"Gentry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... son Ralph had lived together at the Priory for the last six-and-twenty years, and the young man had grown up as a Newton within the knowledge of all the gentry around them. The story of his birth was public, and it was of course understood that he was not the heir. His father had been too wise on the son's behalf to encourage any concealment. The son was very popular, and deserved to be so; but it ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Little as we think so now, this opinion, which was afterwards also Defoe's, was not without justification in those days. But Prynne's crusade did not stop at theatres; and Heylin's account reveals the feeling of contemporaries: "Neither the hospitality of the gentry in the time of Christmas, nor the music in cathedrals and the chapels royal, nor the pomps and gallantries of the Court, nor the Queen's harmless recreations, nor the King's solacing himself sometimes in masques and dances could escape the venom ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... to her own eyes than to any others. The farmers and their wives about the place would declare that Miss Isabel was the finest young woman in South Wales. With the farmers and their wives she was on excellent terms, knowing all their ways, and anxious as to all their wants. With the gentry around she concerned herself but little. Her uncle's habits were not adapted to the keeping of much company, and to her uncle's habits she had fitted herself altogether. It was on this account that neither did she know the young men around, nor did they know her. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... certain evening there was to be a grand wedding festival among the colored gentry on a farm about 6 miles from Uncle Dick's residence. He was, of course called upon to officiate as master of ceremonies. He donned his long-tailed blue coat, having carefully polished the glittering gilt buttons; then raised his immense shirt collar, which he considered essential to his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... English origin, but we have been unable to ascertain the period of its first establishment in the island. The parochial register of St. Peter-Port extends only to the year 1563, soon after which time it contains the name of Philip Brock. By "Robson's Armorial Bearings of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland," eight families of the name of Brock appear to bear different arms, one of which was borne by all the Brocks of Guernsey—viz. azure, a fleur de lis or, on a chief argent a lion pass. guard. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... think his son will hold him for a day or two," replied Cameron. "Now you give me a full half hour. I shall look in upon the boy, you know. But don't be longer. I don't as a rule linger among these Piegan gentry, you know, and a lengthened ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... numbers of the nobles and high families throughout the realm to prepare for changing sides; for it was the fact, throughout the whole course of these wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, that a large proportion of the nobility and gentry, and great numbers of other adventurers, who lived in various ways on the public, stood always ready at once to change sides whenever there was a prospect that another side was coming into power. Then there were, in such a case as this, great ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with everything at Blossholme, a place that Time has touched but lightly. The fields, or many of them, bear the same names and remain identical in their shape and outline. The old farmsteads and the few halls in which reside the gentry of the district, stand where they always stood. The glorious tower of the Abbey still points upwards to the sky, although bells and roof are gone, while half-a-mile away the parish church that was there before it—having been rebuilt indeed ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... assumed by the Virginians that they have descended from a superior race, and this may be true as regards many families whose ancestors were of Norman descent; but it is not true of the mass of her population; and for one descendant from the nobility and gentry of the mother country, there are thousands of pure Anglo-Saxon blood. It was certainly true, from the character and abilities of her public men, in her colonial condition and in the earlier days of the republic, she had a right ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... sudden revolutionary idea? He concentrates on it like all get-out. Then somebody else bursts into the newspapers with the same identical idea, which in turn brings out hordes of claims to the same idea by countless other people. It's no new thing to writers and such-like gentry. They know that when they get such an idea they must act on it at once or somebody else will, because their thoughts on the subject have gone forth and impinged upon the mental receiving sets of others. Well, ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... supposed infirmities excited general commiseration everywhere, and numerous little acts of kindness did I receive. I wandered about the neighbouring towns in the vicinity for a long time, being loth to leave it for several reasons; in fact I quite established a connection amongst the farmers and gentry, who employed me in fabricating little articles of fancy work and repairing all sorts of things most diverse in their natures and uses. At one farm-house I mended a tea-pot and a ploughshare, and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... advantages, and for misery, turbulence, and crime. A Government, to command the obedience of the people by its firmness, and their confidence by a marked consideration for their feelings and welfare; a gentry, united with them as their leaders, protectors, and friends; and a Church, winning them to a purer faith by the unobtrusive display of benefits and excellences: all these blessings might have been its ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... fact, refused rent, retired across the way into a native house, and, plying in his boat, beat the remotest quarters of the isle for provender. He found us pigs—I could not fancy where—no other pigs were visible; he brought us fowls and taro; when we gave our feast to the monarch and gentry, it was he who supplied the wherewithal, he who superintended the cooking, he who asked grace at table, and when the king's health was proposed, he also started the cheering with an English hip-hip-hip. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... travelled gentleman of an estate larger than common. When I say that Governor George Clinton used to stop occasionally, and taste my father's Madeira, I do not wish to boast of being classed with those who then composed the gentry of the state. To this, in that day, we could hardly aspire, though the substantial hereditary property of my family gave us a local consideration that placed us a good deal above the station of ordinary yeomen. Had we lived in one of the large towns, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lestrade, as we parted. "Hill knows all these gentry, and he will give a name to him. You'll find that my theory of the Mafia will work out all right. But I'm sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way in which you laid hands upon him. I don't ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... confederacy between him and his clothes, to be made a puppy: view him well and you will say his gentry sits as ill upon him as if he had bought it with his penny. He hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits; and to furnish each mistress would make him run besides his wits, if he had any to lose. He accounts bashfulness ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... did not mention anyone by name, however. He went on to talk of the town tradespeople, of the public-school boys, who they thought might come in useful if matters were to come to fisticuffs. Nejdanov also inquired about the gentry of the neighbourhood, and learned from Markelov that there were five or six possible young men—among them, but, unfortunately, the most radical of them was a German, "and you can't trust a German, you know, he is sure to deceive you sooner or ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... greatness is uneven; The cricket and high throne alike near heaven.— Now, daughters, you that like to branches spread, And give best shadow to a private house, Be comforted, my girls; your hopes stand fair: Virtue breeds gentry, ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... tax to the King[1]." These calumnies were not peculiar to Ribblesdale, but unhappily were diffused over all the nation, in which a vast body of people were grown up, who, like Morgan, had acquired wealth, and were ambitious of equal consequence with the hereditary gentry and nobility, by whom they found themselves despised for their ignorance and coarse manners, and therefore endeavoured to supplant them. Such men were every-where fast friends to the Parliament, and by their freer intercourse with the common people, whose habits ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Post," all my visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder you took it up so seriously. All my intention was but to make a little sport with such public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c.—gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made free with these cattle, where was the harm? 'twould have been but giving a polish to lampblack, not nigrifying a negro primarily. After all, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... village. The men were quartered in the houses of the villagers, and the officers took rooms at the inn. Except when engaged in expeditions to capture stills—of which they succeeded in finding nearly a score—there was not much to do at Ballyporrit. All the gentry resident within a wide circle called upon them, and invitations to dinners and dances flowed in rapidly. As one officer was obliged to remain always in the village with the detachment, Ralph seldom availed himself ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... near her, her mother's relatives, and even Sir Jeoffry's own, having cut themselves off early from them—Wildairs Hall and its master being no great credit to those having the misfortune to be connected with them. The neighbouring gentry had gradually ceased to visit the family some time before her ladyship's death, and since then the only guests who frequented the place were a circle of hunting, drinking, and guzzling boon companions of Sir Jeoffry's own, who joined him in all his ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Miss Edgeworth retrospectively, when England was despatching her armies all over the world, she had no troops to spare for the defence of Ireland then threatened with a French invasion; and the principal nobility and gentry embodied themselves volunteers for the defence of the country. The Duke of Leinster and Lord Charlemont were at the head of the 'corps which in perfect order and good discipline rendered their country respectable.' The friends ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... took an indignant delight. Behind him, extending back to the remotest past when Bowling Green was the centre of fashion, always there had been a Paliser, precisely as there has always been a Livingston. These people and a dozen others formed the landed gentry—a gentry otherwise landed since. But not the Paliser clan. The original Paliser was very wealthy. All told he had a thousand dollars. Montagu Paliser, the murdered man's father, had stated casually, as though offering unimportant ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... his Cyclops with the idea of a forge. These gentry would be the very last people in the world to flit across my mind whilst gazing at the forge from the bottom of the dark lane. The truth is, they are highly unpoetical fellows, as well they may be, connected ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were assur'd to live here ever; What poor end had you, in this choice? in what Deserve I your contempt? my house, and honours At all parts equal yours, my fame as fair, And not to praise my self, the City ranks me In the first file of her most hopefull Gentry: But Champernel is rich, and needs a nurse, And not your gold: and add to that, he's old too, His whole estate in likelihood to descend Upon your Family; Here was providence, I grant, but in a Nobleman base thrift: No Merchants, nay, no Pirats, ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... were happening at once—more, Tony was sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a twelve-month or in Salem in a long lifetime. For here, by their garb, were people of every nation on earth, Chinamen, Turks, Spaniards, and many more, mixed with a parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters, and tall personages in parsons' gowns who stalked through the crowd with an air of mastery, a string of parasites at their heels. And all these people seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, watching ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... rude, and by the negligence of their manners and language, are not only offensive, but inattentive and indelicate. This is so much the more provoking to them, as our Imperial courtiers and Imperial placemen do not think themselves fashionable without imitating our military gentry, who take Napoleon for their exclusive model and chief ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... He was a Catholic, he undertook to effect a counter-reformation. He would restore the national hierarchy to the position from which it had been dragged down and trampled under the feet of the Cromwellians. He would give back to the Irish gentry and nobility their estates; and to effect this glorious revolution, he relied upon the faith and valour of the Irish. The Protestant militia were disarmed, a Catholic army was formed; the corporations were thrown open to Catholics. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... to take and keep a moderate fruitfulness; so that Virgil, if now alive, might make additions to his Georgicks, from the Plough-practice in this county. As for the natives thereof, generally they are dexterous in any employment, and Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of the gentry: They were all born courtiers ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... name Hermes, Hermeias, is but a transliteration of the Sanscrit Sarameyas, under which he appears in the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house, is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... them gents. They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is, that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, with ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... brought Germain a shock. Since his experiences at the "Holy Ghost" he had progressively arrived at the conviction that the only parallel to the distinction of caste between the hereditary gentry and all other persons as then drawn in France was the distinction between the heavens above and the earth beneath; the distance between was considered simply immeasurable and impassable except by the transmigration ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... one would reasonably suppose it to have been. The cream used to be at least an inch thick, and so yellow; and the milk itself had a peculiar and exquisite flavor—perhaps the best way to describe it, is to say it tasted as lilies smell. The gentry all about were eager to buy it, and willing to pay a good price for it. Drusilla used to go around to supply her customers, nights and mornings, a bright, shining milk-pail in each hand, and one on her head. She had learned to carry herself so steadily in consequence that she ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... which they had attained, the younger ones passing their elders in cultivation, and every discomfort of change of position felt, though not acknowledged. Even the mother, lady as she was by birth, had only belonged to the second-rate class of gentry, and while elevated by wealth, was lowered by connection, and not having either mind or strength enough to stand on her own ground, trod with an ill-assured foot on that to which ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... venture once more into their presence, as the poor widow did to the unjust judge, to try what she could do with them for my liberty, before they went forth of the town. The place where she went to them was to the Swan Chamber, where the two judges, and many justices and gentry of the country, were in company together. She then, coming into the chamber with abashed face, and a trembling heart, began her errand to them in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seat, which is in the hands of God, and is accountable unto none save Him?—'Little esteemed the advice of the King's faithful councillors'—to wit, the runagates that writ this paper. 'Laboured to sow dissension betwixt the gentry and the commoners!' 'Tis the enclosures they point at, I reckon. What! was he the only man that allowed them? and who could have thought the commons had been such dolts? Now let us see the names of these wise, good, and faithful councillors. 'R. Rich, W. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... pension from the city of London, from several of the nobility and gentry, and particularly from Mr. Sutton the founder of the Charterhouse.[5] In his last sickness he often repented of the profanation of scripture in his plays. He died the 16th of August 1637, in the 63d year of his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... at that university are gentlemen of learning and varied attainments; and are, without one exception that I can call to mind, men who would shed a grace upon, and do honour to, any society in the civilised world. Many of the resident gentry in Boston and its neighbourhood, and I think I am not mistaken in adding, a large majority of those who are attached to the liberal professions there, have been educated at this same school. Whatever the defects of American universities ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... of this new writ of inquiry had created a considerable sensation in the town, and the rehearing of the famous cause, which had produced a discussion in the Court above, had excited a considerable interest amongst the gentry of the profession; but as it was understood that I should not attend, and that it would go off, as a matter of course, undefended, or at least unresisted by me, the interest that it had at first excited had completely subsided, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... very next to TYBURN,—a well chosen habitation for such an abandoned traitor: A step or two conveys him to that fatal spot, where the most guilty of all the miserable beings who have ever suffered, was perfectly innocent compared with him.—He lives despised by the nobility and gentry, and execrated by the people at large—countenanced by none excepting their Britannic and Satanic Majesties, and such of their adherents, respectively, who are looking for promotion under their ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... a manner cast in one mould, and all different from the citizens of the principal state and from one another. We may go further than this. Not only nations, but classes of men, are contrasted with each other. What can be more different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and the money-making dwellers in the east? From them I will pass to Billingsgate and Wapping. What more unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... will take no prisoners. I will kill my enemies in the field; and then you can preach as much clemency as you please: I shall never have to fight them again. And now, with your leave, I will see these gentry off the premises. ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... stationer had suffered somewhat in temper since the reader saw him last, three months ago. The young gentry for whom he catered were not the "apples of his eyes" they had been. Not that he was at open war with them, but he ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the fourteenth, In front of the Academy a strong-lunged and insistent tribe of gentry, known as ticket speculators, were reaping a rich harvest. They represented a beacon light of hope to many tardy patrons of the evening's entertainment, especially to the man who had forgotten his wife's injunction "to be sure to buy the tickets on the way down town, dear, and get them ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... obtain Irish aid. On September 1st he gained his first victory at Tippermuir, near Perth, on which he had marched with his Highland host. From Perth he marched on Aberdeen, gaining some reinforcements from the northern gentry, and in particular from the Earl of Airlie. Once again Montrose fought a battle which delivered the city of Aberdeen into his power (September 13th), but now he was unwilling or unable to protect the captured town, which was cruelly ravaged. From Aberdeen Montrose proceeded ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... them that His Majesty, in his boundless pity and compassion, had graciously permitted them to resume their journey. The only exception to this permission was that of a few foreigners, who were detained, lest there might be spies among them. Against gentry of this sort, His Majesty's government had to be particularly on their guard. The country was swarming with them. They generally pretended to be news correspondents, but in reality they were paid agents of the ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry, and they received him as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... understand the institutions of the South, it is first necessary to know something about the dominating class of people. The planters, numbering in 1860 about 384,750 and owning 2,308,518 slaves,[2] were first in the social scale and controlled affairs. "They included an aristocracy or gentry reflecting distinctions of colonial government, and expanding under influences that prevented an amalgamation of widely ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the History of England from the accession of King James II. down to a time within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and the title ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... succeeding to his father's office. All these advantages moved Squire Stubbs, as much as the ruddy brow and manly form of the suitor influenced his daughter, to abate somewhat in the article of their gentry; and so the match was concluded. None seemed more gratified than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed enormous. In Holinshed's Chronicle of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande, published in 1577, there is a chapter on the "maner of buylding and furniture of our Houses," wherein is recorded the costliness of the stores of plate and tapestry that were found in the dwellings of nobility and gentry and also in farm-houses, and even in the homes of "inferior artificers." Verily the spoils of the monasteries and churches must have been fairly evenly divided. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... was a sportsman, and in his apprenticeship used to frequent Barnet races, keeps a high chaise, with a brace of seasoned geldings. During the summer months, the principal passion and employment of Sam's life is to visit, in this vehicle, the most eminent seats of the nobility and gentry in different parts of the kingdom, with his wife and some select friends. By these periodical excursions Sam gratifies many important purposes. He assists the several pregnancies of his wife; he shows his chaise to the best advantage; he indulges his insatiable curiosity for finery, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... be thought to recommend to our English nobility and gentry to become as great lawyers as Sulpicius; though he, together with this character, sustained likewise that of an excellent orator, a firm patriot, and a wise indefatigable senator; but the inference which arises from the story is this, that ignorance of the laws of the land hath ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... The resident gentry sat thunderstruck. Did he expect they could call? (This was the gentler sex.) Plutocracy might jostle aristocracy into the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... for his poor old mother and brought her to the wedding, which lasted nine days and nine nights, every night better than the other. All the lords and ladies and gentry of Ireland were at the wedding. I was at it, too, and got brogues, broth and slippers of bread and came ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... captured,—just as I happened to pass. The knaves landed from a boat in broad daylight, unaware that Charles Town has mended its loose habit toward such gentry." ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... gentlemen, but, judging by their looks, cut-throats every one of them, and without any ceremony would have stuck their long daggers into the English officers had they dared. But the sight of the yardarm of a man-of-war, not to speak of her guns, has a wonderful effect in keeping such gentry in order. Along the decks were arranged a party of ladies and gentlemen, most of them jet black, dressed out in a variety of fanciful costumes. Some in pink and checked shirts, others with blankets over their shoulders, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... her attorneys and Tipstaves, she enlists and operates down even to the populace. At Rennes in Brittany, where the historical Bertrand de Moleville is Intendant, it has passed from fatal continual duelling, between the military and gentry, to street-fighting; to stone-volleys and musket-shot: and still the Edicts remained unregistered. The afflicted Bretons send remonstrance to Lomenie, by a Deputation of Twelve; whom, however, Lomenie, having heard them, shuts up in the Bastille. A second larger ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he. 'I've saved money. We'll take a public-house and I'll make a lady of you. I'm not a purse-proud ungrateful fellow like Jeames—who's such a snob ('such a SNOB' was his very words!) that I'm ashamed to wait on him—who's the laughing stock of all the gentry and the housekeeper's room too—try a MAN,' says he—'don't be taking on about such a humbug ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... John Skyd, "save that it is between one and two hundred miles—more or less—inland among the mountains, and that its name, which is Dutch, means the River of Baboons, its fastnesses being filled with these gentry." ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... mixed up in the diet. So, bein' of a practical mind then, in my 'teens, same as I be to-day, I stopped behind and asked him—takin' care to look bright and intelligent—who might be this Jane he'd allooded to. If you'll believe me, it turned out to be no person at all, but a way the gentry have of sayin' they're uncomfortable; same as, through some writin' chap or other, all the papers was talkin' of your belly as your ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the prefect. "But the public prosecutor (those gentry always are suspicious) does not strike me as being particularly well disposed toward him. He holds one bit of evidence which goes rather against our friend—a threatening letter to Orlanduccio, in which he suggests ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... nowadays," she admitted. "After the war, our gentry and aristocracy who were not wealthy were taxed out of existence. The profiteers, and the men who had made fortunes during the war, took their place. It has made the country ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... black-coated gentry must fight their own battle. The people will not arm if abolition is to be the watchword. I for one will not strike a blow if it be not understood that the institutions of the ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... those of the gentry who were Commonwealth's men, and who chafe sorely under the loss of office and disfavor into which they ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... for the most part, trades-people from the little towns—San Mateo, Redwood City—or the wives of the proletariat—or the servants of the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sign of the times, and the cause of a great increase of drunkenness among the upper classes. The habits and manners prevalent in London spread into the country. As the distinction between the nobility, who, roughly speaking, had been the frequenters of the capital, and the minor gentry, who had lived almost entirely on their own estates, gradually disappeared, the distinction between town ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... I had been travelling by mixed trains, where I might meet with Dutch widows and little German gentry fresh from table. I had been but a latent emigrant; now I was to be branded once more, and put apart with my fellows. It was about two in the afternoon of Friday that I found myself in front of Emigrant House, with more than a hundred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moscow beggars carry no pouches, and do not ask for alms. Generally, when they meet or pass you, they merely try to catch your eye; and, according to your look, they beg or refrain from it. I know one such beggar who belongs to the gentry. The old man walks slowly along, bending forward every time he sets his foot down. When he meets you, he rests on one foot and makes you a kind of salute. If you stop, he pulls off his hat with its cockade, and bows and begs: if you do not halt, he pretends ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... ef you plaze; I am glad to see you are interested in my goods, and I will now show them to you. I am an honest man, and so was my father before me. Father and son, we have sold scarabs to the crowned heads of Europe and to the nobility and gentry of England, Scotland and Ireland—think of that, Mr. Bayne! I would not cheat you; I am too proud to do that, and if I told you a lie my father would turn in his grave! There were twenty-six dynasties of Pharaohs, and each ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... sailed with the fleet down Channel, leaving Lord Henry Seymour with three men of war and a squadron of privateers to watch Dunkirk. At Plymouth the admiral found Drake with forty ships, all except one raised and sent to sea at the expense of himself and the gentry and merchants of the west counties. The weather was wild, as it had been all the winter. Howard with the great ships lay at anchor in the Sound, rolling heavily, while the smaller craft went for shelter into the mouth of the river. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... ancient nation that was conceived near the middle of the 10th century. Its golden age occurred in the 16th century. During the following century, the strengthening of the gentry and internal disorders weakened the nation. In a series of agreements between 1772 and 1795, Russia, Prussia, and Austria partitioned Poland amongst themselves. Poland regained its independence in 1918 only to be overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. It became a Soviet ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... source that some Imperialist and Navy League cranks have organized a gigantic hoax by way of opposition to the Disarmament Demonstration. If the curious breakdown of communication with the east coast does prove to be the work of political fanatics, we think, and hope, that these gentry may shortly be convinced, in a manner they are never likely to forget, that, even in this land of liberty, the crank is not allowed to interfere with the transaction ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... come to such decision upon them, as it thought fit, without injuring the whole country. But it is not the same as regards measures concerning the magistracy, the police, and education. Well, suppose one fine day a Commune should say, "Magistrates? I don't want any magistrates; these black-robed gentry are no use to me; let others nourish these idlers, who send brave thieves and honest assassins to the galleys; I love assassins and I honour thieves, and more, I choose that the culprits should judge the magistrates of the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... accordingly rode away to "a little town called Rugby," where at the bailiffs house they found nine more worthies, who had finished their supper, and were playing cards. One of these gentry was John Winter—the half-brother of Robert and Thomas,—whose mother was the daughter of Queen Mary's redoubtable Secretary, Sir John Bourne [Note 4]. He was either very simple or very clever, and at this distance of time it is not easy ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... bewitched to him; are all in love with him! My sister, Louisa, does not scruple to tell him so, in her letter! But she is one of these high-flyers. Nor can I for the soul of me persuade myself that, family pride excepted, she—ay, she herself, my she, would not prefer him to me. But these gentry are all so intolerably prudent that, talk to them of passions, and they answer they must not have any. Oh, no! They ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... interest taken in them by, the inhabitants of the towns through which the principal coach routes passed. Royston had its full share of such associations, the institution coloured all our local life, from the pauper or cripple who begged of the coach passengers, to the local gentry who were expecting their newspaper. There was thus always something exhilarating and stirring about the arrival of the stage coach. It had within it so many possibilities. It might contain some great "Parliament man," runaway lovers, or stealers ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... to see that they don't, Sir Henry. It is just the kind of case he will glory in; and if Black Riot is all that you believe her, you'll carry off the Derby in spite of these enterprising gentry who—Hallo! here's the motor. Clap on your hat, Sir Henry, and come along. Mind the step! Kensington Palace Gardens, Lennard—and as fast ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Pope and Philip, with a special view to the reception which an invading force would meet with, and it goes into great detail. The people of the towns—London, Bristol, &c.—were, he says, generally heretics. The peers, the gentry, their tenants, and peasantry, who formed the immense majority of the population, were almost universally Catholics. But this writer distinguishes properly among Catholics. There were the ardent impassioned Catholics, ready to be confessors and ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... For haunts in which my boyhood trifled; The level lawn, the trickling brook, The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled: The church is larger than before: You reach it by a carriage entry: It holds three hundred people more: And pews are fitted up for gentry. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and scarcely a day passed without her making some wonderful bargains. For a mere trifle she had bought a 'gude pot, only upon inspection it turned out to be miserably leaky. A nice palliasse, which on more intimate acquaintance proved alive with gentry with whom the most republican body would not wish to be on intimate terms. Jim was always joking the old lady upon her bargains, greatly to the edification of Betty Fraser, a black-eyed Highland girl, who was Mistress Waddel's prime minister in the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... a claim to an occasional bonus rather than a right to influence legislation. Practically, therefore, parliament might be taken to represent what might be called 'public opinion,' for anything that deserved to be called public opinion was limited to the opinions of the gentry and the more intelligent part of the middle classes. There was no want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and Junius, when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the political movement, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of lawyers to John Tarwater was like the application of a mustard plaster. For, in his judgment, they were the gentry, more than any other, who had skinned him out of the broad Tarwater acres. So, at the time of his Patagonian fever, the very thought of so drastic a remedy was sufficient to cure him. He quickly demonstrated he was not crazy by shaking the fever ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Chamber," his stern enforcement of the statutes against livery and maintenance, and his spasmodic attempt to redress the evils of enclosures,[327] probably contributed as much as his arrogance and ostentation to the ill-favour in which he stood with the nobility and landed gentry. From the beginning there were frequent rumours of plots to depose him, and his enemies abroad often talked of the universal hatred which he inspired in England. The classes which benefited by his justice complained bitterly of the impositions required to support his spirited foreign policy. Clerics ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... soon got clear of. At this time 4 Canoes came off to us full of People, and keept for sometime under our stern threatning of us all the while. As I did not know but what I might be obliged to send our Boats ahead to sound, I thought these Gentry would be as well out of the way. I order'd a Musquet shott to be fir'd close to one of them, but this they took no notice of. A 4 Pounder was then fir'd a little wide of them; at this they began to shake their Spears and Paddles at ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... born gentlemen and men of property, and were suspected of a desire to preserve their consideration and their estates. The desertion in France was to aid an abominable sedition, the very professed principle of which was an implacable hostility to nobility and gentry, and whose savage war-whoop was, "A l'Aristocrate!"—by which senseless, bloody cry they animated one another to rapine and murder; whilst abetted by ambitious men of another class, they were crushing everything respectable and virtuous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Lincoln in conversation with several leather-legging gentry like himself, whom I knew from their costume and appearance to be backwoodsmen. All at once these saturnine characters commenced moving about the room, and entering into conversation with men whom they had not ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... performers have a scale of an octave and a half, and sometimes two octaves, and they perform melodies and even harmonies with something like precision, and with an effect which, to give it its due praise, supplies a very tolerable caricature of the Scotch bagpipes. These gentry are not much in favour either with the genuine lovers of music or the lovers of quiet, and they know the fact perfectly well. They hang about the crowded haunts of the common people, and find their harvest in a vulgar jollification, or an extempore 'hop' at the door of a suburban public-house ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... The French checked the system of granting asylum to these vagabonds altogether. But on the restoration of the Papal Government a strong interest was made to allow asylums, as formerly, to criminals. Many of these gentry began to think that the good old times were come again, wherein they could commit with impunity the most atrocious crimes; and no less than eighty persons were in prison at one time for murder. This opened ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... communication of thought is practically impossible between people who are neighbours? How much would it not contribute to the national alertness, to national efficiency, if the local dialects could be swept away and the peasantry and gentry of all England—nay of the British Isles—talk together easily in one tongue? It is impossible not to believe that this ease in the interchange of ideas must in itself contribute greatly to uniformity of thought and character ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Author with the highest Expressions of Zeal for his Service, protesting he would communicate his Capacity to his Correspondents all over Europe, which would be the Means to advance his Fortune, especially amongst the English Quality and Gentry who travelled Italy. The intent of all those fine Promises was to get the two Sets of Blocks into his Hands, which he expected as a Present for the Use of the two original Drawings, from which these Prints were taken; but this not being ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... dozen honest gentlemen dined merrily." There were the heavy dinner-parties at my grandfather's, the regulation allowance of port a bottle per man, but more ad libitum. And there was the yearly "Soham Fair," on July 12, when my grandfather kept open house for the parsons or other gentry and their womankind, who flocked in from miles around. On one such occasion my father had to squire a new-comer about the fair. The wife of a retired City alderman, she was enormously stout, and had chosen to appear in a low dress. ("Hillo, bor! what are yeou a-dewin' with the Fat Woman?"—one ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... asked one of the crowd, "or is she only frightened? Dear! there's white she looks, there's delicate the gentry are!" ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... wiping the sweat from his forehead, "here is someone else who requires my services. These gentry are becoming imprudent, but, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... man ought always to do that, whether he likes it or not); but I say, if it was not that it would be my duty to help my fellow-creature, I would scarcely be at the trouble of stepping over the threshold to serve them, they are such a set of cross, good-for-nothing gentry. I declare, it was but as we came home to dinner now, that we saw Master Sam throwing sticks and stones at Dame Frugal's ducks, for the sake of seeing them waddle; and then, when they got to the pond, he sent his dog in after them to ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... Honey is delicious and desirable, yet Nature over-burthened with too great a Quantity, Surfeits, and begets a loathing of it. Wherefore to Conclude, I commend them as they are, viz. Suitable Recreations for the Gentry of England, and others, wherein to please and delight themselves. And so not doubting this Work will be accepted, as it was well meant to serve my Country-Men, I take leave to ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... before last. You cherish the memory of the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 and 1894; that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! You set great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you to stay with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite in exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for your net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that poor little builder at ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... came forth in print, which was in the year 1683, one William Ayrs, of Watford in Hertfordshire, a Friend, and an acquaintance of mine, who was both an apothecary and barber, being acquainted with divers of the gentry in those parts, and going often to some of their houses to trim them, took one of these books with him when he went to trim Sir Benjamin Titchborn of Rickmansworth, and presented it to him, supposing ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... introduction, Mr. Carrington would have been welcome, for though Mr. Bisset's sway over Keldale House was by this time almost despotic, he had begun to find that despotism has its lonely side, and to miss "the gentry." With an introduction, Mr. Carrington quickly discovered that Mr. Bisset and the mansion he supervised were alike ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... to him by the most beautiful creature they could find within their walls; it was the daughter of Antony Voland, one of themselves. The virtuous young girl was so frightened at the king's glances and the signs he made to his gentry, evidently alluding to her, that, on returning home, she got some burning sulphur and placed herself for a long while under the influence of its vapor, in order to destroy the beauty which made her run the risk of being only too pleasing to the king. Francis, who was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... some of her wings, and thus secure her, rather than trust to such slippery gentry," I thought, as I elevated one of ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... mourn over her because she is working too hard, or pity her because she is obliged to work; has to wear common clothes, and live in narrow rooms, and pass on her poor weary feet the grand carriages of the Richmond gentry, who are not a bit more well-born or well-educated than she; who never take the least notice of her, except sometimes to peer curious at the desk where she sits in the shop-corner, and wonder who "that young person with the rather pretty curls" ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... adviser sent a servant out to meet him, beseeching him by no means to enter the city. "Go tell your master," said Luther, "I will enter Worms though as many devils should be there as tiles upon its houses!" And he did enter, with nobles, cavaliers, and gentry for his escort, and attended through the streets by a larger concourse than had greeted the entry ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Mansoul as this sweet- natured gentleman would, the town was in most happy condition. Now there were no jars, no chiding, no interferings, no unfaithful doings in all the town of Mansoul; every man in Mansoul kept close to his own employment. The gentry, the officers, the soldiers, and all in place observed their order. And as for the women and children of the town, they followed their business joyfully; they would work and sing, work and sing, from morning till night: so that quite through the town of Mansoul ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... by Miss Caprioletta and Mr Foster, which gave rise to much speculation among the Welsh gentry, as to who this Mr Foster could be; some of the more learned among them secretly resolving to investigate most profoundly the antiquity of the name of Foster, and ascertain what right a person so denominated ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... The term 'farmer' is applied exclusively to the agriculturist, and a squatter would be very much offended if you called him a sheep-farmer. The squatting class in Australia correspond to the landed gentry of England. The farmer is usually legally known as a 'selector,' because under the Land Act he selects a piece of ground perhaps in the middle of the squatter's leasehold and purchases it on credit for ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... sometimes. These gentry are much exercised in their minds by my letters about them, and some of them fly out at me very much as bumble-bees do at one who stirs up their nest. For instance, I received, not long ago, from my good friends, Messrs. Cauldwell & Whitney, an anonymous letter to them, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of the Wheatsheaf Inn was the scene this evening of a lively discussion. Some thought the old gentleman, arrived that day from London, to be a new kind of commercial traveler, with designs upon the gardens of the gentry; others that he was a sort of scientific collector; others, again, that he was a private detective; and since there was no evidence at all, good or bad, in support of any one of these suggestions, a very pretty ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... of our nobility are generally beneath all architectural criticism; and it has been pertinently observed that "an educated foreigner is quite astonished when shown the residences of our higher nobility and gentry in the British capital. He has heard speak of some great nobleman, with a revenue equal to that of a principality. He feels a curiosity to look at his palace, and he is shown a plain, common, brick house of forty or fifty feet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their follies. But, as ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... have destroyed the freedom of parliament; you have done your best to shut the door of the House of Commons to the property, the birth, the rank, the wisdom of the people, and have flung it open to their passions and their follies. You have disfranchised the gentry, and the real patriotism of the nation: you have agitated and exasperated the mob, and thrown the balance of political power into the hands of that class (the shopkeepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... with—especially when you come to turn them out of their house and home, as they consider it. It is true, they have the pre-emption right—that is, they may purchase, if they please, and send you to seek a location elsewhere; but this is a privilege those gentry rarely please to indulge in—being universally too ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it, or at least can converse in it. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... sovereign, however, who increased the tolls of the Sound, counterpoised the bad effects of this measure, by the encouragement he gave to manufactures and commerce; in this he was seconded by the Danish gentry, who began to carry on merchandize and factorage themselves, and also established manufactories. Copenhagen at this time was the staple for all Danish merchandize, especially corn, butter, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... by high almighty Jove, By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath, By her untimely tears, her husband's love, By holy human law, and common troth, By heaven and earth, and all the power of both, That to his borrow'd bed he make retire, And stoop to honour, not ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... drew his descent from the landed gentry of England, and had relatives among the aristocracy. The name was originally Rodeney. We are told by his son-in-law and biographer that the Duke of Chandos, a connection by marriage, obtained the command of the Royal yacht for ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Davis, you sees a good bit of the gentry, too, in your way, when you goes in to houses, as it might be the Squire's for to put up a shelf, or mend a window, and ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... Court, in which is the Royal Almonry office, is shown in old maps. Strype speaks of it as a "very handsome large Court, with new buildings fit for gentry of Repute." It was built in 1702, and is supposed to have been called after the father of Secretary Craggs, who was a friend of Pope and Addison. Woodfall, the publisher, had a West End office in the court, and Romney the painter lived there. ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... and costermongers, poets and engineers—and to found my theory of life on less deniable data. A fig for your ghosts! What! Here have I been living and working and thinking nigh half a lifetime, and only now these gentry should deign to give me cognisance of their existence. Dame Nature would have indeed treated me scurvily had she reduced me to such absurd oracles. The phenomena seem so rare and so irregular, the vast majority of mankind having ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... received them half with smiles and half as a joke; the last time, however, he scolded me. The street lads had also heard from their parents of my peculiar turn of mind, and that I was in the habit of going to the houses of the gentry. I was therefore one day pursued by a wild crowd of them, who shouted after me derisively, "There runs the play-writer!" I hid myself at home in a corner, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... most in the world was to prove (the picture Olive had held up from the first) that a woman could live on persistently, clinging to a great, vivifying, redemptory idea, without the help of a man. To testify to the end against the stale superstition—mother of every misery—that those gentry were as indispensable as they had proclaimed themselves on the house-tops—that, she passionately protested, was as inspiring a thought in the present poignant crisis as it ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the same meetings. There were county assemblies for social and judicial purposes, but in each a few prominent people in the neighborhood managed affairs and perpetuated their privileges, as among the landed gentry of England. It was in these ways that popular government continued along the path of material and social progress in the North, while in the South a plantation aristocracy conservatively maintained its colonial ideas and ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... mean, who want live Rats wherewith to try their dogs. Amongst mine I have the honour to include clients of highest rank and position, barristers, magistrates, solicitors and a host of sporting gentry. If the Rat-catcher's efforts commend themselves to such gentlemen, and he always maintains a respectable appearance, he will obtain some very nice outings in the country. Oft-times a party of gentlemen have sent for me in the ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... national movement against the exclusive and dominant English caste. The conduct of the Dublin Parliament made his dream a reality. At once the ultra-Protestant traders of the North clasped hands with the Catholic gentry and peasants of the Centre and South. This unheard-of union was destined to lead Pitt on to a legislative experiment which will concern us later. Here we may notice that the clubs of Irish malcontents ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... by word and by deed, as often as any occasion offered itself; yet not so obscurely, but that his very great learning, prudence, and piety were much noted and valued by the Bishop of his Diocese, and by most of the nobility and gentry of that county. By the first of which he was often summoned to preach many Visitation Sermons, and by the latter at many Assizes. Which Sermons, though they were much esteemed by them that procured, and were fit to judge them; yet they were the less valued, because ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... destroy Order and Science, and to substitute the Kingdom of the Dull upon earth." He attacks the pedantry and formalism of university education in his day, the dissipation and false taste of the traveled gentry, the foolish pretensions to learning of collectors and virtuosi, and the daringly irreverent speculations of freethinkers and infidels. At the close of the book he represents the Goddess as dismissing her worshipers ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... we, the gentry for short, intended to seek accommodation in the inn, poor and shabby though it looked, and Donald was ordered thither to give instructions. The Colonel and the chieftain rode along the village to observe how things were ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... against the Colonnesi, and partly by superseding them in their command as captains. For the latter purpose he became his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Roman Campagna. Thus he collected his own forces and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of mercenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, finding him established in Romagna, in Urbino, and in part of Tuscany, while their own strength was on the decline, determined ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... money-lenders, and Belial richer than all; for they and all that belongs to them are his." "Why does the princess keep these robbers about her?" "What more befitting, seeing that she herself is arch-robber?" I was amazed to hear him call the princess by such name, and the proudest gentry in the land arrant robbers. "Why, pray my lord," said I, "do you consider these great noblemen worse thieves than highwaymen?" "Thou art a simpleton—think on that knave who roves the wide world over, sword in hand, and with his ravagers at his back, slaying and burning, and depriving the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... smiled reassuringly, and said, "Manioc—bom," repeating the phrase several times. The compound looked appetizing, and Iris ate a little. She discovered at once that it was tapioca, but her new acquaintance suggested "cassava" as an alternative. The girl, however, nodded cheerfully. She had heard the gentry at Fort San Antonio call it tapioca, and her convict father cultivated some of the finer variety of manioc ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... narrowly and more dangerously for not fully perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry it is by their overbalance, he speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments, and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry; and makes us believe that the people in such are so enraged against them, that where they meet a gentleman they kill him: which can ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... County. They established themselves in the middle of the eighteenth century in Brunswick and Lunenburg counties of Virginia, as prosperous planters; they did not, however, rank either in dignity or in wealth with the older gentry of Virginia. In a letter written in 1877 Lanier gives in full the various branches of the Lanier family as they separated from this point and went into all parts of the United States. One branch joined the pioneers who went up through Tennessee into Kentucky and ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... course, if I had sent a message to M. Dudouis saying, 'Aubrieux is innocent,' I should have failed to make any impression. It's not the least use, on the eve of an execution, to attempt to convince the gentry of the police or of the law that a man condemned to death is innocent. No. From henceforth Jacques Aubrieux belongs to the executioner. But the prospect of securing the sixty bank-notes is a windfall worth taking a little trouble over. Just think: that was the weak point in the indictment, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... now long gone by, she had only assented to the Dean, because holy orders are supposed to make a gentleman; for she would acknowledge a bishop to be as grand a nobleman as any, though he might have been born the son of a butcher. But nobility and gentry cannot travel backwards, and she had been in doubt about Miss Tallowax. But even with the Lady Sarah a feeling has made its way which teaches them to know that they must submit to some changes. The thing was to be regretted, but Lady Sarah knew ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... been difficult to write in peace-time on the delicate subject of spies and spying, but now that the war is in progress and the methods of those much abused gentry have been disclosed, there is no harm in going more fully into the question, and to relate some ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... was making a tool for those he despised. Pick a man from the plow, clap on his back a black coat, send him to college, and in five years he is a Conservative, and puckers his mouth at anything so vulgar as a Reformer, booing and clawing to the gentry and nobility. Dod, set a beggar on horseback and he will ride over his own father, and your father was no lick-the-ladle like you, but a Liberal who stood up for his rights.' The bitterness and force with which the stranger spoke ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... are yo? awm fain to see yo, aw've often wanted to ax one o' ye gentry ha it is at th' trains is soa ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... foraging fell on an egg,— For gentry such as they A genteel dinner every way; They needed not to find an ox's leg. Brimful of joy and appetite, They were about to sack the box, So tight without the aid of locks, When suddenly there came in sight A personage—Sir Pullet Fox. Sure, luck was never more untoward Since ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... is," assented Mrs McAllister; "we've reason to be contented with our lot. Maybe ye would grow tired of it, however, if ye was always here. I'm told that the gentry whiles grow tired of their braw rooms, and take to plowterin' aboot the hills and burns for change. Sometimes they even dance wi' the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... cities, clothed in their municipal insignia and crimson robes of office, who seem to have had quite as important parts assigned them by their democratic communities, in this and all similar pageants, as any of the nobility or gentry. The nuptials were followed by a brilliant succession of fetes, tourneys, tilts of reeds, and other warlike spectacles, in which the matchless chivalry of Spain poured into the lists to display their magnificence and prowess in the presence of their future ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... to himself a partner with whom to share these advantages. He had remained unmarried, giving no damsel ground for complaint by any delusive attentions, and was supposed to have saved a good deal of money, and to be about the richest man in those parts, with the exception of the landed gentry. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and consistent with the self-respect of the person using them, than "Mr." and "Mrs."! A more than questionable taste and a foolish pride have led us to adopt these terms because they were originally applicable to the gentry or to magistrates, and to abandon the good old words which had a meaning truly polite to others, and not degrading ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... recruited from the ranks of the smaller Irish gentry, and whilst, perhaps, richer in proportion than many of the curates and incumbents in England, there are no 'fat' livings, and all are distinctly poorer since ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Greenacre's raillery, and this raillery had been a safety-valve for her envy. Now, however, and from henceforward, the case would be very different. Now the Lookalofts would boast that their aspirations had been sanctioned by the gentry of the country; now they would declare with some show of truth that their claims to peculiar consideration had been recognized. They had sat as equal guests in the presence of bishops and baronets; they had been curtseyed to by Miss Thorne on ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... rectangular lattice-windows. They were usually of two storeys, crowned by high-pitched thatched roofs, with here and there a tiny dormer window. Some were shops or taverns, among which were interspersed the residences of the burgesses and the town houses of the rural gentry. Fronted by miry roadway, or at best an occasional strip of rough boulder pavement, over which wheeled carriages could rarely pass, these lines of houses had no form or comeliness, save what might be due ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... must have been left in two pieces, to puzzle the ingenuity of those gentry to unite. Yet, venerable and learned as they were, I doubt ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... lodgers.' For some months only two of the four rooms Mrs. Turpin was able to let had been occupied, one by 'young Mr. Rawcliffe,' always so called, though his age was nearly thirty, but, as was well known, he belonged to the 'real gentry,' and Mrs. Turpin held him in reverence on that account. No matter for his little weaknesses—of which evil tongues, said Mrs. Turpin, of course made the most. He might be irregular in payment; he might come home 'at ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... was happy. He had invited all the officials to attend the nuptials by the Golden Gate. Venus was in the ascendant. The red planet of Mars had set, he hoped, forever. The officers and gentry contemplated a frolicsome ride around the Salinas bend, over the beautiful passes to Santa Clara valley and the town ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... were almost invariably from the cities—the refuse population of the wharf, bar-room and hotel. Unwilling to volunteer, these gentry skulked behind every excuse to avoid conscription; but when forced off at last, they and the substitutes banded in an unholy brotherhood to make the best ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... been sounded. Lord Erne struck it when he quoted words which were to become very familiar in Ulster—the letter from Gustavus Hamilton, Governor of Enniskillen in 1689, to "divers of the nobility and gentry in the north-east part of Ulster," in which he declared: "We stand upon our guard, and do resolve by the blessing of God to meet our danger rather than to await it." And the veteran Liberal, Mr. Thomas ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... of shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing things without a name—but of the Lithuanian village dog—never! I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is not I, but my granduncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, etc., who in his young days, had eaten ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... The gentry most usually preserve their estates with great vigilance, but they are generous in giving permission to ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... march on the Socialists," but that it is the "right sort of Socialism," and that "it has been left to the leader of the privileged Parliament [the Hungarian Parliament representing not the small capitalists, but the landed nobility and gentry] to make the first start." And there is little doubt that both the provision of houses for the working people and the public feeding of school children rest on precisely the same principles as the social ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... everything with a view to repeat it sometime in the garden of her country house at home. "She'd show 'em what was what," she thought. "She'd Let 'em know that she had traveled and had been invited out among the gentry," for such she believed Daisy to be, and she anticipated with a great deal of complacency the sensation which that airy, graceful, woman would create in Ridgeville, the little place a mile or more from Allington, where her husband's farm was situated, and where stood the once ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... round by Lady Royland to several of the gentry residing at different places, asking for help if it were needed, and at the same time offering the castle as a sanctuary ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... too, admirably adapted to usher in the merriest month of the year, and seemingly made expressly for the occasion, a wake was held at Whalley, to which all the neighbouring country folk resorted, and indeed many of the gentry as well, for in the good old times, when England was still merry England, a wake had attractions for all classes alike, and especially in Lancashire; for, with pride I speak it, there were no lads who, in running, vaulting, wrestling, dancing, or in any other manly exercise, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... period describes in some detail the pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one who ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... At any other time I would have enjoyed the scene with infinite satisfaction; for the national tipple, in my mind, drinks nowhere so pleasantly as on a bench behind the broad hearthstone of such a kitchen-hall as my friend's. Our smaller gentry had, it is true, long since betaken themselves to their parlours and their drawing-rooms; and the steams of whisky-punch had already risen with the odours of bohea, and the smoke of sea-borne coals, to the damask hangings and alabaster ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... sincere reader. These tales of village life in England a hundred years ago are of an absolute directness and frankness. They blink nothing of the sordid, the mean, the vicious, the wicked in that life, from which they rarely rise in some glimpse of the state of the neighboring gentry, and yet they abound in beauty that consoles and encourages. They are full of keen analysis, sly wit, kindly humor, and of a satire too conscientious to bear the name; of pathos, of compassion, of reverence, while in unaffected singleness of ideal ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Lady Bassett never lost her head for a moment. Indeed, she showed unexpected fire; she sent off coachman and grooms to scour the country and rouse the gentry to help her; she gave them money, and told them not to come back till they ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... so ingeniously made to colour. Again, and aptly illustrating the influence of his prejudices on his sense of hearing, we will notice somewhat more in detail the following assertion respecting the speech of the gentry ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and they have expressed great surprise when I informed them that some men in Ireland of one thousand pounds a year spend their whole lives in running after a hare, and drinking to be drunk. Truly if such a being, equipped in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the same astonishment that a countryman does ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... rosy flush of indignation mantled his cheeks, and only his habitual respect for the landed gentry (whom he was accustomed to call the backbone of England) checked him on the verge of a severe retort. As it was, he ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the country was made the subject of legislation, for James I. much disliked the flocking of the gentry, etc., to London, as he said in his address to the council of the Star Chamber: "And therefore, as every fish lives in his own place, some in the fresh, some in the salt, some in the mud, so let every one live ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton |
