"Shopkeeper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fuer die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher—er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of paper—letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously. I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... referred to was this. The deceased Mr Milvain had a brother who was a struggling shopkeeper in a Midland town. Some ten years ago, William Milvain, on the point of bankruptcy, had borrowed a hundred and seventy pounds from his brother in Wattleborough, and this debt was still unpaid; for on the death of Jasper's father repayment of the loan was impossible for William, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... expedients and substitutes for supplying a temporary deficiency of currency, which make the quantity of money in a commercial country a variable one, capable of considerable contraction or expansion. The actual money can be more or less aided by credit. A farmer, a horse-dealer, a shopkeeper, a mechanic—will all wait with a substantial purchaser for their money, rather than lose the sale of their commodities; and a sudden rise in the price of the staples of the country, such as our own often experience, while it increases the demand for money, proportionally ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... resumed Clopin angrily, "that I'm not a Jew, and that I'll have you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that little shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side, and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter one of these days, like the counterfeit ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... said the shopkeeper, abruptly dropping the cat, "you can turn up your nose at my ideas all you vant, but you mustn't turn it up at my shurch. I don't do dat to you, and don't ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... He had never noticed the shop before, or, if he had noticed it, he had despised it. But the chat with Tom Orgreave had awakened in him the alertness of a hunter. The shop was not formally open—Wednesday's market being only half a market. The shopkeeper, however, was busy within. Edwin loitered. Behind the piles of negligible sermons, pietisms, keepsakes, schoolbooks, and 'Aristotles' (tied up in red twine, these last), he could descry, in the farther ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... better I imagine that they will keep their word. The line of demarcation between the bourgeois and the ouvrier battalions is clearly marked, and they differ as much in their opinions as in their appearance. The sleek, well-fed shopkeeper of the Rue Vivienne, although patriotic, dreads disorder, and does not absolutely contemplate with pleasure an encounter with the Prussians. The wild, impulsive working man from Belleville or La Villette dreads neither Prussians without, nor ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... their heads together, gnawing hard-tack, and as the rain struck the stones, it splashed up in their faces under their sack. On the left, the coral shops showed their brilliant wares dimly through the rain-streaks, with closed glass doors through which here and there the disconsolate face of the shopkeeper was visible, as he stood gazing out upon the dismal, dripping scene. A sailor man came out of the marine headquarters at the turning of the Strada dei Giganti, bending his flat cap against the rain and burying his ears ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... great distance Mr. Wicker's voice came to his ears, and this too, Chris found difficult to credit. There, not four feet in front of him was the old shopkeeper, and yet the high thin voice might have come from anywhere else—the rafters, the room beyond the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... boots and stockings now. Not only that, but they had white shirts and jackets of blue cloth to go to church with on Sunday; and each of them put twopence in the collection-plate just as if they had all been sons of a rich shopkeeper. Moreover, they were setting an example to the other boys about. Four of these, indeed, combined to start a cuddy-fishing business similar to that of Rob's. Neil was rather angry; but Rob was not afraid of any competition. He asked the new boys to come and see how he had rigged up the guy-poles. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... of the government inserted if this seemed needed to make a majority secure. One of the most unedifying scenes in English history is that of George making a purchase in a shop at Windsor and because of this patronage asking for the shopkeeper's support in a local election. The King was saving and penurious in his habits that he might have the more money to buy votes. When he had no money left he would go to Parliament and ask for a special grant for his needs and the bought members could not refuse the money ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the history of a wealthy and powerful farmer family, the Ingmarssons of Ingmar Farm, and develops to include the whole parish life with its varied farmer types, its pastor, schoolmaster, shopkeeper, and innkeeper. The romance portrays the religious revival introduced by a practical mystic from Chicago which leads many families to sell their ancestral homesteads and—in the last chapter of this volume—to emigrate in a body ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... places. They have spoken out before the lower class as if it were not present, and, from all this eloquence poured out without precaution, some bubbles besprinkle the brain of the artisan, the publican, the messenger, the shopkeeper, and the soldier. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... greeted Calthea coolly. He had had a very animated conversation with his wife on the evening before, and had been made acquainted with the unwarrantable enmity exhibited by this village shopkeeper toward Mrs. Cristie's blooded assistant. He was beginning to dislike Calthea, and he remembered that the Rockmores never liked her, and he wished very much that she would cease to spend so much of her time at his house. After breakfast Calthea was more fortunate. ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... the general confession; the doctor, ready to give emphasis to that part of it which says:- "And there is no health in us;" the pushing tradesman, who has to live by going to church, as well as by counter work; the speculating shopkeeper, who has a connection to make; the young finely-feathered lady, got up in silk and velvet and carrying a chignon sufficient to pull her cerebellum out of joint; the dandy buttoned up to show his figure, and heavily dosed with scent; the less ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name—but I could never learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in life—was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... materials in Mrs. Ogborne's handwriting for the above highly interesting but unfinished work. I have not yet sorted them, but I perceive that the MSS. contain some information that was never published, relating to Rochford Hundred, &c. The shopkeeper stated that she had used the greater part of Mrs. Ogborne's papers as waste-paper, but I am not without hopes that she will find more. There is a letter from Mr. Leman of Bath, which is published in the work. I am aware that Mr. Fossett has Mrs. Ogborne's MSS.; but those now in my possession are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... coach and six to ride in, and no one to control her, she would be perfectly contented. The little Teresa sighed for a land where there was no A B C, and Dorinda for one where toys grew on trees, and no hard-hearted shopkeeper demanded money before they were plucked. Herbert wished he lived in a place where there were plenty of gay butterflies, and that he had nothing to do but to hunt them. Thus each child had something to wish for, and something to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... the doorway, and feeling that she was nearer the goal than she had ever been before. A strange joy and excitement thrilled her as she heard the shopkeeper returning. ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... they must have china and plate and fine linen at dinner; so their fine plates are always bare, and their silver trays empty. Ask the butcher, if you don't believe ME. Just you ask him whether he does not go three times to the smallest shopkeeper, for once he goes to Beaurepaire. Their tenants send them a little meal and eggs, and now and then a hen; and their great garden is chock full of fruit and vegetables, and Jacintha makes me dig in it gratis; and so they muddle on. But, bless your heart, coffee! ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... their attire. Whether it be the fine lace mantilla or the Parisian hat which the far-distant-from-her senorita wears, as in temple or plaza she takes her dainty way, or the pretty frock or delicate shoes, the poor woman of the peon, or the mujer of the petty shopkeeper, casts no envious glance—but no, that would not be true! She casts them, but she will not strive to imitate. Is there not some virtue in such non-emulation, or is it but the spirit of a deadened race? Yet this rather sombre and unattractive apparel is found more among the peon ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... bear a resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name but I could never learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Sussex paper for 1792 the following contribution to the history of Burwash: "A Hint to Great and Little Men.—Last Thursday morning a butcher and a shopkeeper of Burwash, in this County, went into a field near that town, with pistols, to decide a quarrel of long standing between them. The lusty Knight of the Cleaver having made it a practice to insult his antagonist, who is a very little man, the great ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... some office of routine business? Then let him consider how many hundreds of similar men would answer an advertisement of his seat being vacant. The fatal thing in his case evidently is, that the faculties and skill required in his situation are possessed by so many of his fellow-creatures. Is he a shopkeeper in some common line of business?—say a draper. Then let him consider how easy it is to be a draper, and how simple are the details of such a trade. While there are so many other drapers in the same street, his going out of business ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... behind, its face upturned to the sky, and its head going jerking along, somehow without its neck being dislocated. The most resigned expression on earth is that of an Indian baby. All the groups we had seen promenading the streets the day before were here collected by hundreds; the women of the shopkeeper class, or it may be lower, in their smart white embroidered gowns, with their white satin shoes, and neat feet and ankles, and rebosos or bright shawls thrown over their heads; the peasants and countrywomen, with their short petticoats of two colours, generally scarlet and yellow (for ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... blandly informed me that he had stolen them. "There is no doubt," said he, "that many tradespeople hold secret stores of one thing and another, but wish prices to rise still higher than they are before they produce them. I did not, however, take those potatoes or that cheese from any shopkeeper's cellar. But, in the store-places of the railway company to which I belong, there are tons and tons of provisions, including both cheese and potatoes, for which the consignees never apply, preferring, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... is very different with him. If he belong to the literary class, he must give up all hope of preferment. If he be in the employ of the government, he may expect to be deprived of his employment, if indeed he be not compelled to give it up from conscientious motives. If he be a shopkeeper, his observance of the Lord's day will probably deprive him of many of his customers, and if he be in the employ of others the same reason will render it very difficult for him ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... monster, Hodge," groaned she, exhausted—"a heartless, horrible monster. You have stolen my sewing-needle—you only. For you knew very well that it was my last one, and that, if I have not that, I must go at once to the shopkeeper to buy some needles. And that is just what you want, you weathercock, you. You only want me to go out, that you may have an ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and value. He knew all about her, she had merely to be herself, to do what she had promised, in order to rest securely on his rock-like truth. He had again touched a deep, grateful chord in speaking of her to the shopkeeper as his wife; he showed no disposition whatever to shrink from the relation before the world; it was evident that he meant to treat her with respect and kindness, and to exact respect from others. For all this, while sitting quietly and silently at his side, she thanked ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the fisherman and his family obtain, during the year, 'supplies' of goods from the shop of the fish-curer. In the great majority of cases there are no passbooks for such accounts. The private account is read over to the fisherman by the fishcurer, or by his shopkeeper, where he does not personally manage that department of his business; and the fisherman being satisfied as to its correctness, or, as it often happens, trusting to the honesty of the merchant, it ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... priced several lamps, had made note of the most satisfactory, and had gone home without buying. The next day a domestic was sent to secure the one which pleased us best. He was charged more than we had been, and in surprise mentioned the sum which we had authorized him to pay. The shopkeeper explained by saying that he always told us the true price in the beginning, because we never tried to beat him down. In truth, modern industrial conditions have pretty well banished the old-time custom of haggling. A premium is set on straightforwardness in ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... our guardian is to be a soldier as well as a philosopher, the military one may be retained. And to our higher purpose no science can be better adapted; but it must be pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, not of a shopkeeper. It is concerned, not with visible objects, but with abstract truth; for numbers are pure abstractions—the true arithmetician indignantly denies that his unit is capable of division. When you divide, he insists that you are only multiplying; his ...
— The Republic • Plato
... shops are not very numerous; the persons who attend on a customer are all children of various ages, and exceedingly intelligent and courteous, but without the least touch of importunity or cringing. The shopkeeper himself might or might not be visible; when visible, he seemed rarely employed on any matter connected with his professional business; and yet he had taken to that business from special liking for it, and quite independently of his ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... frequent all hesitation upon the part of the tradesmen vanished, and they accepted our money without the slightest demur. We speedily discovered that the most rabid anti-British and wildly patriotic German shopkeeper always succumbs to business. When patriotism is pitted against pounds, shillings and pence, patriotism ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... enough for them. We all know who his father was, and we all know what he is—a petty provincial shopkeeper! A gentleman holding important employment in one of the principal mercantile firms in the city isn't good enough for him. If I'm permitted to clean his boots I'm sure I ought to be thankful. Oh, yes! Of ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... though she was the younger of the two, and bore no title. They were aware of the existence of persons of rank who were not lavish patrons, but the name of Vanderpoel held most promising suggestions. To an English shopkeeper the American has, of late years, represented the spender—the type which, whatsoever its rank and resources, has, mysteriously, always money to hand over counters in exchange for things it chances to desire to possess. Each year surges across ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and even in some degree influenced by them in his own person. Mirabeau (the son) was so aware of the absolute necessity of proclaiming himself emancipated from the old feudalities, that, among other extravagances of his conduct, he started as a shopkeeper at Marseilles for some time, by way of fraternizing with the bourgeoisie; afficheing his liberalism. De Tocqueville quoted Napoleon as saying in one of his conversations at St. Helena that he had been a spectator from a window of the scene at the Tuileries, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... art. Which is probably true. But it ought to be remembered by us Europeans (and in sackcloth!) that the mass of us with money to spend on pleasure are utterly indifferent to history and art. The European dilettante goes to the Uffizi and sees a shopkeeper from Milwaukee gazing ignorantly at a masterpiece, and says: "How inferior this shopkeeper from Milwaukee is to me! The American is an inartistic race!" But what about the shopkeeper from Huddersfield or Amiens? The shopkeeper from Huddersfield ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... guilty secret in me I blushed as I asked the question. It seemed sure that the shopkeeper must guess my purpose. I felt myself suspected as though I were a rascal buying pistols to commit a murder. Indeed, I seem to remember having read that even hardened criminals have become confused before a shopkeeper ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... awake from the delusion, which he so powerfully contributed to produce. People at last inquired "why England was to become a party in a dispute between two German powers, and why were the best English regiments fighting on the Maine?" What was it to the busy shopkeeper of London that the Tower guns were discharged, and the streets illuminated, if he were to be additionally taxed? Statesmen began to calculate the enormous sums which had been wasted in an expensive war, where nothing had been gained but glory. Besides, jealousies and enmities sprung ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... fair to hold in remembrance. What grew chiefly upon me, rather, was the conviction that only those who are trustworthy know how to trust. I was an unknown foreigner, and could have easily evaded payment with impunity, yet no London shopkeeper ever ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... born in Paris in 1655, three years before Moliere brought his company from the provinces to the Hotel de Bourbon, and opened the new theatre with the "Precieuses Ridicules." Regnard's father, a citizen of Paris and a shopkeeper, died when his son was a lad, leaving him one hundred and twenty thousand livres,—a fortune for a man of the middle class at that period. Like most independent young fellows, Regnard made use of his money to travel. He went to Italy, and spent a year in the famous cities of the Peninsula,—but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the other chief necessity of human life, the supply of clothing, gave employment to the free Roman shopkeeper. ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... two hundred krans, as you are a new customer," said the shopkeeper. "Anybody else but you would have to pay three ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... minstrels recently came over from Aberdeen, meaning to leave one of his red-and-yellow bills (announcing a performance) in each of the local shops. The minister saw him as he distributed the bills, and closely followed up on his trail. Mr. Pollock entered each shop and said to the shopkeeper: "Please let me see the bill you have there in the window." On getting it, he would scan it, and request to get keeping it. In no shop was he refused, so that by the time he got to the end of the village, he was carrying two dozen large concert placards, while the tout, merrily whistling, and all ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... smart show!" whispered Satin. It was a stiff, middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics, and suggested the conventional taste of a Parisian shopkeeper who has retired on his fortune. Nana was struck and did her best to make merry about it. But Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert's strict adherence to the proprieties. She was always to be met in the society of elderly, grave-looking ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... wounded too—perhaps that was more hurt even than his conscience—but he felt that he had much to make up to the child, not for his long neglect only, but for the indignities that she had been threatened with. She might have been apprenticed to a trade; he might have had to negotiate with some shopkeeper to cancel her indentures. He did not open his mind to Mr. John Short on this matter; he kept it to himself, and made much more of it in his imagination than it deserved. Bessie had already forgotten it, except as a part of the odd medley that her life ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... been locked, bolted, and barred, and, down to the period of our story, had probably never once been opened. The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shopkeeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and even throwing things at them. True, they did it all in a spirit of playfulness, but a moment or a trifle might easily have turned mischief into malice, and, realizing this, Hart pulled up at one of the shops in the big street and asked the shopkeeper, a respectable greybeard, to tell the crowd not ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... fat-faced individual, a country shopkeeper from Connecticut, who had come over to England solely to have an interview with the queen. He had named one of his children for her majesty, and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of them to the illustrious godmother, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... performance was in the shop. They both looked at it. Fortune was still against them. A German opera appeared on the bill. Carmina turned to the music-seller in despair. "Is there no music, sir, but German music to be heard in London?" she asked. The hospitable shopkeeper produced a concert programmed for that afternoon—the modest enterprise of an obscure piano-forte teacher, who could only venture to address pupils, patrons, and friends. What did he promise? Among other ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... of Guam had in operation an economic system which compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. The natives wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor was the only shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least eight hundred per cent. There was a native militia regiment of a thousand men who were paid ten dollars a year. With this cash they bought Bengal goods, cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... felt that it might be unsafe to drink any more wine, he threw down his reckoning, and strolled into the street, followed by his companion. Within an hour from that moment, the three kegs of tobacco were in the possession of a shopkeeper of the place, that brief interval sufficing to enable the man to make his bargain, and to deliver the articles, which was his real object on shore. This little smuggling transaction was carried on altogether without the knowledge of Raoul Yvard, who ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... than to sit down snugly and enjoy what he has. The fun and the excitement of the game are more than the game. There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than a Paris shopkeeper would over ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... kept informed of his whereabouts. Presently he stood on his doorstep, a stocky figure in ancient tweeds, with a bulging pack slung on his arm, and a stout hazel stick in his hand. A passer-by would have remarked an elderly shopkeeper bent apparently on a day in the country, a common little man on a prosaic errand. But the passer-by would have been wrong, for he could not see into the heart. The plump citizen was the eternal pilgrim; he was Jason, Ulysses, Eric the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... camp stool and placed it in the shade of a clump of trees at the edge of a field of wheat, and the Emperor sat down on it. Sitting there in a limp, dejected attitude, perfectly still, he looked for all the world like a small shopkeeper taking a sun bath for his rheumatism. His dull eyes wandered over the wide horizon, the Meuse coursing through the valley at his feet, before him the range of wooded heights whose summits recede and are lost in the distance, on ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... exception, only in Ireland. In 1852, about 60 had been found. Of all archaeologic finds in Ireland, "none is enveloped in greater mystery." (Chambers' Journal, 16-364.) According to the writer in Chambers' Journal, one of these seals was found in a curiosity shop in London. When questioned, the shopkeeper said that it had come ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Gregory for a year; had a father and mother maintained by the parish; and had seen Thomson's 'Seasons' in the hands of a farmer's boy—that was all the inquisitive bookseller could get at; and, indeed, there was nothing more to tell. However, the Stamford shopkeeper was a man of compassion, and seeing the wan little figure before him, resolved upon a tremendous sacrifice. So he told Clare that he would let him have Thomson's 'Seasons' for one shilling: 'You may keep the sixpence, my boy,' he exclaimed, with a lofty wave of the hand. John Clare heard nothing, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... appeared too long, the morning seemed short in proportion. The idea of meeting the new master of the empire face to face, inspired and chilled him in turn. For an instant he hoped that something would be lacking in his toilet—that some shopkeeper would furnish him an honorable pretext for postponing his visit until the next day. But everybody displayed the most desperate punctuality. Precisely at noon, the trousers a la Cosaque and the frogged surtout were on the foot of the bed ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Tomorrow we'll go and see the Councillor at Puempelhagen: if we succeed there we'll look out for a good place for the child in the neighborhood; and if we don't succeed, we'll go to the town and board her for the present with Kurz, the shopkeeper. And now good-night, Charles! Don't be down-hearted, everything will look brighter soon." And so he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... know of any particular variety being desired. He thought the same kind she always got would do. And he looked very hard at Mr. Tolman, evidently wondering at the change in the shopkeeper, ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... settled in the ports of civilized nations, or of barbarous eastern rulers, or in colonies of their own foundation, they everywhere strove to draw out all the resources of the land, to develop and increase them. The quick instinct of the born trader, shopkeeper if you will, sought continually new articles to exchange; and this search, combined with the industrious character evolved through generations of labor, made them necessarily producers. At home they became great as manufacturers; ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Rajinda, the pride of the Mullicks, died of cholera, and the administration of the estate devolved upon our free-thinking Kalidas. Of course there were mortgages to foreclose, and delinquent debtors to stir up. A certain small shopkeeper of the China Bazaar was responsible to the concern for a few thousand rupees, wherewith he had been accommodated by Uncle Rajinda as a basis for certain operations in seersuckers and castor-oil, that had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... tradesman, an artist, a great lord are as distinct from each other as a wolf is from a sheep. Besides, there is another thing peculiar to man, viz. that male and female are not alike, whereas among the rest of the animals, the female is similar to the male. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy to be the spouse of a prince, and often a prince's wife is not worth an artist's. Then, again, there is this difference. The lower animals are strictly dependent on circumstances, each species feeding and housing itself in a uniform manner. Man has not such ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... orphan daughter of a shopkeeper of Sandwich. My father died, leaving to his widow and child an honest name and a little income of L80 a year. We kept on the shop—neither gaining nor losing by it. The truth is nobody would buy our poor little business. I was ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... disagreeably. I can bear the loss of youth heroically, provided I am comfortable, and can amuse myself as I like. But health does not give one the sort of spirits that make one like diversions, public places, and mixed company. Living here is being a shopkeeper, who is glad of all kinds of customers; but does not suit me, who am leaving Off trade. I shall depart on Wednesday, even on the penalty of coming again. To have lived three weeks in a fair appears to me a century! I am not at all in love with their country, which so charms ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... The shopkeeper entered the tienda, and presently reappeared with three or four dirks in red leather sheaths. Guest selected the heaviest, and tried its point ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... a little tangle that is perpetually cropping up in various guises. A cyclist bought a bicycle for L15 and gave in payment a cheque for L25. The seller went to a neighbouring shopkeeper and got him to change the cheque for him, and the cyclist, having received his L10 change, mounted the machine and disappeared. The cheque proved to be valueless, and the salesman was requested by his neighbour ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... century back. The challenges are frequent to a comparison; and sometimes the result would be to the advantage of Germany, more often to ours. But in religious philosophy, which in reality is the true popular philosophy, how vast is the superiority on the side of this country. Not a shopkeeper or mechanic, we may venture to say, but would have felt this obvious truth, that surely the Lisbon earthquake yielded no fresh lesson, no peculiar moral, beyond what belonged to every man's experience ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... news and gossip, the club, as it were, of the little town. Everybody who pretended to gentility in the place belonged to it, It was a test of gentility, indeed, rather than of education or a love of literature. No shopkeeper would have thought of offering himself as a member, however great his general intelligence and love of reading; while it boasted upon the list of subscribers most of the county families in the neighbourhood, some of whom subscribed to the Hollingford ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he foresees that harm to another will follow from them. He may charge a man with crime if the charge is true. He may establish himself in business where he foresees that [145] of his competition will be to diminish the custom of another shopkeeper, perhaps to ruin him. He may a building which cuts another off from a beautiful prospect, or he may drain subterranean waters and thereby drain another's well; and many other ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... personality, in the fact of a man's taking pains to make himself agreeable to you, it is certain that he may try to make himself so by means of which the upshot will be to make him intensely disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneaking manner which an occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like a whipped dog, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... faith, however, did not prevent the shopkeeper from going to his friend's house after supper. It was night, and dark, and the chilling moisture of a winter wind blowing steadily from the Black Sea charged the world outside with discomfort. The brazier with its heap of living coals had astonished him before; now the house was all alight! ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Gorfridge, the great American shopkeeper whose advertisements are so highly esteemed by the London Press, is popularly believed to be interested in his business. This is, of course, a foolish misconception. Mr. Gorfridge has but one consuming passion and that is pigeon flying. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... from the sun. A small vessel, the Endeavour, was chosen; astronomers with their instruments embarked, and the whole placed under the charge of James Cook, a sailor whose admirable character fully merited this distinction. At thirteen he had been a shopkeeper's assistant, but, preferring the sea, he had become an apprentice in a coal vessel. After many years of rude life in this trade, during which he contrived to carry on his education in mathematics and navigation, he entered ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... answered very well indeed so long as prices were high. While the harvests were large and the markets inflated; while cattle fetched good money; while men's hearts were full of mirth—all went well. It is whispered now that the grand Frank has secretly borrowed 25l. of a little cottage shopkeeper in the adjacent village—a man who sells farthing candles and ounces of tea—to pay his reapers. It is also currently whispered that Frank is the only man really safe, for the following reason—they are all 'in' so deep they find it necessary to keep him going. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... way down the passage and across a yard into an outhouse which formed the schoolroom. Here were assembled, as the two ushers entered, some forty boys ranging in age from seven to twelve, mostly, to judge from their dress and manners, of the small shopkeeper and farmer class. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, what ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the tobacco-pedler—whose name was Dominicus Pike—had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ("Shopkeeper turned Gentleman") partakes of the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But it is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Moliere ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure in a social rank too exalted for his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... more. His most successful shop was the sign of the 'Cricket Bat,' in Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane, where he found he had sold as many as came to five shillings and sixpence. With this success he was so pleased, that, wishing to invite the shopkeeper to continue in his interest, he laid out the money in a silver pencil-case; which article, after he had related the above anecdote, he took out of his pocket and assured me he never would part with. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... great fun of the thing consists in the hero's taking lodgings which he has not the slightest intention of paying for, or obtaining goods under false pretences, or abstracting the stock-in-trade of the respectable shopkeeper next door, or robbing warehouse porters as they pass under his window, or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more extensive the swindling is, and the more barefaced ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... good remarks to show that if competition prevents a shopkeeper from selling his goods at a high price, it enables him to buy from others at a cheap rate. "So on the whole," concluded he, "do not let us fuss and make ourselves ill. I would much rather have some coffee, than ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... is a fact that vitality means passion. It does not mean avarice or any of the poor, miserable vices. If David had been a wealthy and most pious Jerusalem shopkeeper, who subscribed largely to missionary societies to the Philistines, but who paid the poor girls in his employ only two shekels a week, refusing them ass-hire when they had to take their work three parts of the way to Bethlehem, and turning them ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... had all the characteristics which were wont to interest Will, and touch his sympathies; he was poor, weak of body, humble-spirited, and of an honest, simple mind. Nothing more natural and cordial than Will's bearing as he entered and held out his hand to the shopkeeper. How was business? Any news lately from Jack? Jack, it seemed, was doing pretty well at Pittsburgh; would Mr. Warburton care to read a long letter that had arrived from him a week ago? To his satisfaction, Will found that the letter had ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... considered almost a matter of course that a shopkeeper must be offered less than he asked; and going from shop to shop to "cheapen" the articles they wanted was a common amusement ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these young fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a hundred thousand francs the day when they were old enough to settle in life, Guillaume regarded it as his duty to keep ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... after them the crowd on foot—village children, farm labourers, and apprentices from forge and counter. Riding side by side, and earnestly conversing, were the "vet," whose horse at the last hunt bolted and left him clinging to a bough, and the shopkeeper, whose grave attire and sober mien seemed strangely out of keeping with the bright, hilarious throng. These were soon met by the main party from the meet, and hounds and hunters sped away in the direction of the hillside covert, while the onlookers adjourned ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... in league with equally dishonest tricksters, whose places are antiquaries only in name, he can lead you where everything is basest imitation. In the former case, if anything is purchased he comes in for a small and not undeserved commission from the shopkeeper, and in the latter for perhaps as much as thirty per cent. I am told that one of these guides, when escorting a party of tourists with plenty of money to spend and no knowledge whatever of the real value or genuineness of antique articles, often makes as much as ten or ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... He was a small shopkeeper's son, and had no recollection of his mother, who died while he was very young. At fifteen he had been taken away from a boarding-school to be sent into the employment of a process-server. The gendarmes invaded his employer's residence one day, and that worthy was sent off to the galleys—a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the Prince thought of the blue-eyed daughter of the shopkeeper in the Friedrichstrasse, just off Unter den Linden; however, he had never thought of marriage in connection with her. "But suppose I should do that," he added, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... A tenant who pays his landlord his rent, thinks himself no more obliged to him than you think yourself obliged to a man in whose shop you buy a piece of goods. He knows the landlord does not let him have his land for less than he can get from others, in the same manner as the shopkeeper sells his goods. No shopkeeper sells a yard of ribband for sixpence when seven-pence is the current price.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, is it not better that tenants should be dependant on landlords?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, as there are many more tenants than landlords, perhaps, strictly speaking, we should ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... that the plan of communication, by means of a nosegay of pinks, had been devised; and it was Jacques who procured him the last disguise that Clement was to use in Paris—as he hoped and trusted. It was that of a respectable shopkeeper of no particular class; a dress that would have seemed perfectly suitable to the young man who would naturally have worn it; and yet, as Clement put it on, and adjusted it—giving it a sort of finish and elegance which I always noticed about his appearance and which I believed was innate in ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... debt itself. Their consumption of imported fabrics on which a high duty is levied is very large, and no increase of price seems to prevent them from continuing to purchase. Whoever shall inquire of a shopkeeper on this subject will be told that this class of women generally buy the most expensive goods. Indeed, one has only to observe them in the street to see that they all have silks as essential to their outfit, with abundance of laces and other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... trouble, thered be no drama) and plays for sympathy all the time as hard as she can. Her good old pious mother turns on her cruel father when hes going to put her out of the house, and says she'll go too. Then theres the comic relief: the comic shopkeeper, the comic shopkeeper's wife, the comic footman who turns out to be a duke in disguise, and the young scapegrace who gives the author his excuse for dragging in a fast young woman. All as old and stale as a fried fish shop ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... bustle, the mud, the street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile or manufacturing district are completely at variance with the lives of nobles. The shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when the great world is thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life begins among the former when the latter have gone to rest. Their day's calculations never coincide; the one class represents the expenditure, the other the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... she:—I have heard, O auspicious King, that Sidi Nu'uman continued his story as follows—The shopkeeper, despite his scruples of conscience, which caused him to hold all dogs impure,[FN265] hath ruth upon my sorry plight and drove away the yelling and grinning curs that would have followed me into his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... lament, let us wait and see what happens. It is not likely that shopkeeper will give him any money. He won't buy clothing of ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker (whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to the people the lucky day for every earthly undertaking, and the prescribed times for all religious ceremonies and observances. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... ruined or driven into sweating and the slums; the old coaching innkeeper and common carrier have been impoverished or altogether superseded by the railways and big carrier companies; the once flourishing shopkeeper lives to-day on the mere remnants of the trade that great distributing stores or the branches of great companies have left him. Tea companies, provision-dealing companies, tobacconist companies, make the position ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Pepys, who was terrified by the steepness of the castle cliff and had no time to stay to service at the Cathedral, when he had been inspecting the defences at Chatham, found something more to his mind in a stroll by Restoration House, and into the Cherry Garden, where he met a silly shopkeeper with a pretty wife, ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... hustling, not a promotion of it. In other words, it is better because it is more civilised; as a great Venetian merchant prince clad in cloth of gold was more civilised; or an old English merchant drinking port in an oak-panelled room was more civilised; or a little French shopkeeper shutting up his shop to play dominoes is more civilised. And the reason is that the American has the romance of business and is monomaniac, while the Frenchman has the romance of life and is sane. But the romance of business really is a romance, and the Americans are really romantic about ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practice now in the matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers have done in Regent Street. Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up his goods behind strong shutters, so that no one might see them after closing hours. Now he leaves everything open to the eye and turns the gas on. So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleeping beauties in ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... seated on a campstool near the back wall of the house, and holding a concertina, whence, at this moment, in slow, melancholy strain, 'Home, Sweet Home' began to wheeze forth. The player was a middle-aged man, dressed like a decent clerk or shopkeeper, his head shaded with an old straw hat rather too large for him, and on his feet—one of which swung as he sat with legs crossed—a pair of still more ancient slippers, also too large. With head aside, and eyes looking upward, he seemed to listen in a mild ecstasy to the notes ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... agent in charge one day appeared conducting a young woman over the premises. If the agent's manner revealed some slight curiosity concerning her, it was not to be wondered at, for it was more than probable he had never before seen so charming a person in the guise of a possible shopkeeper. ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... manufactures among shopkeepers, the wages of servants, and hire of labourers. But although our miseries came on fast, with neither trade nor money left; yet neither will the landlord abate in his rent, nor can the tenant abate in the price of what that rent must be paid with, nor any shopkeeper, tradesman, or labourer live, at lower expense for food and clothing, than ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... grimace in a frightful manner, and skip and dance, and writhe their half-naked bodies into the most exaggerated contortions known to the language of signs. The dignified English salesmen are at their wits' end how to treat them. The instinct of the British shopkeeper fights desperately with his disposition to be shocked. From the Ashantee gentlemen's gestures it can only be concluded that white shirts are wanted, but when white shirts are shown the negroes make furious objection to the plaited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... checked or numbed by those regulations which limited the rich man's right to use his money as he might please. Even a great lord—even the Shogun himself [355] —could not do what he pleased. As for any common person,—farmer, craftsman, or shopkeeper,—he could not build a house as he liked, or furnish it as he liked, or procure for himself such articles of luxury as his taste might incline him to buy. The richest heimin, who attempted to indulge himself in any of these ways, would at once have ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... luxurious center. Most are of plebeian blood. There are smiths and mechanics; there are stone cutters, workers in mosaics, and decorators. There are slaves from the very palace of Tiberius. There is Amon from Egypt, who sells his jewelry down in the Nova Via. There is Polemon, the Grecian shopkeeper, in the Clivus Victoriae. There is Onesimus, the servant of Philemon, from Colossae. There are Amplias and Epaenetus and Stachys, the particular friends of the Gentile apostle. There is, as well, Pomponia Graecina, that ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... the Maharaja will suffer the presence of a poor merchant, who is but a shopkeeper, I will rest here in ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Napoleon knew such women well: they had the fearless dignity of high rank, holding their own, in spite of all the Emperor's vulgarity; and the losses and struggles of their lives had given them a hard eye for the main chance, scarcely to be matched by any bourgeois shopkeeper. And with all this they had a real admiration for military glory. Success, in fact, was ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... of a woman, a shopkeeper named Blunet, who had 21 children in 7 successive births. They were all born alive, and 12 still survived and were healthy. As though to settle the question as to whom should be given the credit in this case, the father or the mother, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was no friend of mine; I was like to have killed him when last I saw him. He was a shopkeeper in a country town in England. I had seen little enough of him; but enough to make me able to swear to him anywhere, even in a marine's uniform, and in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... length made a hasty escape from Mirfield, with only three shillings and sixpence in his pocket, and seemingly without any scheme except that of relieving himself from an irksome employment. But an accidental circumstance speedily enabled him to obtain an engagement with a shopkeeper in Wath, now a station on the railway between London and Leeds; and in procuring this employment, he was indebted to the recommendation of his former master, whose service he had unceremoniously quitted. But this new situation had few ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of dissolution, but might make the whole world our debtor. No nation is better endowed by nature with a faculty for sane idealism than the English. We were never intended to be a nation of shopkeepers, if a shopkeeper is doomed to be merely a shopkeeper, which of course he is not. Our brutal commercialism has been a temporary aberration; the quintessential Englishman is not the hero of Smiles' 'Self-help'; he is Raleigh, Drake, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, or Wordsworth, with a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... fortunes of the French armies in the field. Go where you will, even among those of the very poor who have lost their breadwinners, and you will hear few criticisms and no complaints. The little midinette thrown out of employment, the shopkeeper faced with ruin, the artist reduced to actual want—they also are in the fighting line, and they are proud of it. The women of the thrifty middle class consider it just as much their duty to devote their savings ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... to him, this would be about the worst. He had often thought, with dread, of his sister's marrying, and of his thus being forced to divide everything—all his spoil, with some confounded stranger. But for her to marry a shopkeeper's son, in the very village in which he lived, was more than he could bear. He could never hold up his head in the county again. And then, he thought of his debts, and tried to calculate whether he might get over ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... many other little things can be 'ad reasonable, and Miss Penny's a lady as isn't above buying 'er own groceries, which hit's a treat to see 'er taking, a taste of this or a nibble at that, and always giving shopkeeper ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... review the roles and contributions of such groups as the farmer, shopkeeper, cabinet maker, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... a carriage, which he drove himself, and we set off through the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the streets save a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there a shopkeeper standing at his door took off his hat, and Simon returned the salute and told me the man's name—no doubt to show me that he knew all the inhabitants personally. The thought struck me that he was thinking ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that Lord Braxfield sat on the Justiciary Bench; and the result is, that his Lordship never tried any man for forgery at any of the Circuits, except once at Stirling; and then the culprit, instead of being a friend, or even a common acquaintance of Lord Braxfield's, was a miserable shopkeeper in the town of Falkirk, whose very name it is hardly possible he could have heard till he read it in the indictment. Therefore I think I have effectually cleared his character from the ineffable infamy of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... side; for it "gave" in every way. There seemed to be nothing to grasp or of which to get a good grip, while to have hauled the animal in by the thin line looked like trying to cut it in two, as a shopkeeper does soap or cheese. But at last Andrew "got a han'," as he called it, of one hind flipper, Jakobsen of one of the fore flippers, Steve hauled in the line, and Johannes reached over and caught the other ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... fifth of the people were paupers, or recipients of parish relief. Clothing and bedding were scarce and dear. Education was almost unknown to the vast majority. The houses and shops were not numbered in the cities, for porters, coachmen, and errand-runners could not read. The shopkeeper distinguished his place of business by painted signs and graven images. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were little better than modern grammar and Latin school in a provincial village. The country magistrate used on the bench language too coarse, brutal, and vulgar for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thousands and thousands, without a symptom of disrespect.... I know that our people for a long time used to insist on every Chinaman they met taking his hat off. Of course it rather astonished a respectable Chinese shopkeeper to be poked in the ribs by a sturdy sailor or soldier, and told, in bad Chinese or in pantomime, to take off his hat, which is a thing they never do, and which is not with them even a mark of respect. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... think, as enabling us to see into the heart of the man, raises several points of great moment. Nothing could illustrate better his eagerness to get into close touch and perfect sympathy with the people. He had long before adopted the native dress of an ordinary shopkeeper or respectable workman. He now adapted himself, as far as possible, to the native food. He lived on such as the poor eat. Often he would take his bowl of porridge, native fashion, in the street, sitting down ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... ago workingmen had been urged to put their money into homes. Rows of houses had been built for them, and sold on such ridiculously easy terms, only a trifle down. The interest would not be as much as rent. Then the fascinating shopkeeper had flaunted his wares in the faces of the thrifty housewives. "A good article is cheapest in the end. This Brussels will outwear two ingrain carpets, at a very little advance on the first cost. No moths will trouble it, once down it is there ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... too intricate for one human mind to compass. New faces, new names, new tricks tended to bewilder him. He had to depend more and more on the clerical staff and the finger-print bureau records. His position became that of a villager with a department store on his hands, of a country shopkeeper trying to operate an urban emporium. He was averse to deputizing his official labors. He was ignorant of system and science. He took on the pathos of a man who is out of his time, touched with the added poignancy of a passionate ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... The German shopkeeper put down his razor with only one side of his face shaven. "Oh, mein Gott!" was his protest; but he rummaged in the catch-all packing-box and found the pad of blank warrants. Lidgerwood dictated slowly, in charity for the trembling fingers that held the pen. Knowing his own weakness, he could sympathize ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the knack ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... commonly styled "The Inverury Poet," was born at Aberdeen in 1789. His father, who was a shopkeeper, dying during his infancy, he was placed by his mother at a school taught by a female, from whom he received the greater amount of his juvenile education. At the age of ten, he was put to a cotton-factory, where he served an apprenticeship ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that his share in its composition was the greater. It is a comedy of manners based on the old antagonism between vulgar ignorant energy and ability on the one side, and lazy empty birth and breeding on the other; embodied in Poirier, a wealthy shopkeeper, and M. de Presles, his son-in-law, an impoverished nobleman. Guillaume Victor Emile Augier was born in Valence, France, September 17th, 1820, and was intended for the law; but inheriting literary tastes from his grandfather, Pigault Lebrun the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... on, and was nearing the place where, in company with toys, grocery, and sweetmeats, the shopkeeper kept up a small supply of paper, for which the captain was his main customer, when a dark-bearded fisherman-like man suddenly turned out of a public-house, caught him by the arm, and hurried him sharply down a narrow alley which ran by the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... to Business.—Every person ought to have one principal object of pursuit, and steadily pursue it. Perseverance of a shopkeeper. All useful employments respectable. Character of ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... San Nicolas de los Ranches, "St. Nicholas of the huts," where the shopkeeper, to whom we had a letter, insisted upon turning out of his own room for us, and treated us like princes. The reason of our often being provided with letters to the shopkeepers in small places, was, that they are the only people ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... sufficiently self-assertive; Beethoven treated his noble patrons as so many handfuls of dirt. But it is impossible altogether to lose sight of the peasant in Beethoven and Gluck; Spohr had more than a trace of the successful shopkeeper; Spontini's assertion often became mere insufferable bumptiousness. Besides, they all won their positions through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a proud consciousness of being the best men. But in Handel we have a polished gentleman, a lord amongst ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... meddled with it; but perhaps it will; and politics already influence it considerably. Before the revolution of 1830, neither the French nor Belgian citizens were remarkable for their moustaches; but, after that event, there was hardly a shopkeeper either in Paris or Brussels whose upper lip did not suddenly become hairy with real or mock moustaches. During a temporary triumph gained by the Dutch soldiers over the citizens of Louvain, in October 1830, it became a standing joke against ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay |
