of the church. There is a fixed scale of fees at every church, to which the parties married ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... and so it came about that the morning congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew, with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll at the other. No one looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a momentary attention, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... a counter object of attention for the gay worshippers in the side pew. A little woman in black came hurrying up the aisle and entered the seat before them. She put down on the narrow shelf her prayer-book and a tumbled red handkerchief, and then bowed her head. Suddenly, ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... the servants and so different to our own employers, and we set a mark on them, for we would not go to serve them. We remember once when our lady's brother was showing a visiting lady some old relics near the front door they came upon the head housemaid who was cleaning the church pew chairs (they were carried in while the church was being repaired), and she was near a very old grand piano. The lady asked in such a jeer, "And is this the housemaid's piano"? The gentleman looked very hard at the housemaid, for we were sure that he was very annoyed at her, but we did not ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... rail of woven brass, That hides the "Strangers' Pew," I hear the gray-haired vicar pass From Section ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... with the rest the blood rushed to his head and a feeling of nausea and exhaustion, the dregs of his previous night's debauch, came over him again for a moment, so that he took hold of the back of the pew in front of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... stirred beyond his parlour, and was invisible to every one, except his housekeeper and doctor, but his tall, square, curtained pew was jealously locked up, and was a grievance to the vicar, who having been foiled in several attempts, was meditating a fresh one, if, as he told his wife, he could bring his churchwarden up to the scratch, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is half finished. Should you attend at the usual hour of commencing service, you might be supposed guilty of rising in the morning as early as nine or ten o'clock, and by that means be thought shockingly ungenteel—and if seated quietly in the pew, you might possibly remain unnoticed; but, by thundering along the aisle in the midst of prayer or sermon, you are pretty sure to command the attention of the audience, and obtain the honour of being thought by some, to have been engaged in some genteel affair the night before! Besides, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... gentleman as was the deacon—him as built the chapel—Mrs Jehu Tomkin's father—comes to my shop with his daughter, Mrs Jehu as is now, and spoke to me about the minister. Well, I heard the old gentleman was very rich and pious, and I went the next Sabbath-day as was, with his family, into his pew. I never went any where else after that. He seemed to hit the nail just on the head, and I was convinced—oh, quite wonderful!—all on a sudden. I was married to Mrs Jehu before that day twelvemonth. So you see grace followed me throughout, as it will you, my dear brother, if you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew under the gallery) were. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... to 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. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... gave him a small table for a pulpit. The others, with Gipsey, and a large gray cat, the property of Robby and Kitty, which marched in after them, were the congregation, sitting on the edge of the bed, to be like the long church pew. The minister took for his text, "Little children, love one another," and his sermon was such a dear, funny little discourse, that I must ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Chapel twice. It was exactly twenty minutes to seven one Sunday evening when we first entered it. The lights were burning, the blinds were drawn, and there were 23 people in the place. In a pew on the left-hand side a little old man was holding forth as to the "prodigal son." It was the first time he had ever talked in the chapel, and he has never said a word since. He had a peculiarly free and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... very large, odd, and attractive; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp, fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick Church from the school-pew to the reading-desk. This infatuated young man used sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had been presented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... those of men. Dr. Preston gave a very instructive and impressive talk on that subject before the Ladies' Aid Society of our church the week before I was taken sick. Indeed, I am afraid I caught the cold that led to pneumonia sitting in Charley's pew, which gets a bad draught from the door of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... offered them 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
... married in Akin, South Carolina to Andrew Pew. We had 12 chillun. Jest one boy is my ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms and much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered the building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in the place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,—perhaps he did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern not merely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... was built in 1792, he subscribed ten guineas towards the construction of the building. He signed the call to the first pastor of the Church, the Rev. James Somerville; he thereafter contributed three pounds a year to his stipend and occupied pew No. 16 in the Church. His brother Andrew later contributed five pounds towards removing the remaining debt from the building. The Rev. Mr. Somerville, the pastor of the Church, officiated at Andrew's funeral. There is little doubt from the records that James McGill ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... of Edward's sermon at St. George's to-day somebody in our pew whispered it round that there was the King of Prussia[35] in the Gallery. I looked as directed, and fixed my eyes on a melancholy, pensive, interesting face, exactly answering the descriptions of the King, and immediately ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... counterfeit presentment, these cormorants levy tribute upon both sexes. The high and haughty dame, with a too appreciative and wandering eye; the wealthy banker, with a proclivity for "little French milliners;" the Christian husband, with a feminine peccadillo; the pew-owner at church, with a disposition to apply St. Paul's "holy kiss" a little too literally; and the saintly pastor with a skeleton in his closet, are all alike fish in the tribute net of this insatiable toiler of the turbid sea ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... and fed her in her own ways, and with such food as she partook herself, physically and spiritually. Glory sat, every Sunday, in the corner pew of the village church, by her mistress's side. And this church-going being nearly all that she had ever had, she took in the nutriment that was given her, to a soul that recognized it, and never troubled itself with questions as to one truth differing from another, or no. Indeed, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... sermon was about the coming of the Holy Ghost and of our bodies which are His temple. Any other Sunday Mark would have sat in a stupor, while his mind would occasionally have taken flights of activity, counting the lines of a prayer-book's page or following the tributaries in the grain of the pew in front; but on this Sunday he sat alert, finding every word of the discourse ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that Mousie said she wished they might form the choir at the church. Indeed, the glad spirit of Spring was abroad, and it found its way into our hearts. We soon learned that it entered largely also into Dr. Lyman's sermon. We were not treated as strangers and intruders, but welcomed and shown to a pew in a way that made us feel at home. I discovered that I, too, should be kept awake and given much to think about. We remained until Sunday-school, which followed the service, was over, and then went home, feeling that life both here ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... wall, "It shall be taken out," he said, "before to-morrow morning: to-morrow is Sunday." He was expected to preach on that day and the church was crammed a quarter of an hour before the service began. At five minutes to eleven a lady and child entered and walked to the rector's pew. The congregation was stupefied with amazement. Mouths were agape, a hum of exclamations arose, and people on the further side of the church ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... something was wrong when I didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or two it quite gave me the creeps. What's amiss ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he resolved to sell two-thirds of his interest in the seigniory of ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... got her little purse out of the corner of her bureau drawer. She counted the eight cents, and puzzled over the problem how to increase it to fifty. She puzzled over it all the rest of that day until she went to sleep at nine o'clock. The next day was Sunday; she puzzled over it as she sat in the pew in church, but she could ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... vaguely dissatisfied, as always happened to him on those rare occasions when she missed the appointment; but he had thought little of the circumstance. Nor had he been disturbed on Sunday at seeing the Slocum pew vacant during both services. The heavy snow-storm which had begun the night before accounted for at least ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 position ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the kirk on the Sabbath, and sat, not in the minister's pew, but in the very seat where Allison used to sit with her father and her mother and Willie before trouble came. And when the silence was broken by the minister's voice saying: "Oh! Thou who art mighty to save!" did not her heart respond ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... 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 ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... then, that October afternoon was a future of endless lace and chiffon, the joy of creation, triumph eclipsing triumph. But to Anna, watching the ceremony with blurred eyes and ineffectual bluish lips, was coming her hour. Sitting back in the pew, with her hands folded over her prayer-book, she said a little prayer for her straight young daughter, facing out from the altar with clear, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... 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 loth, if the truth must be told) to present ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... trophy. This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect, he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's to the square pew of the most influential of the wardens, who was also the first man of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... faith 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
... but my mind was so took up with the way Louisa Helen flirted herself down the aisle with Bob on one side of her and Mr. Crabtree on the other, I couldn't hardly get my mind down to listening. And when she contrived Mr. Crabtree into the pew next to Mis' Plunkett, as she moved down for 'em, I most gave a snort out loud. Didn't Mis' Plunkett look nice in that second mourning tucker it took Louisa Helen and all of Sweetbriar to persuade ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and crowded almost to suffocation. On entering, we found three priests standing side by side, in a sort of tribune, placed where the altar usually is, handsomely fitted up with crimson curtains, and elevated about as high as our pulpits. We took our places in a pew close to ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen many times during the morning's service by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... except home impressions, and the sharpest were those of kindred children; but as influences that warped a mind, none compared with the mere effect of the back of the President's bald head, as he sat in his pew on Sundays, in line with that of President Quincy, who, though some ten years younger, seemed to children about the same age. Before railways entered the New England town, every parish church showed half-a-dozen of these leading citizens, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... he could not lose himself in the Shorter 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 to move the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... presented themselves at the church in advance of the others, found the interior cool, dark, and damp. They sat down in a front pew, talking in whispers, looking about them. Druggeting shrouded the reader's stand, the baptismal font, and bishop's chair. Every footfall and every minute sound echoed noisily from the dark vaulting of the nave ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... criticism or archaeology or any of the departments of scientific research into the subject-matter of religion. Most of my readers will understand quite well what I mean. Everyone knows that, broadly speaking, certain ways of stating Christian truth are taken for granted both in pulpit and pew; the popular or generally accepted theology of all the churches of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant alike, is fundamentally the same, and somehow the modern mind has come to distrust it. There is a curious want of harmony between our ordinary views of life and our conventional religious ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... he's a public character. There!" she laughed, as she poured the coffee, "I mustn't discourage you. But don't you see that every mother's son—and, for that matter, every daughter and children's child unto the third and fourth generation—feel that, so long as they pay pew rent or put a cent in the collection, they own a share in you. And we always keep a watch on our investments down this way. That's the Yankee shrewdness you read so much ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lapels of 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
... the unfortunate recollection of the Pew-Opener had awakened in his young pupil a melancholy train of reflections, seemed now to compassionate the sadness which hitherto he had reproved, and walking silently by her side till she came to Soho-Square, said in accents of kindness, "Peace light upon thy head, and dissipate thy woes!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew"; and Jean Webster her knowledge of almshouse life ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of his seigneury the lord of the manor continued, however, to have various other prerogatives. For his use a special pew was always provided, and an elaborate decree, issued in 1709, set forth precisely where this pew should be. In religious processions the seigneur was entitled to precedence over all other laymen of the parish, taking his place directly behind ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... 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
... minister had listened to it in perfect silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,—still, and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Venners had a pew in the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr. Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... these words, he looked hard at my pew, and soon made me understand by his egordium how interesting his discourse would be to me. Written with rare grace of style, it was merely a piece of satire from beginning to end,—of satire so audacious that it was constantly levelled ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a thing as a Author?" returned John, derisively. "And who better'n me? And the p'int is, if the Author made you, he made Long John, and he made Hands, and Pew, and George Merry—not that George is up to much, for he's little more'n a name; and he made Flint, what there is of him; and he made this here mutiny, you keep such a work about; and he had Tom Redruth shot; and—well, if that's a Author, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... is second childhood," quoth the venerable Jacob Sasportas, chief Rabbi of the English Jews, as he sat in the presidential pew, an honored visitor at Hamburg. "Surely thy flock ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that. Thousands of incidents concerning the happy days of childhood flashed through my memory. Then we had few cares and many joys. I saw us sitting in the old family pew in church, and the lines of the old hymns we had sung came back to me, hymns about the love of God and the ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... and true— Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Every man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew— Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold, With a ton of plate in the middle hold, And the cabins riot of stuff untold. And they lay there That had took the plum, With sightless glare And their lips struck dumb, While we shared all ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... on without stopping, 'like a bull in a chiny-shop, I see I have got into the wrong pew; so nothin' remains for me but to beg pardon, keep my proposal for where it will be civilly received, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to this office, if your lady is too wideawake or too nice-looking to be dealt with by a man. There will be cab hire, and postage-stamps—admissions to public amusements, if she is inclined that way—shillings for pew-openers, if she is serious, and takes our people into churches to hear popular preachers, and so on. My own professional services you shall have gratis; but I can't lose by you as well. Only remember that, and you shall have your way. By-gones shall be by-gones, and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... place on the fifteenth of June. General Caraguel, surrounded by his staff, occupied the churchwarden's pew. The congregation was numerous and brilliant. According to M. Bigourd's expression it was both crowded and select. In the front rank was to be seen M. de la Bertheoseille, Chamberlain to his Highness Prince Crucho. Near the pulpit, which was to be ascended ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... of time to the church an' crep' into one of the big seats, waitin' for the music to begin. In a few minutes, along came a grand little lady, all dressed in velvet, with yellow hair and a big bonnet, an' a gentleman with her, an' she stood at the door of the pew an' beckoned me out. 'There's room enough for us all, Miss,' I whispered, pushing farther down the seat, but here the gentleman rapped his stick on the wood an' said so cross 'Hurry out, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera" |
