"Huckster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... French blood in seizing a place that cannot be held, only because it has been reported to you that there is much gold in Cartagena, and that the plunder of it will enrich you. It is worthy of the huckster who sought to haggle with us about our share, and to beat us down after the articles pledging you were already signed. If I am wrong—let M. de Cussy say so. If I am wrong, let me be proven wrong, and I will beg your pardon. Meanwhile, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... will test our willingness, though we be heirs of the kingdom, to do humble tasks. Christian men in this world are sons of a King, and look forward to a royal inheritance, but in the meantime they have, as it were, to keep a little huckster's shop in a back alley. But if we adequately realised the promise of our inheritance, the meanness of our surroundings and the triviality of our occupations would not make us mean or trivial, but our souls would be 'like stars' and 'dwell apart' while we travelled 'on life's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... political importance, being concerned with the settlement of such matters as the precise number of cherries that were to be strung on a stick and sold for a groschen at old women's fruit-stalls; the dimensions of the piece of jam that a huckster should be permitted to put in his porridge; whether the watchmen's horns really needed new mouthpieces, and, if so, whether these should be of ivory or bone. Questions which had to be given the fullest consideration and debated at prodigious length before the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... for a sportsman's pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as thus. Our sexton has ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 171,172. It may be well supposed that this would be regarded as a crime of almost inconceivable magnitude. It was death even to refuse to kneel in the streets when the wafer was carried by. Thus, for example, a poor huckster, named Simon, at Bergen-op-Zoom, who neglected to prostrate himself before his booth at the passage of the host, was immediately burned. Instances of the same punishment for that offence might be multiplied. In this particular case, it is recorded that the sheriff who was present at the execution ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and all his necessaries being laid upon his own horse equally poised on both sides, and over all was spread a covering of red felt of China, on the top of which sat the captain crosslegged, like a huckster between two paniers. Such as were old or weak in the back had a staff artificially fixed on the pannel, on which he could lean back and rest himself as if sitting in a choir. We met the captain-general of this new garrison two days after meeting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... running over the rise. Nick gave a little frightened cry. It was only a huckster's knave with a roll of fresh butter. The groat came down with a splash in the bottom of the wherry. The boatman picked it up out of the water and wiped it with his sleeve. "Here, boy, get aboard," said he, shoving off; ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a keen glance, from her sharp little eyes, to right and left. There was no one to be seen but one of the funny little twin men who kept a huckster's shop across the way. This little man was a great friend of Marian's, and he called to her now in joyous tones, as he stood in the doorway of his shop, to come over and see what he had in his pocket. Marian gave a ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... neighbour, who has the following articles for sale: viz., bacon, butter, cheese, bread, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, potatoes, red and salt herrings, smuggled liquors, and table-beer. Some add the savoury profession of the cook to that of the huckster, and dish up a little roast and boiled beef, mutton, pork, vegetables, &c. The whole of these, the reader may be assured, are of a very moderate quality: they are retailed to the lodgers at very profitable prices, and in the smallest ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... question, and repetition are all effective aids in the presentation of argument. The speeches of great orators are replete with expressions of this sort. Burke, in his Speech on Conciliation, says, "Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster"; "The public," he said, "would not have patience to see us play the game out with our adversaries; we must produce our hand"; "Men may lose little in property by the act which takes away all their freedom. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... provided with the proper tools, to supply any possible need. These men will not be in the fighting-line, but they will have a place assigned to them where they can be hired by any one who likes. [38] If any huckster wishes to follow the army with his wares, he may do so, but if caught selling anything during the fifteen days for which provisions have been ordered, he will be deprived of all his goods: after the fifteen ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... shall later have to mention in detail a patient whom we regard as belonging in the group of stupor reactions, and who for a time made insistent, impulsive and most determined suicidal attempts, yet with a peculiar blank affectless facial expression and with shouting which was more like that of a huckster than one in despair. Here also, then, there was a great deal of "push," yet not associated with that which we call in psychiatry an affect. In both instances we see acts which we are in the habit of calling for this very reason ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables, took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to require the price I had set upon my goods, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Do you think, Isa, that a man can carry his heart round to one customer after another as the huckster ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... delivered over in the ordinary manner. A thought seems to strike the fair huckster; and she stands for a moment gazing upon the face of the handsome purchaser. Is it curiosity? Or is it, perhaps, some softer emotion that has suddenly germinated in her soul? Her hesitation lasts only for an instant. With a smile that seems to solicit, she ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... an ugly one," he retorted. Whereupon he shouldered the hand-organ, grasped the curved knife, and started away. As he walked, he called aloud to every side, like a huckster. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... trackless moor for hours and hours, and often returned footsore and exhausted. She who had been accustomed only to the Canongate and High Street of Edinburgh, the tall houses with their occasional armorial bearings, the convenient huckster shops—their irregular line intersected by the strait closes, the traffic and gossip; or to the forsaken royal palace, and the cowslips of the King's Park—could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving heather, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... then it was sure to take to its heels under his very nose, directly he began to rack his brains to decide how it could most usefully be applied: on one such occasion, for example, he had seen, in a huckster's window, a pipe in the form of a boot-leg, which was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... seeing himself deserted by his principal witness and informer, Prateapace, was not sorry to veer round with the weather-cock, and was obsequiously civil. It was characteristic of our friend Gratian, that he should settle it as he did with that huckster. Going through, as it is called, the main street, I saw him engaged with Miffins, in his shop, and went in. He was talking somewhat familiarly with the man—of all subjects, on what do you suppose?—on fishing. Gratian had been a great fisherman in his day, as his rheumatic pains can now testify. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to hold his tongue, to hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at heart—a huckster still. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... But yet this Foxe could not so closely hide His craftie feates, but that they were descride 920 At length by such as sate in iustice seate, Who for the same him fowlie did entreate; And, having worthily him punished, Out of the court for ever banished. And now the Ape, wanting his huckster man, 925 That wont provide his necessaries, gan To growe into great lacke, ne could upholde His countenaunce in those his garments olde; Ne new ones could he easily provide, Though all men him uncased gan deride, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... freedom of conscience in France, to the termination of the struggle in Holland, Elizabeth baffled both friends and enemies by her vacillation and duplicity, and her utter want of faith; doling out aid in the spirit of a huckster rather than a queen, so that she was, in the end, even more hated by the Protestants of Holland and France than by the Catholics of ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... equestrian statue in bronze of the great and good king, Henri IV, which stands on its lofty pedestal and seems to be keeping guard over the splendid bridge, with its ever-rolling stream of foot-passengers, horsemen, and vehicles of every kind and description, from the superb court carriage to the huckster's hand-cart; but in a moment it was lost to view, as the chariot turned into the then newly opened Rue Dauphine. In this street was a fine big hotel, frequently patronized by ambassadors from foreign lands, with numerous retinues; for ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... against a cherry-tree, and his legs shooting out in front of him, like one who is greatly at his ease. Across his thighs was a wooden board, and scattered over it all manner of slips of wood and knobs of brick and stone, each laid separate from the other, as a huckster places his wares. He was dressed in a long gray gown, and wore a broad hat of the same color, much weather-stained, with three scallop-shells dangling from the brim. As they approached, the travellers observed that he was advanced in years, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other nation, quality, and rank whatever—shall trade or barter, now and henceforth, in the said provisions, or in any of them, in this said city or within the five leagues of its jurisdiction. No huckster shall buy or retail for his own trade or profit any of the above things, under any condition, under penalty of confiscation of everything thus found in his possession which he has bought or traded for—half to be applied to his Majesty's treasury, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... whom he is higgling; after that he can take what he likes from the booth, and the owner will not be a bit the wiser, having become as blind as the deceased cat with whose ashes he has been sprinkled. The thief may even ask boldly, "Did I pay for it?" and the deluded huckster will reply, "Why, certainly." Equally simple and effectual is the expedient adopted by natives of Central Australia who desire to cultivate their beards. They prick the chin all over with a pointed bone, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... saying? In Tyre my sons are learning navigation; in Sidon lives my daughter with her husband. I have lent half my property to the supreme council, though I do not receive even ten per cent for it. And this huckster says that ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... gone? True Feeling is not confined To the learned or lordly mind; Nor can it be bought and sold In exchange for an Alp of gold; For Nature, that never lies, Flings back with indignant scorn The counterfeit deed, still-born, In the face of the seeming wise, In the Janus face of the huckster race Who ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... speaker of the West; far the greatest number had to find out about him.[104] In a word, Mr. Lincoln gained the nomination because Mr. Seward had been "too conspicuous," whereas he himself was so little known that it was possible for Wendell Phillips to inquire indignantly: "Who is this huckster in politics? Who is this county court advocate?"[105] For these singular reasons he was the most "available" candidate who could be offered before the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... is given to few men to marry their daughters to champion boxers: and as Dutch Sam was not a Don Quixote, the average peddler or huckster never enjoyed the luxury of prancing gait and cock-a-hoop business cry. The primitive fathers of the Ghetto might have borne themselves more jauntily had they foreseen that they were to be the ancestors of mayors ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a bargain is a bargain. When I seek a parcel of ground, my purpose with it is my affair only: my neighbour fixes his price, and if it suit me I buy, and there's an end. Now I have passed my days in buying and selling and you count me a huckster. Yet we merchants have our rules of honour as well as you nobles: and if in England I bargain as I have described, it is because between me and the other man the rules are understood. But I perceive that between you and me the bargain must ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... again, but said nothing. He had been for a good many years taking in a daily landscape of stubble-field, orchard and straight country roads. His experience had taught him that a red two-story hay press was a big building. To him the huddle of huckster stands at the county fair made a pretty lively spectacle. Then he was rushed into Chicago. With the roar of wheels still in his ears and the points of the compass hopelessly mixed, he found himself being ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... but they ran considerable risk of lying in utter oblivion. He was at war with the whole guild of respectable writers who have become classics; they despised him as an illiterate fellow, a vulgar huckster, and never alluded to him except in terms of contempt. He was not slow to retort their civilities; but the retorts might very easily have sunk beneath the waters, while the assaults were preserved by their mutual support. The vast mass of Defoe's writings ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... unheard of things which no one would endure telling or hearing, but his most conspicuous acts, which it would be impossible to conceal, were the following. He would go by night, wearing a wig of long hair, into the taverns and ply the trade of a female huckster. He frequented the notorious brothels, drove out the prostitutes, and prostituted himself. Finally, he set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, standing all the time naked at the door of it, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain, which ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... sold; my friend had a good share of them in his custody, and I remember that one evening when our domestic arrangements heaped up for us insurmountable difficulties, this pile of printed matter was fortunately disposed of as waste paper to a huckster. During the days immediately following we lacked none of ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... eyes fell upon her. Then, she was not dead after all! I was not a murderer! And to complete the wonder, he was also alive. A man passing along the bank of the river, as I discovered afterward from Nighthawk, who ferreted out the whole affair—a man named Swartz, a sort of poor farmer and huckster, passing along the Nottoway, on the morning after the storm, had found the woman cast ashore, with the boat overturned near her; and a mile farther, had found Mortimer, not yet dead, in the grave. Succored by Swartz, they had both ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... father a kiss, lass, to sort of sweeten his breakfast. Are the Jays awake? Hunt them up a spade or a shovel and set them digging their neighbors out. And, Mary wife, if I were you I'd keep a pot of coffee on the range all day. There's maybe a poor teamster or huckster passing who'll be the better for a warm cup of drink, and the coffee'll keep him from thinking of ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... you and whom you desire to save, this embracing pardon for others who had shed blood, this cancelling outside of the form of law of a sentence passed by a Court duly constituted, if unjust, all in return for a loan of a pitiful L1000? You huckster well, Lady Harflete, one would think that your father had been a chapman, not rough John Foterell, you who can drive so shrewd a ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... brave, was blind, Squire Sancho just a trifle credulous, But our dear Don was nobly kind, And in the cause of suffering sedulous. If, mounting MALAMBRUNO's steed, He showed more sanguine than sagacious, He was not moved by huckster greed, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... from the country, who has come to the city to sell eggs (shown to be such by her head-dress, and the form of the basket which she has deposited on the ground), accosts a vender of roast chestnuts and asks for a measure of them. The chestnut huckster says they are very fine and asks a price beyond that of the market; but a boy sees that the rustic woman is not sharp in worldly matters and desires to warn her against the cheat. He therefore, at the moment when he can catch her eye, pretending ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... had formerly contained, side by side with the argicultural labourers, an interesting and better-informed class, ranking distinctly above the former—the class to which Tess's father and mother had belonged—and including the carpenter, the smith, the shoemaker, the huckster, together with nondescript workers other than farm-labourers; a set of people who owed a certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact of their being lifeholders like Tess's father, or copyholders, or occasionally, small freeholders. But as the long holdings fell in, they were seldom ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... laden with country produce enters the settlement from the farms behind it. Every housewife drops her broom, and rushes out to waylay the huckster, and induce him to sell her the provisions already engaged to her neighbor. Happy she, if stout enough of arm to convey her booty home with her; for if she trust the vendor to leave it at her house, even after paying him his price, she may bid good-bye ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... into it a bed, a table, and a few chairs, with some other necessary articles which she still had, and then buy some kind of vegetables with about five dollars that were due her, and go to market as a huckster! Let not the sentimental and romantic turn away in disgust. When humanity is reduced to a last resource, be it what it may, the heart endures pains, and doubts, and fears of a like character, whether the resource be that offered to a noble lady, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... explain to him the three successive enjoyments which we have had to-day after dinner,—tea, coffee, and snuff? By what perception or sensation familiar to them, would you account for the modern use of the three vulgar elements, which we see notified on every huckster's stall?—or paint the more refined beatitude of a young barrister comfortably niched in one of our London divans, concentrating his ruminations over a new Quarterly, by the aid of a highly-flavoured Havannah?" The doctor's friend, whose ingenuity is not easily taken at fault, answered, "By friction, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... to be of the same nature with the project into which they had attempted to make the daughter enter, by promising to procure her and her mother, by means of Madam d'Epinay, a salt huckster's license, or snuff-shop; in a word, by tempting her with the allurements of gain. They had been told that, as I was not in a situation to do anything for them, I could not, on their account, do anything for myself. As in all this I saw nothing but good intentions, I was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... by the house, she heard a voice talking to Joel,—the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought as anything true and healthy should have done. "Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... further away than it is, fluttered from the broken windows of the fifth story. All the shops were open; there did not seem to be any buyers, but if there were, they might get supplied. The very old huckster women sat by their baskets of very small and very wizened apples, and infinitesimal pears that had forgotten to grow. Two women, one in a third-story window and one on the street, were exchanging strong compliments. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... a stocking full of money," he informed us, "silver, and copper, and gold, when he married her, for her mother had been a famous huckster—and never missed her post in the Philadelphia market for thirty years, and this was her child's inheritance, and with this money he had fixed up his old hut, till it looked 'e'en a'most inside like ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... small. Tyranny! I have not heard the word mentioned once in fifty years, and now it is more common than salt-fish, the word is even current on the market. If you are buying gurnards and don't want anchovies, the huckster next door, who is selling the latter, at once exclaims, "That is a man, whose kitchen savours of tyranny!" If you ask for onions to season your fish, the green-stuff woman winks one eye and asks, "Ha! you ask for onions! are you seeking to tyrannize, or do you think that Athens ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... and Greene avenues we thought it well to ask our way. A lady was standing on the corner, lost in pleasant drowse. April sunshine shimmered all about: trees were bustling into leaf, a wagonload of bananas stood by the curb and the huckster sang a gay, persuasive madrigal. We approached the lady, and Titania spoke gently: "Can you tell me——" The lady screamed, and leaped round in horror, her face stricken with fearful panic. She gasped and tottered. We felt guilty and cruel. "We were not meditating ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... cried to you the early peas or the wood or the melons of the season. You may remember, too, how perplexing, how fantastic, many of those cries were, making it impossible for you to understand what they meant, or why a wood-huckster, for example, should give vent to such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... class in Paris did not hold a high position. The merchant was too much of a shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper was too much of a huckster. The smallest sale involved a long course of bargaining. This was perhaps partly due to the fact, admirable in itself, that the wife was generally united with her husband in the management of the shop. The customary law of Paris ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Staffy: Mike Merrick the huckster has an apple garden bought against the harvest. He should likely be seeking for a dog. There do be little lads passing to ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... follow that one is a bookman because he has many books, for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which a gentleman's library is not complete. And in the present imperfect arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... although well versified, had not, however, the fortune to please him. He found those verses too methodical for poetry; and the poet, moreover, seemed to him somewhat a huckster, and in bad taste. The satirists might do what they liked, they never had his friendship. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... near my price, and strove to make me take the gold. But what is bred in the bone will out; I am a gentleman born, not a huckster, and the book I gave him freely. May it profit the good knight in his devotions! But now, come, they are weary waiting for us; the hour waxes late, and Elliot, I trow, is long abed. You must begone ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... agriculture and improve The breed of cabbages, especially The Brassica Celeritatis, named For you because in days of long ago You sold it at your market stall,—and, faith, 'Tis said you were an honest huckster then. I'll be Attorney-General if you Prefer; for know I ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... find that silver tube in your cellar then. But listen! When Gungadhura comes to your husband and insists on digging elsewhere, let your husband bargain like a huckster! Let him at first refuse. It may be that Gungadhura will let him continue where he digs, and will himself send men to start digging in the other place. In that case, well ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... angry words, and told her that he was no huckster. He then begged her to don her garments, as he desired to have speech with her. After her women had attired her, Graelent took her by the hand and, leading her a little space away from her attendants, told her that he had fallen deeply in love with her. But ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the songless spirit of this age Has slain the ancient music, or that ears Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know: The streets grow more discordant with the years; And that which bids the huckster sing no more, Will drive the flower-woman from ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... but I suspect that it had been dusted and laid out for my coming. I request my hostess that next time, for my vanity, she lay the book face down upon a chair, as though the grocer's knock intruded. Or perhaps a huckster's cart broke upon her enjoyment. Let it be thought that a rare bargain—tender asparagus or the first strawberries of the summer—tempted her off my pages! Or maybe there was red rhubarb in the cart and the jolly farmer, as he journeyed ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... write the note. You know Mrs. Creamer every bit as well as I," protested Mrs. Nailor, "and I have already asked for at least a dozen. There are Mrs. Wyndham and Lady Stobbs, who were here last winter; and that charming Lord Huckster, who was at Newport last summer; and I don't know how many more—so you will have to get the invitation ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page |
