"Costermonger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a trice, with his box and his dice, Mac' pipin my son, but younger, Brings MUMMING in; and the knave will win For he is a costermonger. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... regrater[obs3]; shopkeeper, shopman[obs3]; tradesman, tradespeople, tradesfolk. retailer; chapman, hawker, huckster, higgler[obs3]; pedlar, colporteur, cadger, Autolycus[obs3]; sutler[obs3], vivandiere[obs3]; costerman[obs3], costermonger[obs3]; tallyman; camelot; faker; vintner. money broker, money changer, money lender; cambist[obs3], usurer, moneyer[obs3], banker. jobber; broker &c. (agent) 758; buyer &c. 795; seller &c.796; bear, bull. concern; firm &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ladies were in their pokiest old head-gear and most dingy gowns, when they perceived the carriage approaching; and considering, of course, that the visit of the Park people was intended for them, dashed into the rectory to change their clothes, leaving Rowkins, the costermonger, in the very midst of the negotiation about the three mackerel. Mamma got that new bonnet out of the bandbox; Lizzy and Liddy skipped up to their bedroom, and brought out those dresses which they wore at the dejeuner at the Newcome ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an English tourist above the state of a costermonger, as, lord 'Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth. The traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as "Sir," as, Sir 'Arry Donkiboi, or 'Amstead 'Eath. The word "Lord" is sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Blood, he speaks terribly! but, for all that, I do not greatly believe him: he looks as like a [155] conjurer as the Pope to a costermonger. [Aside.] ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... picture to a costermonger in Madrid for a bag of peas, is represented at the Champ de Mars by several canvases, the smallest of which would bring forty thousand francs. His best works are in France. The Wedding at the Vicarage, his chef-d'oeuvre, belongs to Madame de Cassin; M. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Protectionist jargon, who in these earnest days would occupy many moments of his time with that? "A Costermonger in this street," says Crabbe, "finding lately that his rope of onions, which he hoped would have brought a shilling, was to go for only sevenpence henceforth, burst forth into lamentation, execration and the most pathetic tears. Throwing ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth enough; the passion for it spreads downwards through all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then, starve him, harness ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... he thought, "so mysteriously miserable, so singularly sad, as mine! If she were only white, I would marry her at once, (if she would have me), for the sake of her gentle spirit alone,— ay, even though she were the child of a costermonger; but I cannot, I do not, love a savage, the daughter of a savage chief, with a skin the colour of shoe leather! No, it is impossible! and yet, I am in love with her spirit. I know it. I feel it. I never heard of such a strange thing before,—a ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... opportunity of showing that you are on familiar terms with the sun, moon, rain, wind, and weather in general. Do this, as a rule, by means of classical tags vulgarised down to the level of a costermonger's cart. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... obscure that they did not know the details of his deeds and prospects. The old ones and then the young were discussed—their weight, their gameness, their hitting power, and their constitution. Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went off the ground I was struck with the clever way in which a London costermonger will turn anything and everything to account. One of them was going about with a truck of cherries, crying out, "Sir Roger Tichborne cherries. Penny ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... devoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generally encamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts. Swarms of people lazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-house to open. Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are not exhilarating, but the costermonger found many customers who bought his nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing better to do. We went two or three times to a freethinking hall, where we were entertained with demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchs and Jewish heroes, and arguments ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the essence of it, it will no longer be able to exist shorn of its splendor, however much it may in its origin have been adapted for use rather than for show. The wheels were heavy, cumbrous and ill put together; they were not well adapted for the costermonger's purpose, and will probably fall to pieces before long. Their fate is a type of that of their once master. That ornamental individual, shorn of his ornamental character, is useless. His raison d'etre is gone as entirely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... their dislikes for a few picturesque and outstanding figures. These they will attack or defend with fervour. But you will be lucky if you overhear any serious discussion of policy. Emerge from the nether world. Range over the whole community—from the costermonger who says 'Good Old Winston!' to the fashionable woman who says 'I do think Mr. Balfour is rather wonderful!'—and you will find the same plentiful lack of interest in the impersonal side of polities. You will find that almost every one is interested ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... with his suffering victim: Charles, in momentary indignation, rushed up to the fellow, wrested the cudgel from his hand, and flung it over the cliff; while Julian was so base, so cowardly, as to reward such generous interference, by holding his weaker brother's arms, and inviting the wrathful costermonger to expend the remainder of his phrensy on unlucky Charles. Yes, and when at home Mrs. Tracy heard all this, she was silly enough, wicked enough, to receive her truly noble son with ridicule, and her other one, the child of her disgrace, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... than that the human mind from accident, from grief, or from that mysterious excitement, during which in half an hour a blaspheming costermonger "gets religion" and becomes a saint of God—nothing is more certain than that the human mind can like this, at a flash, turn topsy-turvy; the good coming to the top, the bad going to the bottom. Mechanical pressure on the cortex of the brain can bring this state of things about, even as ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... on one well-built, well-groomed man of thirty odd years whose slight stoop and cultured air of tolerance marked him a ''Varsity man' as plainly as cap and gown could have done. Just behind him a costermonger in a riot of buttons was indulging in philosophic quips of a cheerfully vulgar nature. A few yards back a massive labourer with clear untroubled eye and powerful muscles stood out like a superior being to the three who were alongside. Half-way a poet marched. What form his poesy took—whether ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of aspect common to the whole suburb, was in a high state of perfection in this part of it. Irreverent street noises fainted dead away on the threshold of the ornamental gates, at the sight of the hermit lodge-keeper. The cry of the costermonger and the screech of the vagabond London boy were banished out of hearing. Even the regular tradesman's time-honored business noises at customers' doors, seemed as if they ought to have been relinquished here. The frantic falsetto of the milkman, the crash of the furious butcher's ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins |
