"Verger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstance to find choir, congregation, organist, organ-blower, bell-ringer and verger all conspicuous by their absence. Mr. James went to the cottages near to make inquiries as to the cause. The first was locked up, but by knocking long and loudly at the door of the second, he at last succeeded in rousing Jacob Johnson, a ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... wall, built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite is the back ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... must have been full of awe and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... been no superintendence at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... many sacred recollections to me," says Mr. Tusher (and Harry remembered how Tom's father used to flog him there)—"a house near to that of my respected patron, my most honoured patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But, madam, the verger waits to close ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the only tourists in the cathedral at that early hour, so the attendant verger tolerated ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... The verger who took them in charge was an ancient man called Paulinus of Mansfield, having been born in that place. And he soon saw that what he had to show of the unfinished cathedral was lost on the heavy-lidded boy who was half asleep, ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... that, as to the necessary means for sending out three or four friars, there would be no lack of people of property who would give them what they needed, offering for his part to assist them to the extent of his ability; and, in fact, he wrote in relation to the subject to Father du Verger, [80] who welcomed with joy the undertaking, and, in accordance with the recommendation of Sieur Houeel, communicated it to some of his brethren, who, burning with charity, offered themselves freely ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... To-day we saw the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far-away humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, and could put one ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... come here every day," said Mellicent softly, "every single day. I should like to be a verger, and spend my life in an abbey. I think I could be awfully good if I lived here always. It makes one feel so small and insignificant, that one wouldn't dare to be selfish, and think one's own happiness so important. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... interesting ceiling, an early brass (to Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlet), and the record of one of those disputes over pews which add salt to village life and now and then, as we saw at Littlehampton, lead to real trouble. The verger (if he be the same) will tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical "packing" of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past a noble carved chair used to be ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... or Cathedral is dedicated to St. Peter, and the Parish Church to St. John. The Head Verger of the Cathedral until recently had charge of both clocks, and St. John's Clock was always kept slightly faster than the Cathedral Clock. Canon Jones, when Vicar of St. John's, one day met the late Verger, (Mr. H. ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father would take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to the grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frail and so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of the mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that pretty white-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... something of a scholar, something of a philosopher, but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put on the table ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... charge; to Mr. J. Oldrid Scott for the loan of drawings of St. Michael's; to Mr. A. Brown, Librarian of the Coventry Public Library for advice and help in making use of the store of topographical material under his care; to Mr. Owen, Verger of St. Michael's and Mr. Chapman, Verger of Holy Trinity, for help in various directions, and to Mr. Wilfred Sims for his energy and care in taking most of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... crowded than they had anticipated, the result being, that as they waited with many others in the aisle, Denys found herself put into a row where there was but one seat, and she could only look helplessly on while Charlie was marched by the verger, who knew him but did not know Denys, right ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... There's the cathedral bell, I say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger;" cried Mr, Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and he could only say to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... their parrot-like description, and they flounder about in most comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it was considered a good likeness. He was staggered for a moment, and then replied hurriedly that it was. But, thank goodness, here comes the lunch. I feel as hungry as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Pre ou Mont Plaisir a la Canardiere an lieu nomme la Montagne on l'Hermitage, prenant d'un bout, vers le sud aux terres de Joseph Bedard, et Jean Baptiste Le Roux dit Cardinal, et allant en profondeur vers le nord quatorze arpents ou environ, jusqu'a la vieille cloture du verger, icelui verger compris en la presente concession et vente, les dix arpents de front joignant du cote du sud-ouest ou fief de la Trinite, appartenant au Seminaire, et du cote du nord-ouest a la terre de Jean ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... enemy's camp. In this frame of mind, grateful for the accidental meeting with Planchet, pleased with himself, D'Artagnan reached Notre Dame. He ran up the steps, entered the church, and addressing a verger who was sweeping the chapel, asked him ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two large houses in the High ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... that she had felt certain of meeting Hilliard "accidentally," in the Mission church. That while she walked beside the elderly Spanish verger, chatting of his native Cordova, listening to tales of Father Juniperra Serra, Father Somera, and the legend of the Indians with the miraculous portrait of the Madonna, she had started more than once at a footfall, fancying it ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... refused admission, a slight which accounts in some measure for the continued antipathy he displayed during his life towards the Jesuits. At Louvain, too, he was associated very closely with a brilliant young French student, John du Verger de Hauranne (1581-1643), better known as the Abbot of St. Cyran, whom he accompanied to Paris and afterwards to Bayonne, where both lived for almost twelve years. During these years of intimate friendship they had many opportunities of discussing the condition ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... quaint old door in question. I had been wandering about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... verger to the cathedral becoming vacant, Swift called Robert to him, and asked him if he had any clothes of his own that were not a livery? Robert replying in the affirmative, he desired him to take off his livery, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... "Antiquities of Winchester," gives the following inscription as having existed on the monument:—"Hic jacet Willielmus comes de insula Vana, alias Wincall;" the parish of that name lies on the river Itchin, and might formerly have been insulated. The verger of Winchester Cathedral, in reply to an inquiry made by the editor of the "Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet," said, it was a knight of the name of Fox, evidently meaning De Foix. This figure suffered severely from the iconoclasts, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs. Proudie's school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf she had ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... as the newly wedded pair had received the exhortation, Aristide, darting to the altar-rail, caught Jean up in his arms, and, to the consternation of the officiating clergy, the verger, and Anne's conventional ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Yes, she was rather nice. She was a milliner, and she wouldn't be seen in the streets with Ingram. It was rather sad, really, because the verger spied on them, and got to know their names and then made a regular row. It was a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Undecimilla, the name of a handmaid, made all the difference, assuming that two young ladies were a more reasonable and probable number than eleven thousand. But what legend ever cared for a comma, or reached a full stop? If you go to Cologne, the verger of the Church of St. Ursula will show you the bones of the whole party in glass cases, and, equally amazing, the town of Baoza in Spain claims to be the birthplace of the lot. Clearly, Magellan had a man from Baoza on ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... go for the ring. R'clect it'll be on the top of my right-hand little ringer, and just be careful how you draw it off, because I shall have the Verger's fees ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... carved heads in arcading of wall, (3) double archway of door. Before returning to the nave the visitor should make an examination of the Monuments in the transepts and choir aisles. Their identity will best be discovered from a glance at the plan provided by the verger. Here mention will only be made of the most notable. In S. transept, against S. wall (1) William de Marchia (1319), builder of the chapter house; (2) Viscountess Lisle, with coloured canopy (14th cent.). In Chapel of St Calixtus (1) shrine of Bishop Beckington, unhappily detached from its original ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... morning we took a fly (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a professedly ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there was a small oak door studded with nails. Generally this was kept locked, but to-day, by a miracle of good fortune, it happened to be open. It was, of course, a very unorthodox thing for the verger to go away and leave the Abbey unattended, even for half an hour, but vergers, after all, are only human, and enjoy a cup of tea as much as other people who do not wear black cassocks. He was safely seated by the fireside in his ivy-colored cottage ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... saddled even his heroes—those heroes are, perhaps, his worst work, young men at once conventional and improbable—with whimsically ugly names; while his invented names are whimsically perfect: that of Vholes for the predatory silent man in black, and that of Tope for the cathedral verger. A suggestion of dark and vague flight in Vholes; something of old floors, something respectably furtive and musty, in Tope. In Dickens, the love of lurking, unusual things, human and inanimate—he wrote of his ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... her young companion; "we are in good time; this is the outer chapel. Yes, I know all that you are thinking, but you need not speak; I did not want to speak the first time I came to St. Hilda's. Just follow me quickly. I know this verger; he will put us into two stalls; then it will ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... verger met them in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass—"Well, sir, who are you? What, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... (Jewish); denomination, sect; basilica. Associated Words: ecclesiastical, ecclesiology, ecclesiolatry, ecclesiasticism, parish, hierarch, hierarchy, hierocracy, hierolatry, hierology, hierarchism, irenics, cure, evangelical, verger, beadle, chancel, clearstory, nave, transept, vestry, presbytery, prebend, prebendary, lectern, apse, irenicon, living, benefice, sinecure, glebe, see, prelacy, convocation, synod, conference, conclave, consistory, crypt, schism, orthodoxy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... L The Marquis de St. Didier G R Two of the legionary chiefs of the national guard G L Pichard, president of Bourdeaux G L Vicq. D'Asyr, a celebrated physician at Paris G R D'Aoust, De Lattre and Du Verger, three generals of the republican army G L The Abbe de Salignac de Fenelon, aged 85 years G L De Fenelon, son of the ambassador at the Hague G L De Bacquencourt, counsellor of state G L The duke de Gesvres, cordon bleu G L The Prince d'Henin, captain of the guards of the Count d'Artois G L De ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... were occupied by a lot of brickmakers, among whom the parson from Barchester did not venture to attempt to make his way, although he was fortified by the presence of one of the cathedral vergers and by one of the palace footmen. I can hardly believe about the verger and the footman. As for the rest, I have no doubt it is all true. I pity Crawley from my heart. Poor, unfortunate man! The general opinion seems to be that he is not in truth responsible for what he does. As for his victory over the bishop, nothing on ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... explore the upper parts of the church, facilities are afforded by a staircase commencing at the south-west Transept leading to the western Tower; and by another leading from the north Transept; but permission must be obtained, for which an application should be made to the Verger in attendance. The ascent, though tedious, is not dangerous, if due caution be used. Many parts will be found worthy of attention; the timber work of the Octagon is a very curious piece of carpentry executed in English oak, and ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... obtained of the Raffaelle, the glorious Rubens's,* the Vandycks, and the almost equally fine Sir Joshuas. But even the glance they had was but a passing one, as the servant trotted them through the rooms with the rapidity of locomotion and explanation of a Westminster Abbey verger; and he made a fierce attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, and other trifling articles that ornamented ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... overflowed into the free seats in the aisle, where I had a full view of them from above. These benches are long, and I was sorry to see the girls planting themselves fast at the outer end, and making themselves square, so as to hinder any one else from getting in, till the verger came and spoke to them, when Charley giggled offensively; and even then they did not make room, but forced the people to squeeze past. Isa could not help herself, not being the outermost; but she was much distressed, and does not shelter herself ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first view of Valhalla, though of course she had heard of it. In old times she had visited Madame Tussaud's and the Tower, but she had not had leisure to get round as far as Valhalla. It impressed her deeply. A verger pointed them to the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had not the courage to ask for It. Priam could not speak. There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... had been found with the help of Mrs. Haworth. But when this woman had been asked—her name was Bent, and she was a verger's wife—to provide a little supper for two gentlemen, she had demurred, and said it was impossible. Then, at last, she had volunteered to cook two chops and boil some potatoes. But she had explained that nothing further ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Macdonald and her two sisters the Misses Reid, Dr. J. C. Davie, Alex. Davie, his brother, Mr. Willoughby, Robert Jenkinson, Albert F. Hicks, John Bagnall, my brother Rowland and myself. Mr. Walter Chambers, as a youth, was organ blower also about this time. The first sexton and verger was William Raby, and the next John Spelde, who had charge of the Quadra Street Cemetery, digging the graves and collecting the fees for ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... boys, barmen, a compositor, several dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at L120 a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... and the other altars were dim; a verger shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... of a pleasant simple verger, I did more. I mounted on some steps he brought, and looked face to face at the bust in ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unmolested about twenty minutes when the verger asked him whether he wouldn't like to walk round. Mr Harding didn't want to walk anywhere, and declined, merely observing that he was waiting for the morning service. The verger, seeing that he was a clergyman, told him that ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... vicar, perpetual curate, residentiary[obs3], beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], flamen[obs3]; confessor, penitentiary; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... over the Cathedral and its surroundings by Mr. Miles, the venerable verger. This faithful and devoted official, who began at the bottom of the ladder as a choir boy in the sacred edifice at the commencement of the present century, is much respected, and has recently celebrated his golden wedding. Few can therefore be more closely identified with the growth and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Frond, and asked what was to be seen. Nothing here but churches and monks. One of the little girls, three years old, looked with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out, "Quel jolie poupee!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall ye be taught ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was the first to be disposed of in the fight. She was an 80-gun line-of-battle ship, carrying the flag of Admiral du Verger. Her position being in the rear of the squadron, she was early engaged by the RESOLUTION, and in addition received the full broadside of every other British ship that passed her. The Admiral fell mortally wounded, and two hundred on board were ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... stopped, and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger in ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was placed there the bells in the church tower began ringing and the pastor, the sexton, and the verger came out from the vestry and took their places at the head of the ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... church seemed empty but for sound and color, there lingered among its shadows a few persons who loved it well. There were priests and a few worshipers. There was also Father Varennes, the Verger, and far away in one of the small chapels opening from the apse in the eastern end good Mother Meraut was down upon her knees, not praying as you might suppose, but scrubbing the stone floor. Mother Meraut was a wise woman; she knew when to pray and when to scrub, and upon occasion did both with ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the old verger in the crypt of St. Mary's. Offered him two sovereigns to lift the stone lid and let me look in. He said he couldn't do that, but discreetly withdrew when I put the money in his hand. It was up to me, don't you know, and here ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... such immorality," he said, addressing the verger, though his words were heard by all present, "Enough of the service has been said! Lower the coffins into the earth!" and turning on his heel he prepared to walk away. But Aubrey Leigh ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... various dungeons that there was little space left for a visit to the very remarkable Church of St. Ours adjoining the chateau, which, as Viollet le Duc says, has a remarkable and savage beauty of its own. After seeing what is left of the girdle of the Virgin, which the verger thought it very important that we should see, we spent what time we had left in gazing up at the interesting corbeling of the nave and the two hollow, stone pyramids ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... people seemed only to enhance the cool brown emptiness of the church, the rows and rows of empty pews, disengaged prayerbooks and abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe Roustan's day for ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Mother, You can prig something out of the Money-box." But the vigilant Verger has his eye on them. Such is the story told by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—mais c'est ires curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service ... vous savez ces chants et le livre ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rushing at Gert again, when the Bishop's Secretary enters, preceded by a verger, who calls ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... ung bergier en ung verger L'autrhyer en jouant a la bille S'entredisoient, pour abreger: Roger Bergier Legiere Bergiere, C'est trop a la bille joue; ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added, hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and we shall be turned out in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... I gather as I pass one of the tombs on my way to the Chapel of Abbot Islip. Anon the verger will have stepped briskly forward, drawing a deep breath, with his flock well to heel, and will be telling the secrets of the next tomb on his ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass—"Well, sir, who are you? What, what, sir?—hey, sir?" deigned the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... furieux, dans sa course rapide, insultait un ruisseau timide dont l'onde arrosait un verger. "Va, lui dit le ruisseau, sois fier de l'avantage d'offrir a chaque pas quelque nouveau danger. Je serais bien fache d'avoir pour mon partage l'honneur cruel que tu poursuis: tu t'annonces par le ravage; moi, par les biens que ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... that the cathedral of those islands, located in the said city of Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet there—especially the Chinese, who have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... story!" persisted Edith, as the girls giggled. "It happened to my sister. She always plays at the Band of Hope concerts in our village at home, and she goes down to the school to practise her solos on the piano there. Old Thomas is the verger, and he's such a queer old character. He really did think she didn't know how to play properly when she crossed her hands over, and he told her so. It was a tremendous joke in our family, because Maisie considers herself musical. She ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, and speak ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... these frequently rusty keys to the past excite a mirth that lightens the toil with which one rummages through the corridors of time. It would be treason to tell the name of that antique university-chapel where a certain wooden-headed verger was betrayed into the absurdest error; it would be personal to give the name of the waggish friend who made him his innocent butt; but the facts and the joke claim ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... was to be married in October, and in these circumstances Mrs. Gibson, Miss Banks, and Mrs. Church put their banns up. This acted as a specific, and Captain Barber, putting the best face he could on the matter, went and interviewed the verger on his ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... it rest, and it was discussed with peculiar fervor in the Catholic University of Louvaine. Among the doctors who there distinguished themselves in reviving the great contest of the fifth and sixth centuries, were Cornelius Jansen of Holland, and Jean de Verger of Gascony. Both these doctors hated the Jesuits, and lamented the dangerous doctrines which they defended, and advocated the views of Augustine and the Calvinists. Jansen became professor of divinity ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... heart on doing the same as the other children, Owen gave him the twopence, and they afterwards learned that the Easter Offering for that year was one hundred and twenty-seven pounds, which was made up of the amounts collected from the parishioners by the children, the district visitors and the verger, the collection at a special Service, and donations from the feeble-minded old ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... is, haunted by ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful; then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and organ. For ever requiem—repose. Tired with scrubbing the steps of the Prudential Society's ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... voice to a drawl. "In Fighting-green, I believe, sir: they told me Poets' Corner was already bespoke for a turn-up between the Dean and Sall the charwoman, with the Head Verger for bottle-holder—" ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... evening, he was obliged to hold on by the rails, or he would certainly have fallen over into his own pew. Mr. Sliverstone, who has been listening and smiling meekly, says, 'Not quite so bad as that, not quite so bad!' he admits though, on cross-examination, that he was very near falling upon the verger who was following him up to bolt the door; but adds, that it was his duty as a Christian to fall upon him, if need were, and that he, Mr. Sliverstone, and (possibly the verger too) ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... broth. Cities en fete are masked and prankt, and the spring in Italy is like one long Forestieri day. At the church of Eremitani in Padua I was taken to see some Mantegnas at a side-altar while a very devout congregation was celebrating Eastertide, and the verger unlocked a gate and pocketed his tip with undiminished piety. How apt an image of life, these Italian churches—some of us praying and some of us sightseeing! It must be confusing to the celestial bookkeepers to distinguish ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... was dark, and very still—except for a faint noise that came from a far corner of the upper left-hand gallery. The old verger, moving about in felt slippers below, paused now and then, and looked up as the sound grew louder or died away. It was like a mouse nibbling—and yet it ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... The verger is surprised. "Where have you been, sir, not to have heard of the celebrated Dean Maitland?" The great dean! The books he has written, the things he has done! All the world knows Dean Maitland, the greatest preacher in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... on the left is the entrance to St. Edmund's Chapel, while the iron gates just beyond the back of the sedilia mark the junction of the south ambulatory with the south transept. Close behind the verger's desk is a pointed arch with a small tomb below, in which are buried the remains of various princes and princesses, and upon it used to be a golden statue of St. Catherine, the patron saint of Henry III.'s dumb daughter Catherine, the first little one interred in this place. At the back of ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... the boast and glory of this church is that of the famous MARSHAL SAXE; who died at the age of 55, in the year 1755. While I was looking very intently at it, the good verger gently put a printed description of it into my hands, on a loose quarto sheet. I trust to be forgiven if I read only its first sentence:—Cette grande composition reunit aux richesse de l'art des Phidias et des Bouchardon, les traits de la grande poesie." "Take any shape ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Verger, with his gold staff, appeared in the Vestry door. A tall handsome man, he had been in the service of the Cathedral as man and boy for fifty years. He had his private ambitions, the main one being that ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... upon the road by a feeling that it would be well for him to get over those last hours. Thus he found himself in Barchester at eleven o'clock, with nothing on his hands to do; and, having nothing else to do, he went to church. There was a full service at the cathedral, and as the verger marshalled him up to one of the empty stalls, a little spare old man was beginning to chant the Litany. "I did not mean to fall in for all this," said Crosbie, to himself, as he settled himself with his arms on the cushion. But the peculiar charm of that old man's voice soon attracted him;—a ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... of the organ rolled out through the open doors—a grand wedding, with choral service, was in course of celebration. Sally begged Amelius to take her in to see it. They tried the front entrance, and found it impossible to get through the crowd. A side entrance, and a fee to a verger, succeeded better. They obtained space enough to stand on, with a ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... harbour. The weather was magnificent. Several men-of-war of the Channel squadron lay off the port. Excursion steamers came in from England, bringing members of Parliament and miscellaneous British subjects, of the sort once indignantly denounced to me by the little old verger of a Midland cathedral as 'them terrible trippers.' The active and good-natured railway porters at the station were worn out with throngs of travellers pouring in from all the country round about. There was much animation everywhere, but nowhere any ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... represented every important Biblical event from the Creation downwards. We were surprised to find the window so perfect, as the stained-glass windows we had seen elsewhere had been badly damaged. But the verger explained that when the Minster was surrendered to the army of the Commonwealth in the Civil War, it was on condition that the interior should not be damaged nor any of the stained glass broken. We could not explore the city further that ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... not English," I affirmed. "You speak too well." I was piqued. She did not answer. She smiled again and I grew angry. In the cathedral she had smiled at the verger's commendation of particularly abominable restorations, and that smile had drawn me toward her, had emboldened me to offer deferential and condemnatory remarks as to the plaster-of-Paris mouldings. You know how one addresses a young lady ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... The verger had gone, and she was quite alone. Deep in the shadow of a gallery she slid to her knees and hid her face. "O God!" she whispered,—"O God, forgive me!" And again the words seemed torn from her—"O ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with a glowing breast, And some applause is instantly suppressed. Now up the nave of that majestic church A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch. Who is it? no one knows; but by his mien He's the head verger, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... would have been its fate in our hands. Edward the Confessor's shrine, which is chiefly of wood, likewise abounds in these inscriptions, although this was esteemed the holiest shrine in England, so that pilgrims still come to kneel and kiss it. Our guide, a rubicund verger of cheerful demeanor, said that this was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by and witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the Constitution may say. They remind me often of an old verger in Westminster Abbey during the American civil war who told me that "he always knew a government without a head couldn't last." Permanence and peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. That even Mr. Dicey has not been able to escape ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Fort du Pilier, Mindin, Ville Martin; Quiberon, with Fort Penthievre; L'Orient, with its harbor defences; Fort Cigogne; Brest, with its harbor defences; St. Malo, with Forts Cezembre, La Canchee, L'Anse du Verger, and Des Rimains; Cherbourg, with its defensive forts and batteries; Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Cherbourg, Brest, and Rochefort, are great naval depots; and Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux, the principal ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the last time. On the 23rd the steeple fell in and took the roof with it; the workmen had left the church a few minutes before. Even then there was at least one untroubled soul in Guildford. The verger was told that the steeple had fallen. "That cannot be," he replied, "I have ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... organ music, and the hush which pervades the building; and there is much entertainment in various ways if one goes early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in. The costumes and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line, the ability of the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular attendants, of course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is in classing the visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can cull the commoners from the parvenu aristocrats, and put them in their respective places as ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Katy might have the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,— ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... he was waiting in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... In the choir a practice was going on. Some thirty young clergy were going through the responses and canticles of the new service-book, with an elder man, also in clerical dress, directing them. At the entrance of the southern choir aisle stood the senior verger of the Cathedral in his black gown—open-mouthed and motionless, listening ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sacerdotal rank. The places, too, in which they stood, in performing their ministrations, were continually changed, each clergyman being escorted with great ceremony to the desk or pulpit at which he was to perform his part by a verger, who was clothed in an antique dress, and bore an ornamented rod in his hand—the emblem ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... possessed certain privileges, and if he died during the year was buried in pontificalibus. The custom was abolished by Henry VIII. In Salisbury Cathedral visitors are shown a small sarcophagus, which the verger says was made ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 'ere church for forty year, but I never heard a Amen carry so far as Muster GELGE pitches his.' It's something to be appreciated, TOBY. Can't say that House of Commons has taken to me kindly; but toward what may be the close of a Parliamentary career, the tribute of this honest Verger is, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... we saw all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he does not want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "A verger, I suppose," thought Wingfold.—"Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... head, feeling that I was almost committing sacrilege. Unfortunately for me, I dislodged some loose mortar, and I heard this rattle noisily into the chamber below. Then I fled as rapidly as I could down the dim alley-way to the silent sunlit Grand' Place. Here I found the verger, and he admitted me to the great old church, in return for a one-franc piece, and brought me a rush-bottom chair to a choice spot before the wondrous Jube, where I made ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... not ridiculously beyond the ken of a verger, when Doris went to church on Sunday morning, she found ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as if the lord chamberlain was the verger and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... evidence in Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. i. p. 79., that remains of the painted figure of Chaucer were to be seen in Nolleken's times. Smith reports a conversation between the artist and Catlin, so many years the principal verger of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... its preparation, notably a pamphlet by the Rev. Canon W. Greenwell, and the "County of Durham," by J.R. Boyle, F.S.A. Thanks are also due to the authorities of the Cathedral for having freely given permission to make drawings and measurements, and to the late Mr Weatherall, chief verger, for his ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... searchlights from the windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed him, wiping the little ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... ministrations, and contrasting them with the officer-like and disciplinary methods of the army chaplains, genially exclaimed, "But I always say there's not a bit of the gentleman about you, my lord." When Dr. Harold Browne became Bishop of Ely, he asked the head verger some questions as to where his predecessor had been accustomed to sit in the Cathedral, what part he had taken in the services, and so on. The verger proved quite unable to supply the required information, and said ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the building, so that he might get rid of half an hour. He had not often been in cathedrals of late years, and now looked about him with something of awe. He could remember that when he was a child he had been brought here to church, and as he stood in the choir with the obsequient verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through the minutes of a long sermon,—a sermon that had seemed to be very long,—in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb to the ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... vessels. Finding himself at once pursued by the English squadron, he sought shelter in the difficult channels at the mouth of the Vilaine. The English dashed in after him. A partial engagement, which ensued, was unfavorable; and the commander of the French rear-guard, M. St. Andre du Verger, allowed himself to be knocked to pieces by the enemy's guns in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran ashore in the Bay of Le Croisic and burned his own vessel; seven ships remained blockaded in the Vilaine. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the company as sponsors, and being placed in an arm-chair, his shoes were taken off, and his head uncovered. The officiator, vested in a cantab's gown and cap, with a book in one hand and a bell in the other, with a verger on each side, robed, and holding staves (alias broomsticks) and candles, preceded by the suttler, bearing a bowl of punch, entered the parlour, and demanded "If there was an infidel present?" Being answered, "Yes," he asked, "What did he require?" Answer. "To be initiated." Q. "Where ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... Icilius, at any rate!' And straightway had him entered on the Army Books 'as Major Quintus Icilius;' his Majorship is to be dated '10th April, 1758' (to give him seniority); and from and after this '26th May, 1759,' he is to command the late Du Verger's Free-Battalion. All which was done:—the War-Offices somewhat astonished at such advent of an antique Roman among them; but writing as bidden, the hand being plain, and the man an undeniable article. Onward from which time there is always a 'Battalion Quintus' on their Books, instead ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... church-door as if he were dazed. The verger came forward. "My hat, good Stephano, I left it just back of the fair lady." He handed the man a piece of silver and the verger disappeared. Petrarch was sure he could not find the lady—she was only a vision, a vision seen by him alone. He ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... hurried tramp to the main road in a torrent of pouring rain: the long drive in the stuffy chaise, the arrival just in time for the brief—very brief—ceremony in the dark church, with the clergyman in a plain black gown muttering unintelligible words, and the local verger and the church cleaner acting as the witnesses to ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... with a key and not broken open indicated that some one connected with the church was directly or indirectly responsible for the theft, and this idea was strengthened by the fact that it was impossible to tell how the robbers had entered the church. The verger had come in as usual that morning by the north door which he had found locked, and it was subsequently ascertained that all the other doors were locked. Some of you may know the church and remember that it is rather dark, its windows few and high up; indeed, only by one of the baptistry ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... and the sparse congregation had dwindled away, she went round to the vestry and asked Jarper, the cross old verger, if she could see Mr Pendle. Jarper, who took a paternal interest in the curate, and did not like Miss Mosk over much, since she stinted him of his full measure of beer when he patronised her father's hotel, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle, under ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the embrace: it seemed to have no effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside his daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their march to ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... have liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible, and had made springs ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... stand until the door of the pew was shut, when a folding wooden flap was lowered across the aperture, on which he seated himself, with his back resting against the pew door. At the conclusion of the service the Verger always opened the pew door with a sudden "click." Should the Aide-de-Camp be unprepared for this and happen to be leaning against the door, with any reasonable luck he was almost certain to tumble backwards into the aisle, "taking a regular toss," ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... pursued the other, after sipping at his refilled glass, "I lived just by an old church in the City, and I knew the verger, and he used to let me look over the registers. I think that's what gave me my turn for genealogy. I believe there are fellows who get a living by hunting up pedigrees; that would just suit me, if I only knew how ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... absence from home. We tried to discover a solution to the mystery, but failed. One day, however, I showed the Dean the old manuscript in my possession, and was surprised to hear that he knew of a tradition of the appearance, once a year, of the apparition. An old verger, since dead, had declared several times that he had seen it; but, being old and childish, no one took any notice ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the cellar and offered to guard our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Majesty should be informed that the cathedral of these islands has no buildings, ornaments, or suitable equipment for divine worship; nor has it any income or contributions for these purposes, or for sacristan, verger, or other necessary assistants. And being built of wood and straw, as it is, and so poor, weatherbeaten, and deprived of necessities, it is a reproach and a cause of loss to our faith and Christian religion, and to our state and the men who rule the state, and even to the majesty and greatness of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... whom he is protected and defended there; those that secure to him all the Happiness, that Ease, Indolence, and Fulness can furnish out to him: What Pretence has he more than any other Man, to a Thousand a Year for doing nothing, or little more than strutting behind a Verger, and Lording it ever Men honester, and more deserving, than himself, and yet can't he be contented? How scandalous wou'd Conduct like this be in a Soldier; was an Officer, one that eats his Majesty's Bread, and wears his Cloth, to behave thus, what would he ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... into the chapel, into two lines, the attendants of the knights-companions flanked either side of the north aisle; while between them walked the alms-knights, the verger, the prebends of the college, and the officers-of-arms, who proceeded as far as the west door of the choir, where they stopped. A slight pause then ensued, after which the king, the knights-companions, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... VERGER. From the Latin Virga, a Rod. One who carries the mace before the Dean or Canons in a Cathedral, or conducts the congregation to ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... group of ecclesiastics round the Cathedral of Barchester is Trollope's main creation, and is destined to endure for some time. It is all in its way inimitably true and subtly graduated from bishop to dean, from dean to canon, and so on through the whole chapter down to the verger and the porter. The relations of these dignitaries to each other, the relation of their woman-kind to each other, the relation of the clerical world to the town world and to the county world, their conventional etiquette, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of the creed he rejected. The clergy are hypocritical and base enough—as a body we mean—to claim Darwin himself now they have secured his corpse. Who knows that, in another twenty years, the verger or even the Dean of Westminster Abbey, in showing visitors through the place, may not say before a certain tomb, "Here is the last resting-place of that eminent Christian, Charles Darwin. There was a little misunderstanding between him and the clergy while he lived, but it has all passed away ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... went to the Abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, I told the verger I was very anxious to see the likeness of the saint who had walked for six miles with his head in his hand, because I was the nearest living counterpart, having walked a quarter of a mile ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the music and the words acted like a spell on her, and she forgot the passing of time, till, as the half-dozen old men and women tottered away to their homes, she raised her head to see the verger beckoning ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, and to turn the balance of the mind, as it did ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Drolleries and Raileries in the very edifice itself. He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, the Rich Framing of the Relics, and all he came across, seeming no more impressed by their solemnity than the Verger Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. "Surely," I thought, "there must be something wrong in a Faith whose Professors make so light of its ceremonies, and turn Buffoons in the very Temples;" nor could I help murmuring inwardly at that profusion ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... ears to the cry, Leonard did not halt till he reached the great western door of the cathedral, against which he knocked. His first summons remaining unanswered, he repeated it, and a wicket was then opened by a grey-headed verger, with a lantern in his hand, who at first was very angry at being disturbed; but on learning whom the applicant was in search of, and that the case was one of urgent necessity, he admitted that the doctor was in ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... undisturbed till the year 1000, when the Emperor OTTO THE THIRD opened his tomb, and, finding his great predecessor sitting on a marble chair, helped him down. The marble chair is on view in the Cathedral to this day (verger, I mark) to witness to the truth of this narrative. One hundred and sixty-five years later, FREDERICK BARBAROSSA opened the second tomb where OTHO had placed C., and transferred to a marble sarcophagus what, at this date, was left of him. In the following century C. was canonised. Whereupon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... very glad to return it and get back his ten pounds. No burst of applause greeted the works of Jane Austen like that which greeted the far inferior works of Miss Burney. Crevit occulto velut arbor oevo fama. A few years ago, the verger of Winchester cathedral asked a visitor who desired to be shown her tomb, "what there was so particular about that lady that so many people wanted to see where she was buried?" Nevertheless, she lived to feel that "her own dear children" were appreciated, if not by the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... vestry things assumed a brighter tone. There was no lack of witnesses to sign the register. The verger pointed out to them the place, and they wrote their names, as people in such cases do, without stopping to read. Then it occurred to some one that the bride had not yet signed. She stood apart, with her veil still down, and appeared to have been forgotten. Encouraged, she came forward ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... right of chaff to the police force. I would make it universal. I should like to see it introduced into the Church itself. Even the dullest sermon would become entertaining if the verger had the right and the habit of interpolating such remarks as: "Cheese it, Pussyfoot!" or "Ring off, you bleedin' old bore, ring off!" There has been too little of this sort of popular raillery in recent years. The bus-drivers used to ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Berry. "I can smell some of them now. Can you not hear the cheerful din of the iron tires upon the cobbled streets? Can you not see the grateful smile spreading over the beer-sodden features of the cathedral verger, as he pockets the money we pay for the privilege of following an objectionable rabble round an edifice, which we shall remember more for the biting chill of its atmosphere than anything else? And ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... which the two men obtained from a verger, whom they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... care to be in waiting, before the Royal procession entered; but being unknown, and of no high rank, I was not allowed to stand forward among the better people, but ordered back into a corner very dark and dismal; the verger remarking, with a grin, that I could see over all other heads, and must not set my own so high. Being frightened to find myself among so many people of great rank and gorgeous apparel, I blushed at the notice drawn upon me by this uncourteous fellow; and silently fell back into ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
