"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always the best. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have with the vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary to the expectations of society. Society expects every man to have certain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches and free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tired garden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrows when he observes, "Ah! I see you ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... obligatory upon the students and upon those clerical members of the faculty who conducted the services. Personally he was drawn thither by the peculiar flavour which the exercises gave his daily life. It was pleasant to sit alone in his pew against the wall above the tiers of students, to watch the morning sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows, and to listen to the antiphonal singing of a fine old Rouen meditation. Occasionally the services began with a Sapphic ode by Gregory the Great, whose opening line, Ecce iam noctis ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... fact, he was as truly a part of the Church as was the pulpit on the platform or the bell in the steeple. No meeting was complete without him. He was an indispensable part of the service. He always sat in the same pew, and none coming into the Church previously to Deacon Gramps ever dared sit in his pew any more than they dared to monopolize the preacher's chair in the pulpit. He always enjoyed the double pleasure of chewing his tobacco and hearing the sermon simultaneously, and this necessitated ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... I must confess, not a little to my discomposure, when I rose in the reading-desk on the day after this dinner with Dr Duncan, I saw that the Hall-pew was full. Miss Oldcastle was there for the first time, and, by her side, the gentleman whom the day before I had encountered on horseback. He sat carelessly, easily, contentedly—indifferently; for, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the meeting-house on the Sabbath, not because they were irreligious or vicious, but either because they lived far from the rendezvous, or because they did not find it a matter of private conscience with them to sit in a pew and listen to a sermon. Moreover, it was the rule among Calvinists that no one could join in the Communion service who had not "experienced religion"; and many excellent persons might entertain conscientious doubts whether this mysterious subjective phenomenon had taken ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... receives the bride from her father's hand. The latter steps back a few paces, but remains near enough to "give away the bride." When this point in the ceremony has been passed, the father quietly joins the mother in the front pew. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... and none at all, I think, has so imperceptibly retired from the Church of England. For all the interest it excited, the secession of this extremely brilliant person might have been the secession of a sacristan or a pew-opener. He did not so much "go over to Rome" as sidle away ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... the church opposite the ship, and heard mass. The congregation was very large, composed chiefly of blacks—women. We were politely shown into the trustees' pew. A short sermon, chiefly addressed to some young persons who had just made their first communion, was delivered by a good-looking young priest, who had fair command of language, and was easy ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... small room, lighted scarcely at all by a narrow window, and it contained a few straight wooden pews one of which had been turned about facing the wall. He lay down in his pew, and, even in daylight, he would have been hidden from anyone a yard away. The hard wood was soft to him. He put his cap under his head and stretched himself out. Then, without will, he relaxed completely. Nature could stand no more. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and less active. Early friendships were gradually forgotten, and the first natural desire to see early friends prosperous like himself, gradually died out. "Every man for himself," became the leading principle of his life; and he acted upon it on all occasions. In taking a pew in church and regularly attending worship every Sabbath, he was governed by the idea that it was respectable to do so, and gave a man a standing in society, that reacted favourably upon his worldly interests. In putting ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... which a man's duties to both, may be accommodated and adjusted. How the carriages rattle up, and deposit their richly- dressed burdens beneath the lofty portico! The powdered footmen glide along the aisle, place the richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each other through their glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the few shabby people in the free seats. The organ peals forth, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... had christened her and every Sunday had cast glances of interest and affection at her as she sat in the great "loose box" of a pew, found it very difficult to read the solemn service without breaking down, and his old thin voice quavered as he spoke the words of hope and consolation which the storm of wind and rain caught up and swept across the narrow church-yard ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... breast. All three horses reared at the report and flash, and Mr. Fraser fell dead on the ground. Karim galloped off, followed at a short distance by the trooper, and the two peons went off and gave information to Major Pew and Cornet Robinson, who resided near the place. They came in all haste to the spot, and had the body taken to the deceased's own house; but no signs of life remained. They reported the murder to the magistrate, and the city gates were closed, as the assassin ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... said, "is, or was, my pew. It is true that I am a little in arrears on pew rent, but I think I may venture to invite ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... broad aisle, she saw nothing in the building or the people around her that was not strange no familiar face, no familiar thing. But it was a church, and she was alone, quite alone in the midst of that crowd; and she went up to the empty pew and ensconced herself in the far corner of it, with a curious feeling of quiet and of being at home. She was no sooner seated, however, than, leaning forward as much as possible to screen herself from observation, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... with his father and mother, found their way to the church which he had attended years before. Many eyes were upon him as he was shown into the pew. All the town had heard of Tom Pollard's return, but few expected to see him at church that night. For some time Tom was very self-conscious, and it is to be feared that he thought little of the service; more than once, too, he caught ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... enabled to declare that the marriage had taken place by license at a church in the district where Trimblett was staying. As a help to identification she added that the church was built of stone, and that the pew-opener had a cough. Tiresome questions concerning the marriage certificate were disposed of by leaving it in the captain's pocket-book. And again she declared that she was tired of ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... is as simple as it can be made. In the Chapel Royal, St. James's, after the reading of the sentence at the offertory, "Let your light so shine before men," etc., while the organ plays, two members of Her Majesty's household, wearing the royal livery, descend from the royal pew, and, preceded by the usher, advance to the altar rails, where they present to one of the two officiating clergymen a red bag, edged with gold lace or braid, which is received in an alms dish, and then reverently placed upon the altar. This bag, or purse, is understood to contain the Queen's ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children besides the baby, and being but a woman, it was the pride of her life to march them into the T'nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared not disbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. The congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when they sung ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I took the responsibility of telling husbands how they ought to treat their wives—and, though I noticed that some of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well—I now take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... and monotonic grind of their intellectual machines, made this remarkable one the ground of discourse to their congregations. More especially than the rest, the first priest of the great temple where was the royal pew, judged himself, from his relation to the palace, called upon to 'improve the occasion', for they talked ever about improvement at Gwyntystorm, all the time they were going down hill ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... with his aunt to attend a missionary meeting. After the minister had ended his sermon, as he sat in the pew he whispered to his aunt, saying, "I wish you would lend me a guinea and I will give it to you again when we get home." His aunt asked him what he wanted of his guinea; he told her he wished to put it in the box when it came round, to assist ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... Sir,' said the clerk. 'They sits in the gallery. The chancel is for Mr. Underwood's family—the Rector, Sir. They seats was just put up instead of the red baize pew before old Mr. Underwood as was then died, and your poor papa went away. And that there font was put, as 'tis there, just when the twin young ladies ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what troubles me, mother," said Frank; "for, while I was sitting so still, and you thought I was attending to the sermon, I was all the while watching a pretty little dog, that was running from pew to pew, trying to find his master; and when he got on the pulpit step, and rolled off, I came so near laughing that I was obliged to put my handkerchief to my mouth, and make believe ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... In a pew near to the altar Victor sat weeping like a child, and when the last Amen was uttered, he sprang to his ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... see a person a good deal beyond the ether side of Jordan before they would think of handing him a Prayer Book. We don't suppose any of them are so precise as the old gentleman who once, when a stranger entered his pew, doubled up the cushion, sat upon it in a two-fold state, and intimated that ordinary beards were good enough for interlopers; but after all there is much of the "number one" principle in the devotion of these goodly followers of the saints, and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... youth to whom life was a very pretty thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he must have pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope for the making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped him like a church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy," ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... sincerity. We are anxious to be convinced, if conviction is possible. Praying for rain in a watery climate is one thing, praying for rain where none ever falls is another. If the clergy can bring down a fruitful shower on the African sands, we shall cry, "A miracle," and send them a quarter's pew-rent. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Lancashire, where some pews have posts at the corners like an old-fashioned four-posted bed. Sometimes two feet above the top of the woodwork there were brass rods on which slender curtains ran, and were usually drawn during sermon time in order that the attention of the occupants of the pew might not be distracted from devout meditations on the preacher's discourse—or was it to woo slumber? A Berkshire dame rather admired these old-fashioned pews, wherein, as she naively expressed it, "a body might sleep ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... quite a feature of the Communion Service to see the state and ceremony with which the Holy Eucharist was carried down the aisle to the Bray's family pew, where the old lady sat, huddled and alone in one of the corners, like a dead body covered clumsily with a black pall. One of the parishioners, who had not that good fortune of being personally acquainted with Lady Bray declared that she really almost objected to this invariable ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Shorter Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as if the exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the second to move the big Bible slightly, to show that ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... vertical, not horizontal. Religious and intellectual lines are only less so. The politician cannot afford to ignore a single vote, and the working man's counts as much as the plutocrat's. There are few churches that do not have representatives of all classes, from the gilded pew-holder to the workman with dingy hands who sits under the gallery. The school is no respecter of class lines. The store, the street-car, and the railroad are all common property, where one jostles another without regard to class. Friendship oversteps all ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the Sabbath, he went with Hannah and Reuben and the professor to church. He had almost shrunk from this duty, in his dread of meeting Claudia there; but she was not present. Judge Merlin's pew was empty when they entered, and remained empty during the whole of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and I have heard very old people refer to him as "Lawyer Redin," and speak of the green baize bag which he always carried back and forth to his office, the forerunner of the present-day brief case, and I know an old lady who can remember him in his pew in Christ Church. He had five daughters and one son. The young man, Richard Wright Redin, soon after his graduation from Princeton, fell a victim to cholera, that terrible disease brought to George Town in its ships. It also carried off a young sister, Fanny, who was a little beauty, ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... wife and I to White Hall; and there, by means of Mr. Cooling, did get into the play, the only one we have seen this winter: it was "The Five Hours' Adventure:" but I sat so far I could not hear well, nor was there any pretty woman that I did see, but my wife, who sat in my Lady Fox's pew ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... alive to the danger of the inherited taste for drink in her son. The stern, uncompromising Presbyterian minister of the town, in whose church the widow had a pew, was temperate, but not an abstainer; in fact, it was his custom to close the day with a short prayer and a tall glass of whiskey and water. While, with his advice, she had entirely buried her doctrinal scruples on the selling of drink to the moderate, her mother-heart ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hanging up the last strip of his background from the brass rail along the ceiling. Within, the Manchester shop window was cut off by a partition rather like the partition of an old-fashioned church pew from the general space of the shop. There was a panelled barrier, that is to say, with a little door like a pew door in it. Parsons' face appeared, staring with ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... you to stop looking at me and to take a good look at the wood out of which the pew ahead of you is made. [If necessary, revise the following sentences to meet your immediate conditions.] You will notice that the pew is made up of a good many pieces of oak fastened together so nicely that you can hardly ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... There was the rub. But now, the crisis being safely passed, I may tell that they would—that they very nearly did—and that the thing that prevented them was nothing more nor less than the moving of the Customs pew in the British Legation Chapel from the front of the church to the back. So do great events ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... The family pew was a little too near the pulpit, but it was most comfortable. When the sermon came on I settled myself in a restful corner to listen to the Archdeacon. After a moment or two I felt he was on sound orthodox lines and needed no supervision of mine. I leant back and gradually ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... quickly raised, "A wreck in the bay!" The shout that naturally followed was, "The lifeboat!" A stalwart Cornish gentleman sprang from his pew to serve his Master in another field. He was the Honorary Local Secretary of the Lifeboat Institution—a man brimful of physical energy, and with courage and heart for every good work. No time was lost. Six powerful horses were procured so quickly that it seemed as if they ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... chapel to themselves and, sitting beside her in a pew, Raymond asked her to marry him. Thunder had wakened in the sky, and the glare of lightning touched their faces now and then. But they only ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... presented an appropriate design for a monument, and sufficient subscriptions having been obtained for the purpose, he superintended its erection. On Tuesday afternoon, March 18th, 1884, the monument, which was affixed to the wall of the church where the gallery containing Pepys's pew formerly stood, was unveiled in the presence of a large concourse of visitors. The Earl of Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, consented to unveil the monument, but he was at the last moment prevented by public ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... evergreens, conjuring him the while not to disappoint our hopes, but to take Richmond. Alas! you may know, by this time, that he can't; but in lack of news since a week ago, I can but hope for the best. I've taken a pew and we contrive to squeeze into it in this wise: first a child, then a mother, then a child, then an Annie, then a child, the little ones being stowed in the cracks left between us big ones. Mr. R., the parson, looking ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial an' magnificent. Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the Quane happens to be takin' a ride. "Women an' priests!" sez I. "Your father's son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin's." Six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins—not more than fifty av them—an' we grated an' bumped like ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... also instructed My intrepid aviators to reserve a pew for Me intact among the ruins of Notre Dame de ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... paint is that peculiar yellow dun which belongs to Georgian and early Victorian aesthetics. But the value of the church is that it is untouched. No restorer has laid a hand on the mouldering baize which lines the pews; no one has knocked down the hideous galleries; nobody has broken into the gallery pew in which, warmed by a fireplace and chimney in winter, the little Princess Victoria of Kent used to sit when she was allowed to visit Claremont. You may see at Esher, better than in any other Surrey church, the surroundings in which our Georgian ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... her life a perpetual sabbath unto the Lord. But the child, because she was of a tender age, could not always accompany her, nor understand why she must always clasp her hands, and kneel down in the pew, when the vicar did the same in his little pulpit. But she was a good child for all that, as the story will show, and loved her mother with an ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... miserable by a succession of hysterical tears. By no means. She made an effort to be serene, and the effort was successful—as such efforts usually are. On the morning of Christmas-day they duly attended church, and Lady Mason was seen by all Hamworth sitting in The Cleeve pew. In no way could the baronet's friendship have been shown more plainly than in this, nor could a more significant mark of intimacy have been given;—all which Sir Peregrine well understood. The people of Hamworth had chosen to talk scandal about Lady Mason, but he at any rate would ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... fragments of emerald and ruby glass of a saint's robe, in a bricked up window. Such buried and forgotten treasure, Glenormiston explained, filled the entire south transept. In the High Kirk, that then filled the eastern end of the cathedral, they went up a cheap wooden stairway, to the pew-filled gallery that was built into the old choir, and sat down. Mr. Traill's eyes sparkled. Glenormiston was a man after his own heart, and they were getting along famously; but, oh! it began to seem more and more unlikely that a Lord Provost, who was concerned about such braw things as the restoration ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... key whence they started. And it was as the renunciation of some terrible striving, as though the organ chanted the litany of some perfect calm reached through an agony of endeavour and suffering. Wilhelmine's eyes were wet, while she leaned her head against the back of the oaken pew. To her music was the only form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded, and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Exeter street where Edith had spent much of her life. Far back in the past she could just remember a charming Surrey village with a pretty vine-covered church where Daddy used to preach. She could recall exactly how her fat legs dangled helplessly from the high pew seat. Directly behind sat a stout farmer with four sons. The boys made faces at Edith on the sly; their mother sometimes ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... and by mere force of numbers so impressing the ushers that the very front pews were vacated in their behalf, although the farrier protested against this. However, he wasn't sorry to have his company all together, and motioned Dorothy into the same pew with himself, and to a place directly under the pulpit. Into this, also, they led the still drowsy Luna, Dorothy gently settling her in the corner with her head resting upon the pew's back, and here she slept on during most of the service. Here, also, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... he looked straight down into the tall Rectory pew, and once or twice his eyes involuntarily sought its occupants. Once, indeed, he paused in his discourse. It was after the words— "We are totally mistaken if we persuade ourselves that Christ was lenient towards sin. He made ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... murmured Laxdale as the door was unceremoniously pushed open and another of the "One Pip" officers made his appearance. "Look alive, Danvers, and don't stand there looking in the air. Walk in and take a pew, ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... unfair to estimate Dr. Buchanan from his pulpit appearances only. Listening to his discourses from the pew, one can form but a faint conception of the greatest merits—the strongest points—of the minister of the Free College Church. It is in the ecclesiastical Forum that Dr. Buchanan is found most in his element; there, like Mark Tapley, he comes out the stronger, the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... and devotional books, and one who seemed to burn the midnight oil in pursuit of God. His book is the result of long meditation and much prayer. It is not a collection of sermons. It does not deal with the pulpit and the pew but with the soul athirst for God. The chapters could be summarized in Moses' prayer, "Show me thy glory," or Paul's exclamation, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" It is theology not of the head but ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... back by policemen, and insulted by footmen—but in vain. Then I tried the fashionable churches, one by one; and sat in the free seats, to listen to prayers and sermons, not a word of which, alas! I cared to understand, with my eyes searching carefully every pew and gallery, face by face; always fancying, in self-torturing waywardness, that she might be just in the part of the gallery which I could not see. Oh! miserable days of hope deferred, making the heart sick! Miserable gnawing of disappointment with which I returned at nightfall, to ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the same. There was a good deal of free inquiry at Homerton Academy, which, however, Mr. Fox assured me, gradually subsided into the right amount of orthodoxy as the time came for the student to exchange his sure and safe retreat for the fiery ordeal of the deacon and the pew. My father and Johnson Fox had been fellow-students, and for some time corresponded together. The correspondence in due time, however, naturally ceased, as it was chiefly controversial, and nothing can be more irksome than for two people ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... my house—at least it is my pew, and I will do in it what I please.—Look here, Mr. Wingfold: I don't want to lose my temper with you, but I tell you that pew is mine, as much as the chair you're not ashamed to sit upon at this moment! And let me tell you, after the way I've been ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... determined to insert it. My heart's desire is, that it may be blessed to all who read it.—As I passed the Centenary Chapel this evening, a gentleman thus accosted me: 'You don't know me.' I answered, 'No sir.' He rejoined, 'I sat in your pew about nine years ago. Mr. Curnock preached about Noah's Ark; and a word you spoke to me afterward, forcibly impressed my mind. You said, 'Get into the Ark,' and now I have got into the Ark.' I had no remembrance of the circumstance, but am thankful he has got in. To God be ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... time, Charles G. Wheeler to remain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations, and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on the left side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plate at the end of a front pew. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... shrine that has too long ignored The gifts that once I brought so frequently I lay this votive offering, to record How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me. Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing To vent in crowded nave and public pew. My creed is simple: that the world is fair, And beauty the best thing to worship there, And I confess ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... formerly of Drumquag, who was ruined by having a legacy bequeathed to him of two shares in the Ayr bank. His hopes on the present occasion are founded on a very distant relationship, upon his sitting in the same pew with the deceased every Sunday, and upon his playing at cribbage with her regularly on the Saturday evenings—taking great care never to come off a winner. That other coarse-looking man, wearing his own greasy hair ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... tell any one, then. It was in church this morning. There was an old woman in front of me, and she'd untied her bonnet, and the ribbons fell over in our pew. She went fast asleep in the sermon, and nodded her head back till it almost tumbled off her head, and Ipse thought if I would put out my hand and just give a tiny, weeny pull at the ribbon, it would come ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Not so Sir Guy. It was his great delight to create as much noise and confusion as possible, that on his entrance the respectable yeomen and humble parishioners might be dazzled with his glory, and whisper one to another, "That be Sir Guy," as he marched to the front of his family pew in a blaze of wondrous apparel. It was natural that he should create a sensation with his red face and gaudy-coloured clothes, and huge, dyed whiskers, and the eternal flower in his mouth, which was always ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... more difficulties. Drina learnt her letters like an angel; and she learnt other things as well. The Baroness de Spath taught her how to make little board boxes and decorate them with tinsel and painted flowers; her mother taught her religion. Sitting in the pew every Sunday morning, the child of six was seen listening in rapt attention to the clergyman's endless sermon, for she was to be examined upon it in the afternoon. The Duchess was determined that her daughter, from the earliest ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... looked round the table for a comparison—'ah, than that jug has! He's talked the Vicar into getting them little bags for collections now, all because he was jealous at the clerk's putting the plate inside my pew reg'lar for me to hold. It isn't that I care about 'olding a plate, but to see 'Umpage smirking round with one of them red velvet bags makes me downright sick—they'll drive me to go over and be a Baptist one of these ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... fellow of your town, one Tisdall,(10) lodges in the same house with me. Patrick told me Squire Tisdall and his lady lodged here. I pretended I never heard of him; but I knew his ugly face, and saw him at church in the next pew to me, and he often looked for a bow, but it would not do. I think he lives in Capel Street, and has an ugly fine wife in a fine coach. Dr. Freind and I dined in the City by invitation, and I drank punch, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Shakespeare. 'Romance, however,' Flora went on, busily arranging Mr F.'s Aunt's toast, 'as I openly said to Mr F. when he proposed to me and you will be surprised to hear that he proposed seven times once in a hackney-coach once in a boat once in a pew once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells and the rest on his knees, Romance was fled with the early days of Arthur Clennam, our parents tore us asunder we became marble and stern reality usurped the throne, Mr F. said very much ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Greenwood's voice among the singers, but at the close of the second verse it rose above all others. "Lads and lasses of the chapel singing-pew," he cried, "we will better that kind of stuff. Sing up to the tune of Olivet," and to this majestic melody he started in a clarion-like voice ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge. To complete ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Donald and Elsie in the courts of Zion, and great peace was upon their brows. When I ascended the pulpit stairs, they were already in their ancestral pew, now the property of Hector Campbell, who had abandoned it with joy, only asking that he be given one in the gallery from which he might see ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... The bells of the village church had just finished ringing when the stranger walked up the aisle and entered, as if at random, a pew which happened to be vacant. Instantly every eye was turned towards him, for a new face was too important an object in Hodnet to be left unnoticed. "Who is he?" "When did he come?" "With whom does he stay?" "How long will he be here?" "How old may he be?" "Do ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... paused, flushed and breathless with her defence, and Christie said, candidly: "I did like the freedom and good-will there, for people sat where they liked, and no one frowned over shut pew-doors, at me a stranger. An old black woman sat next me, and said 'Amen' when she liked what she heard, and a very shabby young man was on the other, listening as if his soul was as hungry as his body. People read books, laughed and cried, clapped when pleased, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Now, the fellow had a horrible dread of staying alone in the church by night, so he took the cook, Jeremias Bild, along with him; and after they had laid the letter down upon the altar, they crept both of them into a high pew close by, belonging to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... accident. At the persuasion of Wildman he changed his plan;[a] and on the 9th of January, about six in the evening, entered Whitehall with his two accomplices; he unlocked the door of the chapel, deposited in a pew a basket filled with inflammable materials, and lighted a match, which, it was calculated, would burn six hours. His intention, was that the fire should break out about midnight; but Took had already revealed the secret to Cromwell, and all ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... He would show them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an 'old Johnny' in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs hastily, and stand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the hymn says. Wal, you'd better believe there was a starin' and a wonderin' next Sunday mornin' when the second bell was a tollin', and the minister walked up the broad aisle with Huldy, all in white, arm in arm with him, and he opened the minister's pew, and handed her in as if she was a princess; for, you see, Parson Carryl come of a good family, and was a born gentleman, and had a sort o' grand way o' bein' polite to women-folks. Wal, I guess there was a rus'lin' among the bunnets. Mis' ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Eliph' Hewlitt at the door, uttered a little cry of joy and darted toward him. She put her finger to her lips and slipped out of the door and drew him to the seat that had once been a church pew, but was now doing duty as a garden-seat under an apple tree in the side yard. On Eliph's face was no longer the care-worn expression of the rejected lover, but the full glow of confidence, ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... gained nothing for the world was pretty evident to the minister the following Sunday—from the lofty watchtower of the pulpit where he sat throned, while the first psalm was being sung. His own pew was near one of the side doors, and at that door some who were late kept coming in. Amongst them were a stranger or two, who were at once shown to seats. Before the psalm ended, an old man came in and stood by the door—a ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... illumination of a treacherous lamp. The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs. Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her even ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... preparation for the reviews; and when the gala is ended, I would have them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the school-masters in our locality I bequeath one golden augustus. Item, to the Jews of this place I bequeath my pew in the high church.—As I would wish that my will should be divided into clauses, this is considered to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... from a brave young officer, since killed. "I drifted into the —— Parish Church last evening to hear the organ and the singing. I was pushed into a pew up in the front, and so could not escape until the end of the service. I could have wept when I heard the sermon; it was a dreadful medieval picture of Heaven and Hell, and a dreadful curse on all the German people as being ready for 'Hell.' ... The whole service was as artificial as one ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... closes of the days of a thousand years; and in the pale ray an artist sat sketching a stretch of the clerestory. I shall always feel a loss in not having looked to see how he was making out, but the image of the pew-opener remains compensatively with me. She was the first of her sort to confront me in England with the question whether her very intelligent comment was conscious knowledge, or mere parrotry. She was a little morsel of a woman, in a black alpaca dress, and a world-old black ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... into the right hand gallery, the other into the left, exceptions being however made in behalf of the owners of the square pews, who enjoyed the privilege of having their families with them in the house of God. Across the middle of the end gallery Dr. Partridge's square pew extended, so that by no means might the occupants of the two side galleries come within ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... "not particularly; a walk under the 'broad canopy' is preferable on a beautiful morning like this to a poky little pew; and I like the singing of the birds better than the humming of a ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Whom we all have to think of nowadays, I would have changed the Creed a very little? Not that she ever had to ask me not to; It never got so far as that; but the bare thought Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew, And of her half asleep was too much for me. Why, I might wake her up and startle her. It was the words 'descended into Hades' That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth. You know they suffered from a general onslaught. ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... lighted by windows of rich stained glass. The pews were wide, the backs low, and the doors and mouldings were of polished oak; the cushions and linings were of crimson damask, and light fans for real use were hung in each pew. The pulpit and reading-desk, both of carved oak and of a tulip shape, were placed in front of the communion-rails, on a spacious platform ascended by three steps—this, the steps, and the aisles of the church were carpeted with beautiful Kidderminster carpeting. The singing ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... one of the high old pews. Through a crack she could look into the next pew; and there they stood. She heard the old man: "Whist, Molly, let's be getting out of this! HE is here with all his grand friends. Don't let ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... church," said she, "as most of you did last night, to see the burying, and, being very weary, I sat me down in Mr. Johns's pew, and fell fast asleep. At eleven of the clock I awoke; which I believe was in some measure occasioned by the clock's striking, for I heard it. I started up, and could not at first tell where I was; but after some time I recollected the funeral, and soon found that I was shut in the church. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... down and covered my face. And from the pew behind me some one leaned over and patted ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... occupied a pew at Stockbridge in front of the pulpit and just under the gallery, which ran round three sides of the church. That pew was rarely vacant on a Sunday. There was no herding to be done on that day, and in the morning the father looked the sheep in the parks himself ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... reflected sadly that he was about to leave for ever the little world in which he had been so happy. General Bramble was standing gravely at attention, and singing as solemnly as if he were in his pew ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... some places for gentlemen who may be already in a slip or pew to deploy into the aisle, on the arrival of a lady who may desire admittance, allow her to enter, and then resume their seats. This is a ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... his mother for the absence of her two younger boys that he could avoid thinking of Barbara. There was a busy exchange of presents after dinner, and next day he accompanied his parents to church, as he had done for five and twenty years, finding peace and a welcome in the worm-eaten pew, the cobwebbed window, the top-heavy decorations and the familiar musty books. The state prayers were invoked therein on behalf of "Victoria, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales and all the Royal Family." And there was an old hymnal ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... already married Winthrop to Vera in Grace Church, with herself in the front pew, in a blue silk dress, received this unexpected evidence of his rare wit with delight. In ecstasy of appreciation she ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... stood in the belfry at the boy's elbow. He wore his surplice, and held his prayer-book, with a finger between the pages. Glancing down toward the nave, he saw Humility sitting in the big vicarage pew—no other soul in church. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... English storms, but rather Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive something of personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which I cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about, and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an old Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin lamp turned low, whose ray served me for veilleuse through ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... demand, the business man still stands largely in a class by himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of man, if he draw near ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so fluttered and troubled ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... music from the choir. Sylvia, feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an anaesthetic, she were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people about her. The woman in front of her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... ye that want to go to Heaven, and buy my penny weekly guide, and pay my pew-rates; and, pray ye, have nothing to do with my misguided brother over the road. This is the ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... up the aisle and into their pew, for fear of coming face to face with Jimmy; she remains a few moments on her knees, and so does not interfere with Teddy, who having hurried through his own private devotions, turns round and watches the ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... her daughter rustle into their pew at church—placed next in honour to that of the proprietor of the soil—all eyes are turned upon them. The old-fashioned farmer's wife, who until her years pressed heavily upon her made the cheese and butter in her husband's dairy, is not so old ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... and wisdom lies mainly in a just sense of proportion and degree. That sanitary reform, promoted by governments, has on the whole been a great blessing seems to me scarcely open to reasonable question, but many of the best judges are of opinion that it may easily be pushed to dangerous extremes. Pew things are more curious than to observe how rapidly during the past generation the love of individual liberty has declined; how contentedly the English race are submitting great departments of their lives to a web of regulations restricting and encircling them. Each individual ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... for half a second. Eight men, all of them under thirty-five, in top physical condition. He was fifteen years older than the oldest and had confined his exercise, in the words of Chauncey de Pew, to "acting as pallbearer for my friends who take exercise." Not that he was really in poor shape, but he certainly couldn't have argued with eight ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the family pew, he pulled out a book from his capacious breast-pocket, and as he anticipated a long period of uninterrupted peace, he commenced to peruse it. It was "Tottel's Miscellany," a collection of amorous sonnets, and little love sonnets and little love songs, and he read page after page, to the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... mentally contrasting it with many Sunday services when he had occupied a pew with the Nasons at their fashionable church in Boston, "it has been an experience I shall not soon forget. In one way it has been a pleasure, for it has taken me back to my young days." Then he added a little sadly, "It has also been a pain, for it recalled my mother and how she used to pray ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a good-lookin' couple. We've got a chicken pie an' a Baptis' minister fer dinner an' both good. Take yer pew nex' t' the minister,' he added as he ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... distinguished forebear Charles Dickens[1] arrived in the town of Boston, he found his room flooded with offers of a pew at Sunday morning church. This fashion in America has apparently passed, though I was taken on sightseeing expeditions to various cathedrals whose architecture seemed to me to be execrable (largely European copies—nothing natively ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... myself on trial before him. He holds me up to a standard of sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn't you keep him away? Do you think it's exactly decorous to let your man-servant occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... married in Akin, South Carolina to Andrew Pew. We had 12 chillun. Jest one boy is my ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... a heathen I am, Father," he exclaimed. "But I am going to turn over a new leaf. I shall honor myself by visiting St. Barnabas's some day very soon, and shall sit in the front pew—or, perhaps, in yours, Mrs. Cleary, if you will let me—now that I know who officiates," and he inclined his head graciously toward the priest. "I hope the service is not ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this law? Examine yourselves and see. Ye would that men should deal fairly by you; do you deal fairly by them as ye would count fairness in them to you?—If conscience makes you hang the head inwardly, however you sit with it erect in the pew, dare you add to your crime against the law and the prophets the insult to Christ of calling ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... delighted and edified" (here a gracious smile) "in the church of St. Ronan's—and hoped to do so whenever Mr. Mowbray had got a stove, which he had ordered from Edinburgh, on purpose to air his pew ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to Mary that she had to wait a long time, but when once she had taken her seat in a pew, there was plenty to look at. The prince stood at one end of the church, and Mary noticed how often he looked at his watch. At the other end by the door were six little girls dressed all alike in primrose colour, ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... begun makin' up to Mrs. O'Grady; an' ivry wan in th' parish seen it, an' was glad iv it, an' said it was scandalous. How it iver got out to O'Grady's pew in th' burryin' ground, I'll niver tell ye, an' th' Lord knows; but wan evenin' th' ghost iv O'Grady come back. Flaherty was settin' in th' parlor, smokin' a seegar, with O'Grady's slippers on his feet, whin th' spook come in in th' mos' natural way in the wurruld, kickin' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the pew in front of her, and breathed a prayer. The minister was praying for the rest of the people, but she needed to utter ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... transverse pews of an old-fashioned shape, which run down the sides of the walls. The organ, presented by Major Ingram in 1691-92, is in a gallery at the west end, and immediately beneath the gallery on the right-hand side is the Governor's pew. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham, where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston, B.D., who was himself ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... that Washington had no library, which accounted for his originality. He was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church; and to see his tall and graceful form as he moved about from pew to pew collecting pence for Home Missions, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... reverently, each passing at once to his own place, Andrew to his prominent pew at the side of the pulpit, Duncan to his modest seat behind the stove. They never addressed each other after entering the sanctuary, but sat with bowed heads in meditation and prayer until the commencement of the service. They generally had a long time to wait, too, for no matter at what ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith |
