"Exciseman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or from a Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government which all allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves the Crown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector of the customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... farm did not prosper; he had to join to it the salary of an exciseman; at last he had to give it up, and rely altogether on the latter resource. He was an active officer; and, though he sometimes tempered severity with mercy, we have local testimony oddly representing the public feeling of the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beastly drunkard," as the New York Observer, in answer to a challenge, proved him to be beyond the possibility of successful contradiction. Tom Paine was of a Quaker family; was a staymaker by trade, but an agitator by occupation. He had obtained an appointment as exciseman, but was dismissed from his office, and emigrated to America in 1774. He somehow obtained an introduction to Dr. Franklin in London, who gave him a letter of introduction to a gentleman in Philadelphia, through whom he procured employment ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... times. My cousin was a loud politician, and evidently accustomed to talk without contradiction at his own table. He was amazingly loyal, and talked of standing by the throne to the last guinea, "as every gentleman of fortune should do." The village exciseman, who was half asleep, could just ejaculate, "very true," to every thing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Sawyer's Cottage might have been found," Gwendolen persisted—taken hold of (as if in a nightmare) by the image of this house where an exciseman had lived. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... or as she called it, Bohanon, was the daughter of a petty exciseman, of Scotch extraction (hence her industry) who, at the time of her birth, resided near the old town of Inniskillen. Her mother died a few months after she was born; and her father, within the twelve months, married again. In the meanwhile, the poor orphan babe ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... broke a hole through the "divets" or turfs of the thatch, and creeping through it, climbed down outside, just as his adversaries, certain of capturing their prize, were mounting the ladder which led to his bed-chamber. When the exciseman saw the empty bed he cried with ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Fielding's life preceding his appointment as a Bow Street magistrate (an appointment comparable only to the choice of Robert Burns as an exciseman) were marked, as we have seen, by lively passages in the political arena, and a steady output of political journalism. Indeed, by this time, the public must have associated swingeing denunciations of Jacobites, and glowing eulogies of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... of care, The sectary's cold shrug, the miser's stare, Were all excited, for the tidings flew As quick as scandal the whole country through. "Rent paid by rhymes at Oakly may be great, "But rhymes for taxes would appal the state," Exclaim'd th' exciseman,—"and then tithes, alas! "Why there, again, 'twill never come to pass."— Thus all still ventured, as the whim inclined, Remarks as various as the varying mind: For here Sir Ambrose sent a challenge forth, That claim'd a tribute due to sterling worth; And all, whatever might their host ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... souls in purgatory.' For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay! Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either here ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hold of Curzon, but with no peculiar or very measured respect, and introduced him as Mr. MacNeesh, the new Scotch steward and improver—a character at that time whose popularity might compete with a tithe proctor or an exciseman. So completely did this tactique turn the tables upon the poor adjutant, who the moment before was exulting over me, that I utterly forgot my own woes, and sat down convulsed with mirth at his situation—an emotion certainly not lessened as I saw Curzon passed from one to the other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever |
