"Steeple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aboot the water being all broke up into furrowes, vor all the world like a plowed field, only each ridge wur twice as high as one of our houses, and they came a moving along as fast as a horse could gallop, and when they hit the rocks vlew up into t' air as hoigh as the steeple o' Marsden church. It seemed to us as this must be a lie, and there war a lot of talk oor it, and at last vour on us made up our moinds as we would go over and ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, Save where full fyve good miles away The steeple towered from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country side That Saturday ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... clever and advanced, and everything that's dreadful,—just like yourself, Herminia. But then he's also very well connected. That's always something, especially when one's an oddity. You wouldn't go down one bit yourself, dear, if you weren't a dean's daughter. The shadow of a cathedral steeple covers a multitude of sins. Mr. Merrick's the son of the famous London gout doctor,—you MUST know his name,—all the royal dukes flock to him. He's a barrister himself, and in excellent practice. You might do worse, do you know, than to go ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... that Murtough would not find out some way of doing; and he was so pleasant a fellow, that he shared in the hospitality of all the best tables in the county. He kept good horses, was on every race-ground within twenty miles, and a steeple-chase was no steeple-chase without him. Then he betted freely, and, what's more, won his bets very generally; but no one found fault with him for that, and he took your money with such a good grace, and mostly ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... horse?" was the reply. "Oh! there are a great many places—it depends upon what kind of horse you want: for race-horses, steeple-chasers, and hunters, I would recommend Tattersall's; for hacks or machiners, there's Aldridge's, in St. Martin's Lane; while Dixon's, in the Barbican, is the place to pick up a fine young carthorse—is it ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor,—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace,—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prisoner black in the face. He had, however, no time for regret or inquiry how far the man had gone, and stuffing a handkerchief into his mouth, to prevent his giving any alarm should he recover breath enough to do so, Harry placed his high steeple hat upon his head, his Geneva bands round his throat, and his long black mantle over his shoulders. He then opened the door and walked quietly forth. The guards were too much occupied with the proceedings in the parade ground to do more than glance round, as the apparent ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... past one o'clock when the sweet-toned bell in the Presbyterian Church steeple began to ring. Dr. Hemingway was at the rope in the belfry. His part was to give us our signal. At the first peal the windows of every Union home blazed with light. The doors were flung wide open, and a song—one song—rose on the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable novel. What the pyramids are to Egypt—what Vesuvius is to Naples—what the field of Waterloo has been for fifty years ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the night and in the river the Bessie May Brown, her red light and her green light trailing scarfs of color on the river, as she chuffed and clanged her bell, and smote the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of the pilot house a priest guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs between the piers of the bridge whose lanterns were still belatedly aglow on the girders and again ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the college fronted the side of a lane, where cattle were sometimes turned out to graze during the night; and from the steeple hung the bell-rope, very low in the middle of the outside porch. Foote saw in this an object likely to produce some fun, and immediately set about to accomplish his purpose. He accordingly, one night, slily tied a wisp of hay to the rope, as a bait for the cows in their peregrination ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... leaders were sent to London, tried, and executed. Many of the inferior sort were put to death by martial law:[****] the vicar of St. Thomas, one of the principal incendiaries, was hanged on the top of his own steeple, arrayed in his Popish weeds, with his beads at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... everything went dark again. The first thing I knew I was in a ship steering, and the seven black crows were in front of me. I had a great trouble to steer my vessel. And as I went on the vessel struck a steeple, and exploded, and I awoke. Whereupon I jumped out of bed, ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... the great fire-place, mending his nets. My mother was at her wheel, spinning flax. She was a tidy little body, of the old school. Her notions of the world in general were somewhat narrow and antiquated; while the steeple-crown cap she wore on her head so jauntily, and her apron of snow-white muslin, that hung so neatly over a black silk dress, and was secured about the neck with a small, crimped collar, gave her an air of cheerfulness the sweet- ness of her ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... connotes something not only solid but antiquated; and is not therefore a very tactful name for a chicken. There would rise up before him something memorable in the haze that he calls his history; and he would see the history books of his boyhood and old engravings of men in steeple-crowned hats struggling with sea-waves or Red Indians. The whole thing would suddenly become clear to him if (by a simple reform) the chickens ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... and as the broad sails of the gay vessel were spread to the morning breeze, which swelled them, that devoted old Church was seen in its raiment of fire, like some old martyr, hugging the flames which consumed it, and pointing with its tapering steeple to an ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... that they were tolerating her out of mere Politeness. Later on, in the Drawing Room, they continued to tolerate her the best they knew how. The Girl with the Book of Rules played a sad little Opus on the Piano, after which the Steeple-Chaser in Red leaped on top of the Instrument and tore out Coon Stuff with eight men turning the Music ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... false, of the state of matters within the Royal Academy—of the academicians who exhibit, and of what are to be 'the' pictures. From early morning, St Martin's bells have been ringing, and a festival flag flies from the steeple; no great pomp, to be sure, but it marks the occasion. About noon, the Queen's party arrives, and Her Majesty is conducted about the rooms by the leading members of the Academy. Between one and two, she departs; and immediately after, the crowd ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... guarding the avenue to rebellion—reached the river's mouth, passed onward up the bay to Washington! As we came in sight, we thronged tumultuously to the vessel's side, and bent eager, loving eyes on the snowy marble front, and white towering steeple of ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom a great yellow star came out to see; At Dueffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mechlin church-steeple we heard the half-chime— So Joris broke silence with "Yet ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... multiplicity of robes de chambre; but he had all the heart and the vivacity of former times. I was truly glad to see the kind old man. We were unlucky in our day for sights, this being a high festival—All Souls' Day. We were not allowed to scale the steeple of St. Genevieve, neither could we see the animals at the Jardin des Plantes, who, though they have no souls, it is supposed, and no interest of course in the devotions of the day, observe it in strict retreat, like the nuns of Kilkenny. I met, however, one lioness walking at ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the weather-cock on a high steeple, "no one is satisfied." From "Fire-side Fables," ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... confine their charitable exertions to collecting money from wealthier people, And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks; He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priest's robes than with his church or his steeple, And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... by a mere curtain, because each is quiet and well disposed, not inclined to assert its own rights or invade those of others; but the ordinary kitchen, like ill-bred people, is constantly doing both. Thomas Beecher proposes to locate his at the top of the church steeple. That is unnecessary; we have only to elevate it morally and intellectually, make it orderly, scientific, philosophical, and the front parlor itself cannot ask a more amiable and interesting neighbor. As the chief workshop of the house, the kitchen ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... High Street of Oxford and the close of Salisbury would be piled with ruins such as those which covered the spots where the palaces and churches of Heidelberg and Mannheim had once stood. The parsonage overshadowed by the old steeple, the farmhouse peeping from among beehives and appleblossoms, the manorial hall embosomed in elms, would be given up to a soldiery which knew not what it was to pity old men or delicate women or sticking children. The words, "The French ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was among the people, chawing them up. He had his well eye on Sam, and crushed his head like an eggshell, with one bite! Then he made a sweep with his paw, and knocked Jack Habersham clean out the tent. He must have gone a hundred feet through the air, for he come down on top of the steeple, and is there yet with the spire sticking up through him. Then he hit Bill Dunham such a clip that he sailed out through the same hole in the tent that Jack passed through. When I left, Bill hadn't been seed by anybody. Guess ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... inscrutible: inuisible, As a nose on a mans face, or a Wethercocke on a steeple: My Master sues to her: and she hath taught her Sutor, He being her Pupill, to become her Tutor. Oh excellent deuise, was there euer heard a better? That my master being scribe, To himselfe should write the Letter? Val. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... church," confided Emily, as they passed a large frame building with pointed steeple and belfry. "They're goin' to have a entertainment t'morra night, an' we're all goin' and Ma ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... service say, Read fast and fair his monthly homily? And wed and bury and make Christen-souls?[160] Come to the left-side alley of St. Paules. Thou servile fool, why could'st thou not repair To buy a benefice at Steeple-Fair? There moughtest thou, for but a slendid price, Advowson thee with some fat benefice: Or if thee list not wait for dead mens shoon, Nor pray each morn the incumbents days were doone: A thousand patrons thither ready bring, Their new-fall'n[161] churches, to the chaffering; ...
— English Satires • Various
... vpon the fift daie of October, a maruellous sore tempest fell in sundrie parts of England, but especiallie in the towne of Winchcombe, where (by force of thunder and lightning) a part of the steeple of the church was throwne downe, and the crucifix with the image of Marie standing vnder the rood-loft, was likewise ouerthrowne, broken, and shattered in peeces; then folowed a foule, a noisome, and a most horrible stinke in the church. [Sidenote: A mightie wind.] On ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... believed that Walden had brought him near to nature, and he wrote with the accumulated artifice of the centuries. Hawthorne's language was as old in fashion as the Salem which he depicted, as "the grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor, who came so early with his Bible and his sword, and trode the common street with such stately port, and made so large a figure as a man of war and peace." But it was. upon Emerson that tradition has most strangely ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... spoil these clothes," said Jack, uneasily. "I need these to wear in the city. The storm isn't here yet, though. I'll wait a minute." He was holding his hat on and looking up at the steeple when he said that. It was a very old, wooden steeple, tall, slender, and somewhat rheumatic, and he knew there must be more wind up so high than there was nearer the ground. "It's swinging!" he said suddenly. "I can see it bend! Glad they're all getting out. There ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... side of a pretty valley, and soon found myself at Pentraeth Coch. The part of the Pentraeth where I now was consisted of a few houses and a church, or something which I judged to be a church, for there was no steeple; the houses and church stood about a little open spot or square, the church on the east, and on the west a neat little inn or public-house over the door of which was written "The White Horse. Hugh Pritchard." By this time I had verified in part the prediction of the old Welsh poet of the post-office. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... a fine afternoon and a pretty walk; round the end of the Long Valley by Cocked Hat Wood, skirting the steeple-chase course; through shady lanes to the wild furze-clad common land; up the sides of the hill range, where the old Roman encampments can still ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know? How should I pay you, miserable people? How should I pay ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Francois; "Spanish moss the same as a pineapple plant! Why, they are no more like than my hat is to the steeple ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... feeling creatures, that trembled and shrank as the flames reached out cruel fingers for them. She shook off the bewildered, dazed feeling, but it came again as the tempest of flame and smoke went racing to the north. Street and house and steeple and the vast crowds seemed sailing away on some swift crescent river to a great, vague, yawning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... And here the shoulder of a hill invited us to race up to the ridge: some way on we came to crossroads, careless of our luck in hitting the right one: yonder hung a village church in the air, and church-steeple piercing ever so high; and out of the heart of the mist leaped a brook, and to hear it at one moment, and then to have the sharp freezing silence in one's ear, was piercingly weird. It all tossed the mind in my head like hay on a pitchfork. I forgot the existence of everything but what I loved passionately,—and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom a great yellow star came out to see; 15 At Dueffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So Joris broke silence with, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... there are few hours of the day or night when I have not been in Lycidas's room, so I let myself in by the night-key he gave me, ran up the stairs,—it is a horrid seven-storied, first-class lodging-house. For my part, I had as lief live in a steeple. Two flights I ran up, two steps at a time,—I was younger then than I am now,—pushed open the door which was ajar, and saw such a scene of confusion as I never saw in Mary's over-nice parlor before. Queer! ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! 125 My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! was there ever heard a better, That my master, being scribe, to himself ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... made their way to the belfry, and, loosing the bell-ropes, in the madness of their excitement began to ring the bells in the steeple; and presently, clang, clang, clang, came from the tower as they hauled on the ropes. Rushing from one bell-rope to another, they started every bell in the steeple ringing, with an effect that was appalling ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... And from Mechlin church steeple we heard the half-chime: and Joris broke silence with "No bally HORS D'OEUVRES for me: I shall get on to something solid ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... the same nutshell of a skiff that he sailed in from Egypt, passes under the noses of the English vessels, and sets foot in France. France recognizes her Emperor, the cuckoo flits from steeple to steeple; France cries with one voice, "Long live the Emperor!" The enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly genuine in these parts. Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was uncommonly pleased to learn that ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... and this changeability of climate extends to the persons. Thus, from earliest infancy, they are wont to shift with every wind. The head of a Langrois stands on his shoulders like a weathercock on the top of a church-steeple; it is never steady at one point, and, if it comes round again to that which it had left, it is not to stop there. As for me, I am of my country; only residence of the capital and constant application ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from the neighboring steeple of the Old South Church, as we noiselessly enter the chamber,—noiselessly, for the hush of the past is about us. We scarcely distinguish anything at first; the moon has set on the other side of the hotel, and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Then the priest took two great baskets full of broken victuals, and led me to a small walled inclosure, of which he had the key, the door of which he unlocked, and we went into a pleasant green plot, in which stood a small hillock like a steeple, all adorned with fragrant herbs and trees. He then beat upon a cymbal, at the sound of which many animals of various kinds came down, from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, others like monkeys, and some having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... of domestic glass and china, had marked her out as his destroying angel for that day; but however it was, in placing the morocco case on the table, she knocked down and broke an ornament standing near it—a little ivory model of a church steeple in the florid style, enshrined in a glass case. Picking up the fragments, and mourning over the catastrophe, occupied some little time, more than she was aware of, before she at last left the drawing-room, to proceed on her ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... fingers formed a pudgy steeple. "But then, so many things seem to be topsy-turvy nowadays, don't they? Wasn't it the realization of this fact which ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... windows, looking out over the roof of the long front porch, gave him an unobstructed view of Main Street, including such edifices as the postoffice, the log-hut library, the ancient watering trough, the drug store, and the steeple of the Presbyterian Church rising proudly above the roofs ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... for a while my shadow deserted me," Merlin replied. "It was on a Sunday my shadow left me, so that I walked unattended in naked sunlight: for my shadow was embracing the church-steeple, where church-goers knelt beneath him. The church-goers were obscurely troubled without suspecting why, for they looked only at each other. The priest and I alone saw him quite clearly,—the priest because this thing was evil, and I because this ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the steeple of the church. She had a dim feeling that a church would be an asylum. So was it that she ran up our alley, to find that she ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Julius Caesar's horse, with slouch-hanging ears, like the goats in Languedoc, and a little horn on her buttock. She was of a burnt sorrel hue, with a little mixture of dapple-grey spots, but above all she had a horrible tail; for it was little more or less than every whit as great as the steeple-pillar of St. Mark beside Langes: and squared as that is, with tuffs and ennicroches or hair-plaits wrought within one another, no otherwise than as the beards are upon the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... beside the rail on which we are travelling, Worcester, Banbury, and Wolverhampton, and two roads to London and Birmingham are open to the wandering tastes of the callow youth of the University; as may be ascertained by a statistical return from the railway stations whenever a steeple-chase or Jenny Lind concert takes place in or near any ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... "at Fulham Lodge, which is nearer in a direct line to the church than to the Bishop's Palace and the 'old avenue.' On Monday the adjacent steeple gave early notice of the approaching funeral; religion and sorrow mingled within me while the slow and mournful tolling of the bell smote upon my heart. Selfish feelings, too, though secondary, might now and then obtrude, for they are implanted in our nature. My departed friend was about ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... hours passed, and the welcome moment arrived. 'I see it!' exclaimed John—'Land oh! Land oh!' In a frenzy of joy he had well-nigh upset the barge and spilled us out. Then he pointed his finger to an object in the distance that seemed like a lonely steeple holding watch ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone—bring that white rock in a line with the steeple." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... meadows to Boston. The morning was very fair. In the night the mist had flown, and now the sun shone out warm and cheerful, giving the necessary brightness to the scene. It lay tenderly on the quaint fen village, and the little gilt vane on the church steeple glittered proudly, almost as ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Balls you may not, but church you shall, attend. Some recognition cannot be denied To the great mercy that has turned aside The sword of death from us and let it fall Upon the people's necks in Montreal; That spared our city, steeple, roof and dome, And drowned the Texans out of house and home; Blessed all our continent with peace, to flood The Balkan with a cataclysm of blood. Compared with blessings of so high degree, Your private woes look ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... seven o'clock that evening that the storm burst. A few huge drops of rain fell on the hot pavements, then the rain ceased again, and the big splashes dried, as if the stones had been blotting paper that sucked the moisture in. Then without other warning a streamer of fire split the steeple of St. Agnes's Church, just opposite Mr. Taynton's house, and the crash of thunder answered it more quickly than his servant had run to open the door to Morris's furious ringing of the bell. At that the sluices of heaven were opened, and heaven's artillery thundered ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... Barnaby, glancing over his shoulder, 'He's a merry fellow, that shadow, and keeps close to me, though I AM silly. We have such pranks, such walks, such runs, such gambols on the grass! Sometimes he'll be half as tall as a church steeple, and sometimes no bigger than a dwarf. Now, he goes on before, and now behind, and anon he'll be stealing on, on this side, or on that, stopping whenever I stop, and thinking I can't see him, though I have my eye on him sharp enough. Oh! he's a merry fellow. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... is our way of amusing ourselves, and if you don't like it you can go home and cultivate prize-fighters, or kill two-year-old colts on the racecourse, or murder jockeys in hurdle-races, or break your own necks in steeple-chases, or in search of wilder excitement thicken your blood with beer or burn your souls out ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... six, peals from St. Martin's church steeple, just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy-and-water, in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... hollow eyes—his rheumy visage—look at that petition penned on his breast. Poh! 'tis a surveyor's notice to pull down. But, then, look at that plurality parson with rotund prominence of portico, and red brick cheeks of vast extent, and that high, steeple-crowned hat—look at the smug, mean, insignificant dwarf of a meeting-house, sinking up to its knees in a narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, with a trap-door of a mouth, and a grating cast of eye. How yonder bridegroom, just cemented in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... that this bank is made in the form of a church. It is really quite a beautiful building. Here is the steeple, here the steps and the wide entrance doors, and the windows with genuine cathedral glass. I think it is splendid to have a bank look like a church, for after all a church is a sort of bank. It stands for those treasures which Jesus talked about when he said, "Lay up ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps, and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and dismounted before the gilded windows ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... For the camel bumped down into steep ditches and scuffled up out of them, climbed over mounds and slid down the further side of them, and all the while Thresk had the sensation of being poised uncertainly in the air as high as a church-steeple. Suddenly however the lights of the camp grew large and the camel padded silently in between the tents. It was halted some twenty yards from a great marquee. Another servant robed in white with a scarlet sash about his waist ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... dishonest in England. Any person who has any natural gift, and everybody has some natural gift, is sure of finding encouragement in this noble country of ours, provided he will but exhibit it. I had not walked more than three miles before I came to a wonderfully high church steeple, which stood close by the road; I looked at the steeple, and going to a heap of smooth pebbles which lay by the roadside, I took up some, and then went into the churchyard, and placing myself just below the tower, my right foot resting on a ledge about two foot from the ground, I, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... station thought so too, when Reud took the ship into Port Royal. He superseded the black pilot, and took upon himself to con the ship; the consequence was, that she hugged the point so closely, that she went right upon the church steeple of old Port Royal, which is very quietly lying beside the new one, submerged by an earthquake, and a hole was knocked in the ship's forefoot, of that large and ruinous description which may be aptly compared to the hole in a patriot's reputation, who has lately taken office with his quondam ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... four in the morning, the army began to move; the right advancing in two columns as far as St. Anthony, and the left marching up within half a league of Crevelt. The prince having viewed the position of the enemy from the steeple of St. Anthony, procured guides, and having received all the necessary hints of information, proceeded to the right, in order to charge the enemy's left flank by the villages of Worst and Anrath; but, in order to divide their attention, and keep them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... something sublime. "The proclamation to the army," says he, "is full of energy: it could not fail to make all military imaginations vibrate. That prophetic phrase, 'The eagle, with the national colours, will fly from church steeple to church steeple, till it settles on the towers of Notre Dame,' ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... one Perched on some lofty steeple's dizzy height, Dazzled by the sun, inebriate by long draughts Of thinner air; too giddy to look down Where all his safety lies; too proud to dare The long descent to the low depths from whence The desperate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... saw my peaceful, friendly little city, with its venerable old church steeple, stretched out calm and sunny in matinal activity. In front of the ugly, bare little station I turned, and stretching out my hands I blessed the little city with all my heart, murmuring in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of bearded men, some in the sad-colored clothes and steeple-crowned hats of Puritans, others in loose top-boots, scarlet coats, lace and periwigs of the cavaliers of the Cromwellian period, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled on the banks ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... and the upper ones eighteen rectangular panes with sixteen keystone-shaped and two quarter-round panes to form the semicircular top. On the second floor the windows are the same except for the eighteen-paned lower sashes. Each side of the steeple on the lower story is a window of this size, notable for the ornamental spacing of twenty-one sash bar divisions, the sweeping curves of which form spaces for glass ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... some two miles to the southeast. About two hundred yards beyond the Parsonage—so Professor Valeyon's house was called, he, in times past, having officiated as pastor of the village—it made a sharp turn to the left around a spur of the hill, bringing into view the tall white steeple of the village meeting-house, relieved ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... works; the other spoke to me in his words." The legends of him in hospital are many. He was determined to walk again—and quickly. "One has to teach these legs," he said impatiently, "to walk naturally, not like machines." Hence the steeple-chases over all kinds of obstacles—stools, cushions, chairs—that his nurses must needs arrange for him in the hospital passages; and later on his determined climbing of any hill that presented itself—at ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as brief as it was fierce. Suddenly a pair of moccasins kicked the air, and the presumptuous young Sauk went to the earth as if flung from the top of a church steeple. The shock was tremendous and caused a momentary hush, for it looked as ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of people were convinced by the words and labours of this young minister.' But, far better than preaching to other people, he had by this time learned to rule his own spirit. Once, as he was coming out of the 'Steeple-house of Colchester, called Nicholas,' one person in particular struck him with a great staff and said to him, 'Take that for Jesus Christ's sake,' to whom James Parnell meekly replied, 'Friend, I do receive it for ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... told him, and, as though to confirm her, a neighbouring steeple-clock clanged twice. He moved uneasily as his eyes fell on the disordered coverlet, half dragged from the bed and trailing on the floor. They shunned hers as he said, a dark flush ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... very high place amongst instruments by means of which human time is economized: and their multiplication in conspicuous places in large towns is attended with many advantages. Their position, nevertheless, in London, is often very ill chosen; and the usual place, halfway up on a high steeple, in the midst of narrow streets, in a crowded city, is very unfavourable, unless the church happen to stand out from the houses which form the street. The most eligible situation for a clock is, ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... structure, with the cupola as indispensable to the old-time Kansas courthouse as a steeple to a church. The jail was in the basement of it, thus sparing culprits a certain punishment by concealing the building's raw, red, and crude lines from the eye. Not that anybody in jail or out of it ever thought of this advantage, or appreciated it, indeed, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the Fourth of July, the people slept serene; The fireworks were stored in the old town hall that stood on the village green. The steeple clock tolled the midnight hour, and at its final stroke, The fire in the queer old-fashioned stove lifted its voice and spoke; "The earth and air have naught to do, the water, too, may play, And only fire is made to ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... conservative faction had strongly objected, but, after the radicals had once gained the day, other innovations passed without public challenge. The old First Parish Church was very white and held aloft an imposing steeple, and strangers were always commiserated if they had to leave town without the opportunity of seeing its front by moonlight. Behind this, and beyond a green which had been the playground of many generations of boys and girls, was a long row ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... wharf waited apprehensively a little longer, conversing in low tones as the moments ran away, and there was great anxiety as to the whereabouts of the missing officer. Seven o'clock struck from the ancient church steeple hard by; still he ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... boobies play like them; but their figures beggared all description. The fellow near whom I stood was short, thick, and fat, and as round as a ball, with a ruff, and prodigious high crowned hat. Any one, at a moderate distance, would have taken him for the dome of a church, with the steeple on the top of it. I inquired of the host who he was. 'A merchant from Basle,' said he, 'who comes hither to sell horses; but from the method he pursues, I think he will not dispose of many; for he does nothing but play.' 'Does he play deep?' said I. 'Not now,' said ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington's besieging army; although the buildings since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object, save the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within arm's length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby resembling an ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... population stood and stared at the destruction like blockheads, as they were, till they also caught and blazed away without a cry. It took some time to reduce the town to ashes, and the lookers-on enjoyed the spectacle immensely, cheering as each house fell, dancing like wild Indians when the steeple flamed aloft, and actually casting one wretched little churn-shaped lady, who had escaped to the suburbs, into the very heart of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... perseverance would overcome the fatality that had hitherto thwarted him. Firm in this resolve, he was passing beneath the walls of a church, which formed the corner of two streets, when, as he turned into the shade of its steeple, he encountered a bulky stranger muffled in a cloak. The man was proceeding with the speed of earnest business, but Robin planted himself full before him, holding the oak cudgel with both hands across his body as a bar ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attending that cause. So, while our literature is flooded, with so many 'demonstrations from history,' many a philosopher finds himself in the situation of the sage who demonstrated that 'Tenterton steeple' was the 'cause of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this—it is the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, jostling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing could be liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming, or buzzing, mixed of walking, tongues, and feet: it is a kind of still roar, or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... proportion." His various erudition, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;" his book, as "the sound" of that armour, "loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple;" his haughty intrepidity, as "a vizor of brass, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain; so that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... lava, growing steeper and steeper; we entered the crater at last, walled with snows of which portions might be of untold ages, for it is never, I believe, wholly empty; we climbed, in such a gale of wind that the guides would not follow us, the steeple-like central pinnacle, two hundred feet high; and there we reached, never to be forgotten, a small central crater at the very summit, where steam poured up between the stones,—and, oh, from what central ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... that wad a tyrant own, And the wretch his true-born brother, Who would set the mob aboon the throne, May they be damned together! Who will not sing, "God save the King," Shall hang as high's the steeple; But while we sing, "God save the King," ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... silent overhead, Below the beast has laid him down; Afar, the marbles watch the dead, The lonely steeple guards the town. ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn; good gossips ran out of their cottage ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Caernaruanshire a fery pig Mountain, the Glory of all Wales, which is named Penmainmaure, and you must also know, it iss no great Journey on Foot from me; but the Road is stony and bad for Shooes. Now, there is upon the Forehead of this Mountain a very high Rock, (like a Parish Steeple) that cometh a huge deal over the Sea; so when I am in my Melancholies, and I do throw myself from it, I do desire my fery good Friend to tell me in his Spictatur, if I shall be cure of my grefous Lofes; ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the spinner, Will sit down to dinner, And eat the leg of a frog. All the good people Will look o'er the steeple And see a ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... pillar is set up as a "sign" and a "witness" to the Lord, or whether as with the Mohammedans these figures appear as minarets with egg shaped summits, or as among the Irish they stand forth as stately towers defying time and the elements, or as among the Christians they appear as the steeple which points towards heaven, the symbol remains, and the original ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Paddy, that you are able to gain your experience while the ship is in harbour and as steady as a church steeple. It would be a different matter if she were rolling away across the Bay of Biscay with a strong breeze right aft; so you ought to be duly thankful to old Saunders for mastheading you without waiting till ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... built on Puget Sound back in the eighties, and was one hundred and six feet over all, twenty-six feet beam and seven feet draft. Driven by a little steeple compound engine, in the pride of her youth she could make ten knots. However, what with old age and boiler scale, the best she could do now was six, and had Mr. McGuffey paid the slightest heed to the limitations imposed upon his steam ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and behold! three or four hours afterwards we were all on deck marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at the entrance to the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... capture Roye and claim success in attack on Albert; French report gains; French shell Germans in quarries; Scheldt River interferes with attack of Germans on Antwerp; Belgians bombard church at Termonde to drive Germans from steeple. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... five more balls had struck the bell with a resounding din, the whole square was in commotion. A miracle was evidently in progress, or the campanile was bewitched. People began to run hither and thither; all the soldiers forming the escort gaped open-mouthed at the steeple as the clangour continued. As soon as the last shot had been fired, I looked down into the square and saw all this, and I saw that the prisoners were attempting to escape, and in more than one instance had succeeded, for the ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... town, village, or hamlet, not one was in sight! Of buildings grouped and arranged as a farm of any sort, not a sign! Of smoke in the sky, betraying some dwelling hidden among the trees, not a trace. Not a steeple above the branches, not a windmill on an isolated hill. Not even in default of houses a cabin, a hut, an ajoupa, or a wigwam? No! nothing. If human beings inhabited this unknown land, they must live like troglodytes, below, and not above ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Latimer (in a sermon preached before Edward VI). An old man, being asked what he thought was the cause of the Sands, replied that he had lived near there, man and boy, fourscore years, and before the neighboring steeple was built there was no Sands, and therefore his opinion was that the steeple was the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles! Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, And leave in our town not even a trace Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face Of the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Esquire. [3206]Barclay the Scot commends that of Greenwich tower for one of the best prospects in Europe, to see London on the one side, the Thames, ships, and pleasant meadows on the other. There be those that say as much and more of St. Mark's steeple in Venice. Yet these are at too great a distance: some are especially affected with such objects as be near, to see passengers go by in some great roadway, or boats in a river, in subjectum forum despicere, to oversee a fair, a marketplace, or out of a pleasant window into some ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... ability, came to the church and desired the workmen to show him their model and to tell him what they esteemed the charge of the north aisle would amount to, which when they told him, he presently undertook to pay them for building it, and not only that, but for a very tall and beautiful tower steeple. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... In the steeple of an old church was a beautiful chime of bells, which for many years had rung out joyous peals at the touch of the ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... bad as jewellers' clocks; but they are bad enough, and, in the nature of things, we have a right to expect more from a church clock than from any other kind. For the same reason the weathercock on a church steeple is to be judged by a higher standard than the one over a carpenter's shop or the ordinary dwelling. I cannot, for instance, imagine a more dangerous moral ensemble than a church with a clergyman preaching bad doctrine in the pulpit, a clock ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... yes, 'tis very pleasant, though I'm poor, To hear the steeple make that merry din; Except I wish one bell were at the door To ring new ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... elms at the corner the rooks tumble out To dance you Sir Roger in clamorous rout; For all honest people There's gold on the whin, And bells in the steeple, And ale ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... procession, some with surplices, some with organ pipes, to make up the solemnity." This monument, as it was left after this profanity, is still to be seen exactly as it remained when the soldiers had done their work. The brasses in the floor, the bells in the steeple, were regarded as lawful plunder. The same would not be said of the stained glass, of which there was a great quantity. This was especially the case with the windows in the cloisters, which were "most famed of all, for their great art and pleasing variety." ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... vertigos and that aerial calenture which prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high" than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... grandmother and served by her former nurse, Gabrielle Beauvouloir never left this modest home except for the parish church, the steeple of which could be seen at the summit of the hill, whither she was always accompanied by her grandmother, her nurse, and her father's valet. She had reached the age of seventeen in that sweet ignorance which the rarity of books allowed a girl to retain without appearing extraordinary ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... of his fame, in 1867. A man and a woman are working in the fields—two poor, simple-minded, weather-beaten, devout French peasants. It is nightfall; the bell called the "Angelus" rings out from the church steeple, and the two poor souls, resting for a moment from their labours, devote a few seconds to the silent prayers enjoined by their church. That is all; and yet in that one picture the sorrows, the toils, and the consolations of the ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... glanced at in the tradition. This circumstance, according to some accounts, was occasioned by the removal of part of the bells from Burscough at the dissolution of the monasteries, when the existing spire steeple was found to be not sufficiently capacious. The tenor bell, said to have been the third bell, at Burscough, bears some apparent proof of its translation. Round the circle, below the ear, is the following ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... capture by Cyrus. But before Babylon was the capital of Chaldea, or Nineveh the capital of Assyria, the city of Calah had been the seat of its kings, and a mighty mound—they call it Nimroud now—"as high as St. Paul's steeple," old travellers loved to say—marks the place on the east bank of the Tigris, twenty miles south of Nineveh; and, before Calah, Assyria had an earlier capital forty miles still nearer the Babylonian border, at Asshur, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... morning and looked from his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and a struggle was going on between the mist and the rising sun. The sun had taken the hill-tops, but the mist still kept possession of the valley and the town. The steeple of the great church rose through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and eastward, on the hills, the dim vapors were rolling across the windows of the ruined castle, like the fiery smoke of a great conflagration. It seemed to him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth on a benighted world; its ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he said, studying the scar. "I thought I knew every inch of that land, but I never seen that before. Why, I was right in there at the head of the canyon the first part of the winter. It's awful wild. Walls of the canyon like the sides of a steeple an' ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... as well as they could; which (says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) they hid somewhere in the steeple. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... continues. After I had written to you yesterday, the brain being wholly extinct, I played piquet all morning with Graham. After lunch down to call on the U.S. Consul, hurt in a steeple-chase; thence back to the new girls' school which Lady J. was to open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J. is really an orator, with a voice of gold; the rest of us played our unremarked parts; missionaries, Haggard, myself, a Samoan chief, holding forth in turn; myself with (at ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sea. The church is also close to the beach, I presume to allow the congregation the benefit of the sea breezes. It has no architectural beauty to recommend it, being a plain building with a spiral steeple, surmounted by a cross. The interior is fitted up with more regard to neatness than elegance. It has an organ, and is supplied with a host of young choristers from ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... base, which from a distance bear a fantastical resemblance to roosting birds. In 1679 the folk of Edwinstowe humbly petitioned for permission to take two hundred oaks for the repair of the building, and one reads that, seven years before, the steeple had been beaten down by thunder, and the old body shaken, and in a very ruinous condition; also that without the king's charitable help the whole church must absolutely perish. After the resultory survey, the Surveyors General of the Woods wrote that most of the ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... began, and nothing I have ever experienced can compare with it. Hunting, pig-sticking, steeple-chasing, big-game shooting, polo—I have done a little of each—all have their thrilling moments, but none can approach 'running a blockade;' and perhaps my readers may sympathize with my enthusiasm when ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... folded in a square form. The men look like robbers; with their long dark-blue or brown cloaks, in which they wrap themselves so closely that it is difficult to get a glimpse of their faces, and their steeple-crowned black hats, they quite resemble the pictures of the bandits in the Abruzzi. They glide about in so spectral a manner, and eye travellers with such a sinister look, that I ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... street, stands Trinity Church, or, as it is commonly called, "Old Trinity," the handsomest ecclesiastical structure in the city. It is the third edifice which has occupied the site. The first church was built in 1697, at the organization of the parish, and was a plain square edifice with an ugly steeple. In 1776, this building was destroyed in the great fire of that year. A second church was built on the site of the old one, in 1790. In 1839, this was pulled down, and the present noble edifice was erected. It was finished and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... were, but they were small compared with the other. It was the third part of him, the Puritan, that was really at war with Shakespeare. He denounced that playwright almost exactly as any contemporary Puritan coming out of a conventicle in a steeple-crowned hat and stiff bands might have denounced the playwright coming out of the stage door of the old Globe Theatre. This is not a mere fancy; it is philosophically true. A legend has run round the newspapers that Bernard Shaw offered himself ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton |
