"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... receiving a benediction in common, they assorted themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... noted in a Yorkshire church tower, an atchievement painted apparently about forty or fifty years ago, of which no account can be given by the sexton or parish clerk. Query, to what names do the bearings belong? viz. Vert, on a fess or, between three bezants, three lions passant azure. Impaling: Vert, three swans in tri, statant, wings erect, argent. Crest, a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... paces. After church, he disappeared as quietly as he had entered, and fortunately escaped hearing the comments on his rash act. His appearance was generally considered as an impertinence, attributable only to some wanton fancy, or possibly a bet. One or two thought that the sexton was exceedingly remiss in not turning him out after discovering who he was; and a prominent pew-holder remarked, that if he couldn't take his wife and daughters to that church, without exposing them to such an influence, he would try to find ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... no attention; and now, as we came forth by the back door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of sexton, which I had already allotted to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... getting quite dark when they found him down in a little dell upon a patch of greensward. Considering that he was a joiner, and not a sexton, he had made remarkable progress with a very creditable grave, which, he explained, was to receive the dead with which the woods were distributed. He added that it was a disgrace to leave so many corpses lying about, and pointed out that he had removed his boots for fear of treading ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the sexton, hearing from without The tumult of the knocking and the shout, And thinking thieves were in the house of prayer, Came with his lantern, asking, "Who is there?" Half choked with rage, King Robert fiercely said, "Open: 'tis I, the king! Art thou afraid?" The frightened ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... this time concluded, and nothing now remained but the last summons of the sexton. At this juncture, while the coffin was being lowered into its resting place, my eyes, accidentally, it may be said, but in reality by some fatal instinct, fell full upon the lid, on which I instantly recognised a name, long and fearfully known to me—the name of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... Protestant churches to expect or to receive fees for conducting funerals, yet it is in perfectly good taste to offer him a fee. In the Roman Catholic Church the rate of fees for funerals is fixed. There are, besides, fees for the sexton, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... the next Sunday to hear Mr. Peck preach, and Putney, who seemed to see her the moment she entered the church, rose, as the sexton was showing her up the aisle, and opened the door of his pew for her with ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sake!' said a trooper, laying his hand upon his bridle. 'Sergeant Sexton hath sprung in even now, and horse and man have gone ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his father, was twenty years of age, weak, characterless, though quite amiable. In his early youth his chief pleasure seemed to consist in ringing the bells of Moscow, which led his father, at one time, to say that he was fitter to be the son of a sexton than of a prince. Dmitri was an infant. He was placed, by his father's will, under the tutelage of an energetic, ambitious noble, by the name of Bogdan Bielski. This aspiring nobleman, conscious of the incapacity of Feodor to govern, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... never rescued be from shame, Though seas of venal ink be shed; No sophistry shall reconcile With sympathy for Erin's Isle, Or sorrow for her patriot dead, The weeping of this crocodile. Life's incongruity is past, And dirt to dirt is seen at last, The worm of worm afoul doth fall. The sexton tolls his solemn bell For scoundrel dead and gone to-well, It matters not, it can't recall This convict from his final cell. Jerusalem, Old and New. Didymus Dunkleton Doty Don John Is a parson of high degree; He holds forth of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... than the babe unborn. Reg'lar goney. Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ... engineer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton's wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they buried Lady Carleon in her son's grave, which Dick had helped to prepare for her, since no sexton could be bribed to do the work. Indeed these were all busy enough attending to the interment of the great ones of Venice. In that churchyard alone they saw six buryings in progress. Also after the priest had read his ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... dead man's bed, The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle! Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand, Digs thro' whole rows of kindred and acquaintance By far his juniors! Scarce a skull's cast up But well he knew its owner, and can tell Some passage of his life. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... of the church, we could see the yellow fog between ourselves and him. There were fourteen persons in the audience, and we were all huddled together in a cowardly way in the pews nearest the door: three old men, four women, and four children, besides ourselves and the sexton, a deaf little old man ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Mr. Simpson's pup followed him in; and it took Simpson, Jenks the sexton, and two small boys, to ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... May 4.—Windbag SEXTON had fine opportunity to-night; made the most of it. SEYMOUR KEAY absent through greater part of sitting. Various rumours current in explanation of the happy accident. Influenza hinted at; but Grand Young GARDNER, who is familiar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... alone, and when the street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... close to it, were the boys' school and girls' school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton's energy; then came a neat little grocer's shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer's wife the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house. And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the 14th of November, 1744, honourable interment in the chancel vault, to the tolling of the great tenor bell, and with the fullest ceremonial of the time. Indeed it is evident, from the charges still preserved in the sexton's book, that Fielding rendered to his wife such stately honours as were occasionally accorded to the members of the few great families ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... house of nuns, And he heard the dead-bell toll; He saw the sexton stand by a grave; 'Now Christ have mercy, who did us save, Upon yon fair ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... burying, sexton tolling! Sing for the second birth, angel Lark! Moan, ye poor Pines, with the Past condoling! Burst out, brave Organ, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Wilmot, keeper of the turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank, near Dudley; and among the descendants of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III., we may mention Mr. Stephen James Penny, the late sexton at ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... and enliven her as it usually did. The warm, moist wind that came in gusts from the south was not invigorating, and she went slowly up the church-steps, glad that her walk was over. There was no one in the church. Even the sexton was not visible; and Christie placed herself in her accustomed seat under the gallery, near the door, glad to rest in the pleasant stillness of the place. How quiet and peaceful it seemed! The sound of the moaning ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... afflicted and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... you go!"—(there followed a hideous oath)— "This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both! If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell In the drift and save the sexton the charge of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... TAY PAY, in the interesting Sunday journal he admirably edits, reproaches me because, in this particular page of history, "Mr. SEXTON," he says, "is derided constantly and shamefully." Anglice: Occasionally when, in a faithful record of Parliamentary events, SEXTON's part in the proceedings must needs be noticed, it is gently hinted that among his many admirable qualities terseness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... after changing his coat again, back to our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering around him as it does on the old folios that fill the shelves all round the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the old time—back in the old place. I was shelling peas to help old Keturah—old Keturah that had had three husbands, and her old husband then was the sexton, and he had buried them all three! We were there, under her porch ... with the honeysuckle all in flower—and, oh, the smell of it in the heat!—it was all there in my dream! And you were there. Oh, Phoebe darling, how beautiful you were! ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... day was a high and glorious morning in spring, and all the trees were budding and bursting into green. Everywhere there were blossoms and flowers; the pear trees and cherry trees in the sexton's garden were sunlit snow, there were nodding daffodils and early tulips in the graveyard beds, great multitudes of daisies, and everywhere the birds seemed singing. And in the middle was the brown coffin end, tilting on men's shoulders and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... always dressed like a country sexton, and with a face like an undertaker. And the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight, an old bird, was fool enough to be taken in by him! For he was taken in. He had a face like a man whose chimney is on fire, when he came ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... twilight, between profound sense and nonsense, between childish play and matured humor." Two brothers who have lost their sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering with a double-edged sword and attended by an enamored fool, and finally a knight-errant devoting his fortune to pay the stingy sexton for the burial of a victim of poverty; they are now hunting for the princess, the sisters, and the beloved lady, and to free them from the sorcerer; none of them succeed in the effort, except the knight, "and he only by the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... amid such simples a balm for wounded pride, I did not really deceive myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher. And all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant as a sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Shepherd-Boys or Dungeon-Gill Force, a Pastoral 'Tis said that some have died for love, &c. Poor Susan Inscription for the Spot where the Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwent-Water Inscription for the House (an Out-house) on the Island at Grasmere To a Sexton Andrew Jones The two Thieves, or the last stage of Avarice A whirl-blast from behind the Hill, &c. Song for the wandering Jew Ruth Lines written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone, &c. Lines written on a Tablet in a School The two April Mornings The Fountain, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... inmate at the time, having fled, in his fright, to the house-top, was left there by the unfeeling thieves, who secured the trap-door within. But the last party who arrived had a bloody tale to tell: they had been to the house of Joseph Farr, the sexton to a neighboring Baptist church; a reputation for the possession of concealed gold proved fatal to him. On entering his house, the door of which stood open, the party sent to his relief stumbled over his body. After having most cruelly beaten him, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr. Arabin's allusion to his severity and hastened to put matters right by observing that "Sexton Clodheve looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there may be a thought too much stick going on during sermon." Mr. Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon, and he smiled to himself as he observed how ignorant his officers were of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... church, stained to imitate marble. Then they all examined the Decalogue over the altar, written in the ancient letters, and done in England in 1714. Mrs. Tracy wished that the old high pulpit and sounding-board had never been replaced by the desk which she now saw there. The sexton showed them the old English Bible, which he said had been in use there about one hundred and twenty-five years. They noticed the little organ, which was very old, and also sent over from England. As they came out of the church, they saw, by its side, a graveyard containing some old inscriptions, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... the church steps without having met even the sexton; somewhat disappointed, it was not with indifference that he saw a stranger standing in the churchyard among the graves; by the grave, it chanced, of a child who died in October, five years old. When the organist perceived this, a purpose which he would have formed later ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Then the sexton would suddenly tack up the aisle and clutch the unhappy Mr. Chubb by the collar, and scud down the aisle again to the accompaniment of "Home Sweet Home," and then incarcerate Henry in the upper portion ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... was open. This was the day for sweeping out the Sunday dust. "Is there any record here, any old, forgotten list of deeds done by the early church?" I questioning thought. "There's a new sexton, I heard Aaron say,—a man who used, years ago, to fulfil the duties; perhaps he'll know something of the tower. I'll ask him this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the elements needed for his diagnosis. But he has seen no deeper into the breast than the tongue, and got no nearer the heart than the wrist. A wise and experienced clergyman, coming to the patient's bedside,—not with the professional look on his face which suggests the undertaker and the sexton, but with a serene countenance and a sympathetic voice, with tact, with patience, waiting for the right moment,—will surprise the shy spirit into a confession of the doubt, the sorrow, the shame, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it remains to try whether you be a man of good utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs. Let me hear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... he should find standing there, old Adam, the village sexton and grave digger, who always stopped when he saw a light ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... something better to write about, I told you what a World of Fending and Proving we have had of late, in this little Village of ours, about an old-cast-Pair-of-black-Plush-Breeches, which John, our Parish-Clerk, about ten Years ago, it seems, had made a Promise of to one Trim, who is our Sexton and Dog-Whipper.—To this you write me Word, that you have had more than either one or two Occasions to know a good deal of the shifty Behaviour of this said Master Trim,— and that you are astonished, nor can you for your Soul conceive, how so worthless a Fellow, and so worthless a Thing into ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... mingled with the attendants. The parties remained for some little time looking at the coffin after it was lowered, and the clergyman slipped away, unobserved even by his dog. An hour after, as he sat at dinner with his friends, his sexton requested to speak with him. He was admitted into the room, when he said it was impossible to close the grave, and that he did not know what to do. "Why?" asked the gentleman, "Because Sir, your terrier stands there, and flies so ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the dinner, thy long ears hearing the music, and thy short discretion not enabling thee to decide which of them thou didst prefer.—Hark! is that not the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers?—Sure it cannot be that time yet? The mad old sexton has toll'd evensong ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... setting on big hilltops far avay; Dis bar sun ban tired of standing, so it lak to set, yu say; And yust ven dis sun ban setting, it shine hard on Yosephine; She ban talking to the sexton, and ban feeling purty mean. "Now," she tal him, "yust be careful,... ay skol fix it op all right; Yust one teng ay lak to tal yu, Curfew ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... this, when the sexton came to pay them a visit, the father broke out to him, and told him what a bad hand his youngest son was at everything: he knew nothing and learned nothing. "Only think! when I asked him how he purposed ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... themselves directly connected with the business affairs of a church probably realise how much of the orderly conduct of the church depends upon the sexton. To many people he is simply the man who looks after funerals, sees that the furnace fires are properly managed, the church swept, etc. In Plymouth Church the sexton was always a man of considerable importance, and I feel it a duty ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... church. One! it tolled. Each man looked at his neighbor. Had death entered the village, and they unaware? Two! three! it went solemnly on, the mellow cadence scarcely dying before another stroke renewed it. The sexton was Simeon Pease, a little red-headed man, a hunchback, abnormally strong. Suddenly he rose in amazement. His ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... commandants, and a captain. Yes, two colonels" (deux colonels). Following his staff, my eye looked at the graves as if it expected to see the living men or their effigies. Somewhat apart lay another grave. "Voila un colonel boche," said the sexton; "and a lieutenant boche—and ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... recognised him, and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so cordially ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... English custom, in a short act of private devotion. When I raised my head and opened my eyes, the very last man of the congregation was actually making his exit through the doorway; and it was quite as much as I could manage to put on my top-coat and gloves and reach the door before the sexton closed it. This rushing habit in the House of God strikes a stranger as rude and irreverent. You meet with no indications of private devotion, either preceding or following public worship. A man ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... of a fever brought on by grief and fretting for the loss of her best friend,—and rich and poor alike had vied with one another in assisting the weird beauty of this exceptional and strange burial, in which no sexton was employed but the wild wind, which would in due time scoop a hollow in the sea, and whirl down into fathomless deeps all that remained of a loving woman, with the offerings of a People's love ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... heed, go ahaid!" stated Uncle Bill, with a wave of his hand. "You ain't too young to die, even ef you is too ole to learn. Only I trust an' prays dat you won't be blamin' nobody but yo'se'f 'bout this time day after to-mor' evenin' w'en de sexton of Mount Zion Cullud Cemetery starts pattin' you in ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Dickens played six characters in the piece. Never have I seen such wonderful changes of face and form as he gave us that night. He was alternately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor as he was an author. One can ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the happier children of a later generation (the descendants of James, Earl of Derwentwater), the circumstances, of which he had heard in his childhood. The Countess of Newburgh was afterwards buried by the side of her husband; and the sexton of St. Giles's Church, some years since, on the lid of the coffin giving way, perceived some gold lace in a state of preservation; so that it seems probable that the blanket in which the bleeding remains were removed, was superseded ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... inclined to neglect them. I am bored, not interested as a churchwarden should be, when the wall of the graveyard crumbles unexpectedly. I fail to find either pleasure or excitement in appointing a new sexton. Canon Beresford, our rector, is no more enthusiastic about such things than I am. He and I are very good friends, but when he suspects me of paying him a business visit he goes out to fish. There are, I believe, trout in the stream which flows at the bottom of the glebe ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... Mary's request to the sexton, who rather unwillingly opened the coffin lid. The road over which they had come, was rough and stony and the jolt had disturbed the position of Frank, who no lay partly upon his mother's shoulder, with his cheek resting against hers. Tenderly Mary laid him back upon his own pillow, and then kneeling ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... but a notary bound up with a sexton; you make me pity you. Am I to teach you your part? You are ugly; be terrible, your ugliness will be forgotten. You are old; be energetic, your age will be overlooked. You are repulsive; be threatening. Since you ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... where Haydn's great-grandfather, Kaspar, had been among the few to escape massacre when the town was stormed by the Turks in July 1683. The composer's father, Matthias Haydn, was, like most of his brothers, a wheelwright, combining with his trade the office of parish sexton. He belonged to the better peasant class, and, though ignorant as we should now regard him, was yet not without a tincture of artistic taste. He had been to Frankfort during his "travelling years," and had there picked ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... the sexton, and came back. But instead of the civil gentleman he had left, he found now a man with a face of horror, and eyes that had seen appalling things. Sir Charles had remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, are not what is wanted; nor is it a cold and barn-like edifice which makes one feel, if one goes to call upon God, as though He were out, and could only be seen at stated times, and by the will of the sexton and the trustees. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... with walks; the tombstones were of every possible strange device, and crowded together in a way which would have been far from pleasing to some of the more aristocratic inhabitants in their lifetime; but the monkish sexton in his own graveyard read the lesson to visitors, often uttered before, that death is a leveller of all ranks, and ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... where the flat, treeless plain began again, we found a peasant sexton engaged in digging a grave. His conversation was depressing, not because he dwelt unduly upon death and kindred subjects, but because his views of life were so pessimistic. Why, for example, did it enter his brain to warn me that the Finnish women of the neighboring villages,—all the country round ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... sparingly decorated with ex-table-d'hote roses, until it resembled the mortuary chapel of a Mulberry Street undertaker; and this effect was, if anything, heightened by four dozen camp-chairs that had been procured from the sexton of Mrs. Sammet's place ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... men went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that stood in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Congress, at that moment emerged from the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the situation, and he persuaded the young lady to permit us to pass in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr. James Sexton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of Liverpool, arose and called the attention of the Conference to this situation, and declared that the American Federation of Labor delegates refused to sign any such document. He said it was not an Inter-Allied ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... check. Then he returned to his rooms, and didn't show up again until late afternoon, when he went away up Belleair Avenue, to the rectory of the Church of St. James. He didn't go in—just talked with the sexton in the vestibule, and when he came down the steps he looked dazed, as if he'd received a hard jolt of some sort. He couldn't have been trying to blackmail the minister, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... gloom profound. At times, when low the water falls, The sailor sees the broken walls; The church tower peeps from out the sand, Like to the finger of a hand. Then hears one low the church bells ringing Then hears one low the sexton singing; A chant is carried by the gust: "Give earth to earth, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... vestibule his intention of marriage with a fair lady of the parish, as was the custom of the day. Another fair lady entering the church on Sunday morning pointed dramatically at the notice, saying to the sexton, "Take that notice down, and don't you dare to put it up again till I ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... well advisd to offer good counsell, and be laught at for his labour: we shall shortly have no counsellors, but Physitians; I spend my breath to thee, and thou answerest me some half an houre after in a sem[i]breve, or like to a Sexton, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... My wife and I to church this morning, and so home to dinner to a boiled leg of mutton all alone. To church again, where, before sermon, a long Psalm was set that lasted an hour, while the sexton gathered his year's contribucion through the whole church. After sermon home, and there I went to my chamber and wrote a letter to send to Mr. Coventry, with a piece of plate along with it, which I do preserve ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... church, it has remained loyal to its history, and is the true child of the eighteenth century. Is it not fitting that the communion-plate presented by Queen Caroline should be treasured here? That the sexton should still show you, even with a cold indifference, the stately prayer-books which once contained prayers for the king? That a bell, captured at Louisburg by Sir William Pepperell, should summon to the worship of God a people ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in merely counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the rest of the congregation. As circumstantial ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... afterwards excluded, as inappropriate. The five poems referring to "Lucy" are placed in sequence, and the same is done with the four "Matthew" poems. A small group of four poems follows appropriately, viz. 'To a Sexton', 'The Danish Boy', 'Lucy Gray', and 'Ruth'; while the Fenwick note almost necessitates our placing the 'Poet's Epitaph' immediately after the Lines 'Written in Germany'; and, with Wordsworth's life at Goslar, we naturally associate five things—the cold winter, 'The Prelude', the "Lucy" ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... Irish Local Government Bill took the floor, and asked to be read a Second Time. Thought it was as dead as a herring, red or otherwise; but here's its ghost filling House with gloom. Promise of several days' cheerful conversation. SEXTON promptly turned on flood of everlasting talk, hopelessly swamping place to begin with. Here's a Bill no one believes Government seriously intend to proceed with; still feel bound, having introduced it, to take Second Reading. Must show ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... Twenty-eighth Street. Pick up anybody. Came staggerin' into the church full of booze, so a pal o' mine told me, and got half-way down the aisle before they could fire her. Drop in there sometime when you go by and ask the sexton if I'm a-lyin'. No more of that for me, I'm through. There ain't but one place for that kind, and that's Blackwell's Island, and that's where they fetch up. I went through hell afore I saw you because of her, and I'm just pullin' out and ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not gette it of, tyll they were mynded to cutte it of with hatchettys. Thus was the wenche well iaped,[58] and for fere she ranne from her fader; her faders arme was hurte; the colyar lost his coles; the sexton was almost out of hys wyt; and the gentylman had ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... welcome its visitor, had, ever since then, sufficed to make him shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... stood at the head of the coffin and began the service; behind him the sexton had taken up his position with folded hands. On either side sat the officers and men, holding their helmets on their knees and looking on with serious countenances. The old woman knelt crouching on a prie-dieu, and hid her face in her hands. When ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 1812, was sexton of a church and porter in the State bank. Extreme poverty prevented Andrew from receiving any schooling, and at the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor. A gentleman was in the habit of visiting the shop and reading to ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only two!—I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.—But I only found ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the cunningest of millinery,—these, who always paused a moment, with a lost look, in the vestibule of the sepulchral-looking little church on the corner of Prytania and Josephine streets, till the sexton ushered them in, and who as often contrived, with no end of ingenuity, despite the little woman's fresh beauty, to get away after service unaccosted by the elders,—who could imagine that these were from so deep a nook ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Anne-Marie! now we shall have the news. And how is Mr. Such-an-one, the priest? How is the Vicar So-and-So? Does he still look as well as ever? and Mr. Jacob, of such a place. And the old sexton, Niclausse, does he still ring the bells at Dann, and at Hirschland, and Saint Jean? He must begin ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the softly carpeted stairs, finding the apartment assigned him not only extremely comfortable, but even elegant in its furnishing. He stood at the window looking down on the tennis court, while Sexton opened the bag, and spread out the required garments on the bed. Evidently he was in a home of wealth and refinement. The grounds outspread before his eyes were spacious and attractive; in the distance ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thought it natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; he knew the respectability which might well feel it necessary to wear "blacks" for an official inquiry; he knew also the economy ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... strange and dreadful sepulchre there is little more to tell. From monarch to monarch we marched on till at length we grew weary of staring at bones and gold. Even Quick grew weary, who had passed his early youth in assisting his father, the parish sexton, and therefore, like myself, regarded these relics with professional interest, though of a different degree. At any rate, he remarked that this family vault was uncommonly hot, and perhaps, if it pleased her Majesty, as he called Maqueda, we might take the rest of the deceased gentlemen ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... M.P., who was howled down at a meeting at St. Helens recently, said he refused to bow the knee to a lot of body-snatchers who wanted him to sacrifice his manhood and conscience to satisfy their inclinations. A self-respecting sexton ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... died by his own hand {197} in 1770, at the age of seventeen, is one of the most wonderful examples of precocity in the history of literature. His father had been sexton of the ancient Church of St. Mary Redcliff, in Bristol, and the boy's sensitive imagination took the stamp of his surroundings. He taught himself to read from a black-letter Bible. He drew charcoal sketches of churches, castles, knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... influence of his aunt, the Carmelite nun, Madame Louise. During the life of her father, Louis XV., she nearly engrossed all the Church benefices by her intrigues. She had her regular conclaves of all orders of the Church. From the Bishop to the sexton, all depended on her for preferment; and, till the Revolution, she maintained equal power over the mind of Louis XVI. upon similar matters. The Queen would often express her disapprobation; but the King was so scrupulous, whenever the discussion fell on the topic of religion, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... said the man, pocketing the money, and clearing his countenance; "and seriously, mine is an uncommonly hard case. I was, till within the last few weeks, the under-sexton of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and my duty was that of ringing the bells for daily prayers but a man of Belial came hitherwards, set up a puppet-show, and, timing the hours of his exhibition with a wicked sagacity, made the bell I rang for church serve as a summons ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The children and the nearest family scrapes together every farthing they can call their own, an' what's still wanting, that they borrow from some rich man. They run themselves into debt over head and ears; they're owing money to the pastor, to the sexton, and to all concerned. Then there's the victuals, an' the drink, an' such like. No, sir, I'm far from speaking against dutifulness to parents; but it's too much when it goes the length of the mourners having to bear the weight of it for the rest of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... found the parson rebuking the gray-headed sexton for having used mistletoe among the greens with which the church was decorated. It was, he observed, an unholy plant, profaned by having been used by the Druids in their mystic ceremonies; and though it might be innocently employed in the festive ornamenting of halls ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... part, I think a good run would not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... family held by a tenure, not of lives, but of deaths, renewable for ever. So that my uncle, who was a man of an anxious temperament, had little trouble in satisfying himself of the meerings and identity of this narrow tenement, to which Lemuel Mattocks, the sexton, led him as straight and confidently as he could have done to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with invective, when sinking under the weight of argument; I am not a man who denies the necessity of parliamentary reform, at the time that he approves of its expediency, by reviling his own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not, to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon it when he ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... tombstones, some of them all awry and weather-worn, and the Thaxtons of 1840, no living Thaxton could tell, every spiritual trace of them having disappeared more utterly than their bones. Their bones, indeed, did not disappear, and were a source of much trouble to the sexton, for in digging a new grave they came up to the surface in quantities, and had to be shovelled in and covered up again, so that the bodily remains of successive generations were jumbled together, and Puritan and Georgian Thaxtons were mixed ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... replied, "The sexton had so informed him; and if false, he was to blame for imposing ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... grinding away at the report stage of Land Bill; don't get any forrader; been at it a week, and to-night just as many Amendments on the paper as there were on Monday. All night upon a single new Clause. Everybody wearied to death. Even WINDBAG SEXTON a little moody; not had such a good night as usual; the debate lasting throughout sitting, and, there being only one Motion before the House, SEXTON (with the SPEAKER in the Chair) could speak only once; that he did, at considerable length. But a poor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... was sent for, and the Clerk, and the Sexton, with bell, book, and candle. They lit the candle, and opened the book (I think it was a Latin Grammar, which they judged would be enough to scare any demon), and rang the bell; and then the Parson, with his heart in his boots, advanced ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... by the peasants was actually issued in 1538, both measures helping to provoke the widespread uprising that broke out in Smaland in 1541. It was named the "Dacke feud" after its principal leader, the peasant-chieftain Nils Dacke, to whom the Sexton refers in the second scene of the ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... is profound, and requires a long apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, the ringers form a guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772. It is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in the room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up they bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... distracted times, that more than the stirring incidents of a whole life often become compressed into the compass of four-and-twenty hours—on that same night, Mr Haredale, having strongly bound his prisoner, with the assistance of the sexton, and forced him to mount his horse, conducted him to Chigwell; bent upon procuring a conveyance to London from that place, and carrying him at once before a justice. The disturbed state of the town would be, he knew, a sufficient reason for demanding the murderer's committal ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... theological institution had filled his mind with arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind, yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry enough soon as ye ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the absence of associate members. Rosy cheeks and pretty eyes now counted in the society for nothing, and when the sister of the county clerk promptly moved that no gentleman be invited to the floor, the sexton's wife seconded the motion. It was carried, and on the night appointed the "Irreparables" had their dinner, and up in the gallery sat the minister, the sheriff, the county clerk, the editor of the Snow-Drift, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... The sexton should be duly informed what preparations to make at the church; the awning at the entrance, the ribbon barrier across the aisle, the floral decorations, etc., by whomever arranged and executed are under the supervision of this functionary, who ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... necessary, Elijah was ready to do even the services of a sexton. When Rabbi Akiba died in prison, Elijah betook himself to the dead man's faithful disciple, Rabbi Joshua, and the two together went to the prison. There was none to forbid their entrance; a deep sleep had fallen upon the turnkeys ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... been for twenty Years Under-Sexton of this Parish of St. Paul's, Covent-Garden, and have not missed tolling in to Prayers six times in all those Years; which Office I have performed to my great Satisfaction, till this Fortnight last past, during which Time ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... grinning skulls was ranged round the wall of the churchyard, and the sexton, who gave us admittance to the church, taking up one to show it off, it all crumbled into dust, which filled the air like ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to her that the best place whence to see it was the tower of the church, which, placed upon a little knoll, was standing out in full relief against the lurid light. She found the key at the sexton's, and led the way up the broken stone stair to the trap- door, where they emerged on the leads, and, in spite of the cold wind and furious flapping of the flag above their heads, stood absorbed in the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children of Admiral Moriarty, 25 pounds each. Thus thirteen daughters of admirals and captains, several of whose fathers fell in the service of their country, receive from the gratitude of the nation a sum in the aggregate less than Dame Mary Sexton, the widow of ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... religion are more hard of heart to believe than laymen and the simple. The cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. At the last they won from him that he had gone to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... stepped out of the back-shop to serve them, was, if we may say so, very unlike his trade. A grave, tall, long-legged, long-nosed, raw-boned, melancholy-looking creature such as he, might have been an undertaker, or a mute, or a sexton, or a policeman, or a horse-guardsman, or even a lawyer; but it was the height of impropriety to have made him a toy-shopman, and whoever did it had no notion whatever of the fitness of things. One could not resist the idea that his clumsy legs would certainly upset the slender ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne |
