"Ostler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinking as himself; and there was so much running and sending of messages, that I could not avoid suspecting something was in the wind. Going to the stable to look after Sir Wycherly's hunter, for I knew how much he values the animal, I found one of the stranger's servants in discourse with the ostler. The latter told me, when the chaise had gone, that great tidings had reached Exeter, before the travellers quitted the town. These tidings he described as news that 'Charley was no longer over the water.' It was useless, Sir Gervaise, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... gone, and from the outside the shrill voice of her page was wafted to me. He was calling to the ostler for her carriage. Standing, in my deep mortification, where she had passed me, I conjectured from that demand that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... humour, but no moral purpose at all. The natural result was that Fielding and his set looked on Richardson as a grave, dull, respectable old prig; Richardson on Fielding as a low rake, who wrote like a man who had been an ostler born in a stable, or a runner in a sponging-house. "The virtues of Fielding's heroes," the vain old printer used to say to his feminine clique, "are the vices of a truly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... my due, and to pay for them at the same time in ready money. I was a gudgeon and they were sharks; and more sharks would soon have been about me, for I heard them, as they left the room, call "boots" and "ostler," of course to assist in lightening ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... her head from the pillow with an anxious, listening movement. At last it came, the sound for which she had been waiting—the rumble of wheels, the clatter of horses' hoofs, the grunts and groans of the ostler as he lifted the heavy bags to their place. Margot's brown eyes looked up ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... intolerable bully, a certain wild-cat element in him making up for lack of weight. But, alas for justice, "I—the victor—had a black eye, while he—the vanquished—had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not." A dozen years later he ran across this lad in Sydney, acting as an ostler, a transported convict who had, moreover, undergone more ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Australia was a big country, and asked him if he had any idea of the name of the place his son had gone to. He had not.' As soon as Commander Gambier arrived at Newcastle, in New South Wales, he met an exceptionally ragged ostler. As the ostler handed him his horse, Mr. Gambier felt an irresistible though inexplicable conviction that this was the old cabman's son. He felt absolutely sure of it; ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... not returned, and Sadie sat in the office at the hotel, making futile efforts to fix her attention on a newspaper. The guests had gone to bed and the building was very quiet, but she had kept the ostler up. He might be needed and she could trust him ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... I clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before an inn flaunting the sign of a peacock—as if in irony of its humbleness, for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy nor ostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrusted my horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord would be able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so I determined to alight, if it were only to drink a can of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... well under twenty minutes," said he. "We've time in hand now, and a little water at the Red Lion will do them no harm. Red four-in-hand passed, ostler?" ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suite, cortege, staff, court. attendant, squire, usher, page, donzel[obs3], footboy[obs3]; train bearer, cup bearer; waiter, lapster[obs3], butler, livery servant, lackey, footman, flunky, flunkey, valet, valet de chambre[Fr]; equerry, groom; jockey, hostler, ostler[obs3], tiger, orderly, messenger, cad, gillie[obs3], herdsman, swineherd; barkeeper, bartender; bell boy, boots, boy, counterjumper[obs3]; khansamah[obs3], khansaman[obs3]; khitmutgar[obs3]; yardman. bailiff, castellan[obs3], seneschal, chamberlain, major-domo[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... likely. Thanky, ma'am. I'll look up the concern and try my chance. Would you call it too great a come-down to have father an 'ostler after being first rider in the 'Great Golden Menagerie, Circus, and Colosseum,' hey Ben?" asked Mr. Brown, quoting the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... responded the devil: "he will assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the fatigue of the next day. The charges were moderate, and the people very civil, with a certain honest hilarity and independent spirit in their manner, which almost made me forget that they were innkeepers, a set of men—waiters, hostesses, chambermaids, &c., down to the ostler, whose cunning servility in England ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... postboy who was dozing under the gateway; and who, after hearing what he wanted, referred him to the ostler; who after hearing all he had to say again, referred him to the landlord; who was a tall gentleman in a blue neckcloth, a white hat, drab breeches, and boots with tops to match, leaning against a pump by the stable-door, picking his teeth with a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... They're a' hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes a-shining ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... a week's sojourn or so at the Ipswich Inn, made a mutual discovery. This was, that not only were the landlady of the Inn, her son and the ostler all of English origin and descent, but that the entire village appeared to be populated by people of English extraction. The butcher was a Englishman, the blacksmith was a Cockney answering to the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the door of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the door, just now, I should be disposed to say that the dog had retreated growling beneath some article of furniture, and was keeping the professors at bay. This conjecture is confirmed by the testimony of the ostler, who, after peeping through the keyhole, assures me that he distinctly saw Professor Nogo on his knees, holding forth a small bottle of prussic acid, to which the animal, who was crouched beneath an arm-chair, obstinately declined to smell. You cannot imagine the feverish state ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... grand-papa, if I seem to you, for the moment, pert) you are Warden here. It is your duty, even your privilege, to GUARD. Is it not? Well, I grant you the adage that it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn't know—won't even 'inquire' whether—the horse HAS been ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... head." And he would have argued the point longer with Jeanne, but he had no time left, for the riders had already turned into the courtyard, and were giving their horses in charge to the white-headed ostler Benoit. Benoit had served in the Golden Pear for a quarter of a century. He had served Victor Dubois's father in Normandy, had come with his young master to America, and was nominally his servant still. But if things had gone ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... more by instinct than aim, I wandered into the stable-yard of one of the principal inns, where I was brought nearer to my senses by hearing the ostler sing out sharply, "Hullo, my man, what is your business?" I told him I was a friendless boy in search of some employment by which I might get a livelihood, as I was very hungry and had no money, or something to that effect; to which he replied that ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... an' I was nigh washed out o' the buggy, besides losin' my way and gettin' inter ditches and puddles, and I hed to stop at Staples' Half-Way House and put up for the night. In the mornin' I riz up early and goes into the stable yard, and the first thing I sees was the 'ostler. 'I hope ye giv' my hoss a good scrub down,' I sez, 'as I told ye, for his color is that delicate the smallest spot shows. It's a very rare color for a hoss.' 'I was hopin' it might be,' sez he. I was a little huffed ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... began, with a glance at the hotel ostler, who was standing near cleaning a bit in industrious and sarcastic silence, "it is a fact, no doubt, that I mentioned here this morning that this young mare was of the Government hackney stock. But, according as I understand from this poor man that owns her, he bought her in a small fair over the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe. Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... shops, and it is not a very small place; but I could not meet with a silver thimble, and bought a halfpenny brass one. Slept at the Graham's Arms, a large inn. Here, as everywhere else, the people seemed utterly insensible of the enormity of Hatfield's offences; the ostler told William that he was quite a gentleman, paid every one genteelly, etc. etc. He and 'Mary' had walked together to Gretna Green; a heavy rain came on when they were there; a returned chaise happened to pass, and the driver would have taken them up; but 'Mr. Hope's' carriage was ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... threat'nings or the zealot's creed; Shook by a dream, he next for truth receives What frenzy teaches, and what fear believes; And this will place him in the power of one Whom we must seek, because we cannot shun." Wisp had been ostler at a busy inn, Where he beheld and grew in dread of sin; Then to a Baptists' meeting found his way, Became a convert, and was taught to pray; Then preach'd; and, being earnest and sincere, Brought other sinners to religious fear: Together grew his influence and his fame, Till our dejected ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... apply it to that thirtieth boy in question, and see the result. Had you but kept that thirtieth boy—been patient with his sickly virtues, cultivated them, hoed round them, why what a glorious guerdon would have been yours, when at last you should have had a St. Augustine for an ostler." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... dismount before the door, give the horse to the sleepy Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among the glasses and bottles. She heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on the landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in setting Christian villages on fire, Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves. One time I was an ostler in an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats; Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, I strewed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so That ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... through Clavering, the ostler standing whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms winked to the postilion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the lodge-gates and let the travellers through with a silent ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... was a sharp corner to turn at the entrance of the inn-yard. But the old horse knew his business so well that had I pulled on one rein with all my strength I believe it would have merely annoyed, without convincing, him. He took me into the yard without a mistake, and I gave up the reins to the ostler, thanking ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sun rose over the white cliffs Of Devon, sparkled through the poplar-tops, And broke the death-like slumber of the Hall. The keeper fetched their breakfast to the hounds; The smart, young ostler whistled in the stalls; The pretty housemaid tripped from room to room; And grave and grand behind his master's chair, But wroth within to have the partridge spoil, The senile butler waited for his lord. But neither Regnald nor young Eustace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words "post-chaise," the "great North Road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there the rule was, Welcome everybody, and wait for nobody. The master of the house introduced the newly arrived guest as Michael Kis, Esq., lord of the manor of Nadudvar, who, "like a jolly good fellow," had come disguised as an ostler to the Whitsun Kingship competition, and there acquitted himself ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Horncastle, nor would Ardrey have taken coach to Stafford en route for a lion fight at Warwick, which had taken place several days before. Mr. Platitude's reappearance is extremely artificial, and the ostler's tales of Abershaw and Co. are obviously reminiscences of Borrow's 'Celebrated Trials.' But the Horncastle story is weaker still. The 'Lord'-Lieutenant, so free and young,' is pilloried, because eighteen years afterwards he did not see his way to make Borrow a J.P. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... men with his face against the window, watching him. "Well, now you see what you have to expect, if you try your trade with me," thought Edward, "I am very glad that you have been spying." Having replaced his pistols, Edward paid his reckoning, and went to the stable desiring the ostler to saddle his horse and fix on his saddle-bags. As soon as this was done he mounted and rode off. Before he was well clear of the town the highwaymen cantered past him on three well-bred active horses. "I presume we shall meet again," thought Edward, who for some time ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... 1859, that it had been built eighty years before by a then well-known character in those parts, one Stevens, father-in-law of Henslow the Cambridge professor of botany. Stevens, who could only with much difficulty manage to write his name, had begun life as ostler at an inn; had become husband to the landlord's widow; then a brewer; and finally, as he subscribed himself on one occasion, "mare" of Rochester. Afterwards the house was inhabited by Mr. Lynn (from some of the members of whose family Dickens made ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... carrying on betwixt them was a joint ejaculation, "Lord guide us, an this weather last, what will come o' the lambs!" The hint was sufficient for my Landlord, who, advancing to take the horse of the principal person, and holding him by the reins as he dismounted, while his ostler rendered the same service to the attendant, welcomed the stranger to Gandercleugh, and, in the same breath, enquired, "What news from the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... asked me what I intended to do, and I told him frankly that I did not know; whereupon he observed that, provided I had no objection, he had little doubt that I could be accommodated for some time at his inn. "Our upper ostler," said he, "died about a week ago; he was a clever fellow, and, besides his trade, understood ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... that servant of Captain Jones; but then they all are. Valet, cook, porter, boots, chambermaid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coal-heaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a man of the most human kind. Jones came across ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... you lay it where I may have it at a minute's warning; for my affairs are a little dubious at present; perhaps I may be gone in half an hour, perhaps I may be your guest till the best part of that be spent; and pray order your ostler to keep my horses always saddled. But one thing above the rest I must beg, that you would let this fellow have none of your Anno Domini, as you call it; for he's the most insufferable sot—Here, sirrah, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... must sometimes—I see our dinner would have been—' Then she recovered herself into a connected sentence. 'We only just heard of Mrs. Gibson's having a fly from the "George," because sister sent our Nancy to pay for a couple of rabbits Tom Ostler had snared (I hope we shan't be taken up for poachers, Mr Osborne—snaring doesn't require a licence, I believe?), and she heard he was gone off with the fly to the Towers with your dear mamma; for Coxe who drives ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words "post-chaise," the "great North road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Roebuck, and behind him again Mr. Hume. Sir Roger Gresley addresses himself to the insides, and the person holding up his paper to the special notice of John Bull is the Marquis of Londonderry. The driver of the coach is Lord Melbourne, and the ostler little ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Scraps, preserved at the Goldsmiths' Library in London, contains a copy of the Factory Bill of 1833, with some pencil notes in Ostler's handwriting which run: ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... it had no place for idlers, and he must get work. The contents of the basket were not yet exhausted, and he took it to a retired corner to eat his breakfast. While he was thus engaged, Joe Flint, the ostler, happened to ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... we linked the Crinoline with the powder puffs on Wenus. Approaching it more nearly, we heard a hissing noise within, such as is made by an ostler, or Mr. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... though, now in his power, was so sedulously shunned by the other party, he decided in the negative; and contenting himself with writing upon a slip of paper the hasty words,—"You are known by the villagers,—be upon your guard,"—he gave it to the ostler, with instructions to deliver it instantly to the owner of the horse he pointed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... few people were to be found, and a woman who was alone in the kitchen came up to him and whispered, "The boys (the rebels) are hid in the potato furrows beyond." He was rather startled at this intelligence, but took no notice. He found an ostler who lent him a wheel, which they managed to put on, and we drove off without being stopped by any of the boys. A little farther on I saw something very odd on the side of the road before us. "What is that?"—"Look to the other side—don't look at it!" ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Brendon's deduction was made manifest within an hour, and the operations of Robert Redmayne defined up to a point. A man was waiting at the police station—George French, ostler at Two Bridges ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 'Mr. Burke has a constant stream of conversation.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; if a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a shower, he would say—"this is an extraordinary man." If Burke should go into a stable to see his horse drest, the ostler would say—we have had an extraordinary man here[852].' BOSWELL. 'Foote was a man who never failed in conversation. If he had gone into a stable—' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if he had gone into a stable, the ostler would have said, here has been a comical fellow; but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... liked his ease in his inn, and took his sip of punch so comfortably, that I, for my part, thought he never would be gone. I was out in the stables and looking at the horses, and talking to the ostler who was rubbing his nags down. I dare say I had a peep into the kitchen, and at the pigeons in the inn-yard, and at all things which were to be seen at "The Bell," while my two companions were still at their interminable punch. It was an old-fashioned inn, with a gallery round the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... done a great deal of business on his way to the fair, and he was hot and tired. He wanted something to eat, and a glass of ale to refresh himself; so he turned his steps to an inn. He was just about to enter when the ostler came out, and they met at the door. The ostler was carrying a sack. "What have you in that sack?" ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... an inn; the horses were changed; the flight was resumed. Wogan had not moved during this delay, neither had Misset nor O'Toole come to the door. But an ostler had flashed a lantern into the berlin, and for a second the light had fallen upon Wogan's face and open eyes. Clementina, however, did not cease; she sang on until the lights had been left behind and the darkness was about them. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... was already surmounting the fire which Milka the ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair of bellows. All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a smoking dunghill, but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear, cheerful radiance, and making the straw roofs ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... archway toll, over at Highgate, but couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there you are! Now, my ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of these societies have done much good, particularly the religious societies; but many others, from being pushed too far, have done great mischief, and have very much assisted to demoralise the community. I remember once hearing a story of an ostler who confessed to a Catholic priest; he enumerated a long catalogue of enormities peculiar to his profession, and when he had finished, the priest inquired of him "whether he had ever greased horses' teeth to prevent their eating their corn?" ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... pots shone, too bright for business, on the shelves. I beheld a Punch's Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It was deserted, and there were none to heed its desolation. In Belgrave Square I met the last man - an ostler - sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... stagecoaches ran every day in the good old times. A mile off to our right, down Star Hill, lies the famous White Lion Inn, now a miserable pot-house, where George IV. used to stay, and where, on the day that the London and South-western Railway was opened, the old ostler cut his throat in sheer despair, for Othello's occupation was gone. Ten miles up the road lies Bagshot Heath, the terror of travellers in those coaching days. There stood, and stands still, a little wayside inn called the Golden Farmer, where many of the coaches stopped to water the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... year the old seaman had been severely tried. Misfortune had followed upon misfortune; until the hardy veteran looked like the spectre of his former self. His only daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen, was engaged to marry the ostler at the Crown Inn, a fine-looking young man, who had lately come from London. He saw Nancy Jarvis, became enamoured of the fisherman's daughter, told his tale of love, and was accepted. The old man ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience, augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities; then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, and made ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... who was also express agent, and the new volunteer who Clinch had suggested would be found among the stable-men. The nearest justice of the peace was ten miles away, and Hale had to abandon even his hope of being sworn in as a deputy constable. This introduction of a common and illiterate ostler into the party on equal terms with himself did not add to his satisfaction, and a remark from Rawlins seemed ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... her head!" cried he to the ostler, and with a snap, a crack, and a jingle, away we ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... distance, on his left hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent widow, her two daughters, the elder of whom seemed to be about the age of fifteen, and a country lad, who served both as waiter and ostler. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... She bade the ostler care for their horses, and she brought them her best wine, seeking under an assumed geniality to conceal the unrest born of her speculations as to what might happen did Captain Charlot return ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... attention that was his kind of tenderness, as she sat humped schoolgirlishly in her shapeless blue overall, averting her face from the light but attempting a proud pose, and keeping her grief between her teeth as an ostler chews a straw. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... outward appearance of the premises we did not expect the best accommodation, we thought anything better than being exposed longer to the fury of the storm, so giving our horse and waggon to the charge of the ostler, we entered Mr. Orton's tavern, and demanded to be shown into a private room, which request we found it was out of the power of mine host to comply with, seeing he had only one apartment, which answered the treble purpose of parlour, kitchen, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... Rupert said to the ostler; and seeing to the other, they were in the yard as soon as the marquis ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... ostler's darkening countenance decided Pitman. 'All right,' he said desperately, 'you drive. I'll ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the happiness to know a gentleman of the name of Tom, who officiates in the capacity of ostler. We have enjoyed a long acquaintance with him—we mean an acquaintance a long way off—i.e. from the window of our dormitory, which overlooks A—s—n's stables. We believe we are the first of our family, for some years, who has not kept a horse; and we derive a melancholy gratification in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... sources of all kinds, such as MSS. of Herd and Mrs. Brown; "an old person"; "an old woman at Kirkhill, West Lothian"; "an ostler at Carlisle"; Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany; Surtees of Mainsforth (these ballads are by Surtees himself: Scott never suspected him); Caw's Hawick Museum (1774); Ritson's copies, others from Leyden; the Glenriddell MSS. (collected by the friend of ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... driver, rubbing himself as if he ached, after throwing the reins to the ostler. 'And I never was ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of corn. Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was standing, bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which the shade had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a black ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... place that would just suit you," the ostler at the Greyhound at Streatham said to him, on the occasion of his third visit there; "but it is let; my old mother is the gentleman's housekeeper. He took the place through me, for he rode up just as you have done, ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... went. The people thought we should have been drowned, but we soon got clear of the jetty; some threw us one thing and some another; at length James Nicholson got into a boat, took us in, and landed us safe ashore. I went to a public house, where I got a glass of brandy, and borrowed the ostler's clothes, and I ailed nothing afterwards. The young woman remained at New Holland all night, and took her departure next morning, without leaving behind her even a single expression of verbal gratitude for what I had done for her. For some time it was reported ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... having large tanneries in Digbeth as far back as 1570; afterwards as cutlers and ironmongers down to a hundred years ago. They were also owners of the Old Swan, the famous coaching house, and which it is believed was the inn that Prince Rupert and his officers came to when Thomas, the ostler, was shot, through officiously offering ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... teamster's account of the happenings at Kirkcudbright had given them so wholesome a fear of his speech and presence as to cause them to misdoubt their own wit, which is saying a deal of Scotchmen. But when the bargain had been struck and John Paul gone with the 'ostler to see to his chests, mine host thought it a pity not to have a fall ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not last long! About noon the landlord, Greenfield, rapped at my door and told me that the Blue Cliffs carriage had come, and that the ostler was watering the horses while the coachman was taking a glass of beer ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... somewhat dazzled. Sam, the tall ostler, was polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the ostler; his duty being merely to drive from one stage to another. When off the box, his hands are thrust in the pockets of his greatcoat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an air of the most absolute ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... energies and hopes. In response to our united appeals a dishevelled head of red hair cautiously looked down from a half-opened window, and our story had to be told again. Well, this time we were let in and allowed to sit down, whilst the ostler's wife was being roused as well as the servant, for we were told that the tourists' season, being already over, the inn was no longer in trim for customers. This was bad news, for the good effects of the luncheon had passed off, and as soon as we could rest and forget ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Ronan's, who was too much in the power of his agent to give way to his first impulse. "But I must tell you, that rather than take such a measure against poor Clara, as you recommend, I would give her up the estate, and become an ostler or a postilion for the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... excellent footing together. The old lady was seen to come from the best—the parlour we mean to say—of the Mermaid, with very unusual symptoms of good humour on her countenance, considering (as Betsy the "maid of all work" whispered to "Jack Ostler,") that her visage had generally a "vinegar cruet" association; though we would not take upon ourselves to assert that brandy had not a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... The ostler of the inn at which we put up, understanding I was bound for London, advised me to take my passage in a collier which would be both cheap and expeditious and withal much easier than to walk upwards of three hundred miles through deep roads in the winter time, a journey which he believed ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... example, (that is to say, PUNCHINELLO does not mean for us all to go buy stock in Erie,) and mayhap, even the humblest of us may, in time, be able to whistle "Shoo Fly" in marble halls. (That is to say, even a poor ostler may get along very well if he attentively ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... bed, having ordered the ostler to get my horse ready by three o'clock; but no rest did I obtain. For the first time in my life, I now learned what it was to go to bed without being able to go to sleep; for two long hours, I tossed and turned about a thousand times, but deep ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... stable where Bunker was housed, chattered with the blue-chinned ostler, and then, for a moment, was alone with the dog. How much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... have doubted whether she had done right in helping to give the boy a bad name, but just then in came the ostler from the ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... even the naked truth itself is seen clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking his lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has cultivated ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... as a man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air and abandons the cattle to the care of the ostler, his duty being merely to drive from one stage to another. When off the box his hands are thrust into the pockets of his great coat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 'parlour' of a public house, the ceremony was performed. Mr. Hone's correspondent sends a copy of the old initiation song, which varies considerably from our version, supplied to us in 1851 by a very old man (an ostler) at Highgate. The reciter said that the COPY OF VERSES was not often used now, as there was no landlord who could sing, and gentlemen preferred the speech. He said, moreover, 'that the verses were not always alike—some said one way, and some ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... as if drawn by the power of gravitation, approached more and more nearly to the distant town. It threaded the streets, and finally stopped in the archway of an inn. There, leaned against the wall, under the eye of the respectful ostler, the bicycle reposed. The owner strolled upstairs, and in the company of choice spirits studied the laws of right angles, of motion, and retarding friction, upon the level surface of the billiard table. Somewhere ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... garden, but no one came to meet him; and he understood now from the uncut grass upon the lawn, the tangled disorder of the flowerbeds, that no one would come. He mounted his horse again, and rode back at a sharp trot. In Ramelton he stopped at the inn, gave his horse to the ostler, and ordered lunch for himself. He said to the landlady ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... who combined in his own person the offices of ostler, porter and clerk, appeared, his lantern shining with a dim yellow glare in the gray light ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... and musical entertainment at Burley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the "fire laddies," at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the Robins Nest Again," and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Jo," a selection which never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five cents for ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... left word for Concepcion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... costing nothing but 63 cents for the pony, and 12 cents for turnpikes. Not that we had the temerity to drive through London. We always left the pony two miles before we reached town, with strict orders to the civil ostler to whose care we confided him to great care of him, and be sure and give him a "good feed." We then proceeded on our way in a cab, which cost us no more than we should have paid for one ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... stable of the Red Dragon three men stooped in conclave over the hind foot of a horse. Deio, the ostler, and Roberts, the farrier, agreed in their verdict for a wonder; and Caradoc Wynne, the owner of the horse, straightened himself from his stooping posture with ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... High Street we dismounted in front of the Blue Boar inn, and handed our tired horses over to the ostler, to whom Saxon, in a loud voice, and with many rough military oaths, gave strict injunctions as to their treatment. He then clanked into the inn parlour, and throwing himself into one chair with his feet ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rode into the town, and as he put his horse up at the inn, he felt that the very ostler had heard the story. As he walked along the street, it seemed to him that everyone he met knew all about it. Robert Bolton would, of course, have heard it; but nevertheless he walked boldly into the attorney's office. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... happy days, every henchman could whistle to him his shabby poet, and every ostler hold court in the stable, with a visdase, or ass face, to keep the audience in a roar, and a nimble-footed trull to set them into ecstasies. But woe betide the honest wayfarer who strolled beyond the orderly precincts of the king's walls after dusk; ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... guard usually had their last drain before arriving at their destination, being a cold night, they kindly sent Mrs. Cox a drop of something warm. The servant-girl who brought out the glass, not being able to reach the lady, the ostler very imprudently left the horses' heads to do the polite. The animals hearing some one getting on the coach, doubtless concluded that it was the coachman; at the same time finding themselves free, and being, probably, anxious to get home, started off at their ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... post-office and telephone services will also bring intelligent ingredients to these suburban nuclei, these restorations of the old villages and country towns. And the sons of the cottager within the affected area will develop into the skilled vegetable or flower gardeners, the skilled ostler—with some veterinary science—and so forth, for whom also there will evidently be work and a living. And dotted at every convenient position along the new roads, availing themselves no doubt whenever possible of the picturesque inns that the old ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... our luggage, will you, ostler?' says one of them to the groom, 'and whatever you do don't forget ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles of the stable establishment about the mails. The whole corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed; so that a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most corrupt character in ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Dick Ostler accordingly made his appearance;—a queer, knowing, shambling animal, with a hatchet-face, a squint, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... no,' said he. 'It would be teaching the ostler to grease the horse's teeth. Perhaps he hasn't thought ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... found men with coaches who did as well, and I agreed with one of them to take me to Trevisa in an hour and a quarter. The horses were put in in three minutes, and with the idea that Father Balbi was behind me I turned round to say "Get up," but he was not there. I told an ostler to go and look for him, with the intention of reprimanding him sharply, even if he had gone for a necessary occasion, for we had no time to waste, not even thus. The man came back saying he could not find' him, to my great rage and indignation. I was tempted to abandon him, but a feeling of humanity ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... seeing funny things, which she described in a manner quite inimitable. She had grown up in New York, before her father's death, in the most select of Knickerbocker circles, but there was not a trace of aristocracy in her ways. She was sociable with the ostler and the office-boy, and agreeable to the neighboring farmers, talking with them with a spirit that quite delighted them. And yet there was nothing free and easy in her ways that encouraged undue familiarity. It was merely natural ease and good nature. She inspired respect in everybody ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... my old charioteer drove into the inn yard, and, having thrown the reins to an ostler, descended from the vehicle. I followed his example, and then inquired the name of the place inside the gates. My guide, philosopher, and friend looked at me rather queerly for a second or two, and then recollecting that I was a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... saw before pulling Sultan round to pass under the archway leading into the yard of the "Rising Sun." I dismounted and called for an ostler. No man appearing, I was about to lead Sultan farther down the yard towards the stables when there was a scurry of feet behind me as if the whole ostler-tribe of the "Rising Sun" was hastening to my assistance. I turned round rattily to find myself looking into the barrel ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... upper part of his face, except a dark quick eye of uncommon fire; and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in concealing the lower part of the countenance. On descending from the coach, the German with some difficulty made the ostler understand that he wanted a post-chaise in a quarter of an hour; and then, without entering the house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour. While the maid-servant was covering the table with bread, butter, tea, eggs, and a huge round of beef, the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her horse into the stable, which was a duty that devolved on the guests at this little change-house, from its mistress having no ostler, she entered the only apartment which the house afforded, and demanded some refreshment. "Sit down at the end of that table," said the old woman, "for the best I have to give you is there already; and be pleased, my bonny man, to make as little noise as ye can, for there's ane ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... taught, of course, and cockatoos learn to say a few words. So do jackdaws and starlings, but very few. Oh, yes! then there's the raven. Uncle said he knew of one at an old country inn that used to say 'Coming, sir,' whenever anyone called for the ostler. Then there are those Indian birds they call Mynahs. Uncle says that some of them talk beautifully. Hallo! There he goes again! It's just like 'Ahoy-oy-oy-oy!' Plain enough to deceive anyone if it came off the sea. I'll wait till I catch sight of the gull that makes that noise, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn |
