"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to finish on the previous evening. Observing Barnet, he went up to him, and recognizing him, said, 'Shall ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... fluttering ribbons, the grass had been closely mown, for there were to be foot-races and wrestling bouts for the amusement of the guests. Beneath a spreading tree a dozen fiddlers put their instruments in tune, while behind the open windows of a small, ruinous house, dwelt in by the sexton, a rustic choir was trying over "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." Young men and maidens of the meaner sort, drawn from the surrounding country, from small plantation, store and ordinary, mill and ferry, clad in their holiday ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... or laurel doubtless indicates "Victory." Not only is this an early and well-accomplished effort, but it is remarkable for the presence of a lower jaw, which is seldom seen on a gravestone. The skull turned up by the sexton is usually the typical object, and to that we may presume the nether jaw is not often attached. It is found, however, on a headstone of a somewhat weak design ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... pass the old church of Stoke Pogis on the way back to the town, and after looking at its timber belfry and steeple John suggested that they should see the inside. The sexton was found working in the garden at the side of the house, and he went indoors for the keys. "Here they be, sir, and you being a pa'son I'll bide in the orchet. You and your young missus can look at the church without me. 'A b'lieve 'a hev seed it afore," ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... all walked to the Parish Church, and had some talk with the sexton, and I had to listen to long yarns about the Major (see under date February 9th). I was tired, and could not go to ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... Presently a group of three or four figures appeared at the head of the avenue of limes, the foremost of them a woman, bearing an infant's coffin under her arm, wrapped in a white sheet. The clerk and sexton, with their robes on, went out to meet them, and conducted them into the church, where the service proper to such occasions was read, after which the coffin was taken out as it was brought in, and lowered into the grave. It was the smallest funeral I ever saw, and my effort ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... do's well at all times, Yet Gowts will hang an arse a long time (Master) The Pox, or English Surfeits if we had 'em; Those are rich marle, they make a Church-yard fat, And make the Sexton sing, they ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Leitha, lies the small village of Rehrau. At the end of the straggling street which constitutes the village, stood a low thatched cottage and next to it a wheelwright's shop, with a small patch of greensward before it. The master wheelwright, Mathias Haydn, was sexton, too, of the little church on the hill. He was a worthy man and very religious. A deep love for music was part of the man's nature, and it was shared to a large extent by his wife Maria. Every Sunday evening he would bring out his harp, on which he had taught himself to play, and he and his wife ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... followed after him and seated herself close beside him. As he came back, holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation! The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white man's pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge's children there. "Oh," he said, "they will not stay there without me." But, as he could not enter, we instinctively followed ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... sedately replied, "The sexton had so informed him; and if false, he was to blame for imposing on ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... went, startling the sexton by arriving an hour early. If there were any who wondered what was the use of that Wednesday-evening service, we did not. In a dark gallery pew we sat, she at one end, I at the other; and, if the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... in her shift, she thrice crossed the King's Highway and was thus married to avoid payment of her first husband's debts. It is not far from the old Church Foundation of St. Paul's of Narragansett, and the tumble-down house of Sexton Martin Read, the prince of Narragansett weavers in ante-Revolutionary days. Weaver Rose learned to weave from his grandfather, who was an apprentice of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... proofs are lying in the strong chest of our house at London, deposited there by the old Earl, who repented of his roguery to Miss Martigny long before he died, but had not courage enough to do his legitimate son justice till the sexton had ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... simples a balm for wounded pride, I did not really deceive myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher. And all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... welcome its visitor, had, ever since then, sufficed to make him shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... take away this deathly feeling." I drew her into a pew and forced her to lie down, crushing thereby a most elegant toilet. But I was afraid she was dying, she looked so pale; then, rushing to the vestry, I found the sexton. He looked somewhat ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... Then the sexton would suddenly tack up the aisle and clutch the unhappy Mr. Chubb by the collar, and scud down the aisle again to the accompaniment of "Home Sweet Home," and then incarcerate Henry in the upper portion of the steeple until after church. But the end came ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Ingatestone Hall, Essex, a seat of Lord Petre's, used to relate to the happier children of a later generation (the descendants of James, Earl of Derwentwater), the circumstances, of which he had heard in his childhood. The Countess of Newburgh was afterwards buried by the side of her husband; and the sexton of St. Giles's Church, some years since, on the lid of the coffin giving way, perceived some gold lace in a state of preservation; so that it seems probable that the blanket in which the bleeding remains were removed, was superseded by the costly ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Southern youth, much struck by the funereal aspect, sexton-like dress, and inordinately long countenance of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... you see yonder comes from the window of old Andrew, the sexton, and inside sits his grandson, little Roger, eating his supper of porridge. The kitchen is in apple-pie order, chairs and tables have been scrubbed as white as snow, the tins on the dresser shine like silver, the hearth is swept clean, and Grandfather's chair is drawn into the warmest corner. Grandfather ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... but close to it, were the boys' school and girls' school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton's energy; then came a neat little grocer's shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer's wife the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house. And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, as it were, away from Framley Court; and ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... theatricalism. The pulpit was moved back, and four young pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed Christmas decoration. The pulpit platform, and the "wing pews" left vacant for the village players, took the place of a stage; the two aisles served for exits and entrances; and the sexton with three rings of the church bell, announced the scenes. The Carpet Committee of the Dorcas Society furnished the exposition of the first act, while sewing the last breadths of the new, hardly-bought ingrain carpet. The scrubbing of the pews ends the act, with dialogue ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... harnessed immediately, glad that further responsibility was taken from him and he had only to carry Toni as far as the railway. But the Pastor sent down to his sexton, an older, kindly man, who had given him a helping hand for years in many matters of responsibility. He was commissioned to take Toni with all care to the great sanitarium in Bern and to give the letter to the doctor there, a good friend of the Pastor's. A half hour ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... opened with a jangle, there were steps in the hall, and Old Timmie Carthewe the sexton appeared in the dining-room. He had a goat's face and a body like ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to your ladyship's orders, I dug up the flower-beds of the family vault, dusted the vault and the—the coffins (added he, trembling) inside. Me and John Sexton did it together, and polished up the plate ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... ground with its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he would go and see the sexton and have him come ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... European ports. Their departure was marked by demonstrations on the part of the authorities and leading men of business, and with a fair breeze and good wishes the fleet bore away for salt water. Of the ten vessels, three were sent by Mr. Handy, the R. H. Harmon, bound for Liverpool, the D. B. Sexton, for London, and the J. F. Warner, for Glasgow. All of the vessels made quick and profitable trips, and the trade thus begun has been carried on with profit to the present time, although at the breaking out of the war American vessels were compelled ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the inscription has not been without its use, in averting what the sensitive poet most dreaded; for it is recorded in one of the books sold here, that some years ago, in digging a neighboring grave, a careless sexton broke into the side of Shakspeare's tomb, and looking in saw his bones, and could easily have carried away the skull had he not been ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... they're not all dug by the sexton," remarked Temperance, patting the blue kirtle to make it lie in the hole she had left for it. "At any rate, the sorest epitaphs are oft invisible save to them that have ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... curtailed to half their proper length, yet finding the patience of the listeners all too short! The degenerate descendants carried the day, however, the most bigoted of their opposers becoming disabled by rheumatism. The old sexton, resignation to inevitable evils being a lesson he had had much opportunity to learn, submitted with a good grace, though very much of opinion that fires in a church were an absurdity and a waste. The stoves were provided, and an uncommonly full attendance the next Sabbath showed the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... grave I left a bunch of winter flowers but yesterday. Ah, me! I never go and wander in that dingy churchyard, where the sound of the great roaring city is hushed to a sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the sexton comes to bring the keys of the church on a Sunday morning he should find the mere body of me lying there, my head leaning on the stone that bears her name—not his name—her name, her one dear name by which I called her last ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... in the window, gazing down the village street through the half-opened shutters. Not a thought was in her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowding images; and she watched the people passing along the street, Dan Targatt's team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, the sexton's old white horse grazing on the bank across the way, as if she looked at these familiar sights from the other side ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... sexton to the cathedral—whom you must not confound with a gravedigger, as you might an ordinary sexton; cathedral sextons are personages of more importance—was seated about this hour at supper in his home, close to the cathedral. Suddenly the deep-toned college bell boomed out, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... finds herself announced as a bride-elect before she has received any actual declaration. The clerk receives his fee of two shillings and makes no further inquiries; nay, more, is prepared, if required, to provide the necessary fathers on each side, in the respectable persons of himself and the sexton—the venerable pew-opener being also ready, on a pinch, to "perform" the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... when they found him down in a little dell upon a patch of greensward. Considering that he was a joiner, and not a sexton, he had made remarkable progress with a very creditable grave, which, he explained, was to receive the dead with which the woods were distributed. He added that it was a disgrace to leave so many corpses lying about, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... charms, consisting of verses of the Koran written on paper, to be tied round the arm or hung on the neck. These have the effect of curing disease and keeping off evil spirits or the evil eye. Sometimes there is a mosque servant who also acts as sexton of the local cemetery. The funds of the mosque and any endowment attached to it are in charge of some respectable resident, who is known as Mutawalli or churchwarden. The principal religious officer is the Maulvi, who corresponds to the Hindu Guru or preceptor. These men are frequently ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... his only close associates were two who had been his companions in that remote period which had been his boyhood. One of these, Jerry Hurley, was a childless widower, a very estimable and highly respected man who owned two farms. The other, like himself a bachelor, was Billy Skidmore, the sexton of the church, and, therefore, the regulator of the ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Penrose looked in the direction from which the voice travelled, he saw a shovel thrown out of a newly-made grave, followed by the steaming head and weather-worn face of old Joseph, the sexton, all aglow with the combined task ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... library of lamentations over the mechanical tendency of our age. There are, in fact, a good many people who profess a profound contempt for matter, though they do nevertheless patronize the butcher and the baker to the manifest detriment of the sexton. Matter and material interests, they would have us believe, are beneath the dignity of the soul; and the degree to which these "earthly things" now absorb the attention of mankind, they think, argues degeneracy from the good old times of abstract philosophy and spiritual dogmatism. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... time had only a chapel, a hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in 1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband whilst their short ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... softly to the sexton's bench in the left hand corner. Sitting there he could see her better and ran ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... scarcely entered before I saw the splendid mausoleum of William the Silent, but the sexton stopped me before the very simple tomb of Hugh Grotius, the prodigium Europae, as the epitaph calls him, the great jurisconsult of the seventeenth century—that Grotius who wrote Latin verses at the age of nine, who composed Greek odes at eleven, who ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... fifty years later the distant echoes of war sounded faintly in Crediton, for French prisoners of war on parole, Napoleon's soldiers, were allowed to live in this town. Vague rumours of them may still be heard. The sexton remembers that his mother often told about them, and one of the first people he buried was a man named Henry, 'though,' he explained, 'they spell it rather differently.' The melancholy fate of this stranger throws a light ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... The sexton should be duly informed what preparations to make at the church; the awning at the entrance, the ribbon barrier across the aisle, the floral decorations, etc., by whomever arranged and executed are under the supervision of ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... "it was past five o'clock when I left the house. I went up the Grande rue, and at half-past five I was standing looking up at the facade of the parish church of Saint-Cyr. I talked there with the sexton, who came to ring the angelus, and asked him for information about the building, which seems to me fantastic and incomplete. Then I passed through the vegetable-market, where some women had already assembled. From there, crossing the place Misere, I went as far as the mill of Landrole by ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... very outset of our interview, and your once reputed skill as a Seer goes for naught! To me the world is a graveyard full of dead, worm-eaten things, and its supposititious Creator, whom you have so be praised in your orisons to-night, is the Sexton who entombs, and the Ghoul who devours his own hapless Creation! I myself am one of the tortured and dying, and I have sought you simply that you may trick me into a brief oblivion of my doom, and mock me with the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... thrown upon the stage. To which Jones answered, "That it was one of the most famous burial-places about town." "No wonder, then," cries Partridge, "that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse grave-digger. I had a sexton, when I was clerk, that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had ever had one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than work, I believe."—Upon Hamlet's taking up the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... body of Sarah Sexton, Who as a wife did never vex one; We can't say that for her at the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of a sculptor of the idealistic school, was in no respect remarkable; and he felt, alas! that he could no more work a miracle than you or I. In the sight of the multitude he was only an elderly sexton with a cast in his eye, with nothing but his office to keep him out of the workhouse. A further and more awkward question arose, how on earth was he to get back to Paradise? The ordinary method was not available, for he had ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... commander; "thy long nose smelling the dinner, thy long ears hearing the music, and thy short discretion not enabling thee to decide which of them thou didst prefer.—Hark! is that not the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers?—Sure it cannot be that time yet? The mad old sexton has toll'd evensong an hour ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... alone, and when the street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked dully out. For her, the light ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... "let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton." ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... by this time concluded, and nothing now remained but the last summons of the sexton. At this juncture, while the coffin was being lowered into its resting place, my eyes, accidentally, it may be said, but in reality by some fatal instinct, fell full upon the lid, on which I instantly recognised a name, long and fearfully known to me—the name of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... of Don Pedro. Leonato, governor of Messina. Antonio, his brother. Balthazar, servant to Don Pedro. Borachio, follower of Don John. Conrade, follower of Don John. Dogberry, a city-officer. Verges, a city-officer. A Sexton. A ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... church for to pray; She went to the stile and there rested awhile; She went to the door and there rested a little more; She went up the aisle and there rested awhile; She looked up; she looked down; She saw a corpse lie on the ground; She said to the sexton, must I look so When I ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... passed to pistols; they took their positions, we cried that they had put the barriers too near together. They, to spite us, swore to shoot over the skin of the bear, sure death! almost barrel to barrel; both were fine shots. 'Let Hreczecha be our second.' 'All right,' I said, 'let the sexton dig a hole at once, for such a dispute cannot end without results. But fight like gentlemen, and not like butchers. It is well enough to shorten the distance, I see that you are bold fellows; but do you want to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... confessed to the writer that he had suffered severe financial loss through installing this action. After expending considerable time (and time is money) in getting it to work right, the whole thing would be upset when the sexton started up the heating apparatus. The writer is acquainted with organs in New York City where ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... read 'em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more about 'em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property. So he wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... 'to ask the sexton if he can let me into the mausoleum at the church. He evidently has access to it himself, for I saw him tonight standing on the steps, and, as I thought, locking ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... peering in through the stained glass, half curious, half envious, and at times some simple hymn would catch him unawares, and he would howl lugubriously in a gigantic attempt at unison. Whereupon little Sloppet, who was organ-blower and verger and beadle and sexton and bell-ringer on Sundays, besides being postman and chimney-sweep all the week, would go out very briskly and valiantly and send him mournfully away. Sloppet, I am glad to say, felt it—in his more thoughtful moments at any ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... minister, came and asked the dean to recommend him for some preferment. The dean said that he would consider his case after he had heard him preach before him in the cathedral. No fault seems to have been found with the sermon, but in the pulpit afterwards, the sexton, Richard Fisher, picked up a letter that had been dropped, and carried it to the bishop, Dr. Gest. This was directed to Th. Finne from Samuel Malta, a noted Jesuit at Madrid. Heth was brought up and examined before ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... "Sexton, was she here to-day Who has met me oft before? Did she come and go away, Tired of waiting any more? For I fancy some mistake Has occurred about the time; Yet, the hour has not yet passed; Hark! the bells ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... an English gentleman discovered who settled here a few years ago. He attended a meeting of the members of the church to which he had attached himself, and hearing something said that pleased him, he cried out "hear him! hear him!" Upon which the sexton came over to him, and told him that, unless he kept himself quiet, he would be under the necessity of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... was newly made, Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade; His work was done, and he paused to wait The funeral train at the open gate. A relic of bygone days was he, And his locks were white as the foamy sea; And these words came from his lips so thin: "I gather them ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... apprehension. The captain, stung by this remark, replied not a word, but gathering up the armour into a bundle, threw it on his back, and set out for the place of probation, preceded by Clarke with the lantern. When they arrived at the church, Fillet, who had procured the key from the sexton, who was his patient, opened the door, and conducted our novice into the middle of the chancel, where the armour was deposited. Then bidding Crowe draw his hanger, committed him to the protection of Heaven, assuring ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... did come on any lawful business, he might ask his way at the shop. Most of the inhabitants were long-lived, early deaths (like that of the little Miss Jessamine) being exceptional; and most of the old people were proud of their age, especially the sexton, who would be ninety-nine come Martinmas, and whose father remembered a man who had carried arrows, as a boy, for the battle of Flodden Field. The Gray Goose and the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who kept their ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. "& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. "& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. "& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flours be planted on my grave, "& that no man remember me. "To ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... has contributed various poems to the literature of the country, which have stamped him as being possessed of a more than ordinary share of the divine afflatus. Among them is "The Sexton's Spade," which has gained a world-wide celebrity. The writer has been connected with Mr. Burnett in the publication of two or three papers, which, somehow or other, never won their way into popular favor: ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... religion are more hard of heart to believe than laymen and the simple. The cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. At the last they won from him that he had gone to the tree where ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... there appears something touching as well as humorous in that primitive marriage-party on the grey October morning, with the autumn sunbeams, silver not golden, faintly brightening the yellowing vine, over the sexton's house, and the orange and grey lichens, the only ornaments outside the solid old church, with its low, heavy Saxon arches. The Vicar bowed with ceremony, and with a dignified and deliberate air, as he recognised Mistress Dulcie; the old clerk and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Reputation in these Parts; and I am glad to hear, that a Fellow who has been laying out his Money ever since he was born, for the meer Pleasure of Wine, has bethought himself of joining Profit and Pleasure together. Our Sexton (poor Man) having received Strength from thy Wine since his fit of the Gout, is hugely taken with it: He says it is given by Nature for the Use of Families, that no Stewards Table can be without it, that it strengthens ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Colonel Hammond meant to walk back to the station, and Alick and Rachel conducted him far enough to put him into the right path, and in going back again, they could not but go towards the stile leading to that corner of the churchyard where the sexton had finished his work, and smoothed the sods ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inquiry, I beg to offer the following statement. During a long series of years an average of about 150 corpses has been annually deposited in Ecclesfield churchyard, which has rendered it an extremely crowded cemetery. But, notwithstanding these frequent interments, my late sexton told me that he remembered when there was scarcely one grave to the north of the church, it being popularly considered that only suicides, unbaptised persons, and still-born children ought to be buried there. However, when a vicar died about twenty-seven years ago, unlike his ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... of us making merry at a friend's house in a country village, when the sexton of the parish church entered the room in a sort of surprise, and told us "that, as he was digging a grave in the chancel, a little blow of his pick-axe opened a decayed coffin, in which there were several written papers." Our curiosity was immediately raised, so that we went to the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Yorkshire—Lipyeatt Family.—Found and noted in a Yorkshire church tower, an atchievement painted apparently about forty or fifty years ago, of which no account can be given by the sexton or parish clerk. Query, to what names do the bearings belong? viz. Vert, on a fess or, between three bezants, three lions passant azure. Impaling: Vert, three swans in tri, statant, wings erect, argent. Crest, a lion passant azure, langued gules. The swans have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that stood in the middle of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... there will the eagles (vultures) be gathered together.' They were perched on the ridges of the temple, and even on small trees and bushes, within a few feet of the body; and so greedy were they that the sexton and his assistants had to beat them off many times before the coffin could be opened. They seemed to know that there would be but a mouthful for each, if divided among them all, and the pack of greedy dogs besides, that waited for ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... without hesitation a short, stout person arrayed in a wrinkled frock coat and wearing the white tie and gold spectacles that invariably garb the members of such quasi-clerical professions as a Shadchen, a sexton or the collector of subscriptions for a charitable institution. Indeed, as Rashkind combined all three of these callings with the occupation of a real-estate broker, he also sported a high silk hat of uncertain vintage and a watch-chain ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... The sexton coming out directly after, and proceeding to lock the door, I was struck by the action. "What IS he locking the door for?" I said to myself. But I said nothing to him, because I had not answered the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... than the babe unborn. Reg'lar goney. Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ... engineer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the most curious cases of hauntings by the phantasms of birds happened towards the end of the eighteenth century in a church not twenty miles from London. The sexton started the rumours, declaring that he had heard strange noises, apparently proceeding from certain vaults containing the tombs of two old and distinguished families. The noises, which generally occurred on Friday nights, most often ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... treated quite as badly. Shops of all kinds were built up against the cathedral, and sometimes the noise which the carpenters made greatly disturbed those at the service within. It must have been shocking indeed! It is said that for a very small sum, the sexton would allow boys to climb up and ring the bells as much as they liked; and, on the day of Queen Mary's coronation, she saw a Dutchman standing on ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... speak when they got to her; and, only stopping to give the man a lecture, mamma picked up her silly little girl, and the procession moved off. First came Cy, as grave as a sexton; then the wheelbarrow with Poppy, white and limp and speechless, all in a bunch; then mamma, looking amused, anxious and angry; then Nelly, weeping as if her tender heart was entirely broken; while the man watched them, with a grin, saying ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... said that some have died for love, &c. Poor Susan Inscription for the Spot where the Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwent-Water Inscription for the House (an Out-house) on the Island at Grasmere To a Sexton Andrew Jones The two Thieves, or the last stage of Avarice A whirl-blast from behind the Hill, &c. Song for the wandering Jew Ruth Lines written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone, &c. Lines written on a Tablet in a School The ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... House—or what was left of it—resumed the Report stage of the Ministry of Health Bill. The debate was remarkable for the brevity of some of the speeches. Sir ROWLAND BLADES set a good example to new Members by making a "maiden" effort in a minute and a half. But his record was easily beaten by Mr. SEXTON, who found ten seconds sufficient for expressing his opinion that the fact that the House was trying to legislate in the small hours was sufficient proof of the necessity of extending the laws of lunacy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... look beyond His narrow verge of being, and provide A decent residence for its clayey shell, Endear'd to it by time. And who would lay His body in the city burial-place, To be thrown up again by some rude sexton, And yield its narrow house another tenant, Ere the moist flesh had mingled with the dust, Ere the tenacious hair had left the scalp, Exposed to insult lewd, and wantonness? No, I will lay me in the village ground; There are the dead respected. The poor hind, Unletter'd as he is, would ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... held that year at Falla. The housewife had made a big fire on the hearth in the living-room and thought it unnecessary to furnish any other illumination, except a thin tallow candle that burned on a small table, at which the sexton was ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... who replies with invective, when sinking under the weight of argument; I am not a man who denies the necessity of parliamentary reform, at the time that he approves of its expediency, by reviling his own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not, to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and knocked about the mazard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggets with 'em? ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... wheelwright, and sexton of the little church standing on the hill outside the village, was in the fullest sense entitled to rank as a worthy: he was not only a deeply religious man, but one who was looked up to and respected by every one in the village and for many a mile around. There ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes; for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood there too, in his black slippers and white ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... mistletoe was never put up in churches but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons: it being a heathenish and profane plant, and therefore assigned to the kitchen. Mr. Brand made many diligent inquiries after the truth of this point. He learnt at Bath that it never came into churches there. An old Sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was by the clergyman immediately ordered to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... impression of his own dignity, and did not quite like leaving his pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr Arabin's allusion to his severity, and hastened to put matters right by observing that 'Sexton Clodheave looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there maybe a thought too much stick going on during sermon.' Mr Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon; and he smiled to himself as he observed how ignorant ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... learning but improves the fool: The college next must give him parts, And cram him with the liberal arts. Whether he blunders at the bar, Or owes his infamy to war; 40 Or if by licence or degree The sexton shares the doctor's fee: Or from the pulpit by the hour He weekly floods of nonsense pour; We find (the intent of nature foiled) A tailor or a butcher spoiled. Thus ministers have royal boons Conferred on blockheads ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... where she had been sitting, "don't you remember old Betty? They all said in the village you'd be too proud to look on your grandmother's grave; but you're not, I see. Well, that's good—that's good. We had a funeral last week, and the vault of the old earl was broken in. The stupid sexton stuck his pick in amongst the old bricks, and so the great man's skull came tumbling out, and rolled beside the skull of Job Martin, the old cobbler; and the sexton laid them both on the edge of the grave, the earl's ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... church, it has remained loyal to its history, and is the true child of the eighteenth century. Is it not fitting that the communion-plate presented by Queen Caroline should be treasured here? That the sexton should still show you, even with a cold indifference, the stately prayer-books which once contained prayers for the king? That a bell, captured at Louisburg by Sir William Pepperell, should summon to the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... sweetly in a nice box, with a doll's blanket folded round her, and, bidding the poor dear a long farewell, confided her to old MacCarty for burial. He was my sexton, and I could trust him to inter my darlings decently, and not toss them disrespectfully into a dirt-cart ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... honoured inhabitants of Gandercleugh. No one thought of disputing his title to the great leathern chair on the "cosiest side of the chimney," in the common room of the Wallace Arms, on a Saturday evening. No less would our sexton, John Duirward, have held it an unlicensed intrusion, to suffer any one to induct himself into the corner of the left-hand pew nearest to the pulpit, which the Sergeant regularly occupied on Sundays. There ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it remains to try whether you be a man of good utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs. Let me ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word for discontented ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... certainly," said Vane, glancing back at the gloomy, bent form of the sexton, as he stood looking up sidewise at the big, squarely-built, wholesome-looking miller. "But I couldn't improve him. I say, what shall we ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... the same ingenuous chronicler, the most famous figure in the social life of the New York of the sixties, the later Petronius, or the forerunner of Mr. Ward McAllister, was Brown, the sexton of Grace Church, which, for many years, had been the fashionable centre. "Arrogant old Isaac Brown," Mrs. Burton Harrison called him in her "Recollections, Grave and Gay," "the portly sexton who transmitted invitations for ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... sake of Archdeacon Morville's kindness, and as the home which Philip regarded with affection, that seemed the one softening touch in his character. So Guy visited the handsome church, studied the grave-yard, and gathered the traditions of the place from the old sexton's wife, who rejoiced in finding an auditor for her long stories of the good Archdeacon, Miss Fanny, and Mr. Philip. She shook her head, saying times were changed, and 'Miss Morville that was, never ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the interesting Sunday journal he admirably edits, reproaches me because, in this particular page of history, "Mr. SEXTON," he says, "is derided constantly and shamefully." Anglice: Occasionally when, in a faithful record of Parliamentary events, SEXTON's part in the proceedings must needs be noticed, it is gently hinted that among his many ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why. All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton came ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... clergy to the influence of his aunt, the Carmelite nun, Madame Louise. During the life of her father, Louis XV., she nearly engrossed all the Church benefices by her intrigues. She had her regular conclaves of all orders of the Church. From the Bishop to the sexton, all depended on her for preferment; and, till the Revolution, she maintained equal power over the mind of Louis XVI. upon similar matters. The Queen would often express her disapprobation; but the King was so scrupulous, whenever the discussion fell on the topic of religion, that she made it a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Dickens wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn facing the church—such a lovely ride—such forest scenery—such an out-of-the-way rural place—such a sexton! I say again, Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place; and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens wrote over sixty years ago, one cannot fail to have a keen desire to ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... inequalities of society any more than those of the earth, with its varied features of swelling hill and lovely dale, to one dull, long, common level. Death, the great grim leveller, does that office both for cottagers and kings. Let it be left to the sexton's spade. The mountains which give shelter to the valleys, and gather the rains that fill their rivers and fertilise their pastures, have important uses in nature, and so have the corresponding heights of rank and wealth and power in society. Setting ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... Chatterton family had, for one hundred and fifty years, held the post of sexton in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol; and at the time of which we write his uncle was sexton. In the muniment-room of the church were several coffers, containing old papers and parchments ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee |
