"Verger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, I told the verger I was very anxious to see the likeness of the saint who had walked for six miles with his head in his hand, because I was the nearest living counterpart, having walked a quarter of a mile with my face ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... with your cash, the Verger cries, How mean'st thou this? John Bull replies, What law protects th' extortion? Stop, gentle friend—what's law to us? The law's your own—so make no fuss, The profits ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... them in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass—"Well, sir, who are you? What, what, sir?—hey, sir?" ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... used to play this instrument at the village church, and his playing drew such crowds that the preacher had just cause for jealousy, and improved the opportunity, yet stifling his rage he ordered the verger to lock the doors and allow no one to depart until after the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest. At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father's breakfast. With a great cry ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Oldrid Scott for the loan of drawings of St. Michael's; to Mr. A. Brown, Librarian of the Coventry Public Library for advice and help in making use of the store of topographical material under his care; to Mr. Owen, Verger of St. Michael's and Mr. Chapman, Verger of Holy Trinity, for help in various directions, and to Mr. Wilfred Sims for his energy and care in taking most of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... and very still—except for a faint noise that came from a far corner of the upper left-hand gallery. The old verger, moving about in felt slippers below, paused now and then, and looked up as the sound grew louder or died away. It was like a mouse nibbling—and yet it ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in large churches there were representatives of all these various officials. They ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... spent from that heartbreaking climb up the merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre—he staggered rather than walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacre-Cour, he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... fly (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Confessor's shrine, which is chiefly of wood, likewise abounds in these inscriptions, although this was esteemed the holiest shrine in England, so that pilgrims still come to kneel and kiss it. Our guide, a rubicund verger of cheerful demeanor, said that this was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the church-door as if he were dazed. The verger came forward. "My hat, good Stephano, I left it just back of the fair lady." He handed the man a piece of silver and the verger disappeared. Petrarch was sure he could not find the lady—she was only a vision, a vision seen by him alone. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... with a glowing breast, And some applause is instantly suppressed. Now up the nave of that majestic church A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch. Who is it? no one knows; but by his mien He's the head verger, if he's ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... any capacity, was like going home. Moreover, besides the empty honour of the thing, there were many small pieces of patronage in the gift of the Chapter—such as a small house opening on to the Close, which had formerly belonged to the verger, but which was now vacant, and was offered to Miss Monro ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that is interesting in and about the cathedral nothing is more so than the Saxon Chapel under the crypt. It is the earliest known place of worship in the kingdom, its architecture being about the seventh century. We light our candles and follow the verger down the stone steps. The descent is a trifle treacherous. There are little niches in the wall where candles are placed. Then we enter the chapel. It is perfectly dark, and smells very earthy. A hole in one side of the wall is pointed out. Tradition ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... penance or of absolution. We followed a crowd of Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made for a special service. There being no pews or sittings in the chapel, but a few plain chairs for hire, we paid the verger two cents for the use of a chair and waited. Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... haunted by ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful; then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and organ. For ever ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... that fell like searchlights from the windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed him, wiping the little chairs ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... forming one great sob, drowned for an instant the priest's voice. Murdered! The word seemed to sting me personally even more than the others. Had I not been, for one instant, the favourite of the kind old man? It was as though the murderer, Verger, had struck at me too, in my grateful love for the prelate, in my little fame, of which he had now robbed me. I burst into sobs, and the organ, accompanying the prayer for the dead, increased my grief, which became so intense that I fainted. It was from this moment that I ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... peculiar fervor in the Catholic University of Louvaine. Among the doctors who there distinguished themselves in reviving the great contest of the fifth and sixth centuries, were Cornelius Jansen of Holland, and Jean de Verger of Gascony. Both these doctors hated the Jesuits, and lamented the dangerous doctrines which they defended, and advocated the views of Augustine and the Calvinists. Jansen became professor of divinity in the university, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... magnificent. Several men-of-war of the Channel squadron lay off the port. Excursion steamers came in from England, bringing members of Parliament and miscellaneous British subjects, of the sort once indignantly denounced to me by the little old verger of a Midland cathedral as 'them terrible trippers.' The active and good-natured railway porters at the station were worn out with throngs of travellers pouring in from all the country round about. There was much ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added, hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and we shall be turned out in a ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... on being married in a parish where neither of them was known; he had got a special licence, and there was nobody in the church but the verger and Sangster, and a deaf uncle of Christine's, who thought the whole affair a great bother, and who had looked up a train to catch back home the very moment that Christine should have safely passed out of ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... door through which they had come was closed. Jack shook it, and hammered it with his fists, but he could not open it; it was locked, and they were prisoners in the tower. The verger who had the charge of the door had remembered that he had left it unfastened, and had turned the key in the lock soon after the children had entered the tower. No one had been near when they ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... stranger in a country church draws as many gazers as a blazing star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him? Then I, Sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding officer, single out a beauty, rivet both my eyes ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice of multitudes of sad souls. Very soon the music ceased with a kind of sob and the verger, with his skirts flapping round his feet, came to warn those isolated human creatures that they ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... voice to a drawl. "In Fighting-green, I believe, sir: they told me Poets' Corner was already bespoke for a turn-up between the Dean and Sall the charwoman, with the Head Verger ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is rushing at Gert again, when the Bishop's Secretary enters, preceded by a verger, who calls upon ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... dean bade him do as he was ordered; and when he returned in his new dress, the dean called all the other servants into the room, and told them that they were no longer to consider him as their fellow-servant Robert, but as Mr. Blakely, verger of St. Patrick's Cathedral; an office which he had bestowed on him for his faithful services, and as a proof of that sure reward, which honesty ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... come here every day," said Mellicent softly, "every single day. I should like to be a verger, and spend my life in an abbey. I think I could be awfully good if I lived here always. It makes one feel so small and insignificant, that one wouldn't dare to be selfish, and think one's own happiness so important. I can't believe that it ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... The verger who took them in charge was an ancient man called Paulinus of Mansfield, having been born in that place. And he soon saw that what he had to show of the unfinished cathedral was lost on the heavy-lidded boy who was half asleep, ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... the King G L Madame du Portal, abbess of Joui G L The Marquis de St. Didier G R Two of the legionary chiefs of the national guard G L Pichard, president of Bourdeaux G L Vicq. D'Asyr, a celebrated physician at Paris G R D'Aoust, De Lattre and Du Verger, three generals of the republican army G L The Abbe de Salignac de Fenelon, aged 85 years G L De Fenelon, son of the ambassador at the Hague G L De Bacquencourt, counsellor of state G L The duke de Gesvres, cordon bleu G L The Prince d'Henin, ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... gather as I pass one of the tombs on my way to the Chapel of Abbot Islip. Anon the verger will have stepped briskly forward, drawing a deep breath, with his flock well to heel, and will be telling the secrets of the next ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... "that Folliot got Fladgate his appointment as verger not so very long after he himself came here? He did, anyway, and Fladgate is Flood. We've traced everything through Flood. Wraye has been a difficult man to trace, because of his residence abroad for a long time and his change ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... dedicated to St. Peter, and the Parish Church to St. John. The Head Verger of the Cathedral until recently had charge of both clocks, and St. John's Clock was always kept slightly faster than the Cathedral Clock. Canon Jones, when Vicar of St. John's, one day met the late Verger, (Mr. H. Plowman, Senr.) and asked him why St John's Clock was always ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... that the cathedral of those islands, located in the said city of Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet there—especially the Chinese, who have observed this condition—it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... year 1141, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; however, it obtained the name of St. Stephen's Chapel. It was rebuilt by King Edward III., anno 1347, who placed in it a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along the Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at the dissolution of monasteries in the reign of Edward VI. amounted to near eleven thousand pounds per annum. Almost ever since ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... "A verger, I suppose," thought Wingfold.—"Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I know," ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... meet outside, what revelation was going to be made to her? Unconsciously, she laid a hand on Selwood's arm as they passed through the porch, and Selwood, with a quick throb of pride, took it and held it. Then, arm in arm, they walked out, and a verger who opened the outer door for them, smiled as they passed him; he foresaw another passing-out, whereat Peggie would wear ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... the almost equally fine Sir Joshuas. But even the glance they had was but a passing one, as the servant trotted them through the rooms with the rapidity of locomotion and explanation of a Westminster Abbey verger; and he made a fierce attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, and other ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... should have liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible, and had made springs come out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as the newly wedded pair had received the exhortation, Aristide, darting to the altar-rail, caught Jean up in his arms, and, to the consternation of the officiating clergy, the verger, and Anne's conventional friends, cried ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... me to hear how he indulged in Drolleries and Raileries in the very edifice itself. He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, the Rich Framing of the Relics, and all he came across, seeming no more impressed by their solemnity than the Verger Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. "Surely," I thought, "there must be something wrong in a Faith whose Professors make so light of its ceremonies, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... sunshine into the beam-shot gloom of Valhalla. It was Alice's first view of Valhalla, though of course she had heard of it. In old times she had visited Madame Tussaud's and the Tower, but she had not had leisure to get round as far as Valhalla. It impressed her deeply. A verger pointed them to the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had not the courage to ask for It. Priam could not speak. There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come out of his mouth and flit irrecoverably away. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... assassins, flinging their treason in their teeth, and by his shouts and gestures turned their attention upon himself, thus enabling Piso to escape despite his wounds. Piso, reaching the temple of Vesta, was mercifully sheltered by the verger, who hid him in his lodging. There, no reverence for this sanctuary but merely his concealment postponed his immediate death. Eventually, Otho, who was burning to have him killed,[72] dispatched as special agents, Sulpicius Florus of the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... of the fees for clerk, verger, bell-ringers, and every person, connected with the church, who could possibly have a tip ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... thus settled, the clock no sooner struck twelve, than they all set out together; they who laid the wager being resolved not to be imposed on by his tampering with the verger. As they passed along, a scruple arose, which was, that though they saw him enter the church, how they should be convinced he went as far as the vault; but he instantly removed their doubts, by pulling out a pen-knife he had in his pocket, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... that class: once upset them in their parrot-like description, and they flounder about in most comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it was considered a good likeness. He was staggered for a moment, and then replied hurriedly that it was. But, thank goodness, here comes the lunch. I feel as hungry as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... they afterwards learned that the Easter Offering for that year was one hundred and twenty-seven pounds, which was made up of the amounts collected from the parishioners by the children, the district visitors and the verger, the collection at a special Service, and donations from the feeble-minded old ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... verger troveroums les flurs Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel) Les herbes ausi pur medicine La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie) Liz vaut per royne, Rose ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... by themselves). Being fags, the eldest of them was not more than about sixteen years old, and all were bound to be up and in bed by ten; the sixth-form boys came to bed from ten to a quarter-past (at which time the old verger came round to put the candles out), except when ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... was waiting in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which they had ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... and stopped, and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... parson from Barchester did not venture to attempt to make his way, although he was fortified by the presence of one of the cathedral vergers and by one of the palace footmen. I can hardly believe about the verger and the footman. As for the rest, I have no doubt it is all true. I pity Crawley from my heart. Poor, unfortunate man! The general opinion seems to be that he is not in truth responsible for what he does. As ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... anticipated, the result being, that as they waited with many others in the aisle, Denys found herself put into a row where there was but one seat, and she could only look helplessly on while Charlie was marched by the verger, who knew him but did not know Denys, right up to ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... reason or another he was refused admission, a slight which accounts in some measure for the continued antipathy he displayed during his life towards the Jesuits. At Louvain, too, he was associated very closely with a brilliant young French student, John du Verger de Hauranne (1581-1643), better known as the Abbot of St. Cyran, whom he accompanied to Paris and afterwards to Bayonne, where both lived for almost twelve years. During these years of intimate friendship they had many opportunities of discussing ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... of a scholar, something of a philosopher, but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Cities en fete are masked and prankt, and the spring in Italy is like one long Forestieri day. At the church of Eremitani in Padua I was taken to see some Mantegnas at a side-altar while a very devout congregation was celebrating Eastertide, and the verger unlocked a gate and pocketed his tip with undiminished piety. How apt an image of life, these Italian churches—some of us praying and some of us sightseeing! It must be confusing to the celestial bookkeepers to distinguish the Bibles from the Baedekers. And while the real Venice is as unreal ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have been at ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the embrace: it seemed to have no effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside his daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... hungry and thirsty for quite three hours, and then the church became empty, and only an old verger kept a seat by the door, half asleep, though the artillery of both armies was at work, and the air was laden with the smell of powder. (Until this time our batteries had avoided firing on the churches.) At last I heard footsteps near me in the dark stairway, and I felt for my pistols, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a sort o' picture there, and I said, "Ullo—they've been advertising Pears' Soap here, or something." But when I looked again, it was only an old fresco. I was so little interested I walked out without tipping the Verger! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... Parliamentary career had Mr. Browborough's name been treated with so much respect in the grandly ecclesiastical city as now. He dined with the Dean on the day before the trial, and on the Sunday was shown by the head verger into the stall next to the Chancellor of the Diocese, with a reverence which seemed to imply that he was almost as graceful as a martyr. When he took his seat in the Court next to his attorney, everybody shook hands with him. When Sir Gregory ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of people seemed only to enhance the cool brown emptiness of the church, the rows and rows of empty pews, disengaged prayerbooks and abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... wonderful piece of wrought-iron work. Whether next day, after viewing the cathedral, the tricycles pursued their journey, is not told. The pilgrimage ends, as it should, at the shrine,—that is, where the shrine had been; for the verger, after saying solemnly that they had come to the shrine of St. Thomas, solemnly added, "'Enery the Heighth, when he was in Canterbury, took the bones, which they was laid beneath, out on the green, and had them burned. With them he took the 'oly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... there is evidence in Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. i. p. 79., that remains of the painted figure of Chaucer were to be seen in Nolleken's times. Smith reports a conversation between the artist and Catlin, so many years the principal verger of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... Mother, You can prig something out of the Money-box." But the vigilant Verger has his eye on them. Such is the story told by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... VERGER. From the Latin Virga, a Rod. One who carries the mace before the Dean or Canons in a Cathedral, or conducts the congregation ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... has so many sacred recollections to me," says Mr. Tusher (and Harry remembered how Tom's father used to flog him there)—"a house near to that of my respected patron, my most honoured patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But, madam, the verger waits to close the gates on ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... supported on the arms, rested against the pillar which fluted the pier. The organ was pealing softly and plaintively, and the little gray coat seemed to heave as with a sob. She stood, impelled to offer to take him with her into the choir, but a verger, spying him, began rating him in a tone fit for expelling a dog, "Come, master, none of your pranks here! Be not you ashamed of yourself to be lying in wait for godly folk on their way to prayers? If I catch you ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgot their epaulets or their quarters of nobility. This mixture of religion and worldly pride seems incongruous at first; but have we not at church at home similar relics of feudal ceremony?—the verger with the silver mace who precedes the vicar to the desk; the two chaplains of my Lord Archbishop, who bow over his Grace as he enters the communion-table gate; even poor John, who follows my Lady with a coroneted prayer-book, and makes ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... story centres in Brandon but more sharply in the Cathedral, which is depicted as a living organism with all its great history behind it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the Canons—down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, England; behind England, the world, all moving toward ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... I affirmed. "You speak too well." I was piqued. She did not answer. She smiled again and I grew angry. In the cathedral she had smiled at the verger's commendation of particularly abominable restorations, and that smile had drawn me toward her, had emboldened me to offer deferential and condemnatory remarks as to the plaster-of-Paris mouldings. You know how one addresses ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... The verger is surprised. "Where have you been, sir, not to have heard of the celebrated Dean Maitland?" The great dean! The books he has written, the things he has done! All the world knows Dean Maitland, the greatest preacher in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... suddenly entered his mind: supposing the failure of the church-clock's striking powers should be only temporary; supposing it should recover under some verger's treatment, and strike twelve! ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... was going on, the verger, if we may so call a uniformed gentleman in attendance, made himself busy in going from nurse to nurse collecting the baptismal garments. Each woman had brought a coverlet—a sort of white bedspread, and a small ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Phoebe! There's the cathedral bell, I say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger," cried Mr. Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and he could only ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... therefore, which was Sunday, service was performed for the last time. On the 23rd the steeple fell in and took the roof with it; the workmen had left the church a few minutes before. Even then there was at least one untroubled soul in Guildford. The verger was told that the steeple had fallen. "That cannot be," he replied, "I have the key in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs. Proudie's school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment afterwards, we were beneath the dome of St. Paul's. If this part of the edifice has appeared imposing when viewed from without, how much grander did it ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... MacMahon's dismissal of his ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, and to turn the balance of the mind, as ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... saddled even his heroes—those heroes are, perhaps, his worst work, young men at once conventional and improbable—with whimsically ugly names; while his invented names are whimsically perfect: that of Vholes for the predatory silent man in black, and that of Tope for the cathedral verger. A suggestion of dark and vague flight in Vholes; something of old floors, something respectably furtive and musty, in Tope. In Dickens, the love of lurking, unusual things, human and inanimate—he wrote ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Sables, with the forts of St. Nicholas, and Des Moulines, Isle Dieu, Belle Isle, Fort du Pilier, Mindin, Ville Martin; Quiberon, with Fort Penthievre; L'Orient, with its harbor defences; Fort Cigogne; Brest, with its harbor defences; St. Malo, with Forts Cezembre, La Canchee, L'Anse du Verger, and Des Rimains; Cherbourg, with its defensive forts and batteries; Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Cherbourg, Brest, and Rochefort, are great naval depots; and Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux, the principal ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Biog. Univers.; Lezay de Marnesia, whose poems de la Nature Champetre, and le Bonheur dans les Campagnes, have passed through many editions, and of whom pleasing mention is made in the above Biog. Univers.; M. de Fontaine, author of Le Verger; Masson de Blamont, the translator of Mason's Garden, and Whately's Observations; Francois Rosier; ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... arcading of wall, (3) double archway of door. Before returning to the nave the visitor should make an examination of the Monuments in the transepts and choir aisles. Their identity will best be discovered from a glance at the plan provided by the verger. Here mention will only be made of the most notable. In S. transept, against S. wall (1) William de Marchia (1319), builder of the chapter house; (2) Viscountess Lisle, with coloured canopy (14th cent.). In Chapel of St Calixtus (1) shrine of Bishop ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... been no superintendence at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and set ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... bottler, two bakers, innumerable boys, barmen, a compositor, several dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at L120 a year, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... very decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... seats, a little beyond the font, where they could see the red-furred tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... grip of the new Gothic on the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Berry. "I can smell some of them now. Can you not hear the cheerful din of the iron tires upon the cobbled streets? Can you not see the grateful smile spreading over the beer-sodden features of the cathedral verger, as he pockets the money we pay for the privilege of following an objectionable rabble round an edifice, which we shall remember more for the biting chill of its atmosphere than anything else? And then the musty ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... so after finding an inn, where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... was walking a little way in front, looking like a small edition of his father in a short jacket, for he imitated Sir James's stride, put on his tall hat at the same angle, and carried his black cane with its two silken tassels in front of him, as a verger ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Cathedral of Barchester is Trollope's main creation, and is destined to endure for some time. It is all in its way inimitably true and subtly graduated from bishop to dean, from dean to canon, and so on through the whole chapter down to the verger and the porter. The relations of these dignitaries to each other, the relation of their woman-kind to each other, the relation of the clerical world to the town world and to the county world, their conventional etiquette, their jealousies, their feuds, their scandals, and their ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... and the hush which pervades the building; and there is much entertainment in various ways if one goes early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in. The costumes and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line, the ability of the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular attendants, of course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is in classing the visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can cull the commoners ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... and asked what was to be seen. Nothing here but churches and monks. One of the little girls, three years old, looked with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out, "Quel jolie poupee!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall ye be taught wisdom." ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... its preparation, notably a pamphlet by the Rev. Canon W. Greenwell, and the "County of Durham," by J.R. Boyle, F.S.A. Thanks are also due to the authorities of the Cathedral for having freely given permission to make drawings and measurements, and to the late Mr Weatherall, chief verger, for his kindly ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... forgot that he was to be married in October, and in these circumstances Mrs. Gibson, Miss Banks, and Mrs. Church put their banns up. This acted as a specific, and Captain Barber, putting the best face he could on the matter, went and interviewed the verger on his own behalf. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... not ridiculously beyond the ken of a verger, when Doris went to church on Sunday morning, she found ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... rather nice. She was a milliner, and she wouldn't be seen in the streets with Ingram. It was rather sad, really, because the verger spied on them, and got to know their names and then made a regular row. It was a common ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the Indias); and two whole and two half racioneros, by virtue of a royal decree given in Valladolid, June 2, 1604, countersigned by Juan de Ybarra, the king's secretary. With the above, and two curas, sacristans, master-of-ceremonies, verger, etc., this church is very distinguished and well served, and the choir is quite crowded at all canonical hours. At its first erection, the advocacy of the most pure Conception was bestowed upon this church, and it has been preserved up ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... found with the help of Mrs. Haworth. But when this woman had been asked—her name was Bent, and she was a verger's wife—to provide a little supper for two gentlemen, she had demurred, and said it was impossible. Then, at last, she had volunteered to cook two chops and boil some potatoes. But she had explained that nothing ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the day on which I was missing. On that day I walked out with him, and we were in a few minutes joined by a friend of his, whom he introduced as Major Argat. After proceeding about one hundred yards farther we arrived at a chapel, the doors of which were open, and the verger ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... came to London as a Canon of Westminster, immediately attracting enormous congregations to hear him preach, his sermons being distinguished by a most singular simplicity, a profound piety, and above all by a deep honesty of conviction which few who heard him could withstand. Weller, the Dean's verger at the Abbey, has many stories to tell of the long queues at Westminster which in those days were one of the sights of London. The Abbey has never since recovered its place as a centre of ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... ornaments. [38] First: It was declared and resolved that his Majesty should be informed that the cathedral of these islands has no buildings, ornaments, or suitable equipment for divine worship; nor has it any income or contributions for these purposes, or for sacristan, verger, or other necessary assistants. And being built of wood and straw, as it is, and so poor, weatherbeaten, and deprived of necessities, it is a reproach and a cause of loss to our faith and Christian religion, and to our state and the men ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... for me, I dislodged some loose mortar, and I heard this rattle noisily into the chamber below. Then I fled as rapidly as I could down the dim alley-way to the silent sunlit Grand' Place. Here I found the verger, and he admitted me to the great old church, in return for a one-franc piece, and brought me a rush-bottom chair to a choice spot before the wondrous Jube, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... station, and the nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—mais c'est ires curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service ... vous savez ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wardens—who sits in a free pew near the front door, and does his best to prevent visitors from either losing themselves, swooning, or becoming miserable. In this quarter there is also stationed another official, a beadle, or verger, or something of the sort, who is quite inclined to be obliging; but he seems to have an unsettled, wandering disposition, is always moving about the place as if he had got mercury in him, can't keep still for the life of him more than two minutes ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... awed feeling, followed her godmother into the shop, and was soon much interested in her purchases; also in the half-confidential and wholly respectful remarks made from time to time across the counter by Mrs Bolton, who had bustled forward to serve them. Her husband was a verger at the Cathedral, and this justified her in expressing an interest from a discreet distance in all that ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... both. Music, however, seems to be freer from all shackles than any other art; and I remember that in one of my essays for Margaret Fuller, I made it out to my own satisfaction to be the apex of expression. The old Glasgow verger of whom I wrote you had not got so far as to see that it needed the "Kist of Whistles," as he called the organ, to make his beloved Cathedral soar and glow with life and praise to its utmost capacity. But I cannot say that it does not sing, even without a sound, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... has been scraped to show the character of the wall, built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite is the back of John of Wheathampstead's ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... "Not a new verger, Templeton. Augustine said, fourteen hundred years ago, that Socrates was the philosopher of the Catholic Faith. If he has not seemed so of late years, it is, I suspect, because we do not understand quite the same thing as Augustine did, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... year, but I never heard a Amen carry so far as Muster GELGE pitches his.' It's something to be appreciated, TOBY. Can't say that House of Commons has taken to me kindly; but toward what may be the close of a Parliamentary career, the tribute of this honest Verger is, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... down the aisles as fast as she dared, considering it was a church, to get her cramped legs warm again, and just as she was thinking what she was to do to get out, the door opened, to her delight, and in came the man who had care of the church—what we call a verger—followed by the old body who ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... church seemed empty but for sound and color, there lingered among its shadows a few persons who loved it well. There were priests and a few worshipers. There was also Father Varennes, the Verger, and far away in one of the small chapels opening from the apse in the eastern end good Mother Meraut was down upon her knees, not praying as you might suppose, but scrubbing the stone floor. Mother Meraut was a wise woman; she knew when to pray and when to scrub, and upon occasion did both ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and went back to her seat after dropping a few pieces of the other coinage into an alms box that stood by the cashier's side. Mrs. Nosnibor and Arowhena then did likewise, but a little later they gave all (so far as I could see) that they had received from the cashier back to a verger, who I have no doubt put it back into the coffer from which it had been taken. They then began making towards the curtain; whereon I let it drop and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... stand until the door of the pew was shut, when a folding wooden flap was lowered across the aperture, on which he seated himself, with his back resting against the pew door. At the conclusion of the service the Verger always opened the pew door with a sudden "click." Should the Aide-de-Camp be unprepared for this and happen to be leaning against the door, with any reasonable luck he was almost certain to tumble backwards into the aisle, "taking a regular ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... in Venice, I inquired from the Verger of St. Mark's if Dragonetti's Violone was in the church, and I could see it. The reply was in the affirmative, but as the Fabbricieri had the care of the instrument, under lock and key, it would be necessary to see them and get their consent for its production. As this ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular^; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman^; clerk, precentor^, choir; almoner, suisse [Fr.], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth^, acolothyst^, acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen^, flamen^; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual director. cenobite, conventual, abbot, prior, monk, friar, lay brother, beadsman^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Gutenberg may until then have revolved in his mind, remains unknown. Whatever they were, chance effaced them all, and brought him at once upon his great discovery. One day, at Haarlem, in Holland, the verger of the cathedral, named Lawrence Koster, with whom he had established friendly relations, showed him in the sacristy a Latin grammar, curiously wrought in engraved letters on a wooden board, for the instruction of the seminarists. Chance, that gratuitous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... on playing till midnight 'but for a very earthy verger,' who insisted on locking up the cathedral and ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... express his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... materials which they had brought at fairs, and then been unable to dispose of, now suddenly become tradeable, and go off with a rush. For instance, on one occasion a lady appeared at Mass in a bustle which filled the church to an extent which led the verger on duty to bid the commoner folk withdraw to the porch, lest the lady's toilet should be soiled in the crush. Even Chichikov could not help privately remarking the attention which he aroused. On one occasion, when he returned ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Now, Jenkins was verger and pew-opener in the church as well as trusted assistant to the aged minister, but the ways and language of the fo'c's'l came back to him with irresistible force when he gazed on ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... we are not tourists. Are you the verger's wife? You must excuse my ignorance, but we are strangers in this part. Perhaps you can tell us a little about the church; it seems a very old one. How many years has ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... at the Hague. He died Lord Dover. A fourth son, John, married Miss Elizabeth Lygon, of Madresfield. The fifth son, James, entered the Church, became Bishop of Ely, and was the ancestor of the Yorkes of Forthampton. I had the luck many years ago to have a talk with an old verger in Ely Cathedral who remembered Bishop Yorke, and who told me that he used to draw such congregations by the power of his oratory and the breadth of his teaching, that when he preached, all the dissenting chapels in ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... the time, by Dr. Verger, an intelligent physician of Bellesme, a neighboring town. He details the result of his observations in two letters addressed to the "Journal du Magnetisme,"—one dated January 29, the other February ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Et ung bergier en ung verger L'autrhyer en jouant a la bille S'entredisoient, pour abreger: Roger Bergier Legiere Bergiere, C'est trop a la bille joue; Chantons Noe, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... him entered on the Army Books 'as Major Quintus Icilius;' his Majorship is to be dated '10th April, 1758' (to give him seniority); and from and after this '26th May, 1759,' he is to command the late Du Verger's Free-Battalion. All which was done:—the War-Offices somewhat astonished at such advent of an antique Roman among them; but writing as bidden, the hand being plain, and the man an undeniable article. Onward from which time there is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... church, facilities are afforded by a staircase commencing at the south-west Transept leading to the western Tower; and by another leading from the north Transept; but permission must be obtained, for which an application should be made to the Verger in attendance. The ascent, though tedious, is not dangerous, if due caution be used. Many parts will be found worthy of attention; the timber work of the Octagon is a very curious piece of carpentry executed in English ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... been in cathedrals of late years, and now looked about him with something of awe. He could remember that when he was a child he had been brought here to church, and as he stood in the choir with the obsequient verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through the minutes of a long sermon,—a sermon that had seemed to be very long,—in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb to the pinnacle which culminated over the bishop's seat, and thence ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of having been grouped with others in charge of a verger, but a verger there must have been, and at my next visit there must equally have been one; he only entered, rigid, authoritative, unsparing, into my consciousness at the third or fourth visit, widely separated by time, when he marshalled me the way that he was going with ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells |
