"Collector" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swiftest and strongest flyers, such as the Hesperidae, also allow you to approach near to them, feeling confident that they can dart away from any threatened danger—a misplaced confidence, however, so far as the net of the collector is concerned. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... heartburnings between Landlord and Tenant, a Government collector of rents shall be appointed, and Tenant-right shall include a power to shoot over the land and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... new cargo and bring it to Savannah, enter it at the customhouse and pay the import duties. This voyage was covered by number 1. He could then, without disturbing his cargo in the least, clear his vessel for France, and get back from the collector of customs all the duty he had paid except three per cent. He was now exporting goods from the United States and was protected by number 2. This was called "the broken voyage," and by using it thousands of shipowners were enabled to carry goods back ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... day that Kerama invited you to come, I had a call from the Interpol clearinghouse in Paris, a relay from the San Francisco police. A wealthy collector of early Egyptian objects in San Francisco had been bragging that he had just purchased a genuine necklace that had belonged to one of the early Pharaohs. We ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Horbury was a bit of a collector of that sort of thing, as you probably saw from his house. This man may have run down to see him about some affair ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... evident, though, that Tom had undergone a great deal, and was far from able to bear much more; for that evening, after telling the Indian porters that I was a sort of curiosity and stone collector, and getting the treasure carried up safely to the house which I had taken, he suddenly gave a lurch, and would have fallen had I not ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... think," I continued, "that you could hold the collector in conversation while I glide imperceptibly from the precincts of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... somebody,"—soon followed, and Ritson, while ever slashing away at poor Percy, often for his minstrel theories, more often for his ballad emendations, and most often for his holding back the original folio manuscript from publication, appeared himself as a collector and antiquarian of admirable quality. Meanwhile Walter Scott, still in his schoolboy days, had chanced upon a copy of the Reliques, and had fallen in love with ballads at first sight. All the morning long he lay reading the book beneath a huge platanus-tree ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... greeted Bessie in a way that showed her wits were otherwise engaged. "It is the income-tax," she explained parenthetically, with an appealing look round at the company. "I have been so put out this morning; I never had my word doubted before. Jimpson is the collector this year—" ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... This reproach is noticed in a very rare tract, which was bought at Mr. Lort's sale, by the celebrated collector Mr. Bindley, and is now in the author's possession. Its full title is, "The Discovery of Witches, in Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of Assize for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Has much injured town and country, And the debt is much augmented; So to meet increased expenses Our most gracious rulers hereby Do exact new contributions; Seven florins from each household, And from all the bachelors two. And next week the tax-collector Comes to gather these new taxes. So 'tis written in this paper." —"Death upon the tax-collector! May God damn him!" cried the people.— "Now as we ourselves have suffered Quite enough by this sad war, and Many lost their goods and chattels; And because 'tis pledged ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... extravagance was the more absurd, because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge Irishman was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among the Arabs, was a book which my boy and his brother prized with a kind of personal interest, because their father told them that he had once seen a son of Captain Riley when he went to get his appointment of collector at Columbus, and that this son was named William Willshire Riley, after the good English merchant, William Willshire, who had ransomed Captain Riley. William Willshire seemed to them almost the best man who ever lived; though my boy had secretly a greater ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... laboratory of the boulevard Montmartre is the rendezvous of all the scholars, travelers, naturalists, artists, and authors, who bask in the sunshine of celebrity. Temming, the old glory, yet with so much youth about him, of natural history; Wilson, collector for his brother in the immense undertaking of completing the museum of Philadelphia; Philippe Rousseau, who bestows life and animation on the animals which he paints; Ledieu, Leon Gozlan, Biard; Delgorgue, the intrepid chaser of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... this point that Mr. Gwynne failed of success as a business man. He could buy with discrimination, he had a rare gift of salesmanship, but as a collector, in the words of Sam Cheatley, the village butcher, himself a conspicuous star in that department of business activity, "He was not worth a tinker's curse." His accounts were sent out punctually twice a year. His wife saw to that. At times of desperation when pressure from the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... played upon the waste ground in front of the parlor windows. Solvent tenants were disturbed at unhallowed hours by the noise of ghostly furniture vans creeping stealthily away in the moonless night. Insolvent tenants openly defied the collector of the water-rate from their ten-roomed strongholds, and existed for weeks without any visible means ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Milton, and diligently catechised thepoet's widow, his brother, and his nephew, scrupulously writing down each detail as it came to him, in the minutee of lives which he supplied to Antony Wood to be worked up in his Athenae and Fasti. Aubrey was only an antiquarian collector, and was mainly dependent on what could be learned from the family. None of Milton's family, and least of all Edward Phillips, were of a capacity to apprehend moral or mental qualities, and they could only tell Aubrey of his goings out and his comings in, of the clothes ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Bishop of Norwich, was a book-collector, and after his death his library was purchased by the king and presented to the University of Cambridge. He died ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... example of old Mr. Feathertop. He didn't exactly collect things; he repudiated the name. He was wont to say, "Don't call me a collector, I'm not. I simply pick things up. Just where I happen to be, Rome, Warsaw, Bucharest, anywhere"—and it is to be noted what fine places these are to happen to be. And to think that Mr. Rasselyer-Brown would never put his foot outside of the United States! Whereas ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... so many idiosyncrasies, appear again as utilizers of old clothes; although when a crested flycatcher weaves a long snake-skin into the fabric of its nest, it seems more from the standpoint of a curio collector—as some people delight in old worn brass and blue china! There is another if less artistic theory for this peculiarity of the crested flycatcher. The skin of a snake—a perfect ghost in its completeness—would ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... I held the cab door for him.' He spoke exactly as if he had been a collector who had been roaming the world for curios. 'Take 'em both, "Doc"—or all of 'em—I ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... come to be governor of islands? Thou knowest, my friend, that my mother said, 'One must live long to see a great deal.' This I mention because I hope to see more if I live longer, for I do not intend to stop until I see thee a farmer or collector of the revenue,—offices which, though they carry those who abuse them to the devil, are, in short, always bringing in ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his four hearty meals every day, regardless of the most persistent rolling and pitching on the part of the steamer; and he played whist indefatigably, for he had found partners as enthusiastic in the game as himself. A tax-collector, on the way to his post at Goa; the Rev. Decimus Smith, returning to his parish at Bombay; and a brigadier-general of the English army, who was about to rejoin his brigade at Benares, made up the party, and, with Mr. ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... cast from the monumental effigy at Stratford-upon-Avon—now in the library at Abbotsford—was the gift of Mr. George Bullock, long distinguished in London as a collector of curiosities. This ingenious man was, as the reader will see in the sequel, a great favorite ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Oldham, who had been appointed collector of the tribute from the Pequots, was killed off Block Island by some of the Indians of the island who were subject to the Narragansett tribe.[3] Although the Pequots had nothing whatever to do with this affair, the Massachusetts government, under Harry Vane, sent a force against ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... everybody's house. The members can there meet together, talk together, and drink together. It is extremely probable that had they trusted solely to the sense of duty—the duty of insuring against sickness—and merely required the members to pay their weekly contributions to a collector, very few societies of the kind would have remained in existence. In a large number of cases, there is practically no choice between the society that meets at a public-house, and ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the baby were well, and in describing a great row that there had been at Hilton Tennis Club, Dolly forgot her news. The wrong people had tried to get in. The rector, as representing the older inhabitants, had said—Charles had said—the tax-collector had said—Charles had regretted not saying—and she closed the description with, "But lucky you, with four courts ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... States and of England, especially, are presented in all their most important aspects and relations. The amount of information here given is immense; and knowing, as we do, the scrupulous care of the collector, we cannot doubt its accuracy. Independently of its connection with the author's argument, this feature of the work cannot fail to give it value and a permanent place in every library, office, counting-room, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... cards, would chat with the women or entertain them by entertaining the children. Ben—as I came into the habit of calling him—was a spare little man with an extremely high forehead. He was an insurance-collector and only one degree less illiterate than Max; but because he had the "forehead of a learned man," and because it was his business to go from house to house with a long, thick book under his arm, he affected longish hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain pomposity ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... terra-cotta constructions within it carry ugliness beyond a joke; you may tell me that in spite of the park's vaunted situation nothing can be seen from it save the chimneys and kilns of earthenware manufactories, the scaffoldings of pitheads, the ample dome of the rate-collector's offices, the railway, minarets of non-conformity, sundry undulating square miles of monotonous house-roofs, the long scarves of black smoke which add such interest to the sky of the Five Towns—and, of course, the gold angel. But I tell you that before the days of the park ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... a panting rash that we reached the place, to find it must have been the house of the collector of the district; but it was all one wrack and ruin—glass, tables, and chairs smashed; hangings and carpets burnt or ragged to pieces, and in one or two places, blood-stains on the white floor, told a terrible tale of what had taken ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Protestant Nobleman like Reuss; sublime Dorcases, who do not rouge, or dress high, but eschew the evil world, and are thrifty for the Poor's sake, redeeming the time. There is a Cardinal de Polignac, venerable sage and ex-political person, of astonishing erudition, collector of Antiques (with whom we dined); there is the Chevalier Ramsay, theological Scotch Jacobite, late Tutor of the young Turenne. So many shining persons, now fallen indistinct again. And then, besides gossip, which is of mild quality and in fair proportion,—what talk, casuistic and other, about ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... by the hand of a deputy) that he had been unexpectedly summoned to London. He had just established himself in lodgings in Alfred Place, Tottenham Court Road; and he desired to see Mr. Luker immediately, on the subject of a purchase which he contemplated making. The gentleman was an enthusiastic collector of Oriental antiquities, and had been for many years a liberal patron of the establishment in Lambeth. Oh, when shall we wean ourselves from the worship of Mammon! Mr. Luker called a cab, and drove off instantly to ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... itself of this instinct in causing the pupil to make a collection of wooden implements fit for his own private use at home. Collecting is, of course, the basis of all natural history study; and probably nobody ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusually active collector when a boy. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... die; but they cling to it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself to avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave. If at any time work fails or sickness comes they are liable to drop helplessly into the ranks of the homeless. It is bad for a single man to have to confront the struggle for life in the streets and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... best I can do, I hope.—Good-morning." After the collector had gone, the man bent his head down, until his face rested even upon the ponderous volume over which he had been poring for hours. He thought, and thought, but thought brought no relief. The most he could earn was ten dollars a week, and for his children, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... was made at Sunderland, to establish that, in the case which I mentioned in my last as having proved fatal there, the disease had been imported from foreign parts, but due inquiry having been made by the collector of the customs, this proved to be unfounded; the man's name was Robert Henry, a pilot:—he died on ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... both of the Epigrams were printed in the 8vo. edition of the works in one volume, but my name is not mentioned as the contributor, which I regret; for, as an enthusiastic admirer of Burns, and a collector for many years of his fugitive pieces, it would have been gratifying to me to have been thus noticed. Perhaps Cunningham did not superintend ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... to the landlord. The old woman had certainly not exaggerated his oddity. But one of his peculiarities was a most fortunate one for us. He was a bibliomaniac—a lover and collector of valuable and curious books. When my father called on him to arrange about the house, he found him sitting almost in rags, apparently dining upon some cheese-parings, and surrounded by a library, ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to jot down important memoranda at the time of collecting. This is the method in use at the Gray Herbarium in Cambridge. It can, of course, be modified to suit one's own taste or convenience. The young collector can begin by simply pressing his specimens between the leaves of a book, the older and coarser the better; and he can mount them in a blank book designed for the purpose, or if he has only a common blank book, he can cut out some ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... with a celestial vision, and had received angelic orders no longer to shave, &c. He obtained his living during the latter portion of his existence by retailing a medicinal sweet, which he averred was good for all sorts of coughs and colds.—Robert Sleath, in 1788, was collector at a turnpike gate near Worcester, and, 'tis said, made George III. and all his retinue pay toll. He died here in November, 1804, when the following ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... not allowed even the privilege of choosing the animal. The mules were distributed by the authorities, and were tied to the doors of the houses for whose occupants they were destined. After the distribution of the mules, a collector went round to receive the payment. During the war in Buenos Ayres the traffic in mules suffered very considerably. For the space of twelve years not a mule had been brought from that part of South America ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... in the year 1763, was Mr. Grosvenor Bedford. He was not, to be sure, a court favorite, but a man, now well along in years, who had long ago been appointed to be Collector of the Customs at the port of Philadelphia. The appointment had been made by the great minister, Robert Walpole, for whom Mr. Bedford had unquestionably done some service or other, and of whose son, Horace Walpole, the letter-writer, he had continued ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... acquainted himself especially with the Latin writings of his learned contemporaries, their prose as well as their poetry, their antiquities and curious lore as well as their more solid learning. Though a poor man, Jonson was an indefatigable collector of books. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623, his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... and lilies of life, he is not continually uttering generous sentiments, and saying fine things. On him, as on his brethren, the world presses with its prosaic needs. He has to make love and marry, and run the usual matrimonial risks. The income-tax collector visits him as well as others. Around his head at Christmas-times drives a snow-storm of bills. He must keep the wolf from the door, and he has only his goose-quills to confront it with. And here it is, having to deal ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... THESES-COLLECTOR. One who collects or prepares theses. The following extract from the laws of Harvard College will explain further what is meant by this term. "The President, Professors, and Tutors, annually, some time in the third term, shall select from ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... paper free. It contains a list of cheap sets of stamps that Cannot be Beat. We have every thing necessary to the stamp collector, and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... been a 'liver,' had run himself aground by his enormous outlay on this Italian structure, which was just finished when he died. The fourth earl, who, we should have stated, was a 'liver' too, was a man of vertu—a great traveller and collector of coins, pictures, statues, marbles, and curiosities generally—things that are very dear to buy, but oftentimes extremely cheap when sold; and, having collected a vast quantity from all parts of the world (no easy feat in those ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... porch—completely despoiled at the Revolution—of the principal church; and even at the meagre treasures of a courageous but melancholy little museum, which has been arranged—part of it being the gift of a local collector—in a small hotel de ville. I carried away from Beaune the impression of something mildly autumnal—something rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to it that he should be prepared to close the sale the moment that Vandover was willing. Long ago, when he had first had the idea of buying the block, he had spent a day in the offices of the county recorder, the tax collector, and the assessor, assuring himself of the validity of the title, and only two days ago he had gone over the matter again in order to be sure that no encumbrances had been added to the block in the meanwhile. He found nothing; ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... about the removal of Holden as Collector of Internal Revenue for the Covington district is premature. There was a raid made upon him by a person in whom I take no stoc,, and a statement made in regard to him which I said—if proved true—would mean that he must go out. But I think ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... worth any other two. He declared it an original antique of the rarest quality; and Odelli, the best gem-cutter in Rome, coincided in the opinion. He held it at two thousand francs, but would have sold it to me for eighteen hundred, I suppose. I didn't bite, and after a few weeks lured the collector of whom he had bought it—one of those who make it a business to haunt the markets, and visit distant cities and excavations, to purchase and sell again to the Roman antiquaries—to boast his prowess as compared with that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... see as in a vision the shrouded form of Kitty Bonnair slipping from her door at midnight to fling a final word after him, not knowing how far he would flee; he could see the lonely mail collector, half obscured in the San Francisco fog, as he scooped the letter from the box with many others and boarded the car for the ferry. It was a last retort, and likely bitter, for he had spoken in anger himself, and Kitty was not a woman to be denied. There was an exaggerated quirk to the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Edward's idea as a financial expedient is that so few of our vanities would survive the attention of the tax-collector. Personally, I should have the name-plate off my gate at once. Indeed, I'm not sure I'll not have it off as it is. It was there when I came, and I have always been a little ashamed of its foppery, and have ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... this collection made? If it was made by Nehemiah (and there is nothing to discredit the statement of the author of 2 Maccabees that he was the collector), then it was not compiled until one hundred years after the Exile, or only about four hundred and twenty years before Christ. Most of the prophets had written before or during the Exile. Joel, Hosea, and Amos had flourished three or four hundred ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... trust you will appreciate my motive in sending you the poem. I do not wish to obtrude my claims as a verse-writer upon your notice, but I thought the incident I have recited would be interesting to one who is so devoted a collector of Stevensoniana.—Respectfully yours, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... scholar, he had a superficial knowledge of several languages, and was an industrious collector of old ballads and relics of the antiquities of his country. He was, however, better than a scholar;—he had genius, enthusiasm, and industry: he could create character, adapt incident, and, in picturesque description, he was without ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and those kindly old souls have long since returned to dust, but their big four-posted bed is doing service, no doubt, in the home of some rich collector. I have forgotten their names but they shall live here in my book as long as its ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the head of form 490 of the corresponding district. We draw your attention herewith to the necessity of enumerating on the first table of form N 246 all the villages and other places of the circuit of each district collector, whether or no they contain debtors of ours, and of stating in the second table the number of inhabitants. The registration is to be done by the official charged with that part of the work: each circuit is to be entered separately and the villages and places it contains to be given ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Briarean hands in exaction upon every industry and interest; filled the land with lies and false reasoning; threw honest men into prisons and locked the gates of them against thieves and assassins; by open defiance of the tax collector denied to children of the poor the advantages of education—did all this and more, and these honest working men stood loyally by it, sharing in wages its dishonest gains, receivers, in one sense, of stolen goods. The groans of their neighbors were nothing to them; even the wrongs of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... governing power—certain subordinate offices whose duties must be performed under a republic or under a despotism. Taxes may be collected by widely differing methods under the two systems, but there must always be the tax collector and the tax assessor. We can, however, see at a glance the weakness of any argument which contends that because the name and even the general duties of the tax gatherer were the same in each case, that the whole system of administration of the taxes or of the community ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... the Secretary of the Interior, from the Postmaster-General, from the postmaster in the city of New York, where such examinations have been some time on trial, and also from the collector of the port, the naval officer, and the surveyor in that city, and from the postmasters and collectors in several of the other large cities, show that the competitive system, where applied, has in various ways contributed ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... speech and clean linen, that he had conquered fortune, rather than by shining abilities. Yet he valued himself not the less on that account. In his mind tact ranked higher than genius, since it was his own peculiar gift: just as blue ginger-jars were better than Sevres, because he, Dr. Rylance, was a collector of ginger-jars. He approved of himself so completely that even his littlenesses were great in his ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... was upright and God-fearing and self-respecting, and though there was a difference of three years all in her favor, she, unlike some of her sex, scorned the use of her personal attractions, simply for the sake of a personal vanity, nor was she a collector of male scalps. She was in a moral quandary of the most metaphysical complexity. What should she do: shirk her evident moral responsibility and allow a bravely battling human soul to sink into iniquity or continue and permit a most ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... d'Aigrigny's dark designs. I owe myself this reparation, for having been his dupe; three or four days, I hope, will complete the work. After that, I have the certainty of meeting with a situation, in my native province, under a collector of taxes: some time ago, the offer was made me by a friend; but then I would not leave Father d'Aigrigny, notwithstanding the advantages proposed. Fancy, my dear young lady—eight hundred francs, with board and lodging! As I am a little of the roughest, I should ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for his occupation of the chair in silence, and the collector plodded off at a tangent in the direction of his next quarry. This appearing to be an old lady, he presently altered his course. With a caution bred of experience, he ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... was a sick man, I could and would have taken a rest. But, in a way, I had become accustomed to the ups and downs of a nervous existence, and, as I could not really afford a rest, six days after my graduation I entered upon the duties of a clerk in the office of the Collector of Taxes in the city of New Haven. I was fortunate in securing such a position at that time, for the hours were comparatively short and the work as congenial as any could have been under the circumstances. I entered the ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... lying old thief, many of the things he told me about Macgillivray, e.g., being an ignoramus in natural history, etc. etc., having proved to be lies. He is at any rate a very good ornithologist, and, I can testify, is exceedingly zealous in his vocation as a collector. As in these (points) Mr. —'s statements are unquestionably false, I must confess I feel greatly inclined ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... times the amount. No offer at L10? Who is it that says "five"? I trust my ears have deceived me. You repeat the insulting proposal? Well, sir, on your own head be it! Mr. Atlee's library—or the Atlee collection is better—was yesterday disposed of to a well-known collector of rare books, and, if we are rightly informed, for a mere fraction of its value. Never mind, sir, I bear you no ill-will! I was irritable, and to show you my honest animus in the matter, I beg to present you in addition with this, a handsomely-bound and gilt copy of a sermon by ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... return, these obscure, undignified people, a fat woman with asthma, an old Welsh milk-seller with a tumour on his bald head, who was the intellectual leader of the sect, a huge-voiced haberdasher with a big black beard, a white-faced, extraordinarily pregnant woman, his wife, a spectacled rate collector with a bent back.... I hear the talk about souls, the strange battered old phrases that were coined ages ago in the seaports of the sun-dry Levant, of balm of Gilead and manna in the desert, of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and arrived that evening in Ipswich. It was October, drizzling and dark; the last cab moved out as he tried to enter it, for he had been detained by his ticket which he had put for extra readiness in his glove, and forgotten—as if the ticket collector couldn't have seen it there, the 'fat chough!' He walked up to his Aunt's house, and was admitted to a mansion where a dinner-party was going on. It was impossible to persuade the servant that this ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... before the Collector of the Port, laid the matter before him frankly, paid the duty, and took the gems over to Tiffany's expert, who informed him that these sapphires were the originals from which his daughter's had been copied, ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... length of 713 miles. The rails are steel, and the road is, mile for mile, as well made as any in England. The carriages are on the American principle—the long waggons capable of seating fifty or sixty persons, with an open passage down the centre, through which the conductor and ticket collector periodically walk. The carriages are heated to distraction by means of a huge stove at either end. It is possible to open the windows, but that is to be easily accomplished only after an apprenticeship too long for the stay of the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... made the wealth of the English Church a sore temptation to him. With his imposition of a tax of one-tenth on all clerical property to defray the expenses of the crusade against the emperor, papal taxation in England takes a newer and severer phase. The rigour with which Master Stephen, the pope's collector, extorted the tax was bitterly resented. Not less loud was the complaint against the increasing numbers of foreign ecclesiastics forced into English benefices by papal authority, and without regard for the rights of the lawful patrons and electors. A league of aggrieved ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... indeed, exactly the wrong way? And, instead of limiting himself to a collection of such facts as help to answer the few problems that he might be able to set up, should he be unmindful of particular problems? Should he rather be a collector of facts at large, endeavoring to develop an interest in whatever is true, simply because it is true? Here are two quite different methods of study suggested. Probably the latter is by far the more common one among immature students. Yet the former is the one ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... buildings and more money, both for providing these and for the general outlay. It was decided to put up a main building at a cost of L2000, and in order to raise money Booker Washington had to do a good deal of travelling as a collector. He found the rich quite willing to respond in a handsome way when his needs became known; but while the work has often been stimulated by large gifts, the more numerous small gifts of commonplace people have from the first been its mainstay. Practically he was introduced to the people ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... clerk, then in business, then in the customs, and a tax collector, and having even applied for a position in the administration of woods and forests, he had at last, when he was thirty-six years old, by a divine inspiration, found his vocation: registrature! and he displayed such a high ability that an inspector had offered ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... kind of half tribute, and in others they receive from one house sixty cates from one and fifty-five from another, and it amounts to the same. There is generally an inequality in the balances used for weighing there in the field, where only God is witness, and the cabeza or collector, who weighs according to his pleasure. Not less is the deceit existing in the collection of oil, for double the amount asked from them by the king is usually taken, and the cabezas keep it; because they assess it among all ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... "A collector, sir, nothing more. Formerly I loved acquiring these beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily, ferreted them out tirelessly, and I've been able to gather some objects of great value. They're my last mementos of those shores that are now dead for me. In ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... we find the learned Lanfranc, that patron of literature, that indefatigable scribe and anxious book collector, who was endowed with an erudition far more deep and comprehensive than any other of his day. He was born at Pavia, in 1005, and received there the first elements of his education;[106] he afterwards went to Bologna, and from thence ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... back the bottom latch and seized the handle of the carriage door. At the same moment he lost his balance and was pulled off by the furious ticket collector ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Asiatic chestnuts resistant to the blight, the Division of Forest Pathology sent R. Kent Beattie to Asia to make selections of chestnuts for introduction into this country. Later Peter Liu, a Chinese collector who worked with Mr. Beattie, continued to select Chinese chestnuts for introduction. These introductions, together with the earlier ones made by the Division of Plant Exploration and Introduction, were grown at Chico, Calif., Savannah, Ga., and Bell, or Glenn Dale, Md. Altogether some 300,000 chestnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... several highly meritorious art collections: these, of Course, were open to Mr. Jefferson. He was particularly pleased with the canvases of Corot in the mansion of Sir George Drummond. That afternoon another collector showed him his gallery and pointed to a portrait of his son, for the three years past a student of art in Paris. Mr. Jefferson asked: "How can you bear to be parted from him ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was just rolling along on the ground. He put his foot out to stop the ball but the ball did not stop, but, instead, carried the man's leg off with it. He no doubt today walks on a cork-leg, and is tax collector of the county in which he lives. I saw a thoughtless boy trying to catch one in his hands as it bounced along. He caught it, but the next moment his spirit had gone to meet its God. But, poor John, we all loved him. He died ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon as it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh, every Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too. For it is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain, Mr. Faust! What ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... I'm a recruit for national service!" Even a woman doing time-honored womanly work moved with an air of distinction; she dusted a room for the good of her country. Just one glimpse was I given of the old-time daughter of Eve, when a ticket-collector at Reading said: "I can't punch your ticket. Don't you see I'm ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... It is to be regretted that this letter has evidently fallen into the hands of some autograph collector, who has ruthlessly cut off the signature; but the reader will easily determine, after careful perusal of the document, from whose pen ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... the incident was forgotten. Walter Bassett had forgotten it likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was called to the telephone by the Collector of the Port. "I just wanted to tell you," said the latter, "that the yacht Energon has arrived and gone to anchor in ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... There were two doors opening into the kitchen from without, the front door and the back door. On the former of these, there came a light tap. Now callers upon the Hamlins, in general, just pulled the latchstring and came in. Nobody tapped except the sheriff, the constable, the tax-collector and the parson, and the latter's calls had been rare since the family fortunes, never other than humble, had been going from bad to worse. So that it was not without some trepidation, which was shared by the family, that old Elnathan now rose from his seat by the chimney corner and went and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... me in clear beautiful characters by Pa.n.dit Satananda-muni (one of the disciples of Svami-Naraya.na), by order of the Wartal Maharaja, after one of the formal visits to the Wartal Temple, which were kindly arranged for me by Mr. Frederick Sheppard, C.S., late Collector of Kaira, and now Commissioner. The translation is the first ever made by any European scholar, though it is right I should mention that I have consulted a fairly accurate version (not always perfect either in its renderings or its English) written by She.th Bhogilal ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... caste in the Blue Ridge Country. They are hospitable beyond measure, I have come to know in my long years of roaming through the mountains, first as court stenographer in isolated courts, then as ballad collector. I have never entered a mountain home throughout the Blue Ridge, no matter how humble the fare, where man, woman, or child offered apology for anything, their surroundings or the food and hospitality given to the stranger ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... user of the device must feel a need for it. The new method or device not only must save him work but must clearly increase his well-being. If any device or change merely increases the wealth of someone else (a tax collector or a landlord for example), the farmer seldom will ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... suasion. When the children had told a lie directly to the mother they were punished severely. When they told a lie to a teacher or neighbor the mother was their defender and they escaped punishment. They heard their mother lie to her husband, to her neighbors, to the rent collector and the grocer. They learned not to fear a lie but to fear being discovered in it. They became clever liars and the little girl at ten was an adept. For disobedience, cheating, taking food and pennies ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... more than a speculative assent to even the most improbable of creeds. Always seeking fixity, his mind was too fluid for any anchor to hold in it. He drifted from speculation to speculation, often seeming to forget his aim by the way, in almost the collector's delight over the curiosities he had found in passing. On one page of his letters he writes earnestly to the atheist Thelwall in defence of Christianity; on another page we find him saying, "My Spinosism ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston. Two years later there was a Keniston exhibition, to which the art-critics came from New York and Boston; and not long afterward a well-known Chicago collector vainly attempted to buy Professor Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited as a rare example of the painter's first or silvery manner. Thus there gradually grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic, circles as men ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... time they died. The slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out—at right angles almost—and peer up and down the road, as if they are casually curious as to what is keeping the rent collector so late this morning. Then they shut up till late in the day, when a boy or two comes home from work. The terrace should be called "Jim's Terrace" if the road is not "James's" Road, because no bills ever seem to be paid there as they are in our street—and for other reasons. There ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... applied to by a collector of one of the local taxes for the amount of tax, his lordship said, he had already paid it, and on looking to his file, discovered a receipt, signed by the same collector who then applied for it. The tax-man, confounded, apologized in the best ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... back in the cabinet where it belonged, Stafford turned to the mantel and pointed to the Peach Blow vase, which only a few moments before had met with disaster. But the damage was not visible from a distance, and with the natural pride of a collector showing one of his most valued possessions, the railroad ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up I observed the title of one of them, "The Origin of Tree Worship," and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Concerning the priests, those of Toyama are the worst. A peasant proprietor with seven of a family and a balance at the end of the year of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the temple. Some priests threaten the farmer, saying that if he does not pay as much as is imposed on him by the collector an inferior Buddha will go past his door. Priests want to keep farmers foolish as ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... of young collectors, if they are genuine issues, have, with but few exceptions, done service on some letter or package before they find their way to the collector's hands. Unless they are too much defaced by postal marks they form as valuable specimens as if they were new, and are perhaps more interesting. To obtain full collections of new foreign stamps would be difficult and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... DEPUTY COLLECTOR FOR BOSTON.—We endorse with pleasure this from the Connecticut Catholic: We congratulate Thomas Flatley, secretary of the Land League, under the presidency of Hon. P. A. Collins, on his appointment as deputy collector of the custom house in Boston. He is a whole-souled gentleman of ability, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... you may take it that it wants everything. I don't mean furniture, or silver, or even gold-plate, or works of art, for it is full of the most magnificent old things that you can imagine. I think Uncle Roger must have been a collector, and gathered a lot of good things in all sorts of places, stored them for years, and then sent them here. But as to glass, china, delft, all sorts of crockery, linen, household appliances and machinery, cooking utensils—except of the simplest—there ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... see what I could do in that line, and to have one selected, ready to close the bargain as soon as the houses arrived. I came across a brig that had been running to Sacramento, but was condemned as a foreign bottom, when Collier, the collector, arrived there, a short time before, and extended the marine laws of the United States over California. The captain and crew were aboard. The captain was an Englishman; the crew, cosmopolitan—a Hindostan, a Mexican named Edwin Jesus, an English sailor and an American. I inquired of the captain ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... orator he pleased his hearers. This turned his head, and a spendthrift's blood runs in his veins. To bring his fair young bride to a stately mansion, he undertook the bad cause of the thievish tax-collector Pyrrhus, and cleared him." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Macbeth, or Mr. Pickwick? But a poet, howsoever artistic, howsoever dramatic, the form of his work may be, is occupied during his entire life in painting his own portrait. And if it were not for the intervention of the biographer, the reminiscence writer, or the collector of letters for publication, our conception of every poet would be true and vital according to the intelligence with which ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... down they exchanged opinions on the morning's experience. No little country coin collector could open fire on them that way, without paying some penalty. Not if they ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... either of the same persons in future, or of others; and when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case in modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of labour from those who would have rightly used them, and their appropriation to the service of the collector himself. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... curiously self-revelatory passages with which his writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as door-keeper long after it had ceased to be part of his duty. As a student of men and a collector of strange characters, it was in keeping with his genius to do so, although he himself was unable to explain why he took pleasure in the task. No one was admitted to the presence of the senior partner who did not ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... his bags and rug strap on the platform and surveyed the scene with mournful pride. "Good old Navy!" he observed to the India-rubber Man, while Thorogood went in search of food. "Good old firm! Father and mother and ticket collector and supplier of ham-sandwiches to us all. Who wouldn't sell his little farm ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... restrained himself, however, and did nothing until the train arrived in London. Then he suddenly burst away from his captor, dived between the legs of a magnificent railway guard, whose dignity and person were overthrown by the shock, eluded the ticket-collector and several policemen, and used his active little legs so well that in a few minutes his pursuers lost him in a labyrinth of low streets not far distant ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H., and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I could do or say would ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Historians in their inimitable, originals, are startled at the paradox, of Bolingbroke who boldly prefers Guicciardini to Thucydides; that is, the most verbose and tedious to the most comprehensive and concise of writers, and a collector of facts to one who was himself an eye-witness and a principal actor in the important story he relates. And, indeed, it may be well presumed, that the ancient histories exceed the modern from this single consideration, that the latter are commonly compiled by recluse scholars, unpractised ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... then, but there was no time. Mother Corey's free hand came around in an open-palmed slap that lifted the collector up from the floor and sent him reeling back against a wall. The knife fell from the crook's hand, and the dark face turned pale. He sagged ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... never was the slightest spot upon his integrity; but in those early days nobody dreamed that he was to attain any high distinction. He was at that time charged with the main military duties under the governor; later he became collector of the port of New York, and in both positions showed himself honest and capable. He was lively, jocose, easy-going, with little appearance of devotion to work, dashing off whatever he had to do with ease and accuracy. At various dinner-parties ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... to the person he had taken down, gladly turned to Edith. He always complained that the host was obliged to sit between the oldest and the most boring guests. It was unusual for him to have so pretty a neighbour as Edith. But he was a collector: his joy was to see a heterogeneous mass of people, eating and laughing at his table. For his wife there were a few social people, for him the Bohemians, and always ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... making his report, departed from the conventional forms so far as to suggest that the confiscated vessel be converted to the use of the government. The prize was the first capture to the credit of the department in ten years. The collector took opportunity to pat his ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... contents of an ample cabinet, brought together by the untired zeal of some curious collector, who tickets his rarities with numbers, and has a catalogue in many volumes, in which are recorded the description and qualities of the things presented to our view. Among the most splendid examples of character which the genius of man has brought to light, are Don Quixote and his ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Vatican, the under-painting being in umber and terraverte. Its authenticity is vouched for not only by the internal evidence of the picture itself, but also by the similarity of treatment seen in a drawing in the Royal Library at Windsor. Cardinal Fesch, a princely collector in Rome in the early part of the nineteenth century, found part of the picture—the torso—being used as a box-cover in a shop in Rome. He long afterwards discovered in a shoemaker's shop a panel of the head which belonged to the torso. The jointed panel was eventually purchased by Pope ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... greatest of thinkers and the greatest of conquerors,—seems to have borrowed the intellect of the one and the universal aspirations of the other. But because he invaded every realm of knowledge, it must not be thought he dealt with Nature at second-hand. He was a collector and a dissector. He could display the anatomical structure of a fish as well as write a treatise on the universe or on rhetoric, or government or logic, or music or mathematics. Dethroned we call him; and yet Mr. Agassiz quotes his descriptions with respect, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... measures should be adopted without the least delay. I have likewise urged the expediency of immediately removing the custom-house at Charleston to one of the forts in the port, and of making arrangements for the collection of the duties there, by having a collector and other officers ready to act when necessary, so that when the office may become vacant the proper authority may be there to collect the duties on the part of the United States. I continue to think that these arrangements should be immediately made. While the right and the responsibility ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Philadelphia lawyer now knows what law is or what law is not—for "any thing" is law here abouts. Of one result we may boast, if that be not sinful, we are ahead of thy wicked city.. Thee had thy delinquent Tax Collector, but thee has him not. We sorrowed, for we had him not, but now we rejoice in one whose name is—not BAILEY—but HILL. We did not want him, but got him involuntarily, as thee ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... From a collector so much older and better experienced in misfortune than yourself, you ask for some advice on the sport of book-hunting. Well, I will give it; but you will not take it. No; you will hunt wild, like young pointers ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... phases: the vegetative, or growing, assimilating phase, and the reproductive. The former is in many cases inconspicuous and therefore unobserved; the latter generally receives more or less attention at the hands of the collector of fungi. The vegetative phase differs from the corresponding phase of all other plants in that it exhibits extreme simplicity of structure, if structure that may be called which consists of a simple mass of protoplasm destitute of cell-walls, protean in form and amoeboid in its movements. This ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... was duly authorized to represent where necessary, and until other arrangements can be made, all the departments of the government having interests in that region. Particularly he is authorized to perform the duties of Dominion lands agent, collector of customs, and collector of inland revenue. At the same time instructions were given Mr. William Ogilvie, the surveyor referred to as having, with Dr. Dawson, been entrusted with the conduct of the first government expedition to the Yukon, to proceed ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... brought him into association and friendship with Johnson, to whom he was introduced by Dr. Percy, the collector of the "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." Goldsmith gave a supper in honour of his visitor, and when Percy called on Johnson to accompany him to their host's lodgings, to his great astonishment he found Johnson in a new suit of clothes, with a new wig, nicely powdered, perfectly dissimilar ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... every part of Georgia, and the announcement that Robert Toombs was to appear before judge and jury was enough to draw large crowds from city and country. His old habits of indomitable industry returned. He rode the circuits like a young barrister again. He was a close collector of claims, an admirable administrator, a safe counselor, and a bold and fearless advocate. In a short time General Toombs' family found themselves once more in comfort, and he was the same power with the people that he ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall |
