"Surplice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Roman, it would proceed thus. First an antiphon, which came to be called an introit, or psalm of entrance, with a verse having special reference to the lesson of the day or season, was sung, as the priest, wearing a long white surplice or alb and a chasuble (the robe worn alike by lay and by clerical officials), entered with two deacons, wearing probably similar garments. In the Gallican rite, as in the eastern, there followed the singing of the "Trisagion": and in both Gallican and Roman the "Kyrie Eleeson," ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... offer a greater bribe," said Mrs. Shortridge, with an arch look. "If you will only exchange the sword for the surplice, Colonel L'Isle, whenever she commits matrimony, no one but you ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... his prayers. It's a lonesome road is running below to Greenane, and a woman would never know the things might happen her and she walking single in a lonesome place. [As she reaches the chapel-gate, the Priest comes to it in his surplice. PRIEST — crying out. — Come ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... of farmers, with their wives, sons, and daughters, opened a door to admit us. Mrs. Petulengro, however, appeared to feel not the least embarrassment, but tripped along the aisle with the greatest nonchalance. We passed under the pulpit, in which stood the clergyman in his white surplice, and reached the middle of the church, where we were confronted by the sexton dressed in long blue coat, and holding in his hand a wand. This functionary motioned towards the lower end of the church where were certain benches, partly occupied by poor people and boys. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... book-shelves, with a volume in his hand, and his countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolutions in favour of the colonial interest after all his labours had been negatived by the committee on the 22nd, and on the 24th, his horse Surplice, whom he had parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... sinews and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau, the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years, from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d'Or: 'The savages descending in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not to go out. The Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm persons, and other assistants, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... precious ornaments, I took a rich cushion in my arms, together with the bible I had from your majesty, and the beautiful psalter, ornamented with fine paintings, which the queen bestowed upon me. My companion carried the missal and a crucifix; and the clerk, clothed in his surplice, carried a censer in his hand. In this order we presented ourselves, and the felt hanging before the lords door being withdrawn, we appeared, in his presence. Then the clerk and interpreter were ordered to make three genuflexions, from which humiliation we were exempted; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... threescore dead and many sick, to find as many of the colony dead, and all disconsolate. Of the discouraged among them who returned to England Smith says: "Some could not endure the name of a bishop, others not the sight of a cross or surplice, others by no means the book of common prayer. This absolute crew, only of the Elect, holding all (but such as themselves) reprobates and castaways, now made more haste to return to Babel, as they termed England, than stay to enjoy the land they called Canaan." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fancied a likeness of himself in his surplice, which his parishioners might buy and engrave, if they had a mind to preserve his lineaments when he was no longer among them. The Justice took a notion to have his big girls and his little girls, his boy and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... his business with the roaring George Augustus and the whimpering Alberta Florence, and had now the little, quiet, brown-faced baby in his arms. Even a young and unmarried man was fain to confess that it was an unusually pretty little face that lay against his surplice, with a pointed chin, and more eyebrows and lashes than most young babies possess, and with dark eyes that looked up at him with a certain intelligence, recognisable even to an ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... in the sun before the door. His mother's gown showed proofs of his genius by sundry little round holes, which were considerably increased each time that it returned from the wash. Nay, heretical and damnable as is the fact, his father's surplice was as a moth-eaten garment from the repeated and insidious attacks of this young philosopher. The burning-glass decided his fate. He was bound apprentice to an optical and mathematical instrument ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... than it had been on him. He laughed most immoderately. The idea of Edward's being a clergyman, and living in a small parsonage-house, diverted him beyond measure;—and when to that was added the fanciful imagery of Edward reading prayers in a white surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage between John Smith and Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... have thought of that yesterday," said Nanon, bursting into a loud peal of laughter. "I can't make cream. Your cousin is a darling, a darling! oh, that he is! You should have seen him in his dressing-gown, all silk and gold! I saw him, I did! He wears linen as fine as the surplice ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his hand and had let ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... practise episcopal ordination, but do not condemn all other ordinations as invalid; and a minister of another Protestant Church may be accepted as a Moravian minister without being episcopally ordained. At the Sacraments, at weddings and at ordinations, the Moravian minister generally wears a surplice; and yet there is no reference to vestments in the regulations of the Church. In some congregations they use the wafer at the Sacrament, in others ordinary bread; and this fact alone is enough to show that they have no ruling on the subject. Again, the Moravians observe ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... embraced his father, groaning while he did so; then, always docile, he opened the door, and the priest appeared in a white surplice, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... we had a Brigade Church Service—we had not had one for a long time. We also had a real padre, who wore a surplice, cassock, and helmet, and who preached an indifferent sermon. I don't suppose we ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... to prevent its contracting over the glans. As neither of these can be performed by any but a priest, and as to be without either is the greatest disgrace, they may be considered as a claim to surplice fees like our marriages and christenings, which are cheerfully and liberally paid, not according to any settled stipend, but the rank and abilities of the parties or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... by Mrs Thorne. There had been no footman from the palace in attendance on Mr Thumble, nor had there been a battle with the brickmakers; neither had Mr Thumble been put under the pump. But Mr Thumble had gone over, taking his gown and surplice with him, on the Sunday morning, and had intimated to Mr Crawley his intention of performing the service. Mr Crawley, in answer to this, had assured Mr Thumble that he would not be allowed to open his mouth in the church; and Mr Thumble, not seeing his way to any further ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... unfortunate gentleman, about to undergo a great public and private change, eulogized for the firmness and clearness of its letters, with the perfect mastery of the supplementary flourish. However, what is written is written; whether penned to the rustling of bridesmaids' satins, or the surplice of the consolatory ordinary—whether to the anticipated music of a marriage peal, or to the more solemn accompaniment of the bell of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... good fortune, that made him a member of that learned corporation? He shook his head. Nothing could change the fact now. After fifteen years' experience of that Elysium, he could not put on the cassock and surplice with all his youthful fervour. He had settled into his life-habits long ago. With the quick perception which made up for her deficiency, his mother read his face, and saw the cause was hopeless; yet with female courage and pertinacity ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... "with no sense of gratitude," as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world mistrustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer. All this he did on the sly, with the greatest secrecy. Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a sound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. "He doesn't care for you or me, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it all the young curate who had brought them there sat folded more and more within his surplice, and became more and more red as to his face, more and more dubious as to his eyes. He was like some young captain, wise though intrepid, who sees his brave battalions routed through the false move ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... count de Virieu, that of the law protecting doves and pigeons. The abolition of seigneurial courts, of the purchase and sale of posts in the magistracy, of pecuniary immunities, of favouritism in taxation, of surplice money, first-fruits, pluralities, and unmerited pensions, were successively proposed and carried. After sacrifices made by individuals, came those of bodies, of towns and provinces. Companies and civic freedoms ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Mr. Calamy [Edward Calamy, the celebrated Nonconformist Divine, born 1616, appointed Chaplain to Charles the Second 1660. Ob. 1666.] had preached before the King in a surplice (this I heard afterwards to be false); that my Lord, Gen. Monk, and three more Lords, are made Commissioners for the Treasury; that my Lord had some great place conferred on him, and they say Master of the Wardrobe; ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... company of soldiers under command of an adjutant of the camp, and the chief constable of the Audiencia, Captain Bartolome Tenorio, with orders to execute the royal decrees and to expel the archbishop from these kingdoms. The latter was clad in his surplice, stole, and cope, and was holding the most holy sacrament in his hands. He was surrounded by the said religious and by a number of seculars. The chief constable disliked that execution exceedingly, but he was ordered to carry it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... saith. There is, besides, a clergyman of the true (though suffering) Episcopal church of Scotland. [Footnote: See Note 9.] He was a confessor in her cause after the year 1715, when a Whiggish mob destroyed his meeting-house, tore his surplice, and plundered his dwelling-house of four silver spoons, intromitting also with his mart and his mealark, and with two barrels, one of single and one of double ale, besides three bottles of brandy. My ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... had other urgent spiritual claims on him, she gave instruction to a less advanced class herself. For this purpose she habited herself in a peculiarly becoming dress of white linen, which reached to her feet and had full flowing sleeves like a surplice. It was girdled with a silver cord with long tassels, and had mother-of-pearl buttons and a hood at the back lined with white satin which came over her head. Below its hem as she sat and taught in a really rather advanced posture showed the toes of her white morocco slippers, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... government of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland. But if he knows that a Scotch congregation will listen with deep attention and respect while an Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and that a glimpse of a surplice or a single line of a liturgy would be the signal for hooting and riot and would probably bring stools and brickbats about the ears of the minister, he acts wisely if he conveys religious knowledge to the Scotch rather by means ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of note was Martha, who looked so much like her brother John that occasionally, in merry mood, she dressed herself in his cassock and surplice, and suddenly appearing before the family deceived them all until she spoke. Martha was the only girl in the brood who was heir to her mother's mind. Had she lived in this age she would have made for herself a career. A contemporary says, "She could preach like a man," a remark, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... casa ... panes negros. "The following are the chief points in the funeral rite as prescribed in the Roman Ritual. The corpse is borne in procession with lights to the church. The parish priest assists in surplice and black stole; the clerks carry the holy water and cross; the coffin is first sprinkled with holy water and the psalm De Profundis recited; then the corpse is carried to the church while the Miserere is said.... Candles are lighted round the coffin, and the office and Mass of the ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... needs mothering badly enough. Yes, Miss Philly ought to be making smearkase and apple-butter for that pale and excellent young man. He intimated that I was a follower of the Scarlet Woman because I wore a surplice." ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... low murmur as if of confession, and the sign of lifted hands, as if in absolution and blessing. Suddenly, from the outskirts of the camp, and full in sight, emerged, from one of the cross lanes, Odo of Bayeux himself, in his white surplice, and the cross in his right hand. Yea, even to the meanest and lowliest soldiers of the armament, whether taken from honest craft and peaceful calling, or the outpourings of Europe's sinks and sewers, catamarans from the Alps, and cut-throats from ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood As where the rays through pictured glories pour On marble shaft and tessellated floor;— Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels. Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend Which holds the dust once living to defend; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopylae"! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Edmonbury, so mounted, came a priest in a surplice, with a cope embroidered with dead bones, skeletons, skulls, and the like, giving pardons very plentifully to all those who should murder protestants; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... most conspicuous, I believe them entitled to all praise for their pastoral devotedness and their laborious, self-denying lives; still, I do not shrink from saying that I think them misguided, and the cause of mischief in the Church. So much for my feeling in regard to the vestments. I prefer the surplice at all times ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... effect by the great display, expense, and magnificent buildings with which they adorn them, so that everything shines and glitters. There they waft incense, they sing and ring bells, they light tapers and candles, so that nothing else can be seen or heard. For when a priest stands there in a surplice embroidered with gilt, or a layman continues all day upon his knees in church, that is regarded as a most precious work which no one can sufficiently praise. But when a poor girl tends a little child and faithfully does what she is told that is considered nothing; for else what should monks and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... requested this minister to pronounce them man and wife; but he coughed and poked the fire. "I am of age," Alfred insisted; "I am twenty-two." Then Mr. Smith said he must first go and put on his bands and surplice; and Alfred said, "If you please, sir." And off went Mr. Smith—and sent a note to ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... turning the parlors into kennels if they chose, and converting the upper rooms into a hay-loft, if they would. No white woman was ever seen upon the premises, unless she came as a beggar, when some new gown, or surplice, or organ, or chandelier, was needed for the pretty little church, lifting its modest spire so unobtrusively among the forest trees, not very far from Spring Bank. John Stanley didn't believe in churches; nor gowns, nor organs, nor women, but he was proverbially liberal, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... a white cloth, had not Richard begged for a Communion for the young pair to speed them on their perilous way, and Mr. Heatherthwayte—almost under protest—consented, since a sea voyage and warlike service in a foreign land lay before them. But, except that he wore no surplice, he had resigned himself to Master Richard on that most unnatural morning, and stifled his inmost sighs when he had to pronounce the name Bride, given, not by himself, but by some Romish priest—when the bridegroom, with the hand wounded for Queen Mary's sake, gave a ruby ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bothwell. He was barefooted, excepting a species of sandals in the antique fashion; his legs were naked beneath the knees; above them he wore hose, and a doublet of dark crimson silk close to his body; and over that a flowing loose robe, something resembling a surplice, of snow-white linen; his throat and neck were uncovered, and his long, straight, black hair was carefully combed down at ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... that the vicar's wife was sitting in the front room, making a pillow-case for the children's bed out of an old surplice which had been excommunicated the previous Easter; she heard the newcomer's voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband, who was where he ought to have been, in his study. At her entry he looked up with an abstracted gaze, having ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... gate of the kraal there was a halt, while the keepers of the gate despatched a messenger to their king to announce the advent of the white man. Of this pause Owen took advantage to array himself in the surplice and hood which he had brought with him in readiness for that hour. Then he gave the mule to John to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... it. You were amongst them; the cardinal named you. Mousquetaires, indeed, who allow themselves to be arrested! But it is my fault for not choosing my men better. What the devil possessed you, Aramis, to ask me for a guardsman's uniform, when a priest's surplice would have fitted you better? And you, Porthos, what is the use of your wearing that magnificent embroidered sword-belt, if the weapon it supports is of such small service to you? And Athos, I do not see Athos. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... murmurs in coldness. Surplice fiercely fearful, praying on his bony both knees, crossing himself.... The Fake French Soldier, alias Garibaldi, beside him, a little face filled with terror ... the Bell cranks the sharp-nosed priest on his knees ... titter from bench ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... hate you once!" said Esther; "one can hardly understand it now. Do you remember how on Sunday afternoons you would insist on playing at church, and how, with a tablecloth for a surplice, you used to be the minister? How you used to storm if we poor things missed any ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... moved on with the throng, and soon was ascending the heights of Morningside Park, after which, he entered the cathedral. The priest whose voice had so often thrilled him stood at his post in his surplice, and the choir had finished the processional hymn. During the responses in the litany, and between the commandments, while the congregation and the choir sang, he heard their natural voices as of old ascending to the vaulted roof and arrested there. He now also heard their spiritual voices resulting ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... own one, that so soon will be my own no longer!" said the father, as he made his way into the vestry to put on his surplice. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... from W.P., Esq., of P——, out of the annual rents, he being lord of the manor; and 3l. from the several inhabitants of L——, settled upon the tenements as a rent-charge; the house and gardens I value at 4l. yearly, and not worth more; and I believe the surplice fees and voluntary contributions, one year with another, may be worth 3l.; but as the inhabitants are few in number, and the fees very low, this last-mentioned sum consists merely in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... "Industry and Idleness" series, Hogarth depicts the little hangman smoking a short pipe as he sits on the top of the gallows, waiting for his victim. The familiar plate of A Modern Midnight Conversation shows a parson in surplice and wig smoking like a furnace while he ladles punch from a bowl—probably meant for a portrait of the notorious Orator Henley. Most of the other guests are also ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... time when he was called to the honour of serving the Mass. He had thought of it a week beforehand, full of emotion and fear. At length the day has come. He is dressed in the white surplice, wearing on his head the red cap. He would have wished the whole world to see him; but the pupils alone were present, and that diminished ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... stopping the entrance of an oven with a King's robe royal; and making a covenant with Heaven a chariot and stirrup to mount up to the height of carnal and clay projects. By the Covenant," added he, "I am enabled to preach the true gospel in spite of my persecutor in a surplice, who would starve the lambs with formality, and forbid me to feed them. He that opposeth me hath in his dwelling idols of wood and stone, and painted symbols of men and women whom Antichrist made saints, and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... their cause into the tribunals and contested this measure inch by inch, however hopelessly. But who would plead for a poor parish, for a penniless priest? What payment could he offer, he who could scarcely find the coins to fill his salt-box or to mend his surplice? ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... tight the cords round her hands that he had let loose before, and she advanced pretty firmly and knelt before the altar, between the doctor and the chaplain. The latter was in his surplice, and chanted a 'Veni Creator, Salve Regina, and Tantum ergo'. These prayers over, he pronounced the blessing of the Holy Sacrament, while the marquise knelt with her face upon the ground. The executioner ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... for there was one near us who, on leaving, had a present from the ladies of an entire set, and a dozen pair of worked slippers into the bargain. But it's all fitting, if preaching is the great office of the clergy. Next comes the Sacrament, and has the surplice and hood. And hood," he repeated, musing; "what's that for? no, it's the scarf. The hood is worn in the University pulpit; what is the scarf?—it belongs to chaplains, I believe, that is, to persons; I can't make a view ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Latine to the Pope, sitting on an elevated state or throne, and changing two pontifical miters; after which I was presented to kisse his toe, that is, his embroder'd slipper, two Cardinals holding up his vest and surplice, and then being sufficiently bless'd with his thumb and two fingers for that day, I return'd home ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... forward in their recognition of the custom, and strove to celebrate it on a scale of the utmost splendour and magnificence. A list of ornaments for St. Nicholas contained in a Westminster inventory of the year 1388 comprises a mitre, gloves, surplice, and rochet for the Boy-Bishop, together with two albs, a cope embroidered with griffins and other beasts and playing fountains, a velvet cope with the new arms of England, a second mitre and a ring. ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... (10 Aug.) the remains of the late king were carried from Whitehall to Westminster and laid in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, the service being conducted wholly in English, the communion taking the place of the mass, and the priests being vested in a surplice only, in accordance with the provisions of the Book of Common Prayer. For a short time after Mary's accession it was thought that she would be content if the Church were restored to the position it was in at the time when Henry VIII died. It was not ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... them in the garden and came to the gate to meet them. She wore a gown of lavender taffeta, which rustled and shone in the sunlight. The skirt was slightly trained, with a dust ruffle underneath, and the waist was made in surplice fashion, open at the throat. A bertha of rarest Brussels lace was fastened at her neck with the amethyst pin, inlaid with gold and surrounded by baroque pearls. The ends of the bertha hung loosely and under it she had tied an apron of sheerest linen, edged ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... his journal, "Monday, the twenty-fourth, came our good general himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, like all those who were with him. As soon as they told me he was coming, I ran to my lodging, took a new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice, and went out to meet him with a crucifix in my hand; whereupon he, like a gentleman and a good Christian, kneeled down with all his followers, and gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the great favors he had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... N. canonicals, vestments; robe, gown, Geneva gown frock, pallium, surplice, cassock, dalmatic[obs3], scapulary[obs3], cope, mozetta[obs3], scarf, tunicle[obs3], chasuble, alb[obs3], alba[obs3], stole; fanon[obs3], fannel[obs3]; tonsure, cowl, hood; calote[obs3], calotte[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Alexander Armstrong—and the old chaplain who had been Michael's father's tutor and was now an almost doddering old nonentity also stood waiting in his white surplice ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and who was as a god to us country folk, because he was occasionally visited by the then Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore wrong side forwards in order to represent a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family were at church. That is the earliest indication I can call to mind of the strong clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has always ascribed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... clergyman, in surplice, band, and white wig, with a hard, yellow, furrowed face, hovered in, like a white bird of night, from the darkness behind, and was introduced to Dr. Walsingham, and whispered for a while to Mr. Irons, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and "thou" both friend and foe. Every day is to them a holy day, and the Sabbath simply a day of rest. We can readily see how this must have scandalized the Puritans. William Penn became a Quaker while in college at Oxford. Refusing to wear the customary student's surplice, he with others violently assaulted some fellow-students and stripped them of their robes. For this he was expelled. His father would not allow him to return home. Afterward relenting, he sent him to Paris, Cork, and other cities, to soften his Quaker ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... into exhibition of passion. And she remembered how Harold and Alfred used to sit over the dining- room fire shaking their heads over the serious scandal that had been caused in the parish by the new Vicar, who had introduced the dangerous innovation of preaching in his surplice. She had laughed and sneered at her brother's hesitations and scruples about accepting the surplice for the black robe, and now she wondered if he would ask her if she considered it a matter of no importance if the priests put on vestments to say Mass, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... that things would come right of themselves?" said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and the time were sad. Under a cloudy sky the little yew-trees, swayed by the wind, threw down their burdens of melted snow. The by-standers had formed a circle, and were watching the grave-diggers, who were lowering the coffin by cords. Near a cross-bearer, whose short surplice permitted the bottom of his trousers to be seen, the priest waited with a finger in his book; and, having grasped the rim of his hat under his left arm, the orator of the Society of Men of Letters already held in his black-gloved hand the funeral oration, hastily patched up by the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... they came into church made a low obeisance, and took up their allotted places; Nicholas Ferrar, in surplice and hood, saying the service. This over, the "Psalm children" went to the manor house and repeated ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... solemn height I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight— Kneeling before the cross within, My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin. Then, as befits the Christian knight, I donn'd the spotless surplice white, And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:— So down I strode with conscience clear— Bade my leal squires afar the deed, By death or conquest crown'd, await— Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed, And gave to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... at the waist with a thong and laced together with fiber at the sides, from the hips to a point just above the knee. It was open above and below this simple seam and interfered not at all with the freedom of the wearer's movements. But Rachel's habit was a voluminous surplice, fitting closely at the neck, supplied with wide sleeves, seamed, hemmed and of ample length. Deborah was literally swathed in covering, with only her withered face and hands exposed. There was a hint of rank in their superior dress and more than a suggestion of blood ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... he is quite ignorant of their admiration, and therefore quite innocent. I am the only woman he loves, and he never even remembers me when he is in the sacred office. If you could see him come out of the vestry in his white surplice, with his rapt face and prophetic eyes. So mystical! So beautiful! You would not wonder that I ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... divinity. And remarkably mixed up with it and yet not belonging to it, antagonistic and kindred like a silver dagger stuck through a mystically illuminated parchment, was the angelic figure of a tall fair boy in a surplice who stood out amidst the choir below and sang, it ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... cheese, a square tower, a stained window, and a trained rector, who read the service with such ventral depth of utterance and rrreduplication of the rrresonant letter, that his own mother would not have known him for her son, if the good woman had not ironed his surplice and put it ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... double file of soldiers. First come Burgoyne and Swindon, who, on entering the square, glance with distaste at the gallows, and avoid passing under it by wheeling a little to the right and stationing themselves on that side. Then Mr. Brudenell, the chaplain, in his surplice, with his prayer book open in his hand, walking beside Richard, who is moody and disorderly. He walks doggedly through the gallows framework, and posts himself a little in front of it. Behind him comes the executioner, a stalwart ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... small intervening field. He had been used to walk in a tall hat, his Master's gown, and wearing a pair of Geneva bands. Ernest noticed that the bands were worn no longer, and lo! greater marvel still, Theobald did not preach in his Master's gown, but in a surplice. The whole character of the service was changed; you could not say it was high even now, for high-church Theobald could never under any circumstances become, but the old easy-going slovenliness, if I may say so, was gone for ever. The orchestral accompaniments to the hymns ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and all frillish propensities, that it hardly could pretend to decency. A great white wrapper she also wore, which might not have been objectionable had it not been so long worn that it looked like a university college surplice at the end of a long vacation. Her slippers had all the ease which age could give them, and above the slippers, neatness, to say the least of it, did not predominate. But Sophie herself seemed to be quite at her ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... below one ear, where the wax light kissed her sunny hair, she appeared a St. Cecilia, very fair and sweet, to the eyes of the man who stood a moment unperceived beneath the arch. A figure of medium height, clad in priestly garments, with a white surplice sweeping to the marble floor; a finely modelled head thickly fleeced with light brown hair, a serene pleasant face, with regular features, deep-set black eyes magnified by spectacles, and an expression of habitual placidity, that bespoke a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... this instance that "discretion was the better part of valour," for he gave poor "Joe" the slip by incontinently bolting up the hatchway, leaving his comrade to encounter alone the chaplain, who the next moment, in full canonicals, surplice and hood and cassock and all, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... given him its licentiate's hood, the Bishop of Rupert's Land had ordained him, and the North had swallowed him up. He had gone forth with surplice, stole, hood, a sermon-case, the prayer-book, and that other Book of all. Indian camps, trappers' huts, and Company's posts had given him hospitality, and had heard him with patience and consideration. At first ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Curate is wanted, at Old Michaelmas next, to serve the Churches of Burton and Shipton, in Dorsetshire; Salary 36l. per annum, Easter Offerings, and Surplice Fees; together with a good House, pleasant Gardens, and a Pigeon House well stock'd. The Churches are within a mile and a half of each other, served once a Day, and alternately. The Village of Burton is sweetly situated, within half a mile of the Sea, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... feel a vehement hatred for the clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the spirits of darkness—a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and offence to them. The sight of a surplice, the sound of bells, scares them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny; the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... soon to be married, advising them not only as to the importance of the step they were about to take, but as to the minor points to be observed in the ceremony. At the appointed time a few friends gathered in Portland-street chapel, and as we approached the altar, our friend appeared in surplice and gown, his pale, spiritual face more tender and beautiful than ever. This was the last marriage service he ever performed, and it was as pathetic as original, his whole appearance so in harmony with the exquisite sentiments he uttered that we who listened felt as if for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... bell Had stopped, with wearisome Cassandra voice 310 No longer haunting the dark winter night. Call back, O Friend! [E] a moment to thy mind, The place itself and fashion of the rites. With careless ostentation shouldering up My surplice, [F] through the inferior throng I clove 315 Of the plain Burghers, who in audience stood On the last skirts of their permitted ground, Under the pealing organ. Empty thoughts! I am ashamed of them: and that great Bard, And thou, O Friend! who in thy ample mind 320 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... desired to retain all the ancient forms of creed and worship from past centuries except those which had been perverted under the centuries of Roman Catholic domination. The other school within the Church desired to cast out all liturgical forms and the surplice, and also all power of the bishops. They wished to reduce worship to the forms of Calvinistic theology. There were also many who desired to make the Church broad enough to include both schools. The Calvinistic party was already forming ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... the people did not conceal their grief and dismay on learning that the heroine was so soon to perish. The Eucharist was brought into the prison, but without the usual accompaniments of candle, stole, and surplice. These 'maimed rights' raised the indignation of the priest Martin, and he indignantly refused to proceed with the ceremony until lights and stole were brought. During the time in which Joan of Arc was receiving the Sacrament, those persons who had been admitted within ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... family, he recognised the expediency of obtaining orders as a descendant of the apostles. It was not long before he obtained permission to officiate as a minister of the Church of England, and he abandoned the birch for the surplice. Mr. Strachan justified every expectation that may have been formed of him. He became a most zealous churchman, and a very short time elapsed until the Scotch schoolmaster was the Hon. and Revd. Dr. Strachan, Rector of York, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... bursar, disturbed apparently from his early breakfast, stood robed in an ancient dressing-gown, with the Times in his hand, on which he was balancing a frog as yellow as himself. The dean, in cap and surplice, on his way from chapel, was eagerly listening to the account which one of the scouts was giving him of the first discovery of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... stained glass, and dark oak, have, in large towns, in a great degree, supplanted the flat-roofed meetinghouses which were the Presbyterian ideal. The preacher generally wears the English preaching gown. The old Geneva gown covered with frogs is hardly ever seen; but the surplice would still stir up a revolution. The service is performed with much propriety of demeanour; the singing is often so well done by a good choir, that the absence of the organ is hardly felt. Educated Scotchmen have come to lament ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... before Benedict came to Peterborough. He gave many ornaments and vestments to the church, and brought several relics; and in particular some of Thomas a Becket (and those we can certainly believe were more authentic than most relics), among which are mentioned his shirt and surplice, a great quantity of his blood in two crystal vessels, and two altars of the stone on which he fell when he was murdered. He was, as might be expected, very zealous in completing the chapel at the monastery gate which his predecessor had begun to raise in honour of the martyred Archbishop. Dean ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... with the last Congressman's speech or the great election sermon; but Nature knows well what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... prayer books were closed to be slipped into pockets or reticules. The presiding celebrate moved down from the altar, his surplice tugged aside by the wandering breeze revealing the worn cavalry boots ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... in truth, Archdeacon Mackenzie's residence there was a troublous time. The endeavour, by the wish of the Bishop, to establish a weekly offertory, was angrily received by the colonists, who were furious at the sight of the surplice in the pulpit, and, no doubt, disguised much real enmity, both to holiness of life and to true discipline, under their censure of what they called a badge of party. Their treatment of the Archdeacon, when they found him resolute, amounted to persecution; the most ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... funeral orations on this occasion. Not a single one of these official discourses deserved to survive the Queen. There was very little to say about her, I admit; but these professional panegyrists, these liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple and mitre, are not too scrupulous to borrow facts and material in cases where the dead person has neglected to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... shorter than the brow, With little band, as you know how, With cloak like Paul, no coat I trow, With surplice none, nor girdle now, With hands to thump, nor knees to bow; 'Tis a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... dress magnificently, mechanics and serving-men humbly. In Orlando Furioso we read that Orlando is to enter 'attired as a madman' and that Marsilius and Mandricard are to appear 'like Palmers'; in Alphonsus, King of Arragon 'Calchas rises up in a white surplice and a cardinal's mitre', and in Edward the First Longshanks figures 'in Friar's weeds'. The list could be continued. It is practically certain that there was no painted scenery, the absence of which would ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... difficulty in controlling him, maddened by pain. In short, he had reached that supreme moment when the bravest feel a shudder in their veins, when suddenly, in the direction of the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, the crowd opened, crying: "Long live the coadjutor!" and Gondy, in surplice and cloak, appeared, moving tranquilly in the midst of the fusillade and bestowing his benedictions to the right and left, as undisturbed as if he were leading a procession of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... moment the clerk was going out with a copper coffee-pot [coffee-pots are often used for holding holy water in Russia] of holy water in his hand, and, not noticing Katusha, brushed her with his surplice. Evidently he brushed against Katusha through wishing to pass Nekhludoff at a respectful distance, and Nekhludoff was surprised that he, the clerk, did not understand that everything here, yes, and in all the world, only existed for Katusha, and that everything else ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... dislike and persecute the Puritans, not, I think, so much because they made war on the surplice, liturgy, and divine right of bishops, as because they were at heart opposed to all absolute authority both in State and Church, and when goaded by persecution would hurl even kings from their thrones. It is to be regretted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... younger daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself into it with all his might. He could drink tea more gracefully and play tennis better than any clergyman on this side of the Atlantic. He could stand beside the white stone font of St. Asaph's in his long white surplice holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as beautifully innocent as the child itself, and drawing from every matron of the congregation with unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "What a pity that he has ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... provided they gave no offence to their neighbours. It seemed to me quite natural also that men like Johnson, with a taste for art, should prefer the Roman ritual to the simple and sometimes rather bare service of the Anglican Church, but that things such as incense and censers, surplice and gown, should be taken as they are, as paraphernalia, the work of human beings, the outcome of personal and local influences, as church-service, no doubt, but not as service of God. God has to be served by very different things, and there is the danger of the formal prevailing over the essential, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... nature rendered to its Creator, and instead of flowering into a morbid and maudlin sentimentality which craves low-browed, long straight-nosed, undraped statuettes in every nook and corner,—or dwarfs the soul and pins it to the surplice of some theologic dogmata claiming infallibility—or coffins the intellect in cramped, shallow, psychological categories,—it bore fruit in a wide-eyed, large-hearted, liberal-minded eclecticism, which, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the heap of straw, a little boy in a surplice, representing an angel, with wings of crimped lawn at his shoulders, was raised in a chair, by a cord and pulley, to the very top of the sanctuary arch, where he sang a carol ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... only heard him in the pulpit of St. Mary's. It was rather fun to take ritualistic ladies, who had fashioned mental pictures of the great Tractarian, to Evensong in Christ Church, and to watch their dismay as that very unascetic figure, with tumbled surplice and hood awry, toddled to his stall. "Dear me! Is that Dr. Pusey? Somehow I had fancied quite a different-looking man." Liddon was now a Canon of St. Paul's, and his home was at Amen Court; so, when residing at Oxford, he lived a sort of hermit-life in his rooms in Christ Church, and did not hold ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... on the child's forehead in baptism, the celebration of saints' days, insistence on kneeling to receive the communion, the use of church organs, the changing of robes during the service, and even the wearing of a surplice or a square cap, were to many earnest souls survivals of "popery" and temptations to superstition. The clergy who held such beliefs tried by resolutions in convocation to change the practices of the church: but notwithstanding the large ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... lank, ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a short white surplice. He had a ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the stairs. The door opened. A choir boy appeared, followed by an old priest in a surplice. As soon as she perceived him, the dying woman, with one shudder, sat up, opened her lips, stammered two or three words, and began to scratch the sheets with her nails as if she had ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Percivale ware in the sea, and saw a ship come sailing toward him; and Sir Percivale went unto the ship and found it covered within and without with white samite. And at the board stood an old man clothed in a surplice, in likeness of a priest. Sir, said Sir Percivale, ye be welcome. God keep you, said the good man. Sir, said the old man, of whence be ye? Sir, said Sir Percivale, I am of King Arthur's court, and a knight of the Table Round, the which am ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... in his surplice, preceded by a choir-boy, who rang a bell, to announce the passage of the Host through the parched and quiet country. Some men, who were working at a distance, took off their large hats and remained motionless until the white vestment ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... following Sabbath the public use of the Liturgy was to be commenced. The 23d day of July, 1637, was that on which the perilous attempt was to be made. In the cathedral church of St. Giles, the Dean of Edinburgh, attired in his surplice, began to read the service of the day. At that moment, an old woman, named Jenny Geddes, unable longer to restrain her indignation, exclaimed, "Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug!" and seizing the stool on ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... he attempted to approach the governor's quarters, but the guard interposed. Throughout the service he was watchful of any opportunity that might arise, but none appeared. At the close he was being taken back to Doomsdale, side by side with his companion, when he saw the chaplain, in his surplice, crossing the green to his rooms. Then, at a sudden impulse, Ralph pushed aside the guard, and, tapping the clergyman on the shoulder, called on him to stop ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... dissipations to which the prudent may occasionally yield. It now offered itself to Glennard as an easy escape from the obsession of moral problems, which somehow could no more be worn in Flamel's presence than a surplice in ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... solemn, joyous and beautiful; the priest in his bright, silver chasuble, dotted with gilt crosses, the deacon, the chanters in holiday surplice of gold and silver, the spruce volunteer singers with oiled hair, the joyous melodies of holiday songs, the ceaseless blessing of the throng by the priests with flower-bedecked tern candles with the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... "obey," but it has a most humiliating ceremony in giving the bride away. I was never more struck with its odious and ludicrous features than on once seeing a tall, queenly-looking woman, magnificently arrayed, married by one of the tiniest priests that ever donned a surplice and gown, given away by the smallest guardian that ever watched a woman's fortunes, to the feeblest, bluest-looking little groom that ever placed a wedding ring on bridal finger. Seeing these Lilliputians around her, I thought, when the little ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Cadwallader. "Those dark, purple-faced people are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in his white surplice." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... gone to Panama for three days. On the day after his departure, the plague broke out in his house, and my services were required promptly. I found the miserable household in terrible alarm, and yet confining their exertions to praying to a coarse black priest in a black surplice, who, kneeling beside the couch of the Spanish lady, was praying (in his turn) to some favourite saint in Cruces. The sufferer was a beautiful woman, suffering from a violent attack of cholera, with no one to help her, or even to take from ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... dress," said Teresa, desperately, "and of course it's pretty, and at first I couldn't think where I'd seen it before, and I don't believe any of the other girls did. But they will! And I don't know what Sister will say! She's wearing Joe Hammond's surplice, yes, but she IS, mother!—it's as long as a dress, you know, and with a blue sash, and all! It's one of the lace ones, that Mrs. Deane gave all the altar-boys a year ago, don't you remember? Don't you remember she made almost all of them ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Eve and St. George of England entered, the appearance of that champion was slightly different. His face was energetically blacked all over with soot, above which he wore an aged and very tall top hat; he wore his shirt outside his coat like a surplice, and he flourished a thick umbrella. Now do not, I beg you, talk about "ignorance"; or suppose that the Mummer in question (he is a very pleasant Ratcatcher, with a tenor voice) did this because he knew no better. Try to realise that ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... rear; he had been given the living of Wombash by a cousin, and filled it very largely because it was not only more piquant but more remunerative and respectable to be a rationalist lecturer in a surplice. And in a hard kind of ultra-Protestant way his social and parochial work was not badly done. But his sermons were terrible. "He takes a text," said one informant, "and he goes on firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, like somebody ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... and he apologised. Then the king shook hands with Prigio in public, and thanked him, and said he was proud of him. As to Lady Rosalind, the old gentleman quite fell in love with her, and he sent at once to the Chaplain Royal to get into his surplice, and marry all the young people off at once, without waiting for wedding-cakes, and milliners, and all the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... we went to the chapel to hear mass, and when we came in the priest was at the altar finishing the Credo. The count looked furious, and after mass he took me with him to the sacristy, and begun to abuse and beat the poor priest, in spite of the surplice which he was still wearing. It was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the middle of the Vicar's ground! What would you say if Mr. Fenwick demanded leave to use your parlour for his vestry room, and to lock up his surplice in your cupboard?" ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the gardener's wife, "my poor little boy has lost the gift of the Reverend Mother of San Surplice! His own cross which has been blessed by his holiness the Pope! It is because I left his cross in his little shirt that he is getting better, but now it is lost and I am sure these ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... thereof] The discussion of the meaning of the Ornaments of the Ministers belongs chiefly to the Communion Service. There has been no question that for Morning and Evening Service a Surplice and Hood ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... approached the grave, the parson issued from the church-porch, arrayed in the surplice, with prayer-book in hand, and attended by the clerk. The service, however, was a mere act of charity. The deceased had been destitute, and the survivor was penniless. It was shuffled through, therefore, in form, but coldly and unfeeling. The well-fed priest moved ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... it is occupied as a receptacle for a beautiful life-size effigy of Dr. Selwyn, for upwards of forty years Canon of Ely, and for many years St Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge;[48] who died in 1875. The figure is represented as vested in cassock, surplice, and stole, with the hands joined as in prayer, in white statuary marble, and resting on a moulded base of Purbeck marble. The cost was defrayed by subscriptions from several noblemen ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... black cassock and a much soiled and slightly torn surplice. The unseemly appearance of this dirty garment was heightened by the circumstance that he had not taken the trouble to adjust it properly. It hung all lop-sided, showing about six inches more of the black cassock underneath one side than the other. However, perhaps it is not right to criticize ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... our Lion, Young Oriel may be described as The Dove of our colony. He is almost as great a pasha among the ladies as Bulbul. They crowd in flocks to see him at Saint Waltheof's, where the immense height of his forehead, the rigid asceticism of his surplice, the twang with which he intones the service, and the namby-pamby mysticism of his sermons, have turned all the dear girls' heads for some time past. While we were having a rubber at Mrs. Chauntry's, whose ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the middle of the church, and Dick twisted the brim of his big hat nervously, troubled by the service the parson in a white flowing surplice read from the reading-desk. Kate, on the contrary, appeared much consoled, and prayed silently, and the parson mumbled so many prayers that Dick began to consider the time it would take to learn a part of equal length. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... steps into an inner library where piles of early folios were wasting away on the ground. Beneath an old ebony table were two long carved oak chests. I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts—Commonwealth quartos, unbound—a prey to worms and decay. All was neglect. The outer door of this room, which was open, was nearly on a level with the Quadrangle; ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... consciousness in an instant, and I have some idea that I must have uttered a suppressed exclamation, for I noticed that Mr Treasurer turned his head quickly in my direction. The impression of the unpleasant feeling was so strong that I found myself rubbing my hand upon my surplice. This accident led me to examine the figures after prayers more carefully than I had done before, and I realized for the first time with what skill they ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it; he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock, and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... laugh; and they had better do it in private, and with aprons off—never before the Chapter, who all, themselves, laugh in private. Man, you know, is the only risible creature; but a Curate must begin to know, from the moment he has put on his surplice, that he is to discard at once, and for ever, this human and irreverend instinct. Had you lived in the triumphal days of the Puritans, what penalties would you not have had to undergo, what buffetings and duckings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of motionless men standing with their caps in their hands and their eyes on the centre of the great hollow square where, hidden beneath the folds of the Flag they had served so well, lay those of their comrades who had died of wounds since the battle. A Chaplain in cassock and white surplice moved across the open space and halted in the centre, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... men come in with a long box. And there are women crying. They all wear little white caps and black dresses. And I see a man in a white surplice, with a large cross in his hands, and a little boy in a long red gown. And the men take off their hats. And now everyone is ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... the officiating ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possible provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, where the facilities in that respect are very limited. The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr Toots are come; the clergyman is putting on his surplice in the vestry, while the clerk walks round him, blowing the dust off it; and the bride and bridegroom stand before the altar. There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better father than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... being repaired. Shelter at Carbury Manor was very much more comfortable than the priest's own establishment, even with the roof on, and Father Barham was in clover. Father Barham was reading his own favourite newspaper, 'The Surplice,' when Roger entered the room. 'Have you seen ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the church found an outlet in whispered criticisms of ecclesiastical architecture with Johnson. "Early Norman arches, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... regarded Laud and his policy with aversion. While, unlike the Presbyterians, they did not urge the abolition of the bishops, they disliked all "superstitious usages," as they called the wearing of the surplice by the clergy, the use of the sign of the cross at baptism, the kneeling posture in partaking of the communion. The Presbyterians, who are often confused with the Puritans, agreed with them in many respects, but went farther and demanded the introduction of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... is turning Puseyite. Having worn out my black gown, I preach in my surplice; this is all the change I have made, or mean ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... nourished any ill will toward the English. The Regent Bedford himself was a canon of Rouen, as Charles VII was a canon of Puy.[2152] On the 20th of October, in that same year 1430, the Regent, donning surplice and amice, had distributed the dole of bread and wine for the chapter.[2153] The canons of Rouen were not prejudiced in favour of the Maid of the Armagnacs; they agreed to the demand of the Bishop of Beauvais and granted him the formal ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and stamped their feet and beat their hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep the blood flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, with sunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red and white comforter over his surplice; the five young men pulled down the ear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn shoulders, burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chaplain gabbled the few necessary prayers: they were inaudible to his hearers; for the rushing wind ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... established church; but when Elizabeth felt herself secure, then they were obliged to conform, or suffered imprisonment, fines, and other punishments. The original difficulty was their repugnance to the surplice, and to some few forms of worship, which gradually extended to an opposition to the order of bishops; to the temporal dignities of the church; to the various titles of the hierarchy; to the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts; to the promiscuous access of all persons to the communion ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... through so many circumstances of doubt and difficulty, he had at length happily conducted his hero and heroine. Not a circumstance was then omitted, from the manly ardour of the bridegroom, and the modest blushes of the bride, to the parson's new surplice, and the silk tabinet mantua of the bridesmaid. But such descriptions are now discarded, for the same reason, I suppose, that public marriages are no longer fashionable, and that, instead of calling together their friends to a feast and a dance, the happy couple elope in a solitary post-chaise, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... well it c'n be some use now an' then, settin' 'round there, not knowin' nothin' in this world what to do with its surplice." ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... need not tell the rest of our adventure at length. We reached the Carracks, and there the Vicar pulled out a short surplice from the immense inner pocket of his pea-jacket, donned it, and read the burial service in due form by the light of his dark lantern: and by the light of it, as I arranged John Emmet's shroud, I had my first and last ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... negligence being thought unseemly, it pleased the Queen's Majesty, sitting in her Council, and with consent of the Archbishop and Bishops, to issue certain injunctions for the better ordering of the Church: to wit, that at all times of their ministration the clergy should wear a decent white surplice, and no other vestment, nor should minister in their common apparel ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie. I dreamed that I was standing inside the communion rails of a church—I on one side of the altar-table, and the clergyman, with his surplice and his prayer-book, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... everlasting vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of 'Who might sit thereon;' the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplice, stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave; the sacristan is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the Venetian Doge did into the Adriatic. The Feast of Candles at Sais is still marked in the Christian calendar as Candlemas Day. The Catholic priest shaves his head as the Egyptian priest did before him. The Episcopal minister's linen surplice for reading the Liturgy is taken from the dress of obligation, made of linen, worn by the priest in Egypt. Two thousand years before the Pope assumed to hold the keys, there was an Egyptian priest at Thebes with the title of "Keeper of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... arrange it. She might have been a young gentlewoman of fifty years back when costume was gayer than nowadays, arrayed for a fashionable wedding or for a bull-fight. And in another church I saw a youthful Saint in priest's robes, a cassock of black silk and a short surplice of exquisite lace; he held a bunch of lilies in his hand and looked very gently, his lips almost trembling to a smile. One can imagine that not to them would come the suppliant with a heavy despair, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... "closet," for they could not see out of it, except where Eugene had furtively enlarged a moth-eaten hole in the curtain, through which, when standing on the seat, he could enjoy an oblique view of the back of an iron-moulded surplice and a very ill-powdered wig. This was a comfort to him. It would have been more satisfactory to have been able to make out whence came the stentorian A-men, that responded to the parson, totally unaccompanied ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preparation after the Chapel service. At this time there was no Sunday sermon in Chapel. The Bishop used to say that the preaching was done in the school; but much of his school was of a hortatory kind in the Chapel, and often without taking off the surplice. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opened, and Theron saw the priest standing in the doorway with an uplifted hand. He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over his shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Wordsworth since hall-time, when the ringing of the chapel-bell summoned him to put on his surplice, and walk quietly down to chapel. As there was plenty of time, he took a stroll or two across the court before going in. While doing so, he met De Vayne, and in his company suddenly found himself vis-a-vis with his old ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... with a surplice and wig, like a half-blown Bishop. The distant country looks the very ghost of a landscape: the white-walled cottages seem part and parcel of the snow-drifts around them, -drifts that take every variety of form, and are swept by the wind into ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... so named because they desired a purer form of worship than the Anglican. To these earnest reformers the Church Elizabeth had established seemed but half-reformed. Many rites and ceremonies, such as wearing the surplice and making the cross in baptism, had been retained; and these things, in their eyes, appeared mere Popish superstitions. What they wanted was a more sweeping change, a form of worship more like that of the Calvinistic churches of Geneva, in ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... development. The distinction between "choir services" (Mattins, Vespers, Compline, &c.)—consisting of prayers, lections, the singing of the psalms, &c.—and the service of the altar was sharply drawn in the middle ages, as in the modern Roman Church. "Choir vestments" (surplice, &c.) are those worn by the clergy at the former, as distinguished from those used at the Mass (see VESTMENTS). In England at the Reformation the choir services (Mattins, Evensong) replaced the Mass as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various |
