"Ferryman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this plant the "Chaplet of the Infernal Gods," because of its [142] narcotic effects. Nevertheless, the roots of the asphodel were thought by the ancient Greeks to be edible, and they were therefore laid in tombs as food for the dead. Lucian tells us that Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of the departed over the river Styx, said: "I know why Mercury keeps us waiting here so long. Down in these regions there is nothing to be had but, asphodel, and oblations, in the midst of mist and darkness; whereas up in heaven he finds ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the little water-gate, having previously arranged with his chief equerry, Appelmann, to have a boat there in readiness for him, and also a good horse, to take across the ferry with them to the other side. So, at twelve o'clock, he and Appelmann embarked privately, with Johann Bruwer, the ferryman, and were safely landed at Mahlzow. Here he mounted his horse, and told the two others to await his return, and conceal themselves in the wood if any one approached. Appelmann begged permission to accompany his Highness, which, however, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... rose and caught his hair In fingers sharp and long. "Loose me, old ferryman: play fair: Try ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... strait, bordered with rocks, which divides Brassey from the island called the Noss. A strong south wind was driving in the billows from the sea with noise and foam, but they were broken and checked by a bar of rocks in the middle of the strait, and we crossed to the north of it in smooth water. The ferryman told us that when the wind was northerly he crossed to the south of the bar. As we climbed the hill of the Noss the mist began to drift thinly around us from the sea, and flocks of sea-birds rose screaming from the ground at our approach. At length we stood upon ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... on till they were carried down more than a mile, loudly calling for help as they went along; but what aid could we render them? No craft, none, at least, which were on the banks of the river, could live in such a boiling torrent as that; for it was during one of the high spring freshets. But the ferryman was of a different opinion, and could not brook the thought of their dying before his eyes without his making a single effort to save them. "How could I stand idly looking on," he said to me afterward, "with a tough ash ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... maid," replied the Magian, raising a warning hand. "There is no form which these intermediate beings can not assume. They have the control of all and everything which mortals may use, so the soul of Korinna revisiting these scenes may quite well have paid the ferryman with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bearing relation to that river, of which they foreboded the overflowing. These circumstances, added to the preceding ones, increased the probability of the fiction; and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these inventions, and gave ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... spoke again in that strained whisper. "Mother, when I went to sleep I dreamt a ferryman came for us, and his boat was close to the shore, and we were stepping in when you called me back. I knew your voice, and you said 'Susie' quite plainly. I wouldn't go, and I wouldn't let him take Dick! I screamed and held him tight, and the ferryman said we must pay ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... lavished on her alone, and bravely started northward, his trumpet hanging on one side, a stone bottle, much heavier, depending from the other. It was a stormy evening when he arrived at the upper end of the island, and there was no ferryman in sight, so, after fuming up and down the shore, he swallowed a mighty draught of Dutch courage,—for he was as accomplished a performer on the horn as on the trumpet,—and swore with ornate and voluminous oaths that he would swim ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... way to Deadborough, the village of his birth. Arrived there, after a forty miles' walk, he refreshed himself with a glass of beer and a penn'orth of bread and cheese, and proceeded at once to Farmer Ferryman in quest of work. The farmer, who was, as usual, in want of labour, sent him to Snarley Bob to "put the measure on him." Snarley's report was favourable. "He seemed a bit queer, no doubt, and kept laughin' ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... name of Peter Houter was the ferryman. He stood at the clumsy steering-beam, while four stout rowers manned the oars of his wide, flat-bottomed craft. Approaching the steersman, Bob asked where in the town he would be likely to find the Captain of a merchantman then taking ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a prophecy of Scott, read the description of Netley Abbey,[47] in a letter to Nicholls in 1764. "My ferryman," writes Gray in a letter to Brown about the same ruin, "assured me that he would not go near it in the night time for all the world, though he knew much money had been found there. The sun was all too glaring and too full of gauds for such a scene, which ought to be visited only in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... adventure! What might it not evoke? Woodland spirits perhaps, romance, a ferryman! Thank God the tree was old, the horn battered and the willow naiadic in its grace. A trio ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... we shall ever get dry again?" asked Eleanor lightly, while they waited for the ferryman to come back ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... at a place called Oxlode, I found a boat, and the news that just beyond lay another dyke. I asked where that could be crossed, but the ferryman of Oxlode did not know. He pointed two houses out, however, standing close together out of the plain, and said they were called "Purles' Bridge," and that I would do well to try there. But when I reached them I found that the water was between me and them and, what is more, that ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... fiend, no fortune, nor no hope of end To our infamous, monstrous slaveries. Gape, earth, and let the fiends infernal view A [276] hell as hopeless and as full of fear As are the blasted banks of Erebus, Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans Hover about the ugly ferryman, To get a passage to Elysium! [277] Why should we live?—O, wretches, beggars, slaves!— Why live we, Bajazeth, and build up nests So high within the region of the air, By living long in this oppression, That all the world will see and laugh to scorn The former ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... heap had been thrown down a slope behind a village, where the fugitives often crossed the river from the east; and in one hut of the same village no fewer than twenty drums had been collected, probably the ferryman's fees. Many had ended their misery under shady trees, others under projecting crags in the hills, while others lay in their huts with closed doors, which when opened disclosed the mouldering corpse with the poor rags round the loins, the skull fallen off the pillow, the little ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... however, or turned to ridicule, these little creatures would forsake the house and never come back again. When the old gods ceased to be worshipped in the Northlands, the dwarfs withdrew entirely from the country, and a ferryman related how he had been hired by a mysterious personage to ply his boat back and forth across the river one night, and at every trip his vessel was so heavily laden with invisible passengers that it nearly sank. When his night's work was over, he received a ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... with threat and curse she ever cried; Whose tongue collected still fresh cause for blame. Meanwhile, where to the lovelier fairy's side The passage lay across a straight, he came; And there an ancient ferryman espied Put from the other shore with punctual aim, As if forewarned and well prepared, the seer Waited the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Hagen, "I be not so weary of life, that I would drown me in these broad waves. Sooner shall men die by my hands in Etzel's lands. That will I well. Stay by the water's side, ye proud knights and good, and I will seek the ferryman myself along the stream, who shall ferry us across to Gelfrat's ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... "The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn't the least idea you were a clergyman. Now I am particular always to appear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... act prevented runaways from securing work on a steamboat with the specific purpose of leaving once they were on free soil. But as usual this enactment was not effective, because there was a loop-hole in it. The State assembly in 1831, therefore, provided that no ferryman on the Ohio River should transport slaves across from Kentucky. No other person, not owning or keeping a ferry, was to be permitted to set slaves over, or to loan them boats or watercraft. Slaves could ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... ill that Heaven hath Sent on this lower world in wrath,— The plague (to call it by its name,) One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,— Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire; Nor wolf nor fox now watch'd to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... task in hand was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp. Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dream canoes. But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where Van Corlaer had ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... usually visited while waiting for the ferryman on our return journey after the summer's absence, the plantation could be seen stretching away into the distance, hemmed in by the flat-topped cypresses. From there we had a view of our distant dwelling, gleaming white in the sunlight and standing in a green ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... originally (as later asserted) a fee to Charon the ferryman to Hades, but simply a "minimum precautionary sum, for the dead man's use" (Dr. Jane Harrison), placed in the mouth, where a Greek usually kept his ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... your track. You left here an hour after midnight. Wrapped in a large cloak, you crossed the river in a boat a mile below the second bridge, and gave the ferryman a gold piece, you, the poor student of medicine! You doubled back twice, and hid in an archway so long that I had almost made up my mind to stab you at once, only that I am fond of hunting. So! you thought that you had baffled all pursuit, ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... hand, named after an old Swedish ferryman. The village has not only a delightful location but it is also beautiful in itself. In 1781 it was Washington's headquarters, and the old house, still standing, is famous as the spot where General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau planned the campaign ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he has little money than when ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... weight. His gaunt frame was thin and spare, his black alpaca coat hung on it like a sack, and his whole attitude spoke of sorrow. He might have been the presentment of an unwilling ghost, who stood with the Ferryman's farthing under his palm, waiting to be taken across the cheerless, dark waters to a limbo of drifting souls. He took his hands from before his face and clasped them over the book, looking out of the window to the evening shadows, ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... I do," said he softly to Esau Wardrop, as they were stepping out, and with that he feigned some small expedient for tarrying in the boat, while the soldiers, taking their arms, leapt on shore. The ferryman also was out before them; and my brother seeing this, took up an oar, seemingly to help him to step out; but pretending at the time to stumble, he caught hold of Esau's shoulder, and pushing with, the oar, shoved off the boat in such a manner, that the rope was pulled ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... band he had divined a little of when, at points along the river, especially about Vienna, there had been mysterious intercourse between Joe Johnson and people on the shore, carried on in imitations of animal sounds; and the negro ferryman at that old Dorchester village had spoken with Johnson only half an hour before the trader's encounter with Jimmy Phoebus in mid-stream, whereupon the grim passenger had produced his pistol ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... as Gazen and I had nicknamed Carmichael, after the grim ferryman of the Styx, seldom forsook his engines, and Miss Carmichael spent a good deal of her time along with him. Occasionally she chatted with Gazen and myself in the saloon, or helped us to make scientific observations; but although neither of us openly confessed it, I think we both felt that ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... city by a different route, following the river bank. He had not walked far before he came to the ferry at Twickenham. The view on the other side of the river attracted him: meadows dotted with cows and sheep, a verdant hill with pleasant villas here and there; and, seeing the ferryman resting on his oars, he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... to cross the Conemaugh at a second point in order to reach Johnstown proper. This was accomplished by a skiff ferry. The ferryman clung to a rope ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... larder. Through certain sections, however, fish and game were abundant. I remember the enthusiasm we all felt when we reached the Sabine River, and for the first time viewed the promised land. It was at a ferry, and the sluggish river was deep. When my father informed the ferryman that he had no money with which to pay the ferriage, the latter turned on him remarking, sarcastically: "What, no money? My dear sir, it certainly can't make much difference to a man which side of the river he's on, when ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... learned that Noah Martin the fisherman who was also the ferryman between the village and its neighbor on the other side of the river, had been drowned during the early morning in a foolish attempt to row his ferry skiff across the stream. The ice which had blocked the river for two months, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... miraculously supported in all thy former?" Then the voice told her how by a certain cave she might reach the realms of Pluto, and how to avoid all the dangers of the road, to pass by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, and prevail on Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and bring her back again. But the voice added, "When Proserpine has given you the box filled with her beauty, of all things this is chiefly to be observed by you, that you never once open or look into the box nor allow your ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... weaving, who shall bid thee leave The road and fill their shuttles while they weave, But slacken not thy steps for all their prayers, For these are shadows only, and set snares. "At last thou comest to a water wan, And at the bank shall be the ferryman Surly and grey; and when he asketh thee Of money for thy passage, hastily Show him thy mouth, and straight from off thy lip The money he will take, and in his ship Embark thee and set forward; but beware, For on thy passage is another ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... criminality, "Les Contes Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I never read ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... it in the sea. Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony? Clar. Oh, no; my dream was lengthened after life; Oh, then began the tempest to my soul, Who passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowne'd Warwick; Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury Can this dark ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... near Lacedaemon, and there she found a hole leading to the Underworld. A ghostly ferryman rowed her over the River of Death, and took one of her copper coins. Then a monstrous dog with three heads sprang out, but Psyche fed him with one of her honey-cakes, and entered the hall of Proserpine, the queen of the dead. Proserpine filled the casket, and by means of the last honey-cake ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... continued Chupin, "was present at all the conferences held at Lacheneur's house. The proof of this is as clear as daylight. Being obliged to cross the Oiselle to reach the Reche, and fearing the ferryman would notice his frequent nocturnal voyages, the baron had an old boat repaired which he had not ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... bright as heaven, from whence the blessing came: But few, oh! few souls, preordained by fate, The race of gods, have reached that envied height. No rebel Titan's sacrilegious crime, By heaping hills on hills can hither climb: The grizzly ferryman of hell denied Aeneas entrance, till he knew his guide. How justly then will impious mortals fall, Whose pride would soar to heaven without ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line" except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the ferryman rather than lose his poise when ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... a piece of Gold was passed, through mistake, at Beverly Ferry, to Asa Leech's Ferryman, with coppers, for a copper.——The owner may have it again, applying to said Leech, telling the marks, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... such as his genial spirit deserves, and not linger on into a twilight life with failing senses. When his memory and his pipe and his books begin to fail him, when those keen old eyes grow dim and he can no longer go to sniff the salt air on the river-wall—then may the quick and quiet ferryman take dear old John ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Pedee river, at Cashway Ferry, I observed that the ferryman had no hair on either side of his head, I asked him the cause. He informed me that it was caused by his master's cane. I said, you have a very bad master. 'Yes, a very bad master.' I understood that he was once a number of Congress from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the deep of Arden wood it lies; About it pleasant leaves for ever wave. Through charmed afternoons we wander on, And at the sundown reach the seas that lave The golden isles of blessed Avalon. When the sweet daylight dies, Out of the gloom the ferryman doth glide To take us both into a younger day; And as the twilight land recedes away, My lady ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... time in safety, and passed into Houston County. The Federals believed Toombs already abroad and had ceased to look for him in Georgia. After the passage was made General Toombs said: "Charlie, that ferryman eyed me very closely. Go back and give ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... after the storm was windless and genial; the morning stepped out from the east bearing the promise of a fine day; the tide was running strongly to the sea. At Newnham the ferryman stood knee-deep in the water washing his boat and hoping for a fare. The man in black came down and was carried across to Arlingham. He asked many questions concerning the tides and the sands. The water ran like a mill-race round the Nab, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... broken by the death of Spottiswoode. From 1864 to Spottiswoode's death in 1883 the original circle remained unbroken; the meetings "were steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks began to thin; and one by one, geistige Naturen such as those for which the poet so willingly paid the ferryman, silent but not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... not occur to Rosamond to suggest that between four and five in the afternoon was an unusual dinner-hour for a ferryman. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... towards the end of April the commissioners sent on a courier to announce their arrival and prepare for their proper reception in Montreal. But the ferryman at Laprairie positively refused to accept Continental paper money at any price; and it was only when a 'Friend of Liberty' gave him a dollar in silver that he consented to cross the courier over ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... figure stood beside The hideous stream, and toward the whispering prow Held forth his tender tremulous hands, and cried, Now to the awful ferryman, and now To her that battled with the shades in vain. Sometimes impending over all her sight The spongy dark and the phantasmal flight Of things half-shapen passed and hid ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there in half ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... held thee, out of season the grave took thee, O Anastasia, flower of the blithe Graces; for thee a father, for thee a husband pours bitter tears; for thee haply even the ferryman of the dead weeps; for not a whole year didst thou accomplish beside thine husband, but at sixteen years old, alas! ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... spread through the city no sounds but those of wailing were heard. Only the voice of Psyche was silent among them. She moved about as one that was sleeping, and indeed she felt as if the boat, with its grim ferryman, had already borne her across the Styx. So the days passed on, and one evening a white-clad priest arrived from the shrine to bid the king tarry ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... with the cold blue river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses that grow along its banks. There are signs of a trodden slope and a ferry, and there's a rough old wooden shelter where passengers can wait; a bell hung on the top with which they call the ferryman. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... continuous travel we reached Lismus Ferry on the second morning from Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of information for us. We would find nothing at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, he advised us. But he had some ointment to apply to the wound thus inflicted, in that Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was only twenty-five miles inland. The weekly ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... appointed time, I was at the ferry—Sarah, as I learned afterwards, left the house at a much earlier hour to "take a walk" and while she was, foolishly I think, making a circuitous route to reach the ferry, her father, who suspected that she intended to run away, went to the ferryman and told him his suspicions, directing him if Sarah came there by no means to permit her to cross the river. Consequently when Sarah met me at the ferry, the ferryman flatly refused to let either of us go over. He knew all about it, he said, ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... cursory mention of that. But I doubt if the group of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north to capture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. The old Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry the homecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony Green and his fellow officers, sent to apprehend the colonial major, found him inexplicably murdered; and by dawn they were back at the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... strong, carrying voice, and the cheery summons of the Twickenham ferryman rang clearly on ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... together with a kettle and provisions, are still placed in the graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... crossed a ferry that was most marvelous. A heavy steel cable was stretched across the river—the Missouri—and fastened securely to each bank, and then a flat boat was chained at each end to the cable, but so it could slide along when the ferryman gripped the cable with a large hook, and gave long, hard pulls. Faye says that the very swift current of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... humorous. Thor on his return from the east comes to a channel, at the farther side of which stands Odin, disguised as a ferryman, Greybeard. He refuses to ferry Thor across, and they question each other as to their past feats, with occasional threats from Thor and taunts from Odin, until the former goes off vowing vengeance ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... brought them down to the water-side, and at parting gave a writing into the hand of the Carline. And when they were safely over the mighty Flood, and landed on a pleasant strand where the water was shallow and the current none so swift, the ferryman spoke a word of them to one of the brotherhood who had stood watching the crossing of that boat. With a friendly greeting he turned and led the way to the Friary, a fair stone building, set with a wall both high and long. Here met the Carline and the Maiden with ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could lie down) a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The companion of my transit was M.A.C., with whom I had been long in love, and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... instigation of the Duke de Morny, has given orders for the construction of a bridge over the Marne near Petit Val, a thing we needed greatly. When you were here, if you remember, one had to walk from the station to the river, about a little quarter of a mile. Once there you had to wave and shout for the ferryman, who, before allowing you to get on the boat, would attend to what cattle or merchandise were waiting there for transport. I do not think the bridge would have been built had not the Duke de Morny come out by train to Petit Val to avoid ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... later, Old Michael, the ferryman, drove by, breaking a track along the blotted road. His ancient corduroys, known to every river-man from Bismarck to Baton Rouge, were hidden beneath layers of overcoats. Through the wool cap pulled ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... land,—a long distance over Jersey sands. Leaving the beach with only six dollars, he reached South Amboy penniless, with six horses and three men, all hungry, still far from home, and separated from Staten Island by an arm of the sea half a mile wide, that could be crossed only by paying the ferryman six dollars. This was a puzzling predicament for a boy of twelve, and he pondered long how he could get out of it. At length he went boldly to the only innkeeper of the place, and addressed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Miss What-you-may-call-her I disremember her name—and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so WE saddle-baggsed; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gold ring off his arm Unto the dead man's wife: "Take that as an atoning gift For the Ferryman's young life." ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... of the ferryman—to keep the figure whole—was a letter from his father, a letter longer than the commonplace chronicles, and painfully written with the mechanic hand on both sides of a company letter-head. Caleb Gordon wrote chiefly of business. Mutterings of the storm of financial depression were already ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... in for her team over that, and a bag of apples, and another of potatoes, or any thing she generally brought into market, placed in front so as to present the appearance of a load of marketing. As she had been over so often, she said, the ferryman hardly ever asked her for her pass, for he knew her so well. "Don't you see you are the very one to bring yourself and family here? You could drive over and take your family to either of three places: to a ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... won't do, Messenger. If that fellow attempts the fords we'll catch him, sure; if he swims we may get him in the water. The Lord knows I want him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing vedettes across the stream.... There's a ferryman over there I'm worried about, too. He'd probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And Allen was thick with him. They used to fish together. Nobody knows what they hatched out between them. It worries me, ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... may fancy that, on the model of Caesar's address to his poor ferryman,—"Caesarem vehis et fortunas ejus"—M. Des Cartes needed only to have said,—"Dogs, you cannot cut my throat, for you carry Des Cartes and his philosophy," and might safely have defied them to do their worst. A German emperor had the same notion, when, being cautioned to keep out ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in my vision. I asked them if there had ever been any Mormon preachers in that country. They said there had not been any there. The young women were modest and genteel in behavior. I passed on to the Cumberland River, was set over the river by the ferryman, and lodged in ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... pebbly beach and shook themselves dry; while Bridget showed them how to pull down their nightshirts to keep them from shrinking, and how to wring out their faery caps to keep the wishes from growing musty or mildewed. After that they met the faery ferryman, who—according to Sandy—"wore a wee kiltie o' reeds, an' a tammie made frae a loch-lily pad wi' a cat-o'-nine-tail tossel, lukin' sae ilk the brae ye wad niver ken he was a mon glen ye dinna see his legs, walkin'." He told them how he ferried over all the "old bodies" who had grown feeble-hearted ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... puffed at her cigar. "Do you know the history of the family?" she asked. "The founder was a rough old ferryman. He fought his rivals so well that in the end he owned all the boats; and then some one discovered the idea of buying legislatures and building railroads, and he went into that. It was a time when they simply grabbed things—if you ever look ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... I'll tell you, Father. They saw two vagabonds by the river. Their clothing was torn and dirty, for they'd been in the water. And when it came to paying the ferryman, they'd no money. Now they're drying their ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the map and decided to leave the boat at Chimney Point to find Kate Fullerton, who had written to the schoolmaster from Canterbury. My aunt had said in a letter that old Kate was living there and that a great change had come over her. So I went ashore and hired a horse of the ferryman—one of those "Green Mountain ponies" of which my uncle had told me: "They'll take any gait that suits ye, except a slow one, an' keep it to ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Growler's head. And in spite of Master Willis's opinion, he rode home to the gulley a new man, assuring Patience, on the donkey by his side, that there was more staunchness and kindness in little Emlyn than ever they had thought for. Even the ferryman who put them over the river declared that the doctor must have done Master Kenton a power of good, and Stead smiled and did not ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cluster of trading houses" was the town of Mendota. Here was the stone house of Henry H. Sibley, and that of J. B. Faribault. Near the river was the ferry house and the home of Mr. Finley the ferryman.[216] Upon the hillside lay the little Catholic chapel, surrounded by the graves in the cemetery. But the center of interest was in the warehouse and store of the American Fur Company, where the skins of buffalo, elk, deer, fox, beaver, otter, ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen |
