"Verger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... died in the year 814, and was left undisturbed till the year 1000, when the Emperor OTTO THE THIRD opened his tomb, and, finding his great predecessor sitting on a marble chair, helped him down. The marble chair is on view in the Cathedral to this day (verger, I mark) to witness to the truth of this narrative. One hundred and sixty-five years later, FREDERICK BARBAROSSA opened the second tomb where OTHO had placed C., and transferred to a marble sarcophagus ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... gentleman—Mr. Ormandy, one of the wardens—who sits in a free pew near the front door, and does his best to prevent visitors from either losing themselves, swooning, or becoming miserable. In this quarter there is also stationed another official, a beadle, or verger, or something of the sort, who is quite inclined to be obliging; but he seems to have an unsettled, wandering disposition, is always moving about the place as if he had got mercury in him, can't keep still for the life of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... sits Sir Edward with a glowing breast, And some applause is instantly suppressed. Now up the nave of that majestic church A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch. Who is it? no one knows; but by his mien He's the head verger, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... to be discharged. The dean bade him do as he was ordered; and when he returned in his new dress, the dean called all the other servants into the room, and told them that they were no longer to consider him as their fellow-servant Robert, but as Mr. Blakely, verger of St. Patrick's Cathedral; an office which he had bestowed on him for his faithful services, and as a proof of that sure reward, which honesty and fidelity ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... verger met them in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass—"Well, sir, who are you? What, what, sir?—hey, sir?" deigned ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... is interesting in and about the cathedral nothing is more so than the Saxon Chapel under the crypt. It is the earliest known place of worship in the kingdom, its architecture being about the seventh century. We light our candles and follow the verger down the stone steps. The descent is a trifle treacherous. There are little niches in the wall where candles are placed. Then we enter the chapel. It is perfectly dark, and smells very earthy. A hole in one side of the wall is pointed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... service he went in great state down the center aisle, preceded by the gorgeous beadle—a character that is always awe-inspiring to me in these churches, being a cross between a magnificent drum-major and a verger and two persons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidly attired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of purple silk. The whole cortege was resplendent in embroidery and ermine; and as the great man swept out of my sight, and was carried on a priestly wave into his shining carriage, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... therefore, which was Sunday, service was performed for the last time. On the 23rd the steeple fell in and took the roof with it; the workmen had left the church a few minutes before. Even then there was at least one untroubled soul in Guildford. The verger was told that the steeple had fallen. "That cannot be," he replied, "I have the key in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... happiest born of men I deem'd, And show'd perchance my pride. I loved that girl, so gaunt and tall, Who whispered loud, 'Sweet Thing!' Scanning your figure, slight yet all Round as your own gold ring. At Salisbury you stray'd alone Within the shafted glooms, Whilst I was by the Verger shown The brasses and the tombs. At tea we talk'd of matters deep, Of joy that never dies; We laugh'd, till love was mix'd with sleep Within your great sweet eyes. The next day, sweet with luck no less And ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... walked up and down the aisles as fast as she dared, considering it was a church, to get her cramped legs warm again, and just as she was thinking what she was to do to get out, the door opened, to her delight, and in came the man who had care of the church—what we call a verger—followed by the old body who cleaned and ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... angry theologians would not let it rest, and it was discussed with peculiar fervor in the Catholic University of Louvaine. Among the doctors who there distinguished themselves in reviving the great contest of the fifth and sixth centuries, were Cornelius Jansen of Holland, and Jean de Verger of Gascony. Both these doctors hated the Jesuits, and lamented the dangerous doctrines which they defended, and advocated the views of Augustine and the Calvinists. Jansen became professor of divinity in the university, and then Bishop of Ypres. After an uninterrupted study of twenty years, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to come here every day," said Mellicent softly, "every single day. I should like to be a verger, and spend my life in an abbey. I think I could be awfully good if I lived here always. It makes one feel so small and insignificant, that one wouldn't dare to be selfish, and think one's own happiness ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which they ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the shops in the town, without, however, earning much money. From the rising of the sun one could hear the sound of his hammer in the cloister. This sole evidence of profane work attracted all the unoccupied to the miserable and evil-smelling dwelling. Mariano, the Tato, and a verger who also lived in the cloister, were those who most frequently met Gabriel, seated on the shoemaker's ragged and broken chairs, so low that one could touch the floor of red and dusty bricks with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Phoebe! There's the cathedral bell, I say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger," cried Mr. Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and he could only say to her, as she was drawing on a new ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... Isle Dieu, Belle Isle, Fort du Pilier, Mindin, Ville Martin; Quiberon, with Fort Penthievre; L'Orient, with its harbor defences; Fort Cigogne; Brest, with its harbor defences; St. Malo, with Forts Cezembre, La Canchee, L'Anse du Verger, and Des Rimains; Cherbourg, with its defensive forts and batteries; Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Cherbourg, Brest, and Rochefort, are great naval depots; and Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux, the principal commercial ports. Many of the works above enumerated are small in extent ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father would take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to the grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frail and so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of the mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that pretty white-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and pulling ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... shall be Quintus Icilius, at any rate!' And straightway had him entered on the Army Books 'as Major Quintus Icilius;' his Majorship is to be dated '10th April, 1758' (to give him seniority); and from and after this '26th May, 1759,' he is to command the late Du Verger's Free-Battalion. All which was done:—the War-Offices somewhat astonished at such advent of an antique Roman among them; but writing as bidden, the hand being plain, and the man an undeniable article. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... on being married in a parish where neither of them was known; he had got a special licence, and there was nobody in the church but the verger and Sangster, and a deaf uncle of Christine's, who thought the whole affair a great bother, and who had looked up a train to catch back home the very moment that Christine should have safely passed out of ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong keep. The ruins of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1241 by Meyler, of Birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its pendant in the story of a Mayence verger, who holds British visitors to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it is said that a Mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to be of English extraction, or like the Stratford mulberry tree, which is said to be a cutting ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... with his gold staff, appeared in the Vestry door. A tall handsome man, he had been in the service of the Cathedral as man and boy for fifty years. He had his private ambitions, the main one being that old Lawrence, the head Verger, in his opinion a silly old fool, should die and permit his own legitimate succession. Another ambition was that he should save enough money to buy another three cottages down in Seatown. He owned already six there. But no one observing his magnificent impassivity (he was famous for this throughout ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... this viol was ten feet high. Hans used to play this instrument at the village church, and his playing drew such crowds that the preacher had just cause for jealousy, and improved the opportunity, yet stifling his rage he ordered the verger to lock the doors and allow no one to depart until ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... church-door as if he were dazed. The verger came forward. "My hat, good Stephano, I left it just back of the fair lady." He handed the man a piece of silver and the verger disappeared. Petrarch was sure he could not find the lady—she was only a vision, a vision seen by him alone. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... tourists. Are you the verger's wife? You must excuse my ignorance, but we are strangers in this part. Perhaps you can tell us a little about the church; it seems a very old one. How many ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... of having been grouped with others in charge of a verger, but a verger there must have been, and at my next visit there must equally have been one; he only entered, rigid, authoritative, unsparing, into my consciousness at the third or fourth visit, widely separated by time, when he marshalled me the way that he was going with a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... on playing till midnight 'but for a very earthy verger,' who insisted on locking up the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... multitudinous rooks suggest security which comes from triumphant legality. No irresponsible person shoots them. When one enters a cathedral close he feels that he is in a land that frowns on the crudity of change. Here everything is a "thousand years the same." And how decent is the demeanor of a verger! ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and very still—except for a faint noise that came from a far corner of the upper left-hand gallery. The old verger, moving about in felt slippers below, paused now and then, and looked up as the sound grew louder or died away. It was like a mouse nibbling—and yet ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... information had expired, and then received him again. Soon afterwards he ordered him and the rest of his servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler, but that his integrity had made him Mr. Blakeney, verger of St. Patrick's, an officer whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a year; yet he still continued for some years to serve his ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... veteran soldier, the church verger's assistant, is standing behind the candle cupboard. Raising his eyebrows and stroking his beard he explains in a half-whisper to an old woman: "Matins will be in the evening to-day, directly after vespers. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... highly educated as we are. A party to them is a party, and they don't wait for anybody, which, after all, is the proper thing to do. Where's the Griffin?" demanded the Lion of Carry-on-Merry, after that intelligent creature, having acted like a verger (a habit he had probably acquired from a life-long proximity to Westminster Abbey), had shown all the dogs to their places along one side where the comfortable carpet formed a sort ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... Frond, and asked what was to be seen. Nothing here but churches and monks. One of the little girls, three years old, looked with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out, "Quel jolie poupee!