"Pawnbroker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trade—it has its own pertic'ler responsibilities and troubles. She is a turrible expense to Watty on account of eating so much. The tales that feller told of how hard he has to hustle showing her off in order to support her appetite would of drawed tears from a pawnbroker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says. Which he found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and sleep in the tent, and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... complimentary pass to a reserved place in Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the coronation of her Britannic Majesty, "For the Senor Camillo Alvarez y Pintal, Chevalier of the Noble Order of the Cid, Secretary to His Catholic Majesty's Legation near the Court of St. James,"—the other, a Sydney pawnbroker's ticket for books pledged by "Mr. Camilla Allverris i Pintal." He held these contrasted certificates of Fortune,—her mocking visiting-cards, when she called on him in palace and in cabin,—one in each hand for a moment; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is—as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers' trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son. I was a member, at that time, of the select committee; and I mention the Society here, because my precious and admirable ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... chance, and that the winnings and losings were determined in every three casts. I saw a decent young man take off and stake his neckcloth: fortune favoured him, and he had the uncommon fortitude to retire, and play no more. There was another booth of rather a singular kind—a temporary pawnbroker's, and who appeared to have a good ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art has, with great judgement, extracted from that work a legend, in which, as he shows very clearly[A], we have the real, although hitherto unnoticed, origin of the Three Balls which still form the recognised sign of a Pawnbroker. The passage is so curious, that it should be transferred entire to ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... other minute was convulsed by the brotherly claps which the backers-up on either side bestowed upon him; and the long faces of all three, as now and then they stopped and scrutinised the shop-window of some silversmith or pawnbroker, betokened anything ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the number invited. Some spoke doubtfully; they might be able to go! they were not sure! and seemed to regard consent as a favor, if not a condescension. Of these, however, two or three were hampered by the uncertainty as to the redemption of their best clothes from the pawnbroker. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... good. Dickie was tired, and the flowers were beginning to droop. He turned to go home, when a sudden thought brought the blood to his face. He turned again quickly and went straight to the pawnbroker's. You may be quite sure he had learned the address on the ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... a financier. A financier is a man who makes money without a trade or profession, and Mulhausen had made a great deal of money, despite this limitation, during his twenty years of business life, which had started humbly enough behind the counter of a pawnbroker's in the Minories. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... I found the place to be a pawnbroker's shop, and from all appearances he must have been doing a very brisk business. He was out himself attending a temperance committee, but his old father was behind the counter, and asked me inside. Though it was ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... Jew pawnbroker at least we think he's a pawnbroker—who's always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as a machine-gun takes ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... excellence, when once pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident, partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever, in modern times, attained ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... set them again, they will bear no sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum, to awaken them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by latitudes and longitudes—slow here and fast there. They have, too, their antipodes—it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the cracked looking-glass to get the general effect. "And it is decently original. The professional cracksman would probably have shaved, whereupon the first amateur detective he met would reconstruct the beard on the sunburned lines. Now for a pawnbroker; and the more avaricious he happens to be, the better he will ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... a girl's, his anklets and bracelets, gold chains and jeweled girdle, and a mitre-shaped coiffure of black and gold studded with enormous diamonds, any one of which would make the fortune of a Pall-Mall pawnbroker. A score of attendants about his own age were standing at the back of the young heir, while four diminutive dwarfs and four jesters in comic garb crouched at his feet, and innumerable other subordinates—such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... philosophical Chinaman visit Vauxhall, the other members of the party consisting of the man in black, a pawnbroker's widow, and Mr. Tibbs, the second-rate beau, and his wife. The Chinaman was delighted, and, by a strange coincidence, Addison's metaphor crops up once more in his rapturous description. "The illuminations began before ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... sensitive nature. She would leave the factory after her long toil, and run home, pick up a parcel which her mother had prepared, and fly like a hunted thing along the shadiest and quietest streets, making many a turning in order to avoid her friends, to the nearest pawnbroker's. Then with sufficient money for the week's requirements she would hurry back with a thankful heart, and answer the mother's anxious, questioning eyes with a glad light in her own. A kiss would be her reward, and she would be sent out to pay the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... by the police authorities, that the description of Mr. NATHAN'S watch has been spread so widely, that the robber will be unable to dispose of it to any jeweler or pawnbroker." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... invested with the funds necessary for my homeward journey. I learned, afterwards, that this man had made an exception in the usually limited range of his operations, in my favor, his establishment not being, by any means, that of a pawnbroker, but, in every sense, of the most ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... tray with the Barry arms emblazoned. In after life, and in the midst of my fortune and splendour, I paid thirty-five guineas, and almost as much more interest, to the London goldsmith who supplied my father with that very tray. A scoundrel pawnbroker would only give me sixteen for it afterwards; so little can we trust the honour ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tragedians admired before Christ was borne, could ever performe more in action than famous Ned Allen." Perhaps he made his money as an actor-manager; perhaps he married money, for his wife was the daughter of a pawnbroker (who was also a theatre-proprietor and one of the grooms of the Queen's chamber); perhaps he began lending money early in life himself. He and his father-in-law, when James succeeded Elizabeth, were made chief masters of "his Majesty's games ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... ignorant, the diamonds must be genuine. Nickie selected another stone, and told the same tale at a pawnbroker's shop in another part of the city. The benignant Hebrew passed ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... of half an hour's duration, he rose trembling from his chair, blew out his candle, and, in a few minutes' time, might have been seen standing with a pale and troubled face before the window of old Balls, the pawnbroker, peering through the suspended articles—watches, sugar-tongs, rings, brooches, spoons, pins, bracelets, knives and forks, seals, chains, &c.—to see whether any one else than old Balls were within. Having at length watched out a very pale and wretched-looking ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... "Three pawnbroker's duplicates, one for the child's shoes, 1s. 6d., one for the wedding ring, 5s., and one for the wife's necklace, 7l., lie at the feet of the father, with the Sporting Magazine; for drunkards generally part with the ornaments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... mingled feelings, watched the recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck the boots under his arm and march away with them to the nearest pawnbroker. If Pasquale had been an equally compassionate Briton, he would have stopped to think, and have tossed the man a sovereign. But he didn't stop to think. That was my cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... by the fitting sobriquet of 'Bully Presby.' You are that! You are one of those shriveled souls that fatten on the toil of others—that thrive on others' misfortunes and miseries. My God! A usurer—a pawnbroker, is a prince compared to you. You are without compassion, pity, charity or grace. Your code is that of winning all, the code of greed! Listen to me. You doubtless look down on me as a camp woman, and with a certain amount of scorn! But knowing what I am, I should far rather be what I am, the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... a great deal of business with Miss Tennant's father; otherwise he must have shunned the proposition upon which she came to him. Indeed, wrinkling his bushy brows, he as much as told her that he was a banker and not a pawnbroker. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... helped in turn—never mind how. He had other acquaintances whom he pestered undauntedly; and from whom he occasionally extracted a dinner, or a crown, or mayhap, by mistake, a goldheaded cane, which found its way to the pawnbroker's. When flush of cash, he would appear at the coffee-house; when low in funds, the deuce knows into what mystic caves and dens he slunk for food and lodging. He was perfectly ready with his sword, and when sober, or better still, a very little tipsy, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knock-kneed, pigeon chest; very feeble, enlarged radices. Three children have died. Housing: nine in three rooms. Evidence from Police, Poor Law Officer, Parish Sister, School Charity, Army Charity, Children's Employment, School Officer, Factor, Pawnbroker and Doctors. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Road there happens to be a highly respectable pawnbroker's shop; in the pawnbroker's window the chances are that you might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... question: "We certainly did not return the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the thief is the most notorious in the city—when his picture has been in the paper ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... surely would have drunk. As it was, when I had spare moments I spent them playing chess, or going with nice girls who were themselves students, or in riding a bicycle whenever I was fortunate enough to have it out of the pawnbroker's possession. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... not where to go, but spent the sleepless night under an arch. Early the next morning he went to a pawnbroker's, and raised L2:10s. on his watch, with which money he walked ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... carriage be seen at his door, the neighborhood is not full of concern lest he be going to run away. If a package be removed from his house, a score of boys are not employed to watch whether it be carried to the pawnbroker. Mr. Payall fills no place in the public mind; no one has any hopes or ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... get over you. What can the pawnbroker do to you? Most people call him uncle, so I expect ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... than 1 pound 2s. 6d. from an intelligent pawnbroker to whom I stated the circumstances and with whom I pledged the ring, my sympathies with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous people were at once enlisted. I could not help wondering that in rich England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a young and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... economic editorials while astride a mustang. Possibly so; but it were well to remember that while it is evidently to the interests of the stockholders of such a corporation that it should prosper, the bond-owner, who is a kind of wholesale pawnbroker and flourishes best during periods of business depression, also has something to say. Whether the former receives any dividends or not the latter must have his interest, and the more of labor products required to pay it the more he ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... house of his old friend the pawnbroker—that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete. "I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, "with some family plate, of which I beseech you to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... right. Miss MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker's shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean's teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to this person, who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day laborer in your city—the merest bird of passage, with my watch at the pawnbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go—and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day's paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite fair—even—since I ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... returned, with perfect calmness, "that, after the usual habit of this class of women, the necklace very soon found its way back, through the pawnbroker, to the jeweler again. It's a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... get into good society, but British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... his advice as to whether or not I should inform the police of my adventure. He heard me with more consideration than I expected, but insisted that I should immediately make known to you my experience in this Bowery pawnbroker's shop. ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... meantime the pawnbroker to whom she had sold the silver cup, which she had stolen from poor Sally's master, impeached her; and as the robbery was fully proved upon Rachel, she was sentenced for this crime to Botany Bay; and a happy day it was for the county of ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Jewish jeweler on rue Saint-Avoie in 1829. Furnisher and creditor of Esther Gobseck. A general pawnbroker. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... slunk along like a criminal. But strong as that fear was, I would rather have met him than faced my father. Soon I came to a wharf where a steamer was taking aboard passengers for California. At once my determination was made. I hurried to a pawnbroker's shop, and from my watch and what little jewelry I had I realized enough money to buy a steerage ticket, and in a few hours was on my way, under ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... "This is no pawnbroker's shop," he asserted. "I'll give you a hundred dollars, outright, for this pearl brooch—as a purchase, understand—but the rest of the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... parties in the Northern wilderness in quest of the same thing! It occurred to the wondering boy that Pierre might have been sent into the Hudson Bay country in quest of the individual who had purchased the Little Brass God at the pawnbroker's shop. ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... with a shuddering presentiment, and I would have given the world to throw it out of the window. But I could not bear to see him pinched with hunger, and he had already tossed the doctor's eighteenpence to a beggar woman. So I trudged off to the pawnbroker's, to get what price I could, and I bethought me that none would know me for what I was so far away as Oxford Street. But the monster behind the counter had a quick suspicion, though I swear I looked as innocent as a babe; he discovered ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to spread abroad, it is his duty to exclude what he believes does not bear the due impress of the author's mind. No doubt as a rule editors have no discretion to be trusted; but happily Mr. Ainger has plenty, and most sincerely do we thank him for withholding from us A Vision of Horns and The Pawnbroker's Daughter. Boldly to assert, as some are found to do, that the editor of a master of style has no choice but to reprint the scraps or notelets that a misdirected energy may succeed in disinterring from ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... butterfly (a present from James Green), and her neck, arms, waist (at least what ought to have been her waist) were hung round and studded with mosaic-gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, etc., looking for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop, or the lump of beef that Sinbad the sailor threw into the Valley of Diamonds. In the right of a gold band round her middle, was an immense gold watch, with a bunch of mosaic seals appended to a massive ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... women; and I drew near faster, but still cautiously, to hear what they were saying. Surely on them the spirit of death and decay had descended; I had no education to dread here: should I not have a chance of seeing nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not have been more practical and commonplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said to the woman upright—this and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cutting off connection between them and its bounties. Next summer I must let the weeds grow up in my garden, so that they may have a better chance for seeds above the stingy level of the universal white. Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... house, and the sufferings which have confined you in it, will prove, in the event, the source of your future peace: for when all my best rhetorick failed to melt Mr Delvile, I instantly brought him to terms by coupling his name with a pawnbroker's! And he could not with more disgust hear his son called Mr Beverley, than think of his son's wife when he hears of the Three Blue Balls! Thus the same passions, taking but different directions, do ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... I made the purchase from a pawnbroker of a lethal instrument, provided with a duplicate bore, so that, should a bird happen by any chance to escape my first barrel, the second will infallibly make ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... strong-fisted, dreadfully hungry, tough and unbeautiful man. Whom his own Nephew, at last, had to assassinate, at the Ford of the Reus (near Windisch Village, meeting of the Reus and Aar; 1st May, 1308): "Scandalous Jew pawnbroker of an Uncle, wilt thou flatly keep from me my Father's heritage, then, intrusted to thee in his hour of death? Regardless of God and man, and of the last look of a dying Brother? Uncle worse than pawnbroker; for it is a heritage ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; "I have a small pawnbroker's business at Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him but that he is willing to come for half wages so as to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that he was a rogue as he passed along the street. Why, he stared at every body he met, as if he was afraid they were going to give him an invitation to walk to the police office. The first thing he did was to call at several pawnbroker's offices, where he tried to sell me. No one would give him what he asked. He wanted ten or twelve dollars, I believe. Well, he gave up that project before night, and I heard him mutter to himself, "If I only had the money for it!" After supper he took me ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber and found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's watch which he had pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her own appartement and ordered the door to be broken ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... high estate. When he had bought it there crossed his mind the silly thought of its signification of the infinite leagues that lay between him and Billy Goodge. He could pawn it for ten pounds—it would be like pawning his heart's blood—but where? Not in Morebury, even supposing there was a pawnbroker's in the place. He had many friends in his profession, scattered up and down the land. But he had created round himself the atmosphere of the young magnifico. It was he who had lent, others who had borrowed. Rothschild or Rockefeller inviting any of them to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to the weather, traces of Hogarthian humour can be detected. A man is staggering under the weight of a woman, who is on his back. She is holding a glass of gin in her hand; a chain and padlock are round the man's neck, labelled "Wedlock." On the right-hand side is the shop of "S. Gripe, Pawnbroker," and a carpenter is just going in ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... adjective. We say "Dutch Gold" for pinchbeck, "Dutch Myrtle" for a weed. "I shall talk to you like a Dutch uncle" is another saying, not in this case contemptuous but rather complimentary—signifying "I'll dress you down to some purpose". One piece of slang we share with Holland: the reference to the pawnbroker as an uncle. In Holland the kindly friend at the three brass balls (which it may not be generally known are the ancient arms of Lombardy, the Lombards being the first money lenders,) is called ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... she fed us liberally when she could browbeat the butcher; and if at times we went short, she shared our privation. Also, there must have been some good in the woman, to stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe. Stimcoe's books had gone into storage at the pawnbroker's; but in his bare "study," where he heard our construing of Caesar and Homer, stood a screen, and behind it an eighteen-gallon cask. A green baize tablecloth covered the cask from sight, and partially muffled the sound of its running ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... London a picture at the address I enclose? The man's card, you see, proclaims 'Silversmith,' but he is 'Pawnbroker.' A picture hangs up at the door which he calls by 'Williams,' but I think is a rather inferior Crome; though the figure in it is not like Crome's figures. The picture is about three feet high by two ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... bargain, and that he was willing to pay his new acquaintance a commission on the proceeds. This last offer Mr. Hall had magnanimously refused, but out of mere good-nature he went forth to do the stranger's bidding. The pawnbroker, however, with a distrust in human nature which stamped him as having an evil mind, called in a passing policeman, and gave this victim of his own kindly disposition into custody. The sequel was inevitable. The constable was led by the unsuspicious ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... all the same, I will not touch a penny of your money; but I know you are long-headed and may think of some scheme for me. I've got nothing to sell of any value; I parted with my father's watch—and it's still at the pawnbroker's; worse luck!" (His pitilessly selfish mother had borrowed ten pounds and forgotten the debt, and he had been compelled to apply to his "Uncle.") Shafto found his salary a very tight fight; eleven pounds ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Dublin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar's, who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:(177) he learned his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Snap, sarcastically. "Give me the ticket," he added, and stowed the pawnbroker's receipt carefully ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... accustomed to the Buncombe style of oratory, to hearing men offer the pledge of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the most trivial occasions, that we are apt to allow a great latitude in such matters, and only smile to think how small an advance any intelligent pawnbroker would be likely to make on securities of this description. The sporadic eloquence that breaks out over the country on the eve of election, and becomes a chronic disease in the two houses of Congress, has so accustomed us to dissociate words and things, and to look upon strong language ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... A pawnbroker in Augusta, Georgia, has $5,000 capital. The largest and best equipped drug store in Anniston, Alabama, is owned by a colored physician. He has a considerable wholesale trade in patent ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon which a pawnbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive, and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the future. It was tantalizing to know ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there's no true kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker. This universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the salon, as in the street, there is no one de trop, there is no one absolutely useful, or absolutely harmful—knaves or fools, men of wit or integrity. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... reins, rope reins, and no reins; spurring, swearing, hallooing, and gesticulating toward Memphis, in mortal terror lest the rebels would capture them again, and some of their hard-earned gains. Pauvre Juils! They would have excited the pity of a pawnbroker, if he had not known them, so frightened and anxious and disconsolate they looked. They could not have appeared more miserable if they had just learned that a brass watch they had sold for silver had ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... blackguard, pawnbroker, traitor!" he cried, shaking his fist at this portrait of a stout and smiling-looking gentleman. "I loathe you! I despise you! I spit upon you!" ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... of the English Utilitarians, sprang from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical English prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but was neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's dishonesty. He left some thousands to his son, Jeremiah, an attorney and a strong Jacobite. A second Jeremiah, born 2nd December 1712, carried on his father's business, and though ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than face a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it, the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before him—Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's face, a little creased ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fire, so far as I can recollect, I behaved as others, morally I seem to be deficient. So I discovered next day when I attempted to buy David's outfit, and found myself as shy of entering the shop as any Mary at the pawnbroker's. The shop for little garments seems very alarming when you reach the door; a man abruptly become a parent, and thus lost to a finer sense of the proprieties, may be able to stalk in unprotected, but apparently ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... I'll tell you.' said the woman. 'I judge that she had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together money to pay the pawnbroker's interest year by year, and prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was out in two days; I ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... long suspected it," the thin voice went on, drily. "The full description of the star will be printed in the Police Gazette, a copy of which every respectable pawnbroker always gets regularly. I suppose the people where the star was ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... famous jewels; yet was of sufficient importance to be known, in a limited circle, as "The De Peyster Pearl." "I know the chain wouldn't bring much; but you could raise a lot on the pearl from a pawnbroker." ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... prized gift of Mrs. Kukor's daughter, Mrs. Reisenberger, who was married to a pawnbroker, very rich, and who occupied an apartment (not a flat)—very fine, very expensive—in a great Lexington Avenue building that had an elevator, and a uniformed black elevator man, very stylish. The ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... from the governor, telling me to. Just as I got on the scene, to my horror, amazement, and disgust, I saw a middle-aged bounder, in loud checks, who, from his looks, might have been anything from a retired pawnbroker to a second-hand butler, sacked from his last place for stealing the sherry, standing in the middle of the field, on the very wicket the Rugborough match is to be played on next Saturday (tomorrow), ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the big pit near the entrance to the Zoo, and ignoring the rather cheap gibes of the rest of the party, I provided myself with half-a-dozen buns, three of which I attached by long strings to the front of my howdah, where they swung about like an edible pawnbroker's sign. The bear was lying in a very small patch of bamboo, and broke cover at once. As I had anticipated, the three swinging buns proved absolutely irresistible to him. He came straight up to me, I ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... matters, the visits to the Prefecture de Police, to the company who took charge of printing and posting handbills promising rewards for the restoring to their owners of lost objects, to the famous "Montde Piete," the great central pawnbroker's of Paris, even—— For a week and more Auntie and the two girls, so far as it was possible for them to help her, did little else than exhaust themselves in such efforts, seizing every suggestion held out by sympathising friends, ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... The old pawnbroker sprawled back in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed, in the beady, ratlike eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... "I'd no doubt of it. Well, it's been a far simpler thing than I'd dared to hope. I'll tell you how we got him. This morning, about ten o'clock, this chap, who won't give his name, went into the pawnbroker's shop in Edgware Road, and asked for a loan on a diamond ring which he produced. Now, Pelver, who happened to attend to him himself, is a good deal of an expert in diamonds—he's a jeweller as well as a pawnbroker, and he saw at once that the ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... doesn't sound nice; but it was much the safest plan. I redeemed it the day before yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker cleared out ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... speculator in precious stones," said Ashton-Kirk, to Bat. "He buys and sells; and his buying is not always aboveboard. He is also a pawnbroker ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... to the police or to the magistrate. I worked in a store. A piece of sterling silverware disappeared. Other pieces had previously been stolen. The police traced the last missing piece to a pawnshop. The pawnbroker testified that a girl pawned it. His identification of me was close enough ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... others told me quite a different story of the house's abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt, shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining years been a familiar figure on the roads of ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Mrs. Morris had defended her apparent lavish expenditure by saying that there was no possibility of saving money. She bought useful things, and when her husband was out of work she could always get a large percentage of their cost from the pawnbroker. The pawnshop, she had tearfully explained to Miss Johnson, was the only bank of the poor. The idea of the pawnshop as a bank, and not as a place of disgrace, was new to Miss Johnson, but before anything further could be said the husband had come ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be beholden to Hatchway, who still hovered about the gate, eager for an opportunity to assist him, he chose to undergo the want of almost every convenience of life, and actually pledged his wearing apparel to an Irish pawnbroker in the Fleet, for money to purchase those things, without which he must have absolutely perished. He was gradually irritated by his misfortunes into a rancorous resentment against mankind in general, and his heart so alienated from the enjoyments of life, that he did not care ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... were crowded: rabbi and pawnbroker and maggid, clothes-man and takif, were infected; and there spread the cry (for the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... you that we have the same chef as when I was kindergarten teacher here in the school years ago. He 's prosperous as a pawnbroker. He gave me a radiant greeting. "How are you, Tanaka?" quoth I. "All same like damn monkey, Sensei," he replied. But he is unfailingly cheerful and the cleverest grafter in the universe, with an artistic temperament highly developed; ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and there along the street Grocery Stores and shops of Italian Warehousemen may be observed, opened here as branches of bigger establishments in the City. Three gilt balls may occasionally be seen hanging out under the first-floor windows of a 'pawnbroker's' residence. House-agents, too, are not uncommon along ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... come into great want, poor Henry and Maria: they had not wherewithal for daily sustenance. The few remaining trinkets, books, clothes, and other available moveables had been gradually pledged away, and to their full amount—at least, the pawnbroker said so. That unlucky publication of the law book, so speedily condemned and heartlessly ridiculed, had wrecked all Henry's possible prospects in the courts; and as for help from friends—the casual friends of common life—he was too proud to beg for that—too sensitive, too self-respectful. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... red satin gown embroidered with flowers of gold and silk, a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop; and I must add that I never before saw so low cut a corsage display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a large turban, constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put the finishing touch to a costume so little in harmony with the style of her face. I scarcely ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... it was agreed that I should exert myself in his behalf, and after a visit to the pawnbroker's, where Dannevig had deposited his dignity, we parted with the promise to meet ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... him a little; and he gave him at once all he had, amounting to six pounds,—a wonderful amount for Roger to have accumulated; with the help of which we got on to the end of Jemima's month. The next step I had in view was to take my little valuables to the pawnbroker's,—amongst them a watch, whose face was encircled with a row of good-sized diamonds. It had belonged to my great-grandmother, and my mother had given it me when ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... in a pawnbroker's shop, he lighted upon a rarity indeed, which might or might not have a history attributed to it, but was in itself more than interesting for the beauty of both material and workmanship. The sum asked for it was large, but with the chance ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... Among the familiar ones seen are the American eagle, with white head and tail, the Austrian eagle with two heads, the British lion, the Irish harp, the French fleur de lis, etc. Among trades the three balls of the pawnbroker, the golden fleece of the dry-goods man, the mortar and pestle of the druggist, and others are well known. Examples of these and others are given in the illustration but any wideawake Woodcraft Girl will be able to find ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... moment, that is to say only the day before the party, that a prince of the blood royal was to be there. How this had been achieved nobody quite understood; but there were rumours that a certain lady's jewels had been rescued from the pawnbroker's. Everything was done on the same scale. The Prime Minister had indeed declined to allow his name to appear on the list; but one Cabinet Minister and two or three under-secretaries had agreed to come because it ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Bonnie has bloomed out. She must have speeded up some Fifth Avenue modiste's establishment to the limit, but she's turned the trick, I'll say. Uh-huh! Not only the latest model evening gown, but she's had her hair done up spiffy, and she's got on a set of jewels that would make a pawnbroker's bride turn green. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... He met a poor man, as he calls him, in Westbourne Grove, who was one of his Christian brethren (is that the right expression?) and who declared he was next door to starving. So what must Ronald do, but run into a pawnbroker's—I shouldn't have thought he could ever have heard of such a place—and sell his coat, or something of the sort, and give the man (who was doubtless an impostor) all the money. Then he positively walked home in his shirt sleeves. I call it a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... clothing her neighbor possessed, and that some articles could be spared for a short time, probably without detection; and if she should be detected before she could redeem them, her friend would excuse her. She devised means to enter, and conveyed to the pawnbroker's two parcels of clothing, upon which she realized nine dollars; she made some purchases for the house, redeemed a coat for her husband, and then started for the asylum for the purpose of fetching him to her home. But on her arrival there, the physician told her that he had left a few ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... who pay the interest when we make a common pawnbroker our agent and see in his dingy rooms the evident distress and needs of his callers. Many shrink from his oppressions who are deceived by the splendid surroundings of the "Security Co." But the interest is exacted from the same class as truly by one ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... respectable indeed. These usually came at night, and in the cellar transactions would take place which involved much money exchanging hands. In the daytime Mr. Norman was an innocent bookseller, but after seven he retired to the cellar and became as genuine a pawnbroker as could be found in London. Touching books he was easy enough to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper who knew little ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... question reminded her of Mr. Bonsfield's chief clerk—the son of a pawnbroker in Camberwell. He assumed the same attitude of body. Certainly Mr. Arthur did not fold his hands together before him—he did not sniff through his nostrils; but her imagination supplied ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... pair of opera-glasses, which he converted into change (on the gratuitous plea that he had forgotten his purse) at the first pawnbroker's on the confines of the city. The pawnbroker talked Greek to him ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly lessened in their value. The conscientious pawnbroker allowed me—'he thought he might'—half a guinea for them. I took it very readily, being determined to call for them very soon, and then, if I afterwards wanted, carry them to some less voracious ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... made an arrangement for leaving them, and running off with the Captain? How do you know that those footmen are not disguised bailiffs?—that yonder large-looking butler (really a skeleton) is not the pawnbroker's man? and that there are not skeleton rotis and entrees under every one of the covers? Look at their feet peeping from under the tablecloth. Mind how you stretch out your own lovely little slippers, madam, lest you knock over a rib or two. Remark the death's-head moths fluttering among the flowers. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the others monuments such that the public pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... haven't the guile of an unfledged chicken. You leave this matter with me. I begin to think I'd like to see Miss Clay. I admire that handsome, dashing sort of girl—yes, that I do. All I want you to do, Jim, is to introduce me to the young lady. If her father is a pawnbroker he must have a bit of money to give her, and a gel with a fat purse is just my style. You come along to the Clays and give me a footing in the house, and that's all ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... letter to Miss Kelly thanking her for tickets and saying that Liston is to produce Lamb's farce "The Pawnbroker's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was blowing up from the East River, and great flakes of snow were beginning to fall, when, out of the darkness of a side street, there came the slight, graceful figure of a young girl, who, crossing Broadway, glided into the glare of the great arclight that was stationed directly opposite a pawnbroker's shop. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... there are fewer lights to be seen now than there were an hour ago. The tradespeople over there, generally, have put up their shutters, and the time for closing the drinking-saloons is at hand; but lights are yet lingering in the pawnbroker's establishments, for the Mont de Piete is an institution of an extremely wakeful, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... cotton handkerchiefs, etc. They, too, had got up to go home, but were lingering in conversation with a friend, who had just come up to them. This friend was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or, as everyone called her, Lizaveta, the younger sister of the old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, whom Raskolnikov had visited the previous day to pawn his watch and make his experiment.... He already knew all about Lizaveta and she knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and washed vigorously. Afterwards he changed his clothes, putting on a dress suit produced from the trunk. When he had finished, he stepped back and laughed softly to himself. His clothes were well cut. His studs, which had very many times been on the point of visiting the pawnbroker's, were correct and good. He was indeed an incongruous figure as he stood there and, with a candle carefully held away from him in his hand, looked at his own reflection. For some reason or other, he was feeling elated. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... time, the patience of his friends and his own little fund of money were both exhausted; and, one by one, the relics of his former prosperity, even to his wife's trinkets, found their way to the pawnbroker. He was a sanguine man, as inventors need to be, always feeling that he was on the point of succeeding. The very confidence with which he announced a new conception served at length to close all ears to his solicitations. In the second year of his investigation ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... as the boys were gathered in their sitting-room, one of them was leaning on the bank. He held up a quarter of a dollar between his thumb and finger, and, looking at his companions, said, "You know Simpson, the pawnbroker?" "Yes." "He is a friend in need, but here is a friend indeed!" and the bright silver ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... A pawnbroker I should take him to be, who wears the jewellery left in his care on his person for safety. As a matter of fact, I believe he is a South African millionaire. He brought her home one day, and Blakde - that's the housekeeper's ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... But I wish you to understand, that, if I am not 'posted,' as you say, I do know my rights, and I shall take proper measures to get possession of my property. You have no more hold upon it than a pawnbroker has upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... come from the attic, was inclined to feel it safe to be civil, and answering his summons went up to him, and being called in, was paid her long unpaid dues from the little heap on the table, the seeing of which riches almost blinded her and sent her off willingly to the pawnbroker's to bring back the pledged ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... left by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... be much obliged to you, Monsieur! But hear me. With respect to Russia, you know how matters stand. From the King of Poland I have nothing to fear. As for the King of England,—he is my relation [dear Uncle, in the Pawnbroker sense], he is my all: if he don't attack me, I won't him. And if he do, the Prince of Anhalt [Old Dessauer out at Gottin yonder] will take care ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... never! Miss Johnson shall not be made to pay our debts. There's Uncle John's gold watch, left as a kind of heirloom, and very dear on that account. I've carried it long, but now it must go. There's a pawnbroker's office opened in Frankfort—take it there this very afternoon, and get for it what you can. I never shall redeem it. There's no hope. It was in my vest pocket when I ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... deeply, partly at the idea of her mother's lace being taken to a pawnbroker's, partly to hear that her brother and sister had ever been reduced to such straits. She made an excuse to take Erica away to her room, and there questioned her more than she had yet ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... pieces of one of the Swiss chalets we give to children to play with; all very light and fragile, hardly more than resting on the ground, as if ready to fly away at the slightest breath of bankruptcy or caprice: the villa of a cocotte or a pawnbroker. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that he had never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to a "fence" in the rear of a pawnbroker's shop, and thence to a number of assignation rooms, in one of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... with the old Fiddle Trick. You take a Fiddel in a Pawn Brokers leave it with him along comes another Felow and pretends its a Stadivarious Stradivarious a valuable Fiddel. 2nd Felow offers to pay fablous sum pawnbroker says I'll see. When 1st felow comes for his fiddel pawnbroker buys it at fablous sum to sell it to the 2nd felow. But 2nd felow doesn't ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... were you doing yesterday on the boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker's, and the ticket to ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker's duplicates in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth without a dozen oaths: then we should consider the Puritan (even though he did quote Scripture somewhat ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... review our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them. The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet expenses. The salary ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... "I met a man and his wife about two years ago—both drunk. I got them to sign the pledge, and since then to invest their money in our bank. The pawnbroker had got the greater part of their goods; but I am happy to say that they have got all the articles out of pawn, and can bring a little money almost every week to the bank; and when putting in the money, the man says that it is better than taking it to the public-house. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... may be proud of having done. And accumulate these things by you until you hear of some honest persons in need of clothing, which may often too sorrowfully be; and, even though you should be deceived, and give them to the dishonest, and hear of their being at once taken to the pawnbroker's, never mind that, for the pawnbroker must sell them to some one who has need of them. That is no business of yours; what concerns you is only that when you see a half-naked child, you should have good and fresh clothes to ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... The speed of it dazed me, and I stumbled along the street like a fool. What was the game? I held the glittering watch in my hand and gazed at it like a hypnotized bird. I came to another pawnshop and went in. "What will you give me on this watch?" I asked. The pawnbroker glanced at it and said he couldn't ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... mother (who seems to have been married a second time) to dispose of some property of hers abroad; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in which were various charges for wine; and, among other evidences of low funds, a pawnbroker's receipt for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds. There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by the screw steamer Andes, which sailed on Wednesday last. The clerk found him to the last degree incommunicative; and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... saint, a love, an archbishop of innocence, a man that ought to be stuffed, as the old actor said. What! you have lived in Paris for twenty-nine years; you saw the Revolution of July, you did, and you have never so much as heard tell of a pawnbroker—a man that lends you money on your things?—I have been pawning our silver spoons and forks, eight of them, thread pattern. Pooh, Cibot can eat his victuals with German silver; it is quite the fashion ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the Danes continued to make night hideous and elope with ladies whom they had never met before. It was a sad time in the history of England, and poor Emma wept many a hot and bitter tear as she yielded one jewel after another to the pawnbroker in order to buy off the coarse and ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... in a pawnbroker's shop," said Mr. Basswood. "And the best part of it is that they caught him trying to pawn my wife's silver spoons and Laura's two rings. The pawnbroker got suspicious, and as he happened to be an honest man, he called in a detective. This detective remembered the picture he had seen printed ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... poor hard-working men, not one in fifty can boil a potato into a condition that is not ruinous to the digestion. And we have reason to know that the Chartists, on their great meditated outbreak, having hired a six-pounder from a pawnbroker, meant to give the signal for insurrection at dinner-time, because (as they truly observed) cannon-balls, hard and hot, would then be plentiful on every table. God sends potatoes, we all know; but who it is that sends the boilers ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... shrewd eye and the false, cringing smile of a small shopkeeper. He explained in the strident vernacular of the Cockney that his name was Henry Hobbs—"Enery Obbs" was his own version of it—and he kept a pawnbroker's shop in the Caledonian Road. It was his intention to have called at Scotland Yard earlier, he explained, but his arrangements had been upset by a domestic event in ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... exactly what to do if we were in London," she resumed; "we could take our things to the pawnbroker's, and get lots of money for them. That is what poor people do. Mrs. Foster has pawned all her rings and brooches. It is quite easy to do, you know; but perhaps there ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... don't she think she ought to send in somethin' also? When she asks what he thinks would be about right, Marc Anthony is gonna say that he guesses she ought to keep the pen she wrote the check with as a souvenir, but that everything else she had, includin' anything a pawnbroker would give ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... jacket. I stopped to examine it. It was stained behind with mud, and in front with a darker color. An old patch hid a part of the front; but a close examination showed two holes over the breast. It was "No. 4"'s lost jacket. I asked the shopman about it. He had bought it, he said, of a pawnbroker who had got it from some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year from some old soldier. He readily sold it, and I took it back with me; and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. Word was sent ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... that the Polish labourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell us that the English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841? Have we not everywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back from the magazine of the pawnbroker? Have we not seen in the house of the working man, in his clothing, in his very looks as he passed us in the streets, that he was a happier being? As to his pleasures, and especially as to the most innocent, the most salutary, of his pleasures, ask your own most intelligent and useful ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perfectly aware why and for what cause it failed. He intends to write one more with all his dearly bought experience in his head, and should that share same fate he will then turn his mind to some other pursuit." Lamb did not write another farce for many years. When he did—"The Pawnbroker's Daughter" (see Vol. IV.)—it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... himself sat in the stocks for the very purpose of bringing them into contempt—the Papisher! he had as lief Miss Jemima had married the devil! Indeed, he was persuaded that, in point of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the occasion—having grown two inches taller since he left—for the one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... officials, and regulated in its workings by certain laws which emanate from the Emperor himself. A limit of sixteen months is assigned, within which pledges must be redeemed or they become the property of the pawnbroker; and the interest charged, formerly four per cent., is now fixed at three per cent. per month. Before the license above-mentioned can be obtained, security must be provided for the existence of sufficient ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... served his time, he began to look about him. The tailor's trade did not seem likely to lead to much, unless it were combined with something else, and a brilliant opening offered itself, as he was at work for a pawnbroker in Hounsditch. "The broker's wife had one daughter alive. The mother, being well persuaded of my good natural temper, and of my good husbandry, and that I had no poor kindred come after me to be any charge or burthen to her daughter, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Academy of Science in Market Street, he saw a lady get out of a taxi and quickly enter a pawnbroker's. Her whole life at once rose up before him. She was Ella Crockford, the wife of the Californian Street Sugar King, and, unknown to her husband, she spent her afternoons at a gambling saloon in Kearney Street, where ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Mr. Brough to get the money? I will tell you. Being in his room one day, old Gates the Fulham porter came and brought him from Mr. Balls, the pawnbroker, a sum of 1,200l. Missus told him, he said, to carry the plate to Mr. Balls; and having paid the money, old Gates fumbled a great deal in his pockets, and at last pulled out a 5l. note, which he said his daughter Jane had just sent him from service, and ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forlorn hope, tried to induce a young Russian nobleman, who was an eager reader of his books, to enter the concern with a large amount of fresh capital. To bait him, a magnificent dinner was given in the Rue Cassini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's gold and silver plate, liberated from the pawnbroker's for the occasion by a timely advance of two thousand francs from Werdet. The feast was an entire success, and an appointment was fixed for the next day at the Russian's hotel. Alas! when the envoy went, he received, sandwiched in the guest's thanks for ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... out the accused, "the b—counter-skipper never had any watch! he only filched a twopenny-halfpenny gilt chain out of his master, Levi, the pawnbroker's window, and stuck it in his eel-skin to make a show: ye did, ye pitiful, lanky-chopped son of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the green-grocer. I, too, left the house, hoping to get rid of some little discontent, caused by thinking of what had happened. Returning by the way of High Street—I declare I can hardly believe it even now—I did positively see Miss Jillgall coming out of a pawnbroker's shop! ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... took the box which contained the plate, felt its light weight, opened it, and saw a pawnbroker's ticket. The poor mother uttered a dreadful cry. Joseph and the Descoings ran to her, saw the empty box, and her noble falsehood was of no avail. All three were silent, and avoided looking at each other; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... he roosted on the paddock fence, for the dawn was raw and cold and his overcoat was hanging in the back room of a pawnbroker's establishment some two hundred miles away. Circumstances which he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to control made it a question of the overcoat or the old-fashioned silver stop watch. The choice was not a difficult one. "I can get along without the benny," reflected the Kid, "because I'm naturally ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... midst of grief. We had not been two hours together, before I knew his history from beginning to end. He had already been married eight years, and his only trouble was a debt of twenty-four dollars, which the illness of his wife had caused him. This money was owing to the pawnbroker, who kept his best clothes in pledge until he could pay it. "Senor," said he, "if I had ten million dollars, I would rather give them all away than have a sick wife." He had a brother in Puerto Principe, Cuba, who sent over money enough to pay the rent of the house, but he found that ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor |
