"Auctioneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should be away the last week her home was to wear its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... course we fell sadly back; and when the house rent became due, we had not wherewith to pay it. The landlord distrained us for it. A second time the few things I had left were put under the hammer o' the auctioneer. 'Oh!' said I, 'surely misery and I were born thegither!' For we had twa dochters, the auldest only gaun six, baith lying ill o' the scarlet fever in the same bed, and I had to suffer the agony o' beholding the bed sold out from under ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... to be the original of the home of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer and estate agent in ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... auction. As the business of the day went on, a dozen of silver spoons had to be disposed of; and before they were put up for competition, they were, according to the usual custom, handed round for inspection to the company. When returned into the hands of the auctioneer, he found only eleven. In great wrath, he ordered the door to be shut, that no one might escape, and insisted on every one present being searched to discover the delinquent. One of the sisters, in consternation, whispered to the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF SOULS! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my own,—as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly, to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the price, asked for ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was a Scotsman—a big, broad-shouldered Sawney—formidable in 'slacks,' as he called his trousers, and terrific in kilts; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an ex-schoolmaster and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he set up his paper, he added the trade ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sell the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a year, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... had at the Office of the Auctioneer, 9. Foregate Street, Worcester, one week previous ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... de plume of Frederick Fargus, born in Bristol; bred to the auctioneer business; author of "Called Back," a highly sensational novel, and a success; gave up his business and settled in London, where he devoted himself to literature, and the production of similar works of much promise, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tightening of the grasp of a man like Klutchem and he did not underestimate the gravity of the situation. What Consolidated Smelting represented, or what place it held in the market were unknown quantities to the Colonel. What he really saw was the red flag of the auctioneer floating over the front porch of that friend in Virginia whom the Bank had ruined, and the family silver and old portraits lying in the carts that were to take them away forever. It was part of ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of Greenwood, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... carriage came near he saw the insignia of nobility, and he asked who that noble lady was. Upon being told, he said, "Stop, my friends, I have got something to sell." The idea of a preacher becoming suddenly an auctioneer made the people wonder, and in the midst of a dead silence he said: "I have more than a title to sell—I have more than a crown of Europe to sell; it is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Is there anyone here who bids for it? Yes, I hear a bid. Satan, Satan, what will you give? 'I will give pleasure, ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... Vernon, as agreed upon between himself and Henry Dunbar—"the very thing," repeated the landlord; "you might say it had been made to order like. There's a sale comes off next Thursday. Mr. Grogson, the Shorncliffe auctioneer, will sell, at eleven o'clock precisely, the furniture and lease of the snuggest little box in these parts—Woodbine Cottage it's called—a sweet pretty little place, as was the property of old Admiral Manders. The admiral died in the house, and having been a bachelor, and his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... store, a drugstore, a jewellery store, a steam laundry, a flour and feed store, a shoe-shop, a bakery, and a bookshop. Three barbers had hung out their signs, and so had two doctors, a photographer, a lawyer, a dentist, and an auctioneer. There were two pool-rooms and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and, at the next election, chose another in his place. Thereupon, not discouraged, he turned his hand, with national facility, to something else—following, successively, the business of a small grocer, of a tavern keeper, and of an auctioneer. Somehow or other, however, ill luck still followed him; and, finally, he took to distributing the village newspaper, and sticking up handbills. This gave him a taste for politics, and having acquired, in his employment as auctioneer, a certain fluency of speech, he cultivated it ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... did greet A round faced Caledonian, who Good eating and good drinking knew; And "Four-pence-half-penny" McKenzie Daily vended wolsey linsey, Next door to one of comic cheer Acknowledged the best auctioneer, That ever knock'd a bargain down, Or bidder if he chanced to frown; He set himself up in the end As Carleton's most worthy friend And by vox populi was sent To Parliament to represent The men of Carleton, one and all, In ancient Legislative Hall. ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... amusing account of the sale of two ships at an auction by an inch of candle. The auctioneer put them up when the candle was first lighted, and bidding went on till it was burnt down. He describes "how they do invite one another, and at last how they all do cry, and we have much to do to tell who did cry last. The ships were the Indian, sold for 1300 pounds, and the Half-Moone, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Earl of Fitz Balaam, of Cullender Castle, in the county of Cumberland, and Simon Rochdale, Baronet, of Hollyhock House, in the county of Cornwall."——By the by, my lord, considering what an expense attends that castle, which is at your own disposal, and that, if the auctioneer don't soon knock it down, the weather will, I wonder what has prevented your lordship's bringing it ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... sounds, and the villagers stood at their cottage doors waiting for the musicians to pass. Next to the firing of rockets nothing can be more heart-stirring than the martial sound of the pipes and drums. The big drum was, on this occasion, played most masterly by the auctioneer and clown of the parish church, called Jose Carcunda, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... burdened. Scott's kindness continued, as long as John Ballantyne lived, to provide for him a constant succession of similar advantages at the same easy rate; and Constable, from deference to Scott's wishes, and from his own liking for the humorous auctioneer, appears to have submitted with hardly a momentary grudge to this heavy tax on his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... natural to us than this old Westwood, the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Taylor had the satisfaction of shooting two Germans in a mist, who were trying to get back through their own wire; and on returning the patrol picked up an odd assortment of articles, which sound like an extract from some mad auctioneer's catalogue: (1) a glass globe full of liquid with a string net round it; (2) a strong case with powder inside it; (3) six hand grenades; (4) a shoulder strap, silver braid on red cloth, 169 in gilt; ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... growing importance on our irrigation holdings, and that settlers are recognising its great value as an adjunct to dairying is proved by the fact that there are now on the settlements four times as many pigs as there were a year ago. A leading auctioneer estimates that, with improved facilities, the sales in Rochester would in the near future amount to 1000 a month. The methods adopted on the irrigation farm of Messrs. Jacob and Kennedy, at Nannulla, show that pig raising is ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... Serbs, Roumanians, Jews of Hungary, and Italians of Whitechapel mingled in the throng. Near East and Far East rubbed shoulders. Pidgin English contested with Yiddish for the ownership of some tawdry article offered by an auctioneer whose nationality defied conjecture, save that always some branch of his ancestry had drawn nourishment from the soil of ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to pass through her idlest thoughts! But she was not going to marry George! That was well settled! In a year or two he would be quite fat! And he always had his hands in his pockets! There was something about him not like a gentleman! He suggested an auctioneer or a cheap-jack! ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... educated at a great public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection with the ancient family whose tree he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... put 'em on the block to sell 'em. The ones 'tween 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The auctioneer he stand off at a distance and cry 'em off as they stand on the block. I can hear his voice ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... a palisade of tables made in the best drawing-room; and on the capital, french-polished, extending, telescopic range of Spanish mahogany dining-tables with turned legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer is erected; and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, the strangers fluffy and snuffy, and the stout men with the napless hats, congregate about it and sit upon everything within reach, mantel-pieces included, and begin to bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli, requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... filled with rage and disappointment; the hag vented her spite on her brother. ''Tis your fault,' said she; 'fool! you have no tongue; you a Chabo, you can't speak'; whereas, within a few hours, he had perhaps talked more than an auctioneer during a three days' sale: but he reserved his words for fitting occasions, and now sat as usual, sullen and silent, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... her silken skirt, and swished up two flights of stairs and into a bedroom at the back, where she turned on the light. "A very comfortable room," she went on in the voice of a tired and very superior auctioneer. "Just vacated by a Wall Street broker and his wife; very well-connected people. Bed and couch; easy-chairs; running hot and cold water. And for it I'm making a special summer rate, with board, of only twenty-five dollars a ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... William W. Corcoran, was born in 1798. He began his business career in Georgetown, but for many years he has been a resident of Washington. At twenty he went into business for himself, beginning as an auctioneer. After several years of successful business he was obliged to suspend, during the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... my estate have been described by an English estate agent and auctioneer, with a better foundation of fact than many ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... second-hand dealers who had come to Grinselhof with the hope of getting bargains. Peasants might be seen talking together, in low voices, with surprise at Do Vlierbeck's ruin; and there were even some who laughed openly and joked as the auctioneer read ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... purchaser into their booths. Several customers entered to inspect the "horse-dealer's" stock. Without understanding the words that he spoke, I guessed by the inflections of his voice that he strove to capture them, while the auctioneer all the while called out the bids. From time to time a loud tumult arose in the booth, mingled with the sound of the keepers' lashes, and the curses of the dealer. Evidently they were scourging some of my companions ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... farm was put up, the auctioneer naturally turning towards the squire, who responded pompously, "I bid twenty-two hundred dollars, the amount of the mortgage I hold ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Tame submission to insult would naturally enough be taken, not for moderation, but for insensibility and want of spirit. Who could be expected to put up with his last performance? He brought us to market like a gang of slaves, and handed us over to the auctioneer. Some, I believe, fetched high prices; but others went for four or five pounds, and as for me—confound his impudence, threepence! And fine fun the audience had out of it! We did well to be angry; we have come from Hades; and we ask you to give us satisfaction ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a progressively startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive Battles. I sha'n't ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... of explanation, it must be noted that the hut had an annual ball once a week, "dancing strictly prohibited." To be explicit, the annual ball was a weekly dinner. The auction was a great success, a real auctioneer presiding, well ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... must see how foolish her enthusiasms appeared in the eyes of the poet's granddaughter. Katharine never made any attempt to spare people's feelings, he reflected; and, being himself very sensitive to all shades of comfort and discomfort, he cut short the auctioneer's catalog, which Katharine was reeling off more and more absent-mindedly, and took Mrs. Vermont Bankes, with a queer sense of fellowship in suffering, under his ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... all that I had intended for publication in my book entitled "THE AUCTIONEER'S GUIDE," I was advised by a few of my most intimate friends to add a sketch of my own life to illustrate what had been set forth ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... a staring forgery, but you, h-you won't mind that, and the 'ladies' man'—ah, the 'ladies' man,' once you are his cousin, he'll never let on. Take Irby! he is, as you say, a nincompoop"—she had dropped into English—"and seldom sober, mais take him! 't is the las' call of the auctioneer, yo' fav-oreet auctioneer—with the pointed ears and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... thou hast patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That Poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's "Catalogue of ships" is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you then the furniture ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... afternoon the country people began to leave town and Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys, stable-boys, gentlemen—all eager ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... laying most emphasis on the name. No one answered; but two persons in the corner, a father and son, exchanged significant glances and looked very acute and wise. The Squire raised his voice, and let it fall like an auctioneer's hammer on ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... services Mr. World conducted his friend from the church, and as they were moving again toward the surging crowds they heard the voice of an auctioneer. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... disease, which make them very liable to sudden death; or their master may be killed in a duel, or at a horse-race, or in a drunken brawl; then his creditors are active in looking after the estate; and next, the blow of the auctioneer's hammer separates ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... who was silent and strange. A boy put a printed catalogue into Dad's hand, which he was doubtful about keeping until he saw Andy Percil with one. Most of the men seated on the rails jumped down into an empty yard and stood round in a ring. In one corner the auctioneer mounted a box, and read the conditions of sale, and talked hard about the breed ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... the body away, And the watches were sold that Saturday. The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy Such watches, and ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... reader, thou hast patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's 'Catalogue of ships' is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... prompt allusion to passing occurrences, and you have the mischievous member of Congress. A spice of malice, a ruffian touch in his rhetoric, will do him no harm with his audience. These accomplishments are of the same kind, and only a degree higher than the coaxing of the auctioneer, or the vituperative style well described in the street-word "jawing." These kinds of public and private speaking have their use and convenience to the practitioners; but we may say of such collectively, that the habit of oratory is apt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, with which the author, Nodier, was long honourably associated as librarian. I purchased it a few years ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly catalogued Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear of a very ragged regiment on the shelves of the auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's Pensees de Shakespeare. None competed with me for the prize. A very slight effort delivered into my hands the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of the auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegant impropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had again seized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... Bobadil such praises bore, Such worthy praises, Kitely[30] scarce had more. By turns transform'd into all kind of shapes, Constant to none, Foote laughs, cries, struts, and scrapes: Now in the centre, now in van or rear, The Proteus shifts, bawd, parson, auctioneer. His strokes of humour, and his bursts of sport, Are all contain'd in this one word—distort. 400 Doth a man stutter, look a-squint, or halt? Mimics draw humour out of Nature's fault, With personal defects their mirth ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... switching tails of the horses, bothered by flies, and the group of real estate men, lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched with the heady perfume ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... San Lorenzo. Beneath the grand stand, where the pools are always sold, the motley throng surged thickest. Jew and gentile, greaser and dude, tin-horn gamblers and tenderfeet, hayseeds and merchants, jostled each other good humouredly. In the pool box were two men. One —the auctioneer—a perfect specimen of the "sport"; a ponderous individual, brazen of face and voice, who presented to the crowd an amazing front of mottled face, diamond stud, bulging shirt sleeves, and a bull-neck encircled by a soiled eighteen-and-a-half inch paper collar. The other gentleman, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Flaccus [Horace], Latin poet and satirist, was born near Venusia, in Southern Italy, on December 8, 65 B.C. His father was a manumitted slave, who as a collector of taxes or an auctioneer had saved enough money to buy a small estate, and thus belonged to the same class of small Italian freeholders as the parents of Virgil. Apparently Horace was an only child, and as such received an education almost beyond his father's means; who, instead of sending ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... He has favoured the world with several literary productions, among which are Memoirs of his own Life, embellished with a view of the author, suspended from (to use the phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a hanging wood; and a very elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to "clear any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting only a certain great ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... pocket. This is his style, 'Come, buy, buy, choice mutton three farthings the carcass. Retail shop next door, ma'am. Jack, serve the lady. Bill, tell him he can send me home those twenty bullocks, at three half-pence each—' and so on. But at night he subsides into an auctioneer, and, with knocking down lots while others are conversing, gets removed occasionally to a padded room. Sometimes we humor him, and he sells us the furniture after a spirited competition, and debits the amounts, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... notable orations to which he had listened, the great lawyer said that the most eloquent words he had ever heard were "spoken on the auction block by a slave mother." It seemed that she pleaded with the auctioneer and the spectators not to separate her from her children and her husband, and she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one of ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... he was right. But his criticism takes no account whatever of one form of appeal to the emotions which has been brought by later art to a high pitch of perfection, but with which the personal feeling of the artist has not much more to do than the "passions" of an auctioneer's clerk have to do with the compilation of his inventory. A poet himself, Horace wrote for poets; to him the pathetic implied the ideal, the imaginative, the rhetorical; he lived before the age of Realism and the Realists, and would scarcely have comprehended either the men ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering, consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with wondrous impudence and pertinacity, dispensing, all the while he is selling, the most ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... exceedingly cheap. History and novels appeared to be the literature in demand; and Walter Scott, Byron, and Bulwer, the names most familiar in the verbal catalogue galloped over by the "learned gentleman," as our auctioneer advertisements have it. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... fool and his nine-hundred-dollar piano are soon parted. The red flag of the auctioneer announces its transfer to a drawing-room frequented by persons capable of enjoying the refined pleasures. Bright and joyous is the scene, about half past nine in the evening, when, by turns, the ladies try over their newest pieces, or else listen with intelligent pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... boldly. The sale was going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a noble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and glass door. Mr. May's heart gave a little jump. Almost everybody has wished for something unattainable, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to her this week,' she replied; and she promised to get any information she could for me within a fortnight, by which time I expected to pass that way again. I did so, and Mrs. Smith proved as good as her word. The niece had got the cup from a friend of hers, an auctioneer, and he, not she, had got it at a sale. But he was away from home—she could hear nothing more at present. She gave his address, however, and assurances that he was very good-natured and would gladly put the gentleman in the way of getting ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... James, my son, call in the auctioneer, stick up a bill 'TO LET.' Let us return at once to the land of our birth. No such attractions exist in this turkey-trodden, maccaroni-eating, picture-peddling, stone-cutting, mass-singing land of donkeys. Let us ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all liberally paid off, and began to disperse, finding work at different mines; and after several consultations, the Colonel and his old brother officer being quite of the same mind, an interview was held with a well-known auctioneer, and the whole of the machinery was announced ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... three days, on a very fine road for the South, known as the state-line road. We drove to the cotton-yard, unloaded, and received the receipts for the cotton, and put up for the night at a wagon-yard. I spent this night in prayer and supplication that God would save me from the slave-pen and the auctioneer's block; and my prayers were responded to in my protection. The next morning we started for home by what was known as the pigeon-roost route, in order to save toll ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... inside, a heap of grain, and two men turning the winches of a winnowing machine. New hats, but old faces. Could his great-great-grandfather have been dug up and set in that barn door, he would have looked just the same, so would the sacks, and the wheat, and the sunshine. At the market town, where the auctioneer's hammer goes tap tap over bullocks and sheep, crowds of men gather together,—farmers, and bailiffs, and shepherds, drovers and labourers—and their clothes are different, but there are the same old weather-beaten faces. Faces that you may see in the ancient illuminated ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as "Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am I bid for ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... the auctioneer noted a man at the far edge of the platform who had made several attempts as if to bid during the sale. He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin, but wiry. His face was bronzed from exposure to sun and wind. He wore a long woolen mantel that completely covered him, even to ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... be lengthened, I should have felt anxious. What a marvellous creation a woman is, to be sure! Man and philosopher as I am, my impulse would have been to consign the contents of the garret to the auctioneer or the ash-man, and to retain most of the least-used furniture and upholstery to eke out our new splendor. But Josephine's method was distinctly opposite. She was critical of nearly everything respectable-looking in the old ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... they got him to touch a grindstone, his body changed its character from shrinking and doubtful, to erect and energetic, and he applied his test. This boy carried with him, night and day, a little wooden hammer, like an auctioneer's, and with this he now tapped each stone several times, searching for the one he had denounced: and, at each experiment, he begged the others to keep away from him and leave him alone with the subject of his experiment; which they did, and held up ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she could do, but that may be the end of it. He's in an auctioneer's office, and may have a pretty ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... But the twelve-line board and the dice-box pay for all. The Gods confound me if I did not lose two millions of sesterces last night. My villa at Tibur, and all the statues that my father the praetor brought from Ephesus, must go to the auctioneer. That is a high price, you will acknowledge, even for Phoenicopters, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' Of Thomas Campbell, the poet, it is written that 'his talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow; his face has a smirk which would befit a shopman or an auctioneer.' Wordsworth, 'an old, very loquacious, indeed, quite prosing man.' Southey 'the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed Roman nose, small carelined brow, the most vehement pair of faint hazel eyes I have ever seen.' There is a savage ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... dinners in pails, and stayed all day, for auctions do not occur very often in the country, and are great events when they do. Eyebright, who did not know exactly how to dispose of herself, sat on the stairs, high up, where no one could see her, and listened to the auctioneer's loud voice calling off the numbers and bids. "No. 17, one clock,—who bids two dollars for the clock? No. 18, lounge covered with calliker. I am offered seven-fifty for the lounge covered with ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... and went to work with the minuteness of an auctioneer taking an inventory, or a sheriff levying an execution. Accordingly he came back full of notes; he had studied Carolus chiefly in respect ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... me a great favour,—get the secret from the old woman, what we ants can do to live a little longer; for it seems to me a folly in worldly affairs to be heaping up such a large store of food for so short a life, which, like an auctioneer's candle, goes out just at the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... French wine, left for me, as a taste of 216 hogshead, which are to be put on sale at 20L a hogshead, at Garraway's Coffee-house, in Exchange alley" etc. The sale by candle is not, however, by candlelight, but during the day. At the commencement of the sale, when the auctioneer has read a description of the property, and the conditions on which it is to be disposed of, a piece of candle, usually an inch long, is lighted, and he who is the last bidder at the time the light goes out is ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... privileges as this. Why, there are twice as many harbours and water-powers here, as we have all the way from Eastport to New OrLEENS. They have all they can ax, and more than they desarve. They have iron, coal, slate, grindstone, lime, firestone, gypsum, free-stone, and a list as long as an auctioneer's catalogue. But they are either asleep, or stone blind to them. Their shores are crowded with fish, and their lands covered with wood. A government that lays as light on 'em as a down counterp'in, and no taxes. Then look at their ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the familiar auction pool, with its close, stifling, dingy room; its crowd of solemn, stupid, wide-awake gentlemen seated in chairs before a platform, backed with a blackboard, on which are inscribed the names of the horses expected to start; and its alert, chattering auctioneer, gay as a sparrow, and equally active, fishing for bids, with strident voice and reassuring manner. A few words, however, may be spared to touch lightly on what is designated the "Mutuel" system, which was invented by M. Joseph Oller, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,—if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could advise it, once, for a little! Flaying of Saint Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... as ever—no, it was not the last time; the last time was at Douglas Kinnaird's. I have met him in all places and parties—at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock's, at Robins's the auctioneer's, at Sir Humphry Davy's, at Sam Rogers's,—in short, in most kinds of company, and always found ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and a good one. Money was needed for the laddies who were going—needed for all sorts of things. To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and such things as the government might not be supplying them. And so they asked me to be their auctioneer. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding thought, for the job... "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell.... That damned fellow Asher! What the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... me two," intoned the auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd became a jam. Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden. In all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying small ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... venture to purchase a freehold, or even a leasehold property, by private contract, without making themselves acquainted with the locality, and employing a solicitor to examine the titles,; but many do walk into an auction-room, and bid for a property upon the representations of the auctioneer. The conditions, whatever they are, will bind him; for by one of the legal fictions of which we have still so many, the auctioneer, who is in reality the agent for the vendor, becomes also the agent for the buyer, and by putting down the names of bidders and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... was Messrs. Sharke's agent, was bustling about, and I found him engaged with a fat, pompous little fellow, the auctioneer, from a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... disfavour. A large bullock-team hauling a waggon load of bales blundered slowly along the road, the weary cattle swinging from side to side under the lash of the bullocky, who yelled hoarse profanity with the volubility of an auctioneer and the vocabulary of a Yankee skipper unchecked by authority. A little further on another team, drawn up before a hotel, lay sprawling, half buried, the patient bullocks twisted into painful angles by reason of their yokes, quietly chewing ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... The auctioneer was shouting above the general din the good points of a man who had just been placed on ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... an auction in a general way, is good. If you hear the auctioneer crying his sales, it means bright prospects and fair treatment ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.' In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the crisp and nervous ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... the witness box; but then, as his father was a lawyer, possibly Gusty often experimented on himself, since he meant to either take up the same pursuit in life, or give his magnificent voice a chance to earn him a living in the role of an auctioneer. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Timothy Babyhouse, The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:—"Nothing is so diverting as this kind of sale—the number of those assembled, the diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what he openly depreciates; or—to spread a dangerous snare—pretending to secure with avidity a picture which already belongs ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and could hear the hum of voices in the hall, but no words, when Coleman came back, accompanied by a committee, of which I think the two brothers Arrington, Thomas Smiley the auctioneer, Seymour, Truett, and others, were members. The whole conversation was gone over again, and the Governor's proposition was positively agreed to, with this further condition, that the Vigilance Committee should send into the jail a small force of their own men, to make certain that Casey should ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... half a dollar for it. When I told Lizzie about it she laughed good and said the city folks must be dumb if they want pewter dishes when you can buy such nice ones for ten cents. Yes, Eph, that's the fellow's going to auctioneer. He's a good one, you bet; he keeps things lively all the time. All his folks is good talkers. Lizzie says his mom can talk the legs off an iron pot. But then he needs a good tongue in this business; it ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... upon the mystery of his craft; 'why, yes—ha,—ha!—just maybe a little. It's only poison, Sir, deadly, barefaced poison!' he began sardonically, with a grin, and ended with a black glare and a knock on the table, like an auctioneer's 'gone!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the year 1832, contained the habitations of a great number of persons in easy circumstances; many of our families of note had their residences there: John Wm. Woolsey, Esq., in 1808, and later on first President of the Quebec Bank; the millionaire auctioneer, Wm. Burns, the god-father to the late George Burns Symes, Esq.; Archbishop Signai—this worthy prelate was born in this street, in a house opposite to La Banque Nationale. Evidences of the luxuriousness of their dwelling rooms are visible to this day, in the panelling of some doors ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the poor to meet on a level, before Him who regards not the outward estate of his creatures. But modern Christians have contrived to evade the rebuke of the apostle by the cunning device of introducing the noisy auctioneer, and under a show of fairness and equality, 'the man in goodly apparel and having a gold ring' is assigned the highest seat; and albeit a skeptic, by the weight of his purse crowds the humble worshippers to the wall and into the corners of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... built in 1747, and stood on the site of Grove Hall, built by, and for many years the mansion of, Thomas Kilby Jones, a famous auctioneer of Boston, and now known as the "Consumptives' Home," on the south-east corner of Washington street and Blue Hill avenue. It was originally the home-stead of Samuel Payson, and was owned by John Goddard in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... drinking long and slowly, and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters of various depths of shade, according to their company, nicknamed "Bower o' Bliss" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... that time hard on ten o'clock, and we turned at once into the place of sale. The Flying Scud, although so important to ourselves, appeared to attract a very humble share of popular attention. The auctioneer was surrounded by perhaps a score of lookers-on—big fellows for the most part, of the true Western build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and adorned (to a plain man's taste) with needless finery. A jaunty, ostentatious comradeship prevailed. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open Lydon's shoulder.—A ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... gigantic withered pear. Each had its fireplace, with a mantelpiece of funereal marble to match the pillars. Mrs. Maitland had refurnished this parlor when she came to the old house as a bride; she banished to the lumber- room, or even to the auctioneer's stand, the heavy, stately mahogany of the early part of the century, and purchased according to the fashion of the day, glittering rosewood, carved and gilded and as costly as could be found. Between the windows at each end of the long room were ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... prize, which was advertised in the Sydney Gazette for sale by auction, Mr. Lord, the auctioneer, setting forth ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the remuneration is excessive, the Board may review the same and fix the remuneration. A trustee may not receive any remuneration for services rendered in any other capacity, e.g. as solicitor, auctioneer, &c., beyond that voted to him as trustee; nor may he share his remuneration with the bankrupt, the solicitor or other person employed about the bankruptcy; or receive from any person any gift, or other pecuniary or personal benefit ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... even he is perhaps only to be accused of levity and divided interest; it was doubtless important for him to be early in Apia, where he combines with his diplomatic functions the management of a thriving business as commission agent and auctioneer. I do say of all of them that they took a very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the auctioneer, "once. Two-pence, twice. Will no one bid higher? It is going for nothing, the key is worth more. Have you ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... impressively these men advance in a line almost to the centre of the slave market, within two or three yards of the arcade, where the wealthy buyers sit expectant. Then the head auctioneer lifts up his voice, and prays, with downcast eyes and outspread hands. He recites the glory of Allah, the One, who made the heaven above and the earth beneath, the sea and all that is therein; his brethren and the buyers say Amen. He thanks Allah for his mercy to men in ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of the gallery and heard this wonderful man preach a sermon in which he illustrated an auctioneer selling a negro girl at the block. He sat as one entranced. So did the immense audience, held spellbound by the scene so graphically pictured. It was the first interesting sermon he had ever heard. It made a tremendous impression on him, not ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... and be there for the auction on Friday. By that time we shall have picked out what is worth saving, and everything will be ready for him to take matters in hand. I think he has already written to the auctioneer, so tell father to give himself no uneasiness ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... little surrounded with houses that anyone standing at its door could view a landscape stretching for miles, while listening to the song birds in the neighbouring gardens. It dates from about 1750, and numbers among its successive landlords, Mr. John Roderick, the first auctioneer of that well-known name, Mr. James Clements, and Mr. Coleman, all men of mark. The last-named host, after making many improvements in the premises and renewing the lease, disposed of the hotel to a Limited Liability Company for L15,500. It is at present one of the best-frequented ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and hired out one hundred slaves; took them himself to the public mart, and acted as auctioneer in disposing of their services. The time at which this was done, was in the Christmas holidays, or rather the last day of the year, when the slaves' annual ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... As first advertised the sale was for three days, but the auctioneer found that he could not get through in the time. The accumulations of such an ancient house as Outram Hall are necessarily vast," and he waved his hand with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... absolute fairness, but this was, to a certain portion of the audience, its chief defect. 'Sweet reasonableness,' said one, 'is always admirable in a spectator, but from a leader we want something more.' 'It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art,' said another; while a third sighed over what he called 'the fatal sterility of the judicial mind,' and expressed a perfectly groundless fear that the Century Guild was ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... would be impossible to sell this "lot" alone, the Spaniard with the whip ordered George to be released and placed upon the block also, stepping forward at the same time and whispering eagerly in the ear of the auctioneer. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... course could equal the torment of the galley-slaves, but the wretchedness of the shore-slaves was bad enough. When they were landed they were driven to the Besist[a]n or slave-market, where they were put up to auction like the cattle which were also sold there; walked up and down by the auctioneer to show off their paces; and beaten if they were lazy or weary or seemed to "sham." The purchasers were often speculators who intended to sell again,—"bought for the rise," in fact; and "Christians are cheap to day" was a business quotation, just as though they had been ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... claret was put up by the auctioneer, and, thinking this a good opportunity for laying in a stock for the mess, as we would be in commission probably in warm latitudes, for the next two or three years, when the wine would come in rather handy, Larkyns listened eagerly ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... will be Abraham Lincoln at the Slave auction. (Auctioneer and slaves. Sells several slaves. Class bid and ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... contained an open letter the writing of which was strangely familiar to her—it did not need the signature "Ralph Corbet," to tell her whom the letter came from. For some moments she could not read the words. They expressed a simple enough request, and were addressed to the auctioneer who was to dispose of the rather valuable library of the late Mr. Ness, and whose name had been advertised in connection with the sale, in the Athenaeum, and other similar papers. To him Mr. Corbet ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... noblemen. Many years ago Arent Schuyler de Peyster, to whom I am indebted for many traditions of early New York society, told me that upon one occasion a conversation occurred between Philip Hone and his brother John, a successful auctioneer, in which the latter advocated their adoption of a coat of arms. Philip's response was characteristic of the man: "I will have no arms except those Almighty ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his glory. With triumphant glee he mounted a chair on the terrace, and began a short speech, with the words, "We're a great people, gentlemen; we're a great people." He then went on to say that he was "going to turn auctioneer," and a huge clothes basket full of grapes—the entire contents of one of his own forcing houses—being brought to him, he proceeded in the most facetious manner to offer them, bunch by bunch, for sale, and he realised in this way a very large ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... a speed of one thousandth of a second," announced Uncle Teddy, displaying all the fine points of his treasure like an auctioneer. "Won't I get some great pictures of you folks diving, though!" And he stood looking at the thing in his hands as if he did not quite believe it was real. Then he came to himself with a start and tossed the pack of letters to Katherine ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... "Hold hard," said the auctioneer, hastily counting the watches on the tray and comparing the number with a list he held in his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... friends accompanied me on my auction-room expeditions and restrained my ardor; but this time I got away alone and found myself bidding at the sale of a solid bog-wood bedroom set which had been exhibited as a show-piece at the World's Fair, and was now, in the words of the auctioneer, "going for a song." I sang the song. I offered twenty dollars, thirty dollars, forty dollars, and other excited voices drowned mine with higher bids. It was very thrilling. I offered fifty dollars, and there was a horrible silence, broken at last by the auctioneer's final, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... resolved on giving up his farm, an arrangement was come to with the Laird of Dalswinton by which Burns was allowed to throw up his lease and sell off his crops. The sale took place in the last week in August (1791). Even at this day the auctioneer and the bottle always appear side by side, as Chambers observes; but then far more than now-a-days. After the roup, that is the sale, of his crop was over, Burns, in one of his letters, describes the scene that took place within and without his house. It was one which exceeded ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship. Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... smattering of the law for home use. There's bread in that! As for literature, he's got enough of that in him already; if he begins to kick, I've concluded that I'll make him learn some trade; the barber's, say, or the auctioneer's, or even the lawyer's. That's one thing no one but the devil can do him out of! 'Believe what your daddy says, Primigenius,' I din into his ears every day, 'whenever you learn a thing, it's yours. Look ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... a "good story," always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog pipe, his riding breeches—he had no horse—and his gaiters, as he used to sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the brim of his artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases constituted his ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice. And when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of awaiting in London the sale of her house. After selecting from among its furniture the objects she wished to transport to her other abode, she left the rest of its contents to be disposed of by the auctioneer and took her departure for the Continent. She was of course accompanied on this journey by her niece, who now had plenty of leisure to measure and weigh and otherwise handle the windfall on which Madame ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... question cannot be the last. There is always the third reading of a bill. The auctioneer usually cries, 'Third and last time,' not 'Second and last time,' and the banns of approaching marriage are called out three times. So, you see, I have the right to ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... privately, but decided at last that the best thing to do was to get the four men together in the back room of a certain saloon and have an open auction. When he had his men lined up, he got on a chair, told about the value of the goods for sale, and asked for bids in regular auctioneer style. The highest bidder got the nomination for $5000. Now, that wasn't right at all. These things ought to be always fixed up ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... on edge in the pipeclay bottom. I found some gold also in Sheep's Head, and then we heard of a rush on the Goulburn River. Next day we offered our spare mining plant for sale on the roadside opposite Specimen Hill, placing the tubs, cradles, picks and spades all in a row. Bez was the auctioneer. He called out aloud, and soon gathered a crowd, which he fascinated by his eloquence. The bidding was spirited, and every article was sold, even Bez's own two-man pick, which would break the heart of a Samson to ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... ingenious rogue, this Parker of yours, Brewster. His method seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer, and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... considered the latter the height of meanness. This friend quietly and persistently moved through the crowd, telling them why our goods were there, and advising to give them a "terrible letting alone." The auctioneer stated on what account they were there, to be sold, asked for bidders, winked his eye and said "no bidders." Our goods were sent back to our store. This law, in the words of a distinguished Statesman, was then allowed to relapse ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... it is in a first-rate situation, and a fashionable neighbourhood. (Auctioneer called it 'a gentlemanly residence.') A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a dark street—but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house just large enough to hold a vile smell. The air breathed in it, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... that he, the said Raymond, had too much salary. Whitbread wants us to assess the pit another sixpence,—a d——d insidious proposition,—which will end in an O.P. combustion. To crown all, R * *, the auctioneer, has the impudence to be displeased, because he has no dividend. The villain is a proprietor of shares, and a long lunged orator in the meetings. I hear he has prophesied our incapacity,—'a foregone conclusion,' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Maybud, and I would fain not die "pop." MAR. You are Rose Maybud? ROSE. Yes, sweet Rose Maybud! MAR. Strange! They told me she was beautiful! And he loves you! No, no! If I thought that, I would treat you as the auctioneer and land-agent treated the lady-bird—I would rend you asunder! ROSE. Nay, be pacified, for behold I am pledged to another, and Lo, we are to be wedded this very day! MAR. Swear me that! Come to a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan |