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall ye be taught wisdom." The old man dropped her hand, and looked as if he would have lighted the faggots ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... The verger had gone, and she was quite alone. Deep in the shadow of a gallery she slid to her knees and hid her face. "O God!" she whispered,—"O God, forgive me!" And again the words seemed torn from her—"O God, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs. Proudie's school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... as sponsors, and being placed in an arm-chair, his shoes were taken off, and his head uncovered. The officiator, vested in a cantab's gown and cap, with a book in one hand and a bell in the other, with a verger on each side, robed, and holding staves (alias broomsticks) and candles, preceded by the suttler, bearing a bowl of punch, entered the parlour, and demanded "If there was an infidel present?" Being answered, "Yes," he asked, "What did he require?" Answer. "To be initiated." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... married by a bishop, with two priests and three curates to assist. The ceremony was held at the great stone church; and as the procession came out, the verger had a hard time to keep the crowd back, so that the little girls in white could go before and strew flowers in their pathway. The organ pealed, and the chimes clanged and rang as if the tune and the times were out of joint; then other bells from other parts of the old town answered, and across ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... eyes when Lance tumbled himself out of the train on something so little bigger or older than himself. He says the way we all talk of "my eldest brother" made him expect something taller than Clement, and more imposing than the senior verger; but he understood it all when he saw him and Lance together. They have two very nice rooms; and Felix has put Lance into the bedroom, which is luckily cool, and sleeps on a sofa bed in the parlour; and the landlady will do ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... The verger who took them in charge was an ancient man called Paulinus of Mansfield, having been born in that place. And he soon saw that what he had to show of the unfinished cathedral was lost on the heavy-lidded boy who was ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... centres in Brandon but more sharply in the Cathedral, which is depicted as a living organism with all its great history behind it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the Canons—down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, England; behind England, the world, all ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... half an hour. He had not often been in cathedrals of late years, and now looked about him with something of awe. He could remember that when he was a child he had been brought here to church, and as he stood in the choir with the obsequient verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through the minutes of a long sermon,—a sermon that had seemed to be very long,—in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb to the pinnacle which culminated over the bishop's seat, and thence make his way along the ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and smiling. 'It's a great compliment to me to hear it from your own lips; not that it's unexpected. Miss Violetta's a sweet saint, just like her ma, she is, an' her ma's a saint if there ever was one. Mr. Higgs, the verger, says that to see her pray that length of time on her knees after the service is over in ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... shrine of our patron Saint (as he was, until superseded by Saint George in the thirteenth century), and there I indulged in overt acts of superstition violating Article XXII. of 'the Church of England by law established.' A verger, with some colonial tourists, arrived during our devotions, but his voice was lowered out of regard for our feelings. Indeed, both he and the tourists adopted towards us an attitude of respectful curiosity (not altogether unpleasant), which was in striking contrast ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... wall, built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite is the back of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... We followed a crowd of Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made for a special service. There being no pews or sittings in the chapel, but a few plain chairs for hire, we paid the verger two cents for the use of a chair and waited. Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... grand wedding, with choral service, was in course of celebration. Sally begged Amelius to take her in to see it. They tried the front entrance, and found it impossible to get through the crowd. A side entrance, and a fee to a verger, succeeded better. They obtained space enough to stand on, with ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... them," said Berry. "I can smell some of them now. Can you not hear the cheerful din of the iron tires upon the cobbled streets? Can you not see the grateful smile spreading over the beer-sodden features of the cathedral verger, as he pockets the money we pay for the privilege of following an objectionable rabble round an edifice, which we shall remember more for the biting chill of its atmosphere than anything else? And then the musty quiet of the museums, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... were taken to see the pictures. Vandy, as showman, naturally escorted Adele. The rest of us, decently grouped about his sisters, followed like a party of sightseers in the wake of a verger. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... withdrew my head, feeling that I was almost committing sacrilege. Unfortunately for me, I dislodged some loose mortar, and I heard this rattle noisily into the chamber below. Then I fled as rapidly as I could down the dim alley-way to the silent sunlit Grand' Place. Here I found the verger, and he admitted me to the great old church, in return for a one-franc piece, and brought me a rush-bottom chair to a choice spot before the wondrous Jube, where ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... morning we took a fly (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has so many sacred recollections to me," says Mr. Tusher (and Harry remembered how Tom's father used to flog him there)—"a house near to that of my respected patron, my most honoured patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But, madam, the verger waits to close ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Confessor's shrine, which is chiefly of wood, likewise abounds in these inscriptions, although this was esteemed the holiest shrine in England, so that pilgrims still come to kneel and kiss it. Our guide, a rubicund verger of cheerful demeanor, said that this was true in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gentille Et ung bergier en ung verger L'autrhyer en jouant a la bille S'entredisoient, pour abreger: Roger Bergier Legiere Bergiere, C'est trop a la bille ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... those islands, located in the said city of Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet there—especially the Chinese, who have observed this condition—it is very annoying that they should ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... one connected with the church was directly or indirectly responsible for the theft, and this idea was strengthened by the fact that it was impossible to tell how the robbers had entered the church. The verger had come in as usual that morning by the north door which he had found locked, and it was subsequently ascertained that all the other doors were locked. Some of you may know the church and remember that it is rather dark, its windows few and high up; indeed, only by ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Bottle," a very decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two large houses in the High Street, and a ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... as I pass one of the tombs on my way to the Chapel of Abbot Islip. Anon the verger will have stepped briskly forward, drawing a deep breath, with his flock well to heel, and will be telling the secrets of the next tomb on ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and resolved that his Majesty should be informed that the cathedral of these islands has no buildings, ornaments, or suitable equipment for divine worship; nor has it any income or contributions for these purposes, or for sacristan, verger, or other necessary assistants. And being built of wood and straw, as it is, and so poor, weatherbeaten, and deprived of necessities, it is a reproach and a cause of loss to our faith and Christian ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... like having a spy in the enemy's camp. In this frame of mind, grateful for the accidental meeting with Planchet, pleased with himself, D'Artagnan reached Notre Dame. He ran up the steps, entered the church, and addressing a verger who was sweeping the chapel, asked him ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nave, as in most cathedrals, is open to the inspection of the visitor free of any charge; but the choir, the tombs, the chapels and transepts, are reserved, and shown to visitors on payment of a small fee. This fee is payable at the verger's desk at the entrance to the north transept. A further fee is payable by those who wish to photograph in this or in any other ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... (Jewish); denomination, sect; basilica. Associated Words: ecclesiastical, ecclesiology, ecclesiolatry, ecclesiasticism, parish, hierarch, hierarchy, hierocracy, hierolatry, hierology, hierarchism, irenics, cure, evangelical, verger, beadle, chancel, clearstory, nave, transept, vestry, presbytery, prebend, prebendary, lectern, apse, irenicon, living, benefice, sinecure, glebe, see, prelacy, convocation, synod, conference, conclave, consistory, crypt, schism, orthodoxy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "En co verger troveroums les flurs Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel) Les herbes ausi pur medicine La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie) Liz vaut per royne, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... (one of the manors of the De Greys), and others, of his manor of Portpoole, called Gray's Inn.[111] This was probably in 1371. Similar feoffments-in-trust were made by successive Lords de Grey until 1506, when Edmund, Lord de Grey of Wilton, sold the manor to Hugh Denys, verger of Windsor Castle, and ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... their charge; to Mr. J. Oldrid Scott for the loan of drawings of St. Michael's; to Mr. A. Brown, Librarian of the Coventry Public Library for advice and help in making use of the store of topographical material under his care; to Mr. Owen, Verger of St. Michael's and Mr. Chapman, Verger of Holy Trinity, for help in various directions, and to Mr. Wilfred Sims for his energy and care in taking most of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... upper parts of the church, facilities are afforded by a staircase commencing at the south-west Transept leading to the western Tower; and by another leading from the north Transept; but permission must be obtained, for which an application should be made to the Verger in attendance. The ascent, though tedious, is not dangerous, if due caution be used. Many parts will be found worthy of attention; the timber work of the Octagon is a very curious piece of carpentry executed in English oak, and very ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... great naturalist may figure as an ardent devotee of the creed he rejected. The clergy are hypocritical and base enough—as a body we mean—to claim Darwin himself now they have secured his corpse. Who knows that, in another twenty years, the verger or even the Dean of Westminster Abbey, in showing visitors through the place, may not say before a certain tomb, "Here is the last resting-place of that eminent Christian, Charles Darwin. There was a little misunderstanding between him and the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... showed itself even here. For praying one day in the Cathedral, like a good Catholic as he was all his life, his attention was arrested by the great lamp which, after lighting it, the verger had left swinging to and fro. Galileo proceeded to time its swings by the only watch he possessed—viz., his own pulse. He noticed that the time of swing remained as near as he could tell the same, notwithstanding the fact that the swings ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... "County of Durham," by J.R. Boyle, F.S.A. Thanks are also due to the authorities of the Cathedral for having freely given permission to make drawings and measurements, and to the late Mr Weatherall, chief verger, for his kindly ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... readers, especially those not of the Roman Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious fashion of quete or collection at church—not by a commonplace verger, or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl whom the cure could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing smiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and to enable her to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... been suppressed by the Inquisition, as has been done throughout the Indias); and two whole and two half racioneros, by virtue of a royal decree given in Valladolid, June 2, 1604, countersigned by Juan de Ybarra, the king's secretary. With the above, and two curas, sacristans, master-of-ceremonies, verger, etc., this church is very distinguished and well served, and the choir is quite crowded at all canonical hours. At its first erection, the advocacy of the most pure Conception was bestowed upon this church, and it has been preserved up ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... stranger in a country church draws as many gazers as a blazing star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him? Then I, Sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding officer, single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes to hers, set my nose ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... side with the Pointed, and the very first grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably blended. The choir was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... go for the ring. R'c'lect it'll be on the top of my right-hand little finger, and just be careful how you draw it off, because I shall have the Verger's fees somewhere ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... whose poems de la Nature Champetre, and le Bonheur dans les Campagnes, have passed through many editions, and of whom pleasing mention is made in the above Biog. Univers.; M. de Fontaine, author of Le Verger; Masson de Blamont, the translator of Mason's Garden, and Whately's Observations; Francois Rosier; Bertholan, the ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... spoil the broth. Cities en fete are masked and prankt, and the spring in Italy is like one long Forestieri day. At the church of Eremitani in Padua I was taken to see some Mantegnas at a side-altar while a very devout congregation was celebrating Eastertide, and the verger unlocked a gate and pocketed his tip with undiminished piety. How apt an image of life, these Italian churches—some of us praying and some of us sightseeing! It must be confusing to the celestial bookkeepers to distinguish the Bibles from the Baedekers. And while the real Venice is as unreal ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... much entertainment in various ways if one goes early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in. The costumes and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line, the ability of the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular attendants, of course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is in classing the visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can cull the commoners ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... had charge of the fees for clerk, verger, bell-ringers, and every person, connected with the church, who could possibly have a tip ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... brilliant if Marshal MacMahon's dismissal of his ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, and to turn the balance of the mind, as ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... his mind: supposing the failure of the church-clock's striking powers should be only temporary; supposing it should recover under some verger's treatment, and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... To-day we saw the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far-away humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, and could put one ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word of the service, and was as good as an angel. When the procession had filed out, and the last strain of the great organ had rumbled into silence, we went on a tour through the cathedral, a heterogeneous band, headed by a conscientious old verger, who did his best to enlighten us, and succeeded in virtually ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Alice's first view of Valhalla, though of course she had heard of it. In old times she had visited Madame Tussaud's and the Tower, but she had not had leisure to get round as far as Valhalla. It impressed her deeply. A verger pointed them to the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had not the courage to ask for It. Priam could not speak. There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... for the future. And from that date henceforward not one of the community attended Church. Sunday after Sunday, the bells rang in vain. Mr. Arbroath conducted the service solely for Mrs. Arbroath and for one ancient villager who acted the double part of sexton and verger, and whose duties therefore compelled him to remain attached to the sacred edifice. And the people read their morning prayers in their own houses every Sunday, and never stirred out on that day till after their dinners. In vain did both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath run up and down the little ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... spent from that heartbreaking climb up the merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre—he staggered rather than walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacre-Cour, he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost and lonely ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the King G L Madame du Portal, abbess of Joui G L The Marquis de St. Didier G R Two of the legionary chiefs of the national guard G L Pichard, president of Bourdeaux G L Vicq. D'Asyr, a celebrated physician at Paris G R D'Aoust, De Lattre and Du Verger, three generals of the republican army G L The Abbe de Salignac de Fenelon, aged 85 years G L De Fenelon, son of the ambassador at the Hague G L De Bacquencourt, counsellor of state G L The duke de Gesvres, cordon bleu G L The Prince d'Henin, captain of ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... glorious Rubens's,* the Vandycks, and the almost equally fine Sir Joshuas. But even the glance they had was but a passing one, as the servant trotted them through the rooms with the rapidity of locomotion and explanation of a Westminster Abbey verger; and he made a fierce attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... that he was to be married in October, and in these circumstances Mrs. Gibson, Miss Banks, and Mrs. Church put their banns up. This acted as a specific, and Captain Barber, putting the best face he could on the matter, went and interviewed the verger on his ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... more crowded than they had anticipated, the result being, that as they waited with many others in the aisle, Denys found herself put into a row where there was but one seat, and she could only look helplessly on while Charlie was marched by the verger, who knew him but did not know Denys, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... from the embrace: it seemed to have no effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside his daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their march ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Verger Sproule, of old time, who was born in the first year of the nineteenth century, once told Mr. Morgan, present senior lay clerk, that he well remembered John Weeks, and that the portrait on the tablet was ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... You can prig something out of the Money-box." But the vigilant Verger has his eye on them. Such is the story ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... before she was up, which I was sorry for, so only saw her, and away to chapel, leaving further visit till after sermon. I put my wife into the pew below, but it was pretty to see, myself being but in a plain band, and every way else ordinary, how the verger took me for her man, I think, and I was fain to tell him she was a kinswoman of my Lord Sandwich's, he saying that none under knights-baronets' ladies are to go into that pew. So she being there, I ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... enforced the Sacrist's rules, and took care that bad characters were not harboured in the church, and that burden-bearers were kept out. We have seen that these duties fell largely into abeyance at certain times. Every Michaelmas Day the Verger appeared before the Dean to give up his wand, and to receive it back if his character was satisfactory. The Verger was bound to be a bachelor, because, said the statute, "having a wife is a troublesome and disturbing affair, and husbands are apt to study the wishes of their ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... cash, the Verger cries, How mean'st thou this? John Bull replies, What law protects th' extortion? Stop, gentle friend—what's law to us? The law's your own—so make no fuss, The profits are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed him, wiping the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... subjects of congratulation; even the uncertainties and misfits of these frequently rusty keys to the past excite a mirth that lightens the toil with which one rummages through the corridors of time. It would be treason to tell the name of that antique university-chapel where a certain wooden-headed verger was betrayed into the absurdest error; it would be personal to give the name of the waggish friend who made him his innocent butt; but the facts and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... long letter to your reverence after your religious profession. Besides, your reverence heard of me through the Padre Lector Verger, who is at present our guardian. I received your letter when I was among the Gentiles over three hundred leagues away from any Christian settlement. There is my life and there, I hope, God helping, to die. When this hour comes, some member of our province will take care to notify ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... ecclesiastical changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in large churches there were representatives of all these various officials. They disappeared ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... cry, Leonard did not halt till he reached the great western door of the cathedral, against which he knocked. His first summons remaining unanswered, he repeated it, and a wicket was then opened by a grey-headed verger, with a lantern in his hand, who at first was very angry at being disturbed; but on learning whom the applicant was in search of, and that the case was one of urgent necessity, he admitted that the doctor was in ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... men at once conventional and improbable—with whimsically ugly names; while his invented names are whimsically perfect: that of Vholes for the predatory silent man in black, and that of Tope for the cathedral verger. A suggestion of dark and vague flight in Vholes; something of old floors, something respectably furtive and musty, in Tope. In Dickens, the love of lurking, unusual things, human and inanimate—he wrote of his discoveries delightedly ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... being thus settled, the clock no sooner struck twelve, than they all set out together; they who laid the wager being resolved not to be imposed on by his tampering with the verger. As they passed along, a scruple arose, which was, that though they saw him enter the church, how they should be convinced he went as far as the vault; but he instantly removed their doubts, by pulling out a ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... express his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him throughout ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... verger's lodge noticed a little brown bird flitting about the Cathedral precincts, and admired its beautiful singing. "But it is a pity," said they, "that all that warbling should be lost and wasted far out of hearing up on the parapet." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... dropped his voice to a drawl. "In Fighting-green, I believe, sir: they told me Poets' Corner was already bespoke for a turn-up between the Dean and Sall the charwoman, with the Head Verger ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stream of people entering the Abbey through the north transept. He was carried on by them, till a verger showed him into a seat near the choir, and he mechanically obeyed, and dropped ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a wonderful piece of wrought-iron work. Whether next day, after viewing the cathedral, the tricycles pursued their journey, is not told. The pilgrimage ends, as it should, at the shrine,—that is, where the shrine had been; for the verger, after saying solemnly that they had come to the shrine of St. Thomas, solemnly added, "'Enery the Heighth, when he was in Canterbury, took the bones, which they was laid beneath, out on the green, and had them burned. With them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... seeing highly priced dress materials which they had brought at fairs, and then been unable to dispose of, now suddenly become tradeable, and go off with a rush. For instance, on one occasion a lady appeared at Mass in a bustle which filled the church to an extent which led the verger on duty to bid the commoner folk withdraw to the porch, lest the lady's toilet should be soiled in the crush. Even Chichikov could not help privately remarking the attention which he aroused. On one occasion, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... which the two men obtained from a verger, whom they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them expressed either ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... unprecedented circumstance to find choir, congregation, organist, organ-blower, bell-ringer and verger all conspicuous by their absence. Mr. James went to the cottages near to make inquiries as to the cause. The first was locked up, but by knocking long and loudly at the door of the second, he at last succeeded in rousing Jacob Johnson, a deaf old ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... is, haunted by ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful; then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and organ. For ever requiem—repose. Tired with scrubbing the steps of the Prudential ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment afterwards, we were beneath the dome of St. Paul's. If this part of the edifice has appeared imposing when viewed from without, how much grander did it seem now ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... by a feeling that it would be well for him to get over those last hours. Thus he found himself in Barchester at eleven o'clock, with nothing on his hands to do; and, having nothing else to do, he went to church. There was a full service at the cathedral, and as the verger marshalled him up to one of the empty stalls, a little spare old man was beginning to chant the Litany. "I did not mean to fall in for all this," said Crosbie, to himself, as he settled himself with his arms on the cushion. But the peculiar ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... dull heart Hope came not. As one talketh in a dream, And doth not mark the sense of his own words, He read; and, as one walketh in a dream, He after walked toward the vestment-room, And never marked the way he went by,—no, Nor the gray verger that before him stood, The great church-keys depending from his hand, Ready to follow him out ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... contrived nests under the bulging old-fashioned eaves, seemed less busy, less active on their bright pinions, and skimmed to and fro with a gliding ease, suggestive of happy indolence and peace. The doors of the church were set wide open,—and Adam Frost, sexton and verger, was busy inside the building, placing the chairs, as was his usual Sunday custom, in orderly rows for the coming congregation. It was about half-past ten, and the bell-ringers, arriving and ascending into the belfry, were beginning to 'tone' the bells before pealing ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... their entrance into the chapel, into two lines, the attendants of the knights-companions flanked either side of the north aisle; while between them walked the alms-knights, the verger, the prebends of the college, and the officers-of-arms, who proceeded as far as the west door of the choir, where they stopped. A slight pause then ensued, after which the king, the knights-companions, and the chief officers of the Order, entered the chapter-house—a ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—mais c'est ires curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service ... vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job... on the simple pretext ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it was considered a good likeness. He was staggered for a moment, and then replied hurriedly that it was. But, thank goodness, here comes the lunch. I feel as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... visit to the very remarkable Church of St. Ours adjoining the chateau, which, as Viollet le Duc says, has a remarkable and savage beauty of its own. After seeing what is left of the girdle of the Virgin, which the verger thought it very important that we should see, we spent what time we had left in gazing up at the interesting corbeling of the nave and the two hollow, stone pyramids ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... character were imparted to the performances, which in tone and manner were admirable and precise. She made the boys understand the sense of the words they sang, till I have seen them even in tears during the singing. The "chaste old verger" (as our reporter called him), who headed the procession at least four times a day, up and down the church, was a very important and successful part of the machinery, and from him, up to the highest official, everything was carried out with ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that she had felt certain of meeting Hilliard "accidentally," in the Mission church. That while she walked beside the elderly Spanish verger, chatting of his native Cordova, listening to tales of Father Juniperra Serra, Father Somera, and the legend of the Indians with the miraculous portrait of the Madonna, she had started more than once at a footfall, fancying it ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... never famous for forbearance at any time, was not to be tampered with. Turning to his verger ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... not English," I affirmed. "You speak too well." I was piqued. She did not answer. She smiled again and I grew angry. In the cathedral she had smiled at the verger's commendation of particularly abominable restorations, and that smile had drawn me toward her, had emboldened me to offer deferential and condemnatory remarks as to the plaster-of-Paris mouldings. You know how one addresses a young lady who is obviously ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... qui produis Les fleurs dont le jardin se pare, Et que, sans toi, toujours avare, Le verger ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... set out on our expeditions of sight-seeing, but we did not keep together. Euphemia and I made our way to the old cathedral. The ancient verger who took us about the edifice was obliged to show us everything, Euphemia being especially anxious to see the stall in the choir which had belonged to Charles Kingsley, and was much disturbed to find that under the seat the monks of the fifteenth ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Our Lady of the Waters; and when she finally rose, could not bring herself to leave as yet that place of sorrowful beauty, all warm and golden with the last light of the declining sun. She watched the old verger, Pierre Polou, stumping softly around the darkening building, and spoke to him once, asking the hour; but he was very deaf, as well as nearly blind, and ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... soon after his arrival, or confessing at all, in a church to which, as far as we knew, he was not attached? His tall and portly form looked magnificent and commanding as he stepped forth into the shadowy aisle, and, preceded by a verger, or suisse, bearing a lighted flambeau and a staff of office, was soon lost ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... door through which they had come was closed. Jack shook it, and hammered it with his fists, but he could not open it; it was locked, and they were prisoners in the tower. The verger who had the charge of the door had remembered that he had left it unfastened, and had turned the key in the lock soon after the children had entered the tower. No one had been near when they had crept inside, and so the verger had no idea that any one had gone ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... something of a scholar, something of a philosopher, but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put on the table ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... side of the court, he says, "be very stately." Nor did the princes of Lancaster limit their designs to magnificent structures; this college was as well filled as the hospital, for it contained a dean and twelve prebendaries; thirteen vicars choral, three clerks, six choristers and one verger, in all thirty-six persons; and the endowment was adequate to the establishment, for the revenues at the dissolution amounted to 595l. 12s. 11d. Among the various donations to this college, the following taken from the Parliamentary rolls of the year 1450, ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Raileries in the very edifice itself. He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, the Rich Framing of the Relics, and all he came across, seeming no more impressed by their solemnity than the Verger Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. "Surely," I thought, "there must be something wrong in a Faith whose Professors make so light of its ceremonies, and turn Buffoons in the very Temples;" nor ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have been at ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... is rushing at Gert again, when the Bishop's Secretary enters, preceded by a verger, who calls ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... back his ten pounds. No burst of applause greeted the works of Jane Austen like that which greeted the far inferior works of Miss Burney. Crevit occulto velut arbor oevo fama. A few years ago, the verger of Winchester cathedral asked a visitor who desired to be shown her tomb, "what there was so particular about that lady that so many people wanted to see where she was buried?" Nevertheless, she lived to feel that "her own dear children" ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... vestry things assumed a brighter tone. There was no lack of witnesses to sign the register. The verger pointed out to them the place, and they wrote their names, as people in such cases do, without stopping to read. Then it occurred to some one that the bride had not yet signed. She stood apart, with her veil still down, and appeared to have been forgotten. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... stately calm, as she waited for the arrival of the Darcy family, but even she felt a tremor of excitement when the verger hobbled up to the square pew and stood holding the door open in his hand. The heads of the villagers turned with one consent to the doorway; only one person in the church disdained to move her position, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... "A verger, I suppose," thought Wingfold.—"Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added, hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and we shall be turned out ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole building ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... VERGER. At the University of Oxford, an officer who walks first in processions, and carries ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall |
