"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... changeable to something gayer. A few drive away in handsome equipages, but most prefer to walk, and there is usually a good deal of smiling talk in groups before parting, in which Mr. Euston likes to join. He leaves matters in the vestry to the care of old Barlow, the sexton, and makes, if one may be permitted the expression, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Queen Elizabeth, feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and seeing the same dried from moisture, and yet the form remaining with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London, to his house in Wood Street, where for a time he kept it for the sweetness, but in the end caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Ministry of Health Bill. The debate was remarkable for the brevity of some of the speeches. Sir ROWLAND BLADES set a good example to new Members by making a "maiden" effort in a minute and a half. But his record was easily beaten by Mr. SEXTON, who found ten seconds sufficient for expressing his opinion that the fact that the House was trying to legislate in the small hours was sufficient proof of the necessity of extending the laws of lunacy. "Si argumentum requiris circumspice," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... spot unmarked by any stone or memorial. These 'corpse-candles' crossed the river, stopped at a hamlet, and returned, attended by a larger light. All three sank into the earth on the spot whence the two lights had risen. The minister threw a few stones on the spot, and next day asked the sexton who lay there. The man remembered having buried there two children of a blacksmith who lived at the hamlet on the opposite side of the water. The blacksmith died next day! This did more for second sight, probably, than all the minister's sermons ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... to it, were the boys' school and girls' school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton's energy; then came a neat little grocer's shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer's wife the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house. And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, as it ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... he went he helped hold good the precedent that preachers' boys are not especially angelic. For instance, we have it on good authority that Bob, aged fourteen, once climbed into the belfry of a church and removed the clapper, so that the sexton thought the bell was bewitched. At another time he placed a washtub over the top of a chimney where a prayer-meeting was in progress, and the smoke broke up the meeting and gave the good people a foretaste ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn facing the church—such a lovely ride—such forest scenery—such an out-of-the-way rural place—such a sexton! I say again, Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place; and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens wrote over sixty years ago, one cannot fail to have a keen desire ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the Established Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton? Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit? No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else, with his mouth alone, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... grave. After she left, I went to the place; but it was a new-made grave. There was no stone up. I asked the sexton about her. He said he supposed she was the daughter of the woman buried there last Thursday week. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Early English. It is built in the form of a cross, with a smaller transept at the western end, while the choir terminates in an apse, and a central tower rises from four supporting arches. Within the cathedral, over the doorway, is a picture of old Scarlet, Peterborough's noted sexton, who buried Catharine of Arragon and Mary Queen of Scots. The nave has an ancient wooden roof, carefully preserved and painted with various devices. The transept arches are fine specimens of Norman work. Queen Catharine ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... stragglers recognised him, and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so cordially ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... she wondered at this somewhat unusual show of interest in a total stranger. She put it down at last to Ransford's undoubted sentimentality—the man's sad fate had impressed him. And that afternoon the sexton at St. Wigbert's pointed out the new grave to Miss Bewery and Mr. Sackville Bonham, one carrying a wreath and the other a large bunch of lilies. Sackville, chancing to encounter Mary at the florist's, whither he had repaired to execute a commission for his mother, had heard ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... o'Clock; at One the Speaker (Mr. PARNELL), interrupting SEXTON in passage of passionate eloquence, said he thought this would be convenient opportunity for going out to his chop. So he went off; Debate interrupted for an hour; resumed at One, and continued, with brief intervals for refreshment, up till close upon midnight. Proceedings conducted with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... by the sight of a back strangely familiar. The back belonged to a, gentleman who was energetically climbing the embankment in front of him, on the top of which Major Sexton, a regular, army officer, sat his horse. The gentleman was pulling a small boy after him by one hand, and held a newspaper tightly rolled in the other. Stephen smiled to himself when it came over him that this gentleman was none other than that Mr. William T. Sherman he had met ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was unable to attend the service, for just as he stepped from the carriage to the churchyard, the sexton was ringing the bell for the closing. The worshippers came filing out of the church. As they passed the King, where he stood with one foot on the carriage step, he was impressed with their stalwart bearing and sturdy, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... The polite sexton conducted the strangers up the center aisle and put them into a good pew. The church was not full, but was filling rapidly. Our party bowed their heads for the preliminary private prayer, and so did not see the great preacher as he entered and stood at ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... closed after service at York Cathedral. As soon as I had posted it, I walked sedately twice round the cathedral, and then I found the sexton at the door, who commiserating me of my former vain applications, and having the hope of lucre before his eyes, let me in. I saw the burnt part, which looks not melancholy but unfinished. Every bit of wood is carried away clean, with scarcely ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... social fountain. But I now wish to notice especially misery, degradation, and moral eclipse, resulting directly from giant evils, which are tolerated in all our large cities, though known to every thoughtful person, from judge to artisan, from clergyman to sexton, from editor to reporter, from wealthy matron to the humble sewing woman. Every earnest thinker knows that there are evils feeding the furnaces of physical, mental, and moral destruction; that there are flourishing nurseries, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... taken up two bottles for you." The flesh-coloured coat was then Moiselet. I followed him into his room, and we began to drink with all our might. Two other bottles arrived; we only went on in couples. Moiselet, in his capacity of chorister, cooper, sexton, &c. &c. was no less a sot than gossip; he got tipsy with great good-will, and incessantly spoke to me in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... church, stained to imitate marble. Then they all examined the Decalogue over the altar, written in the ancient letters, and done in England in 1714. Mrs. Tracy wished that the old high pulpit and sounding-board had never been replaced by the desk which she now saw there. The sexton showed them the old English Bible, which he said had been in use there about one hundred and twenty-five years. They noticed the little organ, which was very old, and also sent over from England. As they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... sexton walked up and down the aisles, closing such of the pew doors as were open. Then he shut off the gas, and after looking around to see that nothing was forgotten, went out, apparently satisfied, and locked ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... father, was twenty years of age, weak, characterless, though quite amiable. In his early youth his chief pleasure seemed to consist in ringing the bells of Moscow, which led his father, at one time, to say that he was fitter to be the son of a sexton than of a prince. Dmitri was an infant. He was placed, by his father's will, under the tutelage of an energetic, ambitious noble, by the name of Bogdan Bielski. This aspiring nobleman, conscious of the incapacity of Feodor to govern, laid his plans ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... buried the dead Mayor in St. Hathelswide's Churchyard, privately and quietly. He stayed by the grave until the sexton and his assistants had laid the green turf over it; that done, he went round to the Abbey House and sought out Mrs. Saumarez. After his characteristic fashion he spoke out what was ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... tendency of our age. There are, in fact, a good many people who profess a profound contempt for matter, though they do nevertheless patronize the butcher and the baker to the manifest detriment of the sexton. Matter and material interests, they would have us believe, are beneath the dignity of the soul; and the degree to which these "earthly things" now absorb the attention of mankind, they think, argues degeneracy from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... tomb-stones and monuments, appears to have prevailed for many generations; and may be very naturally accounted for, by the repugnance which most men would feel, to the idea of having their bones knocked about by the sexton's spade, and then wheeled off to the bone-house, if there happens to be a bone-house, or shot into the neighbouring river, or on a farmer's dung-heap, if there is no such convenience as a bone-house at hand. It was this feeling that induced the celebrated sculptor, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... patch over his eye has tricked poor Solomon into his place, and the squire and the parson are hearing the evidence. Parson Vance is splendid. How good, too, is old Mrs. Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham; Lord Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don't know either; he's such damned fine sport. Do you like Sally Barnes? I'm in love with her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the burying, sexton tolling! Sing for the second birth, angel Lark! Moan, ye poor Pines, with the Past condoling! Burst out, brave Organ, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... journals who now have a monopoly of the public, never give verbatim reports of vestry meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the world, but at the same time he must say, that there are speeches—that celebrated speech of his own, on the emoluments of the sexton, and the duties of the office, for instance—which might be communicated to the public, greatly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... notices Collins for the first time]. Hullo, Bill: youve got em all on too. Go and hunt up a drink for Joseph: theres a dear. [Collins goes out. She looks at Soames's cassock and biretta] What! Another uniform! Are you the sexton? ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... for we had already made up our minds to ascend the steeple of the church to get a view of the surrounding country and a better hearing of the guns if possible. After a few words exchanged with the sexton—a staunch Italian, as he told us he was—we went up the ladder of the church spire. Once on the wooden platform, we could hear more distinctly the boom of the guns, which sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel. Were they the guns of Persano's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... worship, or become aware of his dim face peering in through the stained glass, half curious, half envious, and at times some simple hymn would catch him unawares, and he would howl lugubriously in a gigantic attempt at unison. Whereupon little Sloppet, who was organ-blower and verger and beadle and sexton and bell-ringer on Sundays, besides being postman and chimney-sweep all the week, would go out very briskly and valiantly and send him mournfully away. Sloppet, I am glad to say, felt it—in his more thoughtful moments at any rate. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... One builder confessed to the writer that he had suffered severe financial loss through installing this action. After expending considerable time (and time is money) in getting it to work right, the whole thing would be upset when the sexton started up the heating apparatus. The writer is acquainted with organs in New York City ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... heart to believe than laymen and the simple. The cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... and imaginations in vain. There they stuck, as the seamen used to say, like the Merrydun, of Dover, which took seven years in veering, and when she did so the fly of her ensign swept two flocks of sheep off Beachy Head, while her jib-boom knocked down the steeple of Calais church and killed the sexton. Cruising on this Siberian ground was horribly monotonous work. We sincerely wished the French fleet alongside of us, or in a warmer place. On one dark night we were caught in a heavy gale from the westward. We were under close-reefed main and foretop-sails ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... wretches! had soiled and marred Whatever to womanly nature belongs; For the marriage tie they had no regard, Nay, sped their mates to the sexton's yard, (Like Madame Laffarge, who with poisonous pinches Kept cutting off her L by inches) - And as for drinking, they drank so hard That they drank ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... churches to expect or to receive fees for conducting funerals, yet it is in perfectly good taste to offer him a fee. In the Roman Catholic Church the rate of fees for funerals is fixed. There are, besides, fees for the sexton, the organist, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... (The sexton's little house stood by the gate leading into the churchyard. His wife came out when the carriage stopped, wiping soap-suds from her bare arms with her apron. Beth leaned forward and held out her hand to her, and the woman smiled a cordial welcome. She had a round flat face ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... In the lull of deep thanksgiving. For the wrath of heaven is lifted, Lifted from the rescued city. Gone, the sound of rolling death-cart, Hushed, the ringing, tolling belfry, Still, the bier and gloomy shovel, Still, the idle, listless sexton. Other days of anxious watching Followed, one or two years later; Days when fierce, destructive fevers Darkened many homes with mourning.[2] Yet the citizens are happy In this season of glad respite; Now the people ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... parish sexton came in for a gossip, so the father told him his troubles, and how that his younger son was such a simpleton that he knew nothing and could learn nothing. "Just fancy, when I asked him how he intended ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... religious; he thought there was wisdom in them if there was wisdom in nothing else; he loved the church and he loved the steeple, and the parson who did the duty and the parson who did not do the duty; and he loved the clerk and the sexton and the parish beadle with his broad gold-laced hat, and cane of striking authority; and he loved the watchmen and their drowsy drawl of "past umph a' clock;" he loved the charity schools and admired beyond all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... men went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that stood in the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... in it, and, so far as its being a play of peace, it was made up of a series of battles between certain valiant knights and princes, of whom St. George of England was chief and conqueror. The rehearsal being over, Robin went with the boys to the sexton's house, (he was father to the "King of Egypt,") where they showed him the dresses they were to wear. These were made of gay-colored materials, and covered with ribbons, except that of the "Black Prince of Paradine," which was black, as became his title. The boys also showed him the book ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... in 1812, was sexton of a church and porter in the State bank. Extreme poverty prevented Andrew from receiving any schooling, and at the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor. A gentleman was in the habit of visiting the shop and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... was an advantage in the absence of associate members. Rosy cheeks and pretty eyes now counted in the society for nothing, and when the sister of the county clerk promptly moved that no gentleman be invited to the floor, the sexton's wife seconded the motion. It was carried, and on the night appointed the "Irreparables" had their dinner, and up in the gallery sat the minister, the sheriff, the county clerk, the editor of the Snow-Drift, the head-teacher and a dozen other gentlemen, all in strict evening—if still ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... was forced to carry poor Jackson's body, with that of the fever-patient, just at sunset. As the Dutchman who officiated as hearse, sexton, bearer, and procession, stuck his spade into the ground, and withdrew it full of crumbling shells and fine sand, the hole it left filled with bitter black ooze. There, sunk in the ooze, covered with the shifting sand, bewailed by the wild cries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the glorious sky And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie Within the silent ground, 'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June, When brooks send up a cheerful tune, And groves a joyous sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... intimated his disapprobation to the clergy. For my own part, I think a good run would not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... back looking rather queer and crestfallen. "I find my friend has gone into the country for a few days; and I don't quite like to get the sexton to open the church without his authority, and— But New York is full of churches, and we can easily find another, with a ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... been into every shop I could find, chiefly to talk to people who are not soldiers. Even went into the church to look around and listened to the parrotlike description of the place by the sexton. ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... has the grave revealed its secrets to observant men? Dr. Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a sexton turn up a skull. He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull, and had the murderess hung. She was safe from the sexton and the rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer. Well, the day you were blown up, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... an old church was a beautiful chime of bells, which for many years had rung out joyous peals at the touch of the sexton's hand upon the rope. ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... put to a most horrid quaking the moment I passed the door, to perceive old Simon standing foremost in the throng about the altar, in his leather cap (which he would not remove for clerk or sexton, but threatened them, as I am told, with the law if they lay a finger on him). And seeing him there, I must needs conclude that he intended to do us an ill turn, for his face wore the most wicked, cruel, malicious look that ever thirst of vengeance ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... example, would marry one day, and their children would necessarily be called Placid too. But would they be placid? And was Mr. Piner's father a piner? It is even more perplexing when the name carries a calling as well, as in Farmer Wheatear, and Giles Joltem, the carter, and Mr. Coverup, the sexton, in the old story of Dame Partlet's Farm. Suppose Mr. Joltem's son had become a chauffeur, with rubber tyres? Or could he? If not, these names must have immensely have simplified the question 'What to do ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... from the alley; the surroundings were not such as they liked. Did you notice that bit of a house landing modestly back from the road, at the further corner of those ample grounds that surround the South End Church? It is the sexton's house, and that church, and those Sunday-school rooms, and those grounds, and everything pertaining to them, are under his care. The father is the sexton, it is true, and attends the furnace and rings the bell; but it is Sallie's care that keeps seat and desk and window ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... signal. I make no positive assertion that he spent any time in watching the British; Revere, knowing the route, may have signalled in order to make sure that the news crossed the river, even though he himself might fail. The person who displayed the signals seems to have been one Newman, the sexton of the church, rather than Captain Pulling, a friend of Revere's. At any rate, the signals were hung while Revere was crossing the river to Charlestown. He passed unobserved not far from the Somerset man-of-war, and remarks that "it was then young flood, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... seen a play every day this week Ill sign when we are once to come to study how to excuse King is offended with the Duke of Richmond's marrying Mrs. Stewart's sending the King his jewels again Much difficulty to get pews, I offering the sexton money My people do observe my minding my pleasure more than usual My wife this night troubled at my leaving her alone so much Never was known to keep two mistresses in his life (Charles II.) Officers are four years behind-hand ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... be the work of invisible hands, his nervous system received such a shock that he fell in a fit, and was found where he fell, by the sexton, ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... nothing whatever about eggs in it, and so far from being a play of peace, it was made up of a series of battles between certain valiant knights and princes, of whom St. George of England was the chief and conqueror. The rehearsal being over, Robin went with the boys to the sexton's house (he was father to the "King of Egypt"), where they showed him the dresses they were to wear. These were made of gay-coloured materials, and covered with ribbons, except that of the "Black Prince of Paradine," which was black, as became his ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is at the State House in Hartford. It is evening. The sexton is preparing the room for the meeting which is ...
— The Tree That Saved Connecticut • Henry Fisk Carlton
... Cottage to the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in 1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband whilst ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... past won't bury its dead. It sits over their corpses like a persistent resurrectionist, in a fashion which is irresistibly disheartening. Did it never strike you, by the way, what a droll caricature might be made on that line? Time as a decrepit old sexton, you know." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... the sexton of a country parish on the northern shore of Lake Maelaren who had devised this means of eking out his probably limited professional income. The ensuing correspondence had proved quite satisfactory. The mother was evidently pleased. It was almost as ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... stared more and more, and suspended my duty as a sexton. But presently some one cried out—"There she blows! whales! whales ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... darkness of the place, I had taken them for antiquated hymn-books, which were lying about in great numbers. But one day, while I was teaching in the church, I looked for a paper mark in the Catechism of one of the boys, which I could not immediately find; and my old sexton, who was past eighty (and who, although called Appelmann, was thoroughly unlike his namesake in our story, being a very worthy, although a most ignorant man), stooped down to the said niche, and took from it a folio volume which I had never before observed, out of which he, without the slightest ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... not see it in the same light, and it seems he made some ill-advised speech,—said he would rather turn sexton and bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that, which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,—but that was no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was sick of his capitalist airs, and he for ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the waggoner, and Stevens, the Sexton, all saw Everard going on the upland path to Swaynestone. But the blacksmith swore to seeing him in the village street at the same hour. A keeper saw him going to the copse at the same time that a shepherd met him on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... became drowsy, and soon dropped into a sweet sleep. His nap might have proved a very unfortunate event for him, but for the kindness of a wide-awake Quaker. For he did not wake up when the meeting closed, and the congregation might have dispersed, and the sexton locked him in, without disturbing his slumbers. But the kind-hearted Quaker moved his spirit by giving him a gentle rap on the shoulder. He started up, somewhat surprised that the service was over, and passed out with the crowd. Soon after, meeting a fine-looking young Quaker, who carried ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... which happen'd in his berth, At forty-odd befell: They went and told the sexton, and The ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... history of his resurrection in 1821. His sister died exactly ten years after him. A report had been spread that he had been lifted and taken to dissecting-rooms in Glasgow, which at that period was the fate of many a more seemly corpse than Davie's; and the young men—for Manor had no sexton—who dug the sister's grave in the vicinity of her brother's, stimulated by curiosity to see if his body had really been carried off, and if still there what his bones were like, lifted them up, and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a visit to their camp four miles below Ukiah, and finding there a unique kind of assembly-house, desired to enter and examine it, but was not allowed to do so until I had gained the confidence of the old sexton by a few friendly words and the tender of a silver half dollar. The pit of it was about 50 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet deep, and it was so heavily roofed with earth that the interior was damp and somber as a tomb. It looked like a low tumulus, and was provided with a tunnel-like ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Pigoreau had him christened at St. Jean en Greve. She did not invite any of the neighbours to the function, and gave parents' names of her own choosing at the church. For godfather she selected the parish sexton, named Paul Marmiou, who gave the child the name of Bernard. La Pigoreau remained in a confessional during the ceremony, and gave the man ten sou. The godmother was Jeanne Chevalier, a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ... engineer did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... this, and she did it; but when the moment for starting came, her courage almost failed her. The church was but a few yards from her own gate, and she walked there without any attendant. She had, however, sent word to the sexton to say that she would be there, and the old man was ready to show her into the family pew. She wore a thick veil, and was dressed, of course, in all the deep ceremonious woe of widowhood. As she walked up the centre of the church she thought of her dress, and told herself that all ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of hearts all the same that it was a forlorn hope. The old sexton had probably seen Monica walk through the village, and had come to lock the church as usual after her practice, quite unaware that anyone was exploring the belfry. By this time he would be at home again, with the keys in his pocket. The two girls shouted themselves hoarse, and ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... their fines and fees; and shortly after, Stephen Pewsey, by the town and parish where he lived, for fear his wife and children should become a charge upon them. The other seventeen remained prisoners till King James's proclamation of pardon; whose names were Thomas and William Sexton, Timothy Child, Robert Moor, Richard James, William and Robert Aldridge, John Ellis, George Salter, John Smith, William Tanner, William Batchelor, John Dolbin, Andrew Brothers, Richard Baldwin, John Jennings, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... deprived of this flimsy pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs. Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every morning, returning for us in the evening. ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... residence among us, one of the most honoured inhabitants of Gandercleugh. No one thought of disputing his title to the great leathern chair on the "cosiest side of the chimney," in the common room of the Wallace Arms, on a Saturday evening. No less would our sexton, John Duirward, have held it an unlicensed intrusion, to suffer any one to induct himself into the corner of the left-hand pew nearest to the pulpit, which the Sergeant regularly occupied on Sundays. There he sat, his blue invalid uniform brushed ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. JAMES SEXTON, M.P., who was howled down at a meeting at St. Helens recently, said he refused to bow the knee to a lot of body-snatchers who wanted him to sacrifice his manhood and conscience to satisfy their inclinations. A self-respecting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... south the headstones cluster, The sunny mounds lie thick; The dead are more in muster At Hughley than the quick. North, for a soon-told number, Chill graves the sexton delves, And steeple-shadowed slumber The slayers ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... own way. Ef you won't hearken an' you won't heed, go ahaid!" stated Uncle Bill, with a wave of his hand. "You ain't too young to die, even ef you is too ole to learn. Only I trust an' prays dat you won't be blamin' nobody but yo'se'f 'bout this time day after to-mor' evenin' w'en de sexton of Mount Zion Cullud Cemetery starts pattin' you in ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... smelling the dinner, thy long ears hearing the music, and thy short discretion not enabling thee to decide which of them thou didst prefer.—Hark! is that not the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers?—Sure it cannot be that time yet? The mad old sexton has toll'd ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Byways in the Rocky Mountains Clifton Johnson Trails of the Pathfinders G.B. Grinnell Stories of California E.M. Sexton Glimpses of California Helen Hunt Jackson California: Its History and Romance J.S. McGroarty Heroes of California G.W. James Recollections of an Old Pioneer P.H. Bennett The Mountains of California John Muir Romantic California E.C. Peixotto Silverado Squatters R.L. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Jimmy More the blacksmith till 'a hurt his arm—they'd have no less than eleven children if they'd not been lucky t'other way, and buried five when they were three or four months old. Now every one of them children was given to the sexton in a little box that any journeyman could nail together in a quarter of an hour, and he buried 'em at night for a shilling a head; whereas 'twould have cost a couple of pounds each if they'd been ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... girl was a member of the society I knew what would happen. A new carpet for the aisle and the pulpit chairs upholstered! Ha! And them girls and boys themselves cleaning windows and sweeping and dusting the whole church once a month. Ridiculous! Myron Jones has always suited us as sexton before. Oh! we'll have ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... the sexton, was lying dead in the old coach-house in the inn yard. The body had been discovered, only half an hour before this story begins, under strange circumstances, and in a place where it might have lain the better part of a week undisturbed; ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship; chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern voice of the sexton. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... little hostel, whither they were conveying the poor pedlar, the party passed the church, and the sexton, who was digging a grave in the yard, came forward to look at them; but on seeing John Law he seemed to understand what had happened, and resumed his employment. A wide-spreading yew-tree grew in this part of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Cawly adopted a working beam, that is, a beam working on a centre or trunnion. At one end of the beam was the pump, at the other was an iron cylinder with an iron piston in it; both ends of the beam were arched or sexton-shaped, and had a chain on each, one connected to the pump rod, the other to the piston rod. When about to start work, the piston being up near the top of the cylinder, steam was let in under it and a jet of water was let in which soon condensed ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... warmth and shelter within its holy walls. It is the only church in New York in which there is no distinction made between the rich and the poor. The writer has frequently seen beggars in tatters conducted, by the sexton and his assistants, to the best seats ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... night, it would ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why. All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton came near ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... very much annoyed. So much transcendental science, so much knowledge of the world had been driven into me already, that I longed to go home to the company of the village sexton, who, still believed that anecdotes and fables were the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... first Monday after Harold's pin-sticking exploit that the minister had "lively sessions" with his boy. The old sexton privately declared that he heard muffled curses and shrieks and the sound of blows rising from the cellar of the parsonage—but this story was hushed on his lips. The boy admittedly needed thrashing, but the deacons of the church would rather ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... cook his own dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither he has retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled; the sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is beginning a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence does not appear; and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family pew with a face as complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a morning before he began the mending of his watches, and by evening had so well digested them that he was primed for discussion with Pryse, of the opposite persuasion, at the Rose and Crown. Sol Mogg, the sexton of St. Anne's, had his beloved Gazette in his pocket as he tolled the church bell of a Thursday, and would hold forth on the rights and liberties of man with the carpenter who mended the steeple. Mrs. Willard could talk of Grenville and Townshend as knowingly as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "D[olbe]n shall blush in his grave among the dead, W[alpo]le among the living, and even Vol[pon]e shall feel some remorse." How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of blushing or remorse in either, though some very good opportunities have offered, if they had thought fit to accept them; so that with your permission, I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... And fellows, hired for silence, "spoke all." No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must titter. The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon, Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon. The final Sexton (smile he must for him) Could hardly get to "dust to dust" for him. He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood, Only with simp'ring at his lively mood: Provided that they fresh and neat came, All jests were fish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... replied Parson Christian, pulling a great key out of his pocket and locking the church door. He was sexton as well. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sufficient to justify the conclusion that he was not as steady on his pins as a sober man would have been. He had over-balanced himself, and—and that was the whole story. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict in accordance with the facts, and the Captain's body was put to bed with the sexton's spade. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... am content to lose some of my crowns, That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'm go pinioned along by my door. Being young, I studied physic, and began To practise first upon the Italian; There I enriched the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure [3] With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells. And after that, was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. Then after that was I an usurer, And ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... yoke. Attached to the soil! The soil clings to our souls! Young labour's scant guerdon, cold charity's doles, The crow-scarer's pittance, the poor-house's aid All smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... grave, where he mingled with the attendants. The parties remained for some little time looking at the coffin after it was lowered, and the clergyman slipped away, unobserved even by his dog. An hour after, as he sat at dinner with his friends, his sexton requested to speak with him. He was admitted into the room, when he said it was impossible to close the grave, and that he did not know what to do. "Why?" asked the gentleman, "Because Sir, your terrier stands there, and flies so fiercely at ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... orders that the peasantry were to be dealt with gently and justly, yet they found neither peasants nor villagers to deal with at all. The whole population on their line of march had betaken themselves to the woods, except the village sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to run. Lurking in the thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all stragglers from the army and murdered them without mercy—so difficult is it in times of civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has contributed various poems to the literature of the country, which have stamped him as being possessed of a more than ordinary share of the divine afflatus. Among them is "The Sexton's Spade," which has gained a world-wide celebrity. The writer has been connected with Mr. Burnett in the publication of two or three papers, which, somehow or other, never won their way into popular favor: either the public had very bad taste, or ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... a man's well advisd to offer good counsell, and be laught at for his labour: we shall shortly have no counsellors, but Physitians; I spend my breath to thee, and thou answerest me some half an houre after in a sem[i]breve, or like to a Sexton, with a ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... they assorted themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sexton and a grave digger, if he is one who has a zeal for his calling, becomes something of an historian, amassing many a curious tale and strange legend concerning the people with whom he has to do, living and dead. For a man with ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... ten paces. After church, he disappeared as quietly as he had entered, and fortunately escaped hearing the comments on his rash act. His appearance was generally considered as an impertinence, attributable only to some wanton fancy, or possibly a bet. One or two thought that the sexton was exceedingly remiss in not turning him out after discovering who he was; and a prominent pew-holder remarked, that if he couldn't take his wife and daughters to that church, without exposing them to such an influence, he would try to find some church ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... accosted without hesitation a short, stout person arrayed in a wrinkled frock coat and wearing the white tie and gold spectacles that invariably garb the members of such quasi-clerical professions as a Shadchen, a sexton or the collector of subscriptions for a charitable institution. Indeed, as Rashkind combined all three of these callings with the occupation of a real-estate broker, he also sported a high silk hat of uncertain vintage and a watch-chain bearing a Masonic emblem approximating ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... and you shall be accredited to them all who are of that great Brotherhood. Well, 'tis settled. Go, make ready as best you can; I must write. Stay; the sooner this Harflete is under ground the better. Bid that sturdy fellow, Bolle, find the sexton of the church and help dig his grave, for we will bury him at dawn. Now go, go, I tell you I must write. Come back in an hour, and I will give you money for your faring, also my ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... and Charles Copeman, who had, as already indicated, a passion for digging—caught, perchance, in boyhood from his father's sexton—dug a funk-hole from the enemy shell-fire. McInerney helped him. Now this was not an ordinary funk-hole. It was a very splendid and elaborate hole, and no one was allowed to come near, lest he cause its perfection to crumble ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... the Ingmarssons had been on earth such a long time that they must know what was pleasing to our Lord. Therefore the people fairly begged them to rule over the parish. They appointed both parson and sexton; they determined when the river should be dredged, and where gaols should be built. But me no one consults, nor have ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... fetidity, This wreck of me, And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound, They see Life's beauty in her draining wound! Lay thou the blind thing down With saurian tusk and bone, With dust of sworded maw And peril's fossil claw, Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover Of after-law untomb ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... Methodists, the Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, are not what is wanted; nor is it a cold and barn-like edifice which makes one feel, if one goes to call upon God, as though He were out, and could only be seen at stated times, and by the will of the sexton and the trustees. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... child that survived to thee, oh, aged pastor of Esthwaite. Clad in his morning gown, the reverend priest at a table Of sculptur'd stone was seated; and his seat was a massy but easy Settle of oak, which in youth his ancient servitor, Isaac, Footman, sexton, and steward, butler and gardener also, Carved by the winter fire in nights of gloomy November, And through many a long, long night of many a dark December. 21 The good man's heart was glad, and his eyes were suffus'd with a rapture Of perfect love as they settled on her—that pulse of his ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the church, Arthur asked the sexton if Mr. Delancey's pew was full, and, on being informed there was no one in it but himself and wife, he desired to be shown to it. It was situated quite at the head of the aisle, near the pulpit; and the sexton's ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... now, as we came forth by the back door, he raised for a moment a pale and tell-tale face that was as direct as a confession. The rascal had expected to see Fenn come forth alone; he was waiting to be called on for that part of sexton, which I had already allotted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jochem, Oswald's servant, is the incarnation of fidelity; the old Captain, who finds himself today in a French and tomorrow in a Prussian mood, is instructive at least, for such dualistic patriotism was not unknown at the time; the Collector follows his vocation with inspiring avidity, the Sexton is droll without knowing it, and each of the Hofschulze's servants has something about him that separates him from his confederates even though he be nameless. There are no ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... have been in if you had. No church, no clergyman, no doctor, no sexton. Why, you young dog, it ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog Speed. It was four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes; for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood there too, in his black slippers and white nightcap, gaping ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... sor, av coorse, who was standin' tremblin' fornint him, while the sexton was diggin' the grave to putt him in alive—in the dark shadow of a ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... the churchyard was clear of the funeral train, the mad laird peeped from behind a tall stone, gazed cautiously around him, and then with slow steps came and stood over the new made grave, where the sexton was now laying the turf, "to mak a' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of religion wherever ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the Abbey he gave me some anecdotes of Johnny Bower to whom his father had alluded; he was sexton of the parish and custodian of the ruin, employed to keep it in order and show it to strangers;—a worthy little man, not without ambition in his humble sphere. The death of his predecessor had been mentioned in the newspapers, so that his name had appeared in print throughout the land. When Johnny ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... culpable neglect of those who should have felt an interest in its preservation. About two feet of the top of the shaft is wanting, as may be seen by reference to the engraved sketch, (See the Cut,) which was taken in the year 1815." The sexton of the church, who was then an old man, told Mr. Rhodes in 1818, that he well recollected the missing part being thrown carelessly about the churchyard, as if of no value, until it was broken up by some of the inhabitants, and knocked to pieces for domestic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... say," answered the fellow; "but I'll inquire from the sexton, William Morgan. Here, Peter," he added to a curly-headed lad, who was playing on one of the grassy tombs, "ask your father ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... place," to improve the note-books of visitors, set about manufacturing an extraordinary instance of longevity. A gravestone was chosen in an out-of-the-way place, in which there happened to be a space before the age (72). A figure 1 was cut in this space, and the age at death then stood 172. The sexton was either deceived, or assented to the deception; as the late vicar, the Rev. J. Clayton, learned that it had become a practice with him (the sexton) to show strangers this gravestone, so falsified, as a proof of the extraordinary age to which people lived in the parish. The vicar ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamentary War; and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if be were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them "CASKETS"!—a vile modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Marlow looked upon Frohman as their very own. He always said that he wanted to be buried in the churchyard by the river. This churchyard had a curious interest for him. He used to wander around in it and struck up quite an acquaintance with the wife of the sexton. She was always depressed because times were so bad and no one was dying. Then an artist died and was buried there, and the old woman cheered up considerably. Frohman used to tell her that the only funeral that he expected to attend was ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... gone. The sexton was turning out the lights, and a moment later Dick found himself once more on the street, looking with a grim smile on his hunger-pinched features, at the figure of the Christ, wrought in the costly stained ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... old Pierre, the sexton. He took the fever only a week ago, and was delirious nearly all ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... of ten. The sexton rung a merry peal from the sweet-toned bell, which was the pride of the inhabitants of Mason's Corner. Within the church the ushers, having attended to the seating of the audience, stood just within the door awaiting the arrival of the bride ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... shivered, and one could see his steaming breath at each de profundis that he uttered. At the final sign of the cross he bolted off, without the least desire to go through the service again. The sexton took his shovel, but on account of the frost, he was only able to detach large lumps of earth, which beat a fine tune down below, a regular bombardment of the coffin, an enfilade of artillery sufficient to make one think the wood was splitting. One may be a cynic; nevertheless ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... asked on what ground or provocation, that is, from what cause, Hamlet lost his wits; the sexton chooses to ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... tomb, With its quaint tracery, gilded here and there With sunlight glancing through the o'er-arching lime, Far flinging its cool shadow, flickering light— Our greyhair'd sexton, with his hard grey face, (A living tombstone!) resting on his mattock By the low portal; and just over right, His back against the lime-tree, his thin hands Lock'd in each other—hanging down before him As with their own dead weight—a tall slim youth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... setting on big hilltops far avay; Dis bar sun ban tired of standing, so it lak to set, yu say; And yust ven dis sun ban setting, it shine hard on Yosephine; She ban talking to the sexton, and ban feeling purty mean. "Now," she tal him, "yust be careful,... ay skol fix it op all right; Yust one teng ay lak to tal yu, Curfew ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... either side The want of argument supplied: They rail, reviled; as often ends The contests of disputing friends. Fables: Sexton and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... have been better if he had. For when they got back to the Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him for fear he should ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... descendants of the original "churchyard membership," and to them alone, the inalienable right to lie in God's Acre, provided, as in the ancient charter, they had "died in honorable estate." I added: "Bartholomew Storrs, as sexton, has constituted himself watchdog of our graves and censor of our dead. He carried one case to the Supreme Court in an attempt to keep an unhappy woman from sleeping in ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
