"Churchwarden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then looked comparatively clean and new. A curious incident occurred here in May, 1833, an account of which I had from the lips of a son of the then churchwarden. Birmingham was visited by a very severe epidemic of influenza, which was so general that few households escaped. Nor was the epidemic confined to mankind; horses were attacked, and the proprietor of "The Hen and Chickens" lost by death sixteen horses in one day. So many of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... and the next moment the clergyman appeared, as it seemed to me, with a peculiar airiness of aspect, and the light of a humourous satisfaction in his eye. After the usual salutations, he took his seat beside us, lifted a pipe of the kind called "churchwarden" from the box on the ground, filled and lighted it, and for a little while we were silent all three. The clergyman then drew an old magazine from his side pocket, opened it at a place where the leaf had been carefully turned ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... offices were held by women beyond such parochial offices as Sextoness, Overseer and Churchwarden, which they occasionally filled. Their always-existing right to act as Poor-Law Guardians seems to have been entirely left in abeyance until the early '70's, when the attention of public-spirited women was being called to the need ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the altar of Scott, versifying the tale of Il Bizarro, which the dying Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. The Churchwarden and the Curate is not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression of shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of Poets and Critics may be taken as the poet's last word on the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... "You are not churchwarden," retorted her husband; "you can get away from him. You hear him when he is in the pulpit, where, to a certain extent, he is bound to ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... there found a little girl, which she told my wife her name was Jinny, by which name we shall call her. I think a good likely girl, and a parish child of St. Bride's, of honest parentage, and recommended by the churchwarden. After dinner among my joyners laying my floors, which please me well, and so to my office, and we sat this afternoon upon an extraordinary business of victualling. In the evening came Commissioner Pett, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... times more useful had not his charitable disposition been over tinged with oddity and caprice. His contact with the poor of the parish soon made him overseer, although his religious observances would not qualify him for churchwarden; for he only went to church at funerals, to which he was frequently invited, his staid appearance, and a certain air of gentility of which he was master, being in such cases no mean recommendation. Overseer and select vestryman, he printed the parish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... is splendid. My husband is in the churchwarden's pew; he left before me; he is becoming a fanatic—he speaks of lunching on ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... And although, he paid Cess and Ship-money without murmuring, and, on being chosen a Knight of the Shire, did zealously speak up in the Commons House of Parliament on the King's side (refusing nevertheless to make one of the lip-serving crowd of courtiers of Whitehall), and although, when churchwarden in his parish, he ever preserved the laudable custom of Whitsun and Martinmas ales for the good of the poor, and persisted in having the Book of Sports read from the pulpit,—he was averse from all high-handed measures of musketooning, and calivering, and gambriling those of the meaner ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... by developing into a Churchman, but otherwise aroused no hostile feeling. It was obviously his cue to conciliate everybody. He was liked without being popular, trusted without being a favorite. Churchwarden, trustee for public funds, executor for private friends, he had a reputation for disinterested industry. And people said how well it was that one so unselfish as Josiah Bonnithorne should nevertheless prosper even ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... cock of the spire, "His father's churchwarden." Said the brook running faster, "I run through ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the supposition, that Horbury's an innocent man, and the victim of foul play. But—he may be a guilty man! Lord bless you!—I don't attach any importance to reputation and character, not I! It isn't ten years since Jim Chambers and myself had a case in point—a bank manager who was churchwarden, Sunday-School teacher, this, that, and t'other in the way of piety and respectability—all a cloak to cover as clever a bit of thievery and fraud as ever I heard of!—he got ten years, that chap, and he ought to have been hanged. As I say, you never can make certain. ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... forty days in the parish, gains a settlement without notice[u]; upon the principle of having substance enough to gain credit for such a house. 6. Being charged to and paying the public taxes and levies of the parish; and, 7. Executing any public parochial office for a whole year in the parish, as churchwarden, &c; are both of them equivalent to notice, and gain a settlement[w], when coupled with a residence of forty days. 8. Being hired for a year, when unmarried, and serving a year in the same service; and 9. Being bound an apprentice for seven years; ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... but mother and me had gone to church, and she had fallen asleep, I got father's big clay-pipe, rammed it full of tobacco out of his great lead box, and then took it into the back kitchen, feeling as grand as a churchwarden, and set to and smoked it till I turned giddy and faint, and the place seemed ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... good deal of time in learning to shoot straight with my father's gun; I sent pretty well all the lead gutter round our little church into our best barn door, a thing which has often repented me since, especially as churchwarden. When, however, I was turned fourteen years old, and put into small clothes, and worsted hosen knitted by my dear mother, I set out with a loach-fork to explore the Bagworthy water. It was St. Valentine's day, 1676, as I well remember. After wading along Lynn stream, I turned into the still more ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... "Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture—if she does not return shortly—I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe." ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... sat in easy-chairs at opposite sides of a table that was littered with books and papers, glasses, a bottle of whiskey, and a canister of tobacco. He was smoking a long churchwarden, I a stubby and blackened short one. At a small table at the other end of the room three officers of the fort were playing cards with the silence ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... the organist, who under my direction presides over the musical portion of our services; and this is Dr Ennefer, our excellent local practitioner; and this is Mr Joliffe, who, though engaged in trade, finds time as churchwarden to assist me in the supervision ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... sing of those terrible shears With which Atropos snips off both bumpkins and peers, But they're naught to that weapon which shines in the hands Of some would-be Patricians, when proudly he stands O'er the careless churchwarden's baptismal array, And sweeps at each cut generations away. By some babe of old ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... stately in proportion, and in excellent preservation. Through the metal plate of the vane itself are cut boldly, stencil fashion, the letters "A. R." (I was unable to find out to whom they referred—presumably a churchwarden), and immediately below them, the date 1703. The pointer is very thick and richly foliated, and the wrought ironwork which supports the arms, which indicate the four cardinal points of the compass, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... church, but if he carried iniquity further and actually went to chapel, then of course, excellent as his meat was, Mr. Carey would be forced to leave him for ever. Mrs. Carey often stopped at the bank to deliver a message to Josiah Graves, the manager, who was choir-master, treasurer, and churchwarden. He was a tall, thin man with a sallow face and a long nose; his hair was very white, and to Philip he seemed extremely old. He kept the parish accounts, arranged the treats for the choir and the schools; though there was no organ in the parish church, it was generally considered (in Blackstable) ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... possessed of more education than was usual among country people at that time, when reading and writing were still rare accomplishments. 'Righteous Christer' was an important man in the small village. Besides being a weaver, he was also a churchwarden, and was able to sign his own name in bold characters, as may still be seen to-day in the parish registers, where his fellow-churchwarden, being unable to read or write, was only able to sign his name with a cross. Unfortunately ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... perversity, went up to Louis and looked over his shoulder as he read the communication, which was a printed circular, somewhat yellowed, with blanks neatly filled in, and the whole neatly signed by a churchwarden, informing Louis that his application for sittings at St. Luke's Church (commonly called the Old Church) had been granted. It is to be noted that, though applications for sittings in the Old Church were not overwhelmingly frequent, and might indeed very ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... all,' said the landlord. 'This very morning the folks of our parish made me churchwarden, {116} which they would no more have done a month ago, when they considered me a down ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... rather peculiarly constructed heap, as you can see. Among them, by the way, I found this flattened and corroded bullet. That puzzled me. I think I understand it now." Thus Borsdale, as he composedly smoked his churchwarden. "In short, the whole affair is ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... was born the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John Bull—on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... present the so-called leaders of enlightened and liberal thought are in this matter, so far as fairness and insight go, on a level with the wives and mothers of our small provincial shopkeepers, or the beadle or churchwarden of a country parish. But prejudice, even when so virulent and so dogged as this, will lift and disappear some day like a London fog; and then the lineaments of the question will confront us clearly—the question: but who shall ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below: There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee: No more, O Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer claims his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... "Memoirs of Louis XV:"— "Tencin, a curse on thy seraphic zeal, Which by persuasion hath contrived the means To make the Scotchman at our altars kneel, Since which we all are poor as Capucines?] On the following day he was elected honorary churchwarden of the parish of St. Roch, upon which occasion he made it a present of the sum of five hundred thousand livres. His charities, always magnificent, were not always so ostentatious. He gave away great sums privately, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... that you ask for entrance; it is your neighbour's castle-door; and you are not a sanitary inspector. If you happen to come in at the meal-time of the roughest and dirtiest, apologize as naturally and honestly as you would if you intruded on the wealthy churchwarden's well-set luncheon. Among the very lowest, do all you can to honour parents before their children (I know it is nearly impossible in some sad cases); and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... bit of bread and cheese in my pocket, and I'll take my short pipe with me, and I'll be back soon.' He laid great stress and emphasis on having 'his short pipe' with him, probably reserving a regular long-shanked 'churchwarden' for home use. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... and living soft, Grew plump and able-bodied; Until the grave churchwarden doff'd, The ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... over many of the tradespeople, who had begun to feel the influence of his hearty nature and consistent uprightness, and had become used to what had at first appeared innovations. Mr. Dusautoy, in thanking Mr. Kendal, begged him to allow himself to be nominated his churchwarden next Easter, and having consented while his blood was up, there was no danger that, however he might dislike the prospect, he would falter when ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saint who reminds me of Hamlet's uncle,—a thing "of shreds and patches," but rather pretty to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and whether they are active on their pins. And in course of time, if the G.O.M. still presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out 'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,' without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... ain't the Bentons I'm thinkin' so much about," he continued. "There are others. Look at Mike Gibband, fer instance, an' him a churchwarden, too. Why, he swears like a trooper, an' would do a man a mean trick whenever he could. I could tell ye what he did ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... breakfast was nearly ended, Dudley tapped at the window with the end of his clay pipe—a 'churchwarden' Milly called it—just such a long curved pipe as Joe Willet is made to hold between his lips in those charming illustrations of 'Barnaby Rudge'—which we all know so well—and lifting his 'wide-awake' with a burlesque salutation, which, I suppose, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... various documents. Sir Robert Schomburgk was shewn by the rector of the parish, the Rev. J.H. Gittens, an old vestry-book of St John's, in which various entries occur of the name of Ferdinando Palaeologus, from 1649 till 1669, as vestryman, churchwarden, trustee, surveyor of the highway, sidesman to the churchwarden, and lieutenant, &c. The last entry is that of his burial, 'October 3d 1678.' His name also appears in a legal document respecting the sale of some land, executed in 1658. But the most ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement, either by apprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore, carried his industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a-year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by, or could give such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... was arrested one evening," continued Mr. Quarterpage. "Of course, the news of his arrest ran through the town like wild-fire. Everybody was astonished; he was at that time—aye, and had been for years—a churchwarden at the Parish Church, and I don't think there could have been more surprise if we'd heard that the Vicar had been arrested for bigamy. In a little town like this, news is all over the place in a few minutes. Of course, Chamberlayne would hear that news like everybody else. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... he wore his own handsome head well powdered; at others, curled without powder; at others, straight, without powder or curls. He was churchwarden; and then, when his head was full of his office, it was also full of flour, and full of ideas of his own consequence and infallibility. On a concert night, and in the ball-room, it was curled, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... so very strange. She was quite certain that it was her pocket- handkerchief which was in that loaf just now; and it had been in her own hand not five minutes before. She wondered who had furnished the bread? She was sure it could not be Dakin, because he was the churchwarden. Suddenly Miss Matty ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Will cost you a guinea, Which you reckon too much by five shilling or ten; But light your churchwarden And judge it accordin' When I've told you the ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... that?" he asked, and pointed to a charmingly grotesque piece of old Staffordshire pottery which made St. George a stunted churchwarden with the legs of a child, his horse the kind of animal that would be used in a green grocer's cart and the dragon a cross between a leopard and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... rose, lavender, woodruff, and box were formerly in request for decking churches on St. Barnabas' Day, the officiating clergy having worn wreaths of roses. Among the allusions to the usage may be mentioned the following entries in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, London, in the reigns of Edward IV. and Henry VII.:—"For rose garlondis and woodrolf garlondis on St. Barnabe Daye, xj'd." "Item, for two doss (dozen?) di bocse (box) garlands for prestes and clerkes ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... to spirited service. "I am to have a command of Cossacks and Wallacks," writes he, "a kind of people I have a good opinion of. I am determined not to serve in the line. One might as well be a churchwarden." ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... ostentatiously put it on the ledge too. The squire stared hard at him and soon reckoned him up. He then placed a second half-crown on the first, and the stranger produced a second sovereign. Five times was this repeated during the service. At last the churchwarden brought his brass plate, which the squire gravely took and held out to his neighbour, who swept the five sovereigns on to it in a very grand manner. The squire picked up one half-crown for the plate and, with a twinkle in his eye, returned the rest ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... that Raratongan girl last year. She'll go to sleep after supper, and I can open any door in the saloon, as you know, don't you, old man?" and he laughed coarsely. "Dear, dear, what times we have had together, Louis, my esteemed churchwarden ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... object to pretended secret societies and hocus pocus, and would not. You see what he was—a portly, pushing, egotistical tradesman. Mark the successful man, the merchant prince with argosies on every sea, the employer of thousands of hands, the munificent contributor to public charities, the churchwarden, the member of parliament, and the generous patron of his relatives his self-approbation struggling with the instinctive sense of baseness in the money-hunter, the ignorant and greedy filcher of the labor of others, the seller of his own mind and manhood for luxuries and delicacies ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Holliday to the latter's room, hung with rapiers, swords, and other arms. There ceremony was laid aside, and the old cavalier and the brilliant general entered into familiar talk, the former lighting a long pipe, of the kind known at present as a "churchwarden." ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... utter a little cry. "And their father is churchwarden!" said the indignant woman. "Really, William, this is too much—without even consulting you! But it is easy to see how that comes about. Lucy Wodehouse and young Wentworth are—; well, I don't know if they are engaged—but they are always together, walking and talking, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... which closed the last volume, a churchwarden occupied uncle for about an hour. When he had left off, uncle proposed a walk in the garden. I could see at once what this was meant to lead to, as he almost immediately turned in the direction of the summer house. When we got there he sat down on the couch, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... charitable, and educational organization has got to be wound up afresh, and set going again for another week. The superintendent of the Women's Mission is waiting with a bundle of accounts, complicated as only ladies' accounts can be. The churchwarden has come with a face full of gloom to consult on the falling off in the offertory. The Scripture-reader has brought his "visiting book" to be inspected, and a special report on the character of a doubtful family in the parish. The organist drops in to report something wrong ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Norfolk tradition of the lucky and generous Pedlar, Blomfield says that the north side of the church of Swaffam (or Sopham) was certainly built by one John Chapman, who was churchwarden in 1462; but he thinks that the figures of the pedlar, etc., were only put "to set forth the name of the founder: such rebuses are frequently met with on old works." The story is also told in Abraham de la Prynne's Diary under date Nov. 10, 1699, as "a constant ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... paid two shillings a day. At the house in Winchelsea called the "Friars" lived the noted highwaymen George and Joseph Weston, who during the last century plundered in all directions, and then atoned for it by the exercise of extensive charity in that town: one of them actually became a churchwarden. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... smoked many churchwarden pipes in the little arbor in his garden that day. In the afternoon his brother was so weak and tired that the subject of the conversation was not reverted to. At eight o'clock the Colonel went off to bed. The next morning, after breakfast, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... considerable attention, people flocking to the church from all over the country-side, and it was not long before certain persons came forward and declared they had ascertained the cause of the disturbance. The churchwarden, sexton, and his wife and others all swore to seeing a huge crow pecking and clawing at the coffins in the vaults, and flying about the chancel of the church, and perching on the communion rails. When they tried to ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the old gentleman, "I will consent for this year, and this year only. I have been churchwarden of this parish for between forty and fifty years, and we have always given the harvest festival collection to the hospital, and although under these exceptional circumstances it may possibly be desirable to diverge ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... as did the Ancient and George theirs likewise, and together we filled them, slowly and carefully, as pipes should be filled, while Prudence folded a long, paper spill wherewith to light them, the which she proceeded to do, beginning at her grandfather's churchwarden. Now, while she was lighting mine, Black George suddenly rose, and, crossing to the forge, took thence a glowing coal with the tongs, thus doing the office for himself. All at once I saw Prue's hand was ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... you are always wanting to groan over. Mr. Churchwarden Threpp, we will call a vestry meeting and make ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... is intriguing me slightly even at this solemn moment. Do you suppose the sheep will be allowed to hear the trial of the goats, or will the court be cleared? I must say I should be so interested to hear the defence of the late churchwarden who ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite like one of two centuries before. You entered a long antiquely-brown room, traversed full length by a table. Before every chair was placed a little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought to every visitor at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal, mechanical action of all the people's minds was then wonderful. An average German peasant was a genius compared to these fresh, rosy-fair, well-clad Hollanders. It was to me a ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... proper Government supervision, had missionaries been business-like, had Downing-Street officials known what colonizing meant, and had Lord Glenelg been fitted to be anything much more important than an irreproachable churchwarden. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... they sailed contentedly downstream. Philip's public spirit and industrious habits would not permit of what he called "a life of indolent ease." He rose early and put in a good eight hours' day at various unpaid labours. He became churchwarden of the parish, joined the vestry, and was a much valued unit of that obscure element in the population which does a great part of the public work for which individuals of a less modest type ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... eaten and drunk, and the ruddy hue was returning to his cheek, Mr. Heatherthwayte discovered that he must speak with his churchwarden that night. Probably the pleasure of communicating the tidings that the deed was accomplished added force to the consideration that the father and son would rather be alone together, for he lighted his lantern with alacrity, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every difficult letter, a t, or a p, or a far too current s. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson. And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as innumerable ballads and poems which have ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... arrival of new inhabitants in the district include one dated 1729, and in them we find a churchwarden possessing such a distinguished name as Hotham, signing that surname without a capital, and in 1809 we find an overseer of the poor only able to make his mark ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... very courteous; he drew forth a bag of clinking dollars, for strange as it may seem, he was a churchwarden: the Micmacs being all Catholics, the chief holds the silver keys of St. Peter. But venerable and pious as he appeared, with his silver cross and silver hair, the old fellow was something too of a broker! He demanded a fair rate of commission—eight per cent. premium on every dollar! Even this ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... worthy host, firm and well set up on his limbs, smoking his long churchwarden and caring nothing for nobody at home, and despising everybody abroad. He wore the typical scarlet waistcoat, with shiny brass buttons, the corduroy breeches, and grey worsted stockings and smart buckled shoes, that characterised every self-respecting ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ugly (coeval, one would say, with the room itself), a snuff-box, and long pipes serve to recall that respect for the past and for tradition which is one of the most delightful, as it is one of the most successful, elements in Punch's composition. Here you may see Sir John Tenniel's long churchwarden, with his initials marked upon it, and Charles Keene's little pipe—for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... agreeable banquet it was! Elwin was made to retell, to Forster's convulsive enjoyment, though he had heard it before, a humorous incident of a madman's driving about in a gig with a gun and a companion, who up to that moment thought he was sane. The Sage of Chelsea had his smoke as usual, a special churchwarden and a more-special "screw" of tobacco having been carefully sent out for and laid before him. There was something very interesting in this ceremonial. We juniors at the end of the table, Robert Lytton and myself, both lit a cigar, which brought forth a ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... churchwarden. Why, father, do you think I'm a baby to put up with a doll's head like this?' looking ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Calvados. When a boy at school, though poorly clad, he was full of bright intelligence; and the master, who taught him to read and write, when praising him for his diligence, used to say, "Go on, my boy; work, study, Colin, and one day you will go as well dressed as the parish churchwarden!" A country apothecary who visited the school, admired the robust boy's arms, and offered to take him into his laboratory to pound his drugs, to which Vauquelin assented, in the hope of being able to continue his lessons. But the apothecary would not permit him to spend ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was something very different. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... others that do countenance delinquent ministers to preach, and commit them, if they see cause; upon which some were taken into Custody." One instance of this is given in Whitelocke's Memorials (p. 286). "Mr. Harris, a Churchwarden of St. Martius, ordered to be committed for bringing delinquents to preach there, and to be displaced from his ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... feel pity for her. They were very cruel to her; not one would remain near; so that she found herself, at last, kneeling alone in the midst of a wide circle, like one condemned who has a mark of shame on his forehead. Her mortification is not yet complete, for the uncle of Marcel—the churchwarden, who wears a vest of violet with large skirts—the tall man who offers the blessed bread at Easter—passes on when she puts out her hand to take her portion, and refuses to allow her to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... year of the abominable business of Tilsit— that my churchwarden, the late Mr. Ephraim Pollard, and I, in cleaning the south wall of Lanihale Church for a fresh coat of whitewash, discovered the frescoes and charcoal drawings, as well as the brass plaque of which I sent you a tracing; and I think not above a fortnight ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... please, and your own money for loo and brag, and keep your own woman and have her as ugly as the bearded lady, for what I care—I want nobody's lips but yours, sweet, if you'll be kind. And, so help me, I'll stop at one bottle, my lady, and play as small as a Churchwarden's club! And, Lord, I don't see why we should not be as happy ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... a notice of a Mr. Richard Hoby, youngest brother of Sir Philip, as churchwarden in 1602, and a monument, much dilapidated, is to be seen in the chancel of Badsey Church, erected to the memory of his wife and that of her first husband by Margaret Newman, their daughter, who married Richard Delabere ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... strange stores of his memory to bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate. Still devoted to sport, he hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as his youthful imagination could never have pictured. So he lived a life of country ease, and died a churchwarden. And he deserved his prosperity, for he carried the soul of Falstaff in the shrunken ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to the Church of Saint Peter on Easter morning. She knelt, with her chaplet of beads, among the rest, imploring Heaven's mercy. But she knelt alone in the midst of a wide circle. All the communicants avoided her. The churchwarden, Marcel's uncle, in his long-tailed coat, with a pompous step, passed her entirely by, and refused her the heavenly meal. Pascal was there and came to her help. He went forward to the churchwarden and took from ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and its influence permeated even their amusements. Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden.... All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand.... There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange and unusual. Father Grigory, still in his vestments, was standing ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... real old-fashioned place, between Westbourne Grove and Notting Hill—one of the very last of the old taverns, with a tea-garden behind it, and a bar-parlour of a very comfortable sort, where various old fogies of the neighbourhood gather of an evening and smoke churchwarden pipes and tell tales of the olden days—I rather gathered from what I saw that it was the old atmosphere that attracted Mr. Ashton—made him think of bygone England, ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... looked to any one of these four. But to each it seemed the most perfect thing possible. I will only say that all round it were great arches. Kathleen saw them as Moorish, Mabel as Tudor, Gerald as Norman, and Jimmy as Churchwarden Gothic. (If you don't know what these are, ask your uncle who collects brasses, and he will explain, or perhaps Mr. Millar will draw the different kinds of arches for you.) And through these arches one could see many things ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... he has no notes in his Bible, opens both palms, and shows all is fair there too. Thus, with a decisive air, my young man goes on without hesitation; and though from the beginning to the end of his pretty discourse, he has not used one proper gesture, yet at the conclusion, the churchwarden pulls his gloves from off his head; 'Pray, who is this extraordinary young man?' Thus the force of action is such, that it is more prevalent (even when improper) than all the reason and argument in the world without it." This gentleman concluded his discourse by saying, "I do not ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... it's over now. You needn't jump on me. I acted from the best motives. That's what my grandfather, Farnie's pater, you know, always used to say when he got at me for anything in the happy days of my childhood. Don't sit there looking like a beastly churchwarden, you ass. Buck up, and take ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's best handkerchief!—or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him. He is fit to be perpetual churchwarden. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... that they should hold no private assemblies or conventicles with the doors shut; that nothing should be construed to exempt them from the payment of tithes or other parochial duties: that, in case of being chosen into the office of constable, churchwarden, overseer, &c. and of scrupling to take the oaths annexed to such offices, they should be allowed to execute the employment by deputy: that the preachers and teachers in congregations of dissenting protestants who should take the oaths, subscribe the declaration, together ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... finish up with all the Psalms of David, and the Holy Children, and the Burial Service. No more call for Parson Twemlow, or the new Churchwarden come in place of Cheeseman, because 'a tried to hang his self. Zebedee Tugwell in the pulpit! Zebedee, come round with the plate! Parson Tugwell, if you please, a-reading out the ten commandments! But 'un ought to leave out the sixth, for fear of spoiling 's own ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of Paris the deacon, when Cardinal de Noailles kept a register of the wonders of St. Medard's Cemetery, a churchwarden of the place, assisted by two secretaries and the corporal of Gendarmes, religiously inscribed the miraculous cures of the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... perfection the character of men of fashion. This, the normal state of young Liverpool, at a certain period the butterfly becomes a grub, a money grub, and abandoning brilliant cravats, primrose gloves, and tight shiny boots, subsides into the respectable heavy father of genteel comedy, becomes a churchwarden, a patron of charities, a capitalist, and a highly respectable member of society. The Manchester man is abrupt, because his whole soul is in the money-making business of the day; the Liverpool gentleman's icy manners ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... rector, parson, vicar, perpetual curate, residentiary^, beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular^; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman^; clerk, precentor^, choir; almoner, suisse [Fr.], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth^, acolothyst^, acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... garden. There under a thin-leaved apricot tree sat Mistress White, very pretty, with her long fair fingers clasped over a book which lay face down on her lap. Presently she was aware of Richard Wholesome walking to and fro and smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe, then, as yet in England, called a churchwarden. These were two more than commonly good-looking persons, come of sturdy English breeds, fined down by that in this climate which has taken the coarseness of line and feature out of so many of our broods, and has made more than one English painter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... possible at any time, he had let the moment pass. The nearest Justice lived twelve Irish miles away, and had he been on the spot he would, since he was of necessity a Protestant, have been as helpless—unless he brought the garrison of Tralee at his back—as a churchwarden in a Synod of Cardinals. The skipper hesitated, and while he hesitated the hatches were off, and the Sullivans swarmed down like monkeys. Before the sloop could be made fast, the smaller kegs were being tossed ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... And now two bloody swords are there. A purse she to a thief exposed, At once his ready fingers closed; He opes his fist, the treasure's fled; He sees a halter in its stead. She bids ambition hold a wand; He grasps a hatchet in his hand. A box of charity she shows, 'Blow here;' and a churchwarden blows, 50 'Tis vanished with conveyance neat, And on the table smokes a treat. She shakes the dice, the boards she knocks, And from all pockets fills her box. She next a meagre rake address'd: 'This picture see; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... The churchwarden and postmaster of Muggerbridge would have been very indignant had such an insinuation ever reached his ears. It never did, happily, and the worthy man was consequently always well satisfied with his purchases; which—whatever he gave for them—he always contrived to sell ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... pride of heart, the Churchwarden surveys High o'er the belfry, girt with birds and flowers, His story wrought in capitals: 'twas I That bought the font; and I ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Hand, I am in hopes she may give her self no further Trouble in this matter. On Sunday was sennight, when they came about for the Offering, she gave her Charity with a very good Air, but at the same Time asked the Churchwarden if he would take a Pinch. Pray, Sir, think of these things in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... we all buckled to with a will, doing four hours a day. As for Umslopogaas, he would have none of that either. He did not wish to learn that 'woman's talk', not he; and when one of the teachers advanced on him with a book and an ink-horn and waved them before him in a mild persuasive way, much as a churchwarden invitingly shakes the offertory bag under the nose of a rich but niggardly parishioner, he sprang up with a fierce oath and flashed Inkosi-kaas before the eyes of our learned friend, and there was an end of the attempt ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... 'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth—as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish—to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... looked years ago above the organ and round the chancel; from far down the church, just before the sermon, came the old accustomed sound of small boys shuffling their hobnailed shoes upon the stone floor and the audible guttural whisper of the churchwarden admonishing them to "mind the stick;" the stained-glass windows admitted the same pleasant light as of yore—all was unchanged. But Mrs. Goddard and Nellie occupied the cottage pew, and their presence alone was sufficient ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... and girls, all with pewters or glasses before them, and the air was thickening with smoke of pipes. The beneficiary of the evening, a portly person with a face of high satisfaction, sat near the chairman, and by him were two girls of decent appearance, his daughters. The president puffed at a churchwarden and exchanged genial banter with those who came up to deposit offerings. Mr. Dick Perkins, the Vice, was encouraging a spirit of conviviality at the other end. A few minutes after Thyrza and her companions had entered, a ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently dangling his heels,—the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking a churchwarden,—"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that I cheerfully ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... had brought it to was a timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked churchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, and how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood; of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of limb when the first gun said "Death!" ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shame, contrition, and anger, and had settled down earnestly to my work. I hardly recognised the man who came in on us after supper, as my mother and I sat in the orchard, with my father in a better humour than of late, and smoking a churchwarden, which, you may like to know, was a long clay pipe. The smoke sailed peacefully up, as I sat looking at its blue smoke-rings. How often since have I seen them float from the black lips of cannon, and thought of my father ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... it in brief; "Hey, presto!" and—the treasure fled— He grasped a halter, noosed, instead. Ambition held a courtier's wand, It turned a hatchet in his hand. A box for charities, she drew; "Blow here!" and a churchwarden blew— "Hey, presto, open!" Opened, in her, For gold was a parochial dinner! Vice shook the dice, she smote the board, And filled all pockets from her hoard. A counter, in a miser's hand, Grew twenty guineas at ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... neighbourhood, and was still at the call of any one who did not think him too old-fashioned—for even here the fashions, though decidedly elderly young ladies by the time they arrived, held their sway none the less imperiously—and Mr Brownrigg, the churchwarden. More of Dr ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... man, who was smoking a long churchwarden pipe at my end of the table, "my heart softens for him. Why, gossips, we've been in the same straits ourselves. Gadzooks, never did mother feel more concern for her eldest born than I when Rory Random went out to make his own ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not, however, wherewithal to seal the letter, until I found in the church a little wax still sticking to a wooden altar-candlestick, which the Imperialists had not thought it worth their while to steal, for they had only taken the brass ones. I sent three fellows in a boat with Hinrich Seden, the churchwarden, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... most sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without their annual dinner. The village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of the most ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... failure of all his efforts, the dying down of desire and ambition. From the general narrative there stood out little pictures of individual persons or scenes, clear cut and masterly—of his father, the Gainsborough churchwarden; of his Methodistical mother, who had all her life lamented her own beauty as a special snare of Satan, and who since her husband's death had refused to see her son on the ground that his opinions 'had vexed his father'; of his first ardent worship of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Conference was held at Newcastle, Hole told a story of a young curate who was preaching in a strange church from which the rector was away. He preached a very short sermon, and in the vestry afterwards the churchwarden remarked upon its shortness, and the curate told him that a pup at his lodgings got into his room and ate half his sermon, whereupon the churchwarden said: "I should be much obliged if you could get our rector one ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the book rather close to her face, being shortsighted; but, without even lifting her eyes, she had become aware of the entrance of Mrs Griffith and George. She glanced significantly at Mrs Howlett. Mr Griffith hadn't come, although he was churchwarden, and Mrs Howlett gave an answering look which meant that it was then evidently quite true. But they both gathered themselves together for the last ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... always been good church-goers, and Anthony, for years, had acted as churchwarden. It was one summer evening, up at the vicarage, whilst he was checking the offertory account, that he first set eyes upon her. She was fresh back from school at Leeds: she was dressed in a white dress: she looked, he thought, like a ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... was a churchwarden at the church to which Charlie, in a bowler hat, had had to take ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... afterwards, however, a special messenger came post haste along the road from Oswestry, and in a moment the news flashed through the little town. "Victory"! An attempt was made to ring the bells, but the churchwarden could not be found, and no one else had authority to pull the ropes. So that the concourse fell back on the time-honoured procession, and led by a drum and fife band, and headed by the Bailiffs, the cheering throng paraded the streets while cannon booming ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... aspects of Major Barbara, let me, for the credit of English literature, make a protest against an unpatriotic habit into which many of my critics have fallen. Whenever my view strikes them as being at all outside the range of, say, an ordinary suburban churchwarden, they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch in northern ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... squire of our town was SQUIRE WESTON of the Priory, who, with his brother, kept one of the genteelest houses in the country. He was churchwarden of our church, and much respected. Yes, but if you read the Annual Register of 1781, you will find that on the 13th July the sheriffs attended at the TOWER OF LONDON to receive custody of a De la Motte, a prisoner charged with high treason. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Bird "The wind blew words" The Faded Face The Riddle The Duel At Mayfair Lodgings To my Father's Violin The Statue of Liberty The Background and the Figure The Change Sitting on the Bridge The Young Churchwarden "I travel as a phantom now" Lines to a Movement in Mozart's E-flat Symphony "In the seventies" The Pedigree This Heart. A Woman's Dream Where they lived The Occultation Life laughs Onward The Peace-offering "Something tapped" The Wound A Merrymaking ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... was a heresy which involved the destruction of Christianity, of which, as a member of the Irish Church (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived himself a pillar. But this was only his ignorance; for man may deny his descent from an ape and be eligible as a churchwarden without being any the less ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... prebendary, canon, rural dean, rector, parson, vicar, perpetual curate, residentiary[obs3], beneficiary, incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular[obs3]; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman[obs3]; clerk, precentor[obs3], choir; almoner, suisse[Fr], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth[obs3], acolothyst[obs3], acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... churchwarden that year, and of course had to take the plate round. When I comes to the Rector's pew I see Mrs. Abel openin' a little purse. First she takes out a sovereign, and then a shilling, and says to me, quite clear, as she dropped ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... became acquainted with these matters: Joey told him that he had very early learnt to read and write by the goodness of his father, who, though he had not interest enough to get him into a charity school, because a cousin of his father's landlord did not vote on the right side for a churchwarden in a borough town, yet had been himself at the expense of sixpence a week for his learning. He told him likewise, that ever since he was in Sir Thomas's family he had employed all his hours of leisure in reading good books; that he had read the Bible, the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... four families, I finally fixed upon a banker. Offers more advantageous from a worldly point of view were open to me. I could have gone to a public-house, where the victuals were simply unlimited, and where the back door was left open all night. But about the banker's (he was also a churchwarden, and his wife never smiled at anything less than a joke by the bishop) there was an atmosphere of solid respectability that I felt would be comforting to my nature. My dear child, you will come across cynics who will sneer at respectability: don't you listen to them. Respectability ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association. Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's night ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... make money, sells wine and brandy at retail, quarrels with officers who are not punctilious enough in saluting him, forces the inhabitants to catch seal and cod for the King, and then cheats them of their pay, and countenances an obnoxious churchwarden whose daughter is his mistress. "The country groans, but dares not utter a word," concludes the accuser, as he closes ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... long churchwarden pipe, took its stem from his lips, and waved it in the air with an ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... could, perhaps, find some authority for reading the line, "Will you play upon this pipe?" as, "Will you smoke this pipe?" And the other actor would reply, "Certainly—and thank you, my Lord, I have one of my own." Mr. EDWARD TERRY has no objection to The Churchwarden in his theatre, and his Churchwarden drew very well. However, we've had this discussion before. Will it end this time, as it has hitherto done, in smoke? Let us suppose a Shakspearian ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... which had been carved out of its fringe, or the village spreading humbly at his feet, or the church into which he walked on Sunday with heavy tread, and upright carriage, conscious of his threefold dignity—as squire, magistrate, and churchwarden. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of things!" said Dr. May, who never wanted much provocation to begin storming about parish affairs. "When I am churchwarden again, I'll see what can be done about the seats; but it's no sort of use, while Ramsden ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... had received the Holy Sacrament at mid-day from the hand of his old friend Nikolas Laister, the Vicar of Saint Sebald's. He would have no one to see him save ourselves and Hans Richter the churchwarden, a man after his own heart, and the Pernharts; and at first he marked not our coming, inasmuch as he was just then giving a toy to the deaf-mute boy, which he had carved with his own hand, and Dame Giovanna had much pains to carry away the child, who had cast himself on the old ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of the story of old Doby's meerschaum," Westholt said, "pleased me enormously. She managed to convey to him—without hurting his aged feelings or overwhelming him with embarrassment—that if he preferred a clean churchwarden or his old briarwood, he need not feel obliged to smoke the new pipe. He could regard it as a trophy. Now, how did she do that without filling him with fright and confusion, lest she might think him not sufficiently grateful for her present? But they tell me she did it, and that old ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the astrologer could very well have defended himself by pointing out that the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... alone in the small breakfast-room overlooking the sloping lawns, waited upon by Davison, the late Sir Jacques' butler, a useful but melancholy servant, having the demeanour of a churchwarden and a habit of glancing rapidly under tables and chairs as though he had mislaid a cassock or a Book of Common Prayer. The huge, gloomy dining-room oppressed the new owner of Hatton Towers, being laden with the atmosphere of a Primitive Methodist ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... I was made churchwarden of Walton upon Thames, settling as well as I could the affairs of that distracted parish, upon my own charges; and upon my leaving the place, forgave them seven pounds odd money ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... not finish the word. Pulling the little door open, he put his foot on the first step of the narrow ladder of a staircase: and then fell prone upon it. John Cale and young Mr. Threpp, the churchwarden's son, who had been the clerk's companion, were descending the stairs, after the chimes had chimed themselves out, and they had locked them up again to (perhaps) another year, when ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... years Dick became a churchwarden and a philanthropist (he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), and a highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange. He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... society I have met. The premises consisted of one long dingy room with two dingy windows: the furniture of a long table covered with dirty American cloth, a multitude of wooden chairs, an old sofa, two dilapidated dinner-waggons, and a frame against the wall from which, by means of clips, churchwarden pipes depended stem downwards; and by each clip was a label bearing a name. On the table stood an enormous jar of tobacco. A number of ill-washed glasses decorated the dinner-waggons. There was not a curtain, not a blind, not a picture. The further end of the room away from ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... become a contributor to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. The occasion of his confirmation inspired some religious poems published in this paper. In 1763 a beautiful cross of curious workmanship, which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries, was destroyed by a churchwarden. The spirit of veneration was strong in the boy, and he sent to the local journal on the 7th of January 1764 a clever satire on the parish Vandal. But his delight was to lock himself in a little attic which he had appropriated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... deaneries my father found a churchyard partly sown with wheat. "Really, Mr Z—-," he said to the incumbent, "I must say I don't like to see this." And the old churchwarden chimed in, "That's what I saa tew, Mr Archdeacon; I saa to our parson, 'Yeou go whatin' it and whatin' it, why don't yeou tater it?'" This found its way into 'Punch,' with a capital drawing by Charles Keene, whom my father ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... of the ancient shaft, as is proved by what has been found in it. But in mediaeval times the puticolus was enlarged and converted into a hermitage, and a hermit is known to have occupied it till the eve of the Reformation, for in the Churchwarden's book of the parish of Bassingborne, under the date 1506, is the entry, "Gyft of 20d. recd, off a Hermytt depting at Roiston in ys pysh" It is true that this entry does not absolutely fix the residence of the hermit at the cave, but it is hardly ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... a glacier while it slided from the top to the bottom of a mountain, Master Godfrey, and if so, however did you get up again?" asked Churchwarden ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... among those of deaths of persons attached to the Palace of Whitehall, in the registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster, of "——, one of the blake garde." about the year 1566, and later. In the Churchwarden's Accompts we find— ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might have been anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised to learn that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me he looked like a churchwarden. He had the appearance of a man from whom you would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude or two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... inscribed on the tablet to his memory is 1675. At the west end of the north aisle is the ancient font mentioned by Faulkner as standing in the east end of the south aisle. It was the gift of Mr. Thomas Hyll, churchwarden in 1622, and is of stone, painted and gilt. On the east wall of the north aisle are three monuments which attract attention. That of "Payne of Pallenswick Esqre," who "hath placed this monument to the memory of himself ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Rector approached his voice to her ear. "He's a churchwarden!" cried the unfortunate man, in ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... put your hand in your pocket, and tell him you are very sorry you have no change; this, you know, will be strictly true, and speaking truth is always a commendable quality;—or, if it suits you better, bid him go to the churchwarden—this you may easily do in a dashing way. Never think of following any business or profession,—such conduct is unworthy of a dasher. In the evening, never walk straight along the foot-way, but go in a zigzag direction—this ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... playhouse during the troubled years that followed is varied. In the churchwarden's account of St. Giles's Parish is found the entry: "1646. Paid and given to the teacher at the Cockpit of the children, 6d."[613] Apparently the old playhouse was then being temporarily used ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... that not a man should come inside the door of his church without shilling fee, and women (as sure to see twice as much) must every one pay two shillings. I thought this wrong; and as churchwarden, begged that the money might be paid into mine own hands when taken. But the clerk said that was against all law; and he had orders from the parson to pay it to him without any delay. So, as I always obey the parson when I care not much about a thing, I let them have ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the historian, the Vice-president, the churchwarden, the two curates, the gentleman-tradesman, the sentimental member, the crimson maltster, the quiet gentleman, the man of family, the Spark, and several others, quite agreed, and begged that he would recall something of the kind. The old ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... are called Churchwardens; all those names being expressive of the nature of the office, which is to guard, preserve, and superintend the rights, revenues, buildings, and furniture of the church. In an old churchwarden's book of accounts, belonging to the parish of Farringdon, in the county of Berks, and bearing date A.D. 1518, there is the form of admitting churchwardens into their office at that period, in the following words: 'Cherchye Wardenys, thys shall be your charge: to be true to God and to the cherche: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... spite of the indirect efforts made by the officer of the watch, the second in command, and the navigating officer to get him out of it. It was incomprehensible, and at the same time very alarming. Commander d'Oysonville, who was churchwarden of St. Roch when he died, was a kind and very honourable man, but nobody could possibly have been less of a sailor. He was a first-class organizer, and he carried his theories to the extremist possible limit. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and gave heavily to the poor—the only thing he could not give being big ideas to his provincial and suburban deity. Pettier than an insect, and more obstinate than a mule, he had also the superior, sleek humility of a "chosen one." He was churchwarden too. He read the lesson in a "place of worship," either chilly or overheated, where neither organ, vestments, nor lighted candles were permitted, but where the odor of hair-wash on the boys' heads in the back rows ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... Elizabeth Elstob, was buried? In Chambers's Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire, she is said to have been buried at Saint Margaret's, Westminster; but after every inquiry, made many years since of the then worthy churchwarden of the parish, our researches were in vain, for there is no account of her sepulture in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... text. "We have great demand for this sort of thing," they concluded, "and if you care to attempt something in this style we should be pleased to look at it." The said text was "Thou, God, seest me." The letter was of a degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... he, pulling down his greasy waist-coat.—"I am come, Sir," said I, "to make some inquiry concerning a vacant school-master-ship."—"Oh there again," resumed the sausage-making churchwarden,—"Vy you are the seventeenth fellow that has been here to-day a bothering me about this plaguy vacasey. How do you read? you'll have a trial before me and my brother representative of this parish, and my spouse will also attend the reading bouts. Now if so be as you minds your hits, why then may ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the shaft of his churchwarden into small lengths, and flung the pieces out at the open window and said, ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... his humble bride in the fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded, and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the village gossips, "quite ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... town possesses to perfection. It is impossible to be a day in Naples without discovering that it is the most depraved city in Europe; there is something in the atmosphere which relaxes the moral fibre, and the churchwarden who keeps guard in the bosom of every Englishman falls asleep, so that you feel capable of committing far more than the seven deadly sins. Of course, you don't, but still it is comfortable to have them ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... neither," said the girl. She was but a child, yet she spoke positively, and yet again without disrespect in her manner. "'Tis poison for 'ee," she added, knocking out the ash from her master's churchwarden pipe and refilling it from the tobacco-jar. "You know what ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... require. It looked out, by two long windows, on a wide sweep of lawn which stretched away from the end of the house. In this room, in chairs of various luxurious styles, sat Mr. Caske and his two friends. Each of the three men was smoking a churchwarden pipe; and at the elbow of each stood a little three-legged, japanned smoker's table, on which was a stand of matches, an ash-tray, and a ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Mrs. Bumpkin, on a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly, so as to make it last the longer, with tobacco from his leaden jar; and then, having lighted it, he and his wife would go out of the back door, through the garden ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris |
