"Ferryman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things—the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night above ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... done in my vision. I asked them if there had ever been any Mormon preachers in that country. They said there had not been any there. The young women were modest and genteel in behavior. I passed on to the Cumberland River, was set over the river by the ferryman, and lodged in ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... had joined Galliffet, I wrote to my wife: "Conduct of troops most orderly. It is now, of course, here, as it was already in 1870 with the Germans, that, the soldier being Guy Boys [Footnote: Guy Boys was Lady Dilke's nephew; Jim Haslett the ferryman at Dockett. Sir Charles was illustrating the fact that all classes serve together both in the ranks and as officers.] and Jim Haslett and all of us, and not a class apart, there is no 'military tone.' Discipline, nevertheless, seems perfect, but are the officers as ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... formed of logs of wood and large boulder stones. Up this causeway you walked until you came to the overhanging shore which on the left hand was cut away to admit the causeway continuing up into the land. There was a small thicket of trees on the rock-top and a patch of garden which belonged to the ferryman. The only house visible was a farm-house which stood on the spot where the (Gough's) Woodside Hotel may now be found. It had a garden enclosed by a hedge round it. The road to Bidston was a rough, rutted way, and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... the grain for the farmers. If ill-treated, however, or turned to ridicule, these little creatures would forsake the house and never come back again. When the old gods ceased to be worshipped in the Northlands, the dwarfs withdrew entirely from the country, and a ferryman related how he had been hired by a mysterious personage to ply his boat back and forth across the river one night, and at every trip his vessel was so heavily laden with invisible passengers that it nearly sank. When his ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... my way up the river for a mile or two, to where, at a pretty quiet spot, I observed a boat just leaving the bank for the north side. I hailed the ferryman, and he returned immediately, when, adding myself and nag to his freight, he again commenced pulling up the stream, assisted by a couple of curly-headed urchins, his sons, two out of twelve, as he laughingly told me; adding, that they ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... wafter of all souls to bliss or bane! Who calls the ferryman of Hell? Come near and say who lives in bliss and who in pain. Those that die well eternal bliss shall follow. Those that die ill their own black deeds shall swallow. Shall thy black barge those guilty ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the ferry, and learned that the ferryboat no longer plied, as, since the troubles began, there was so little traffic that it did not pay the ferryman to remain there. As they had already decided to cross by the ford, four miles higher up, this did not matter. As none of them was aware of its exact position, they decided to wait ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... William, as they took their seats at the breakfast table, "because I had purchased this light wagon and horse for you to ride to church in, and I came down in it. I reached the river last night, but could not cross. The old ferryman had gone to bed, and would not rise. Well, after breakfast, dear mother, I shall have the pleasure of driving you to church in your ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... gloom he distinguished the ferry boat three-quarters of the way across the river, nearing the opposite bank. His "halloa" brought an answer from the ferryman. Cursing his luck in missing the boat by so short a margin of time, he sat down heavily on the stout wooden wall that guarded the approach. It would be ten or fifteen minutes before the tortoise-like craft could ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... in that strained whisper. "Mother, when I went to sleep I dreamt a ferryman came for us, and his boat was close to the shore, and we were stepping in when you called me back. I knew your voice, and you said 'Susie' quite plainly. I wouldn't go, and I wouldn't let him take Dick! I screamed and held ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... the Infernal Gods," because of its [142] narcotic effects. Nevertheless, the roots of the asphodel were thought by the ancient Greeks to be edible, and they were therefore laid in tombs as food for the dead. Lucian tells us that Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of the departed over the river Styx, said: "I know why Mercury keeps us waiting here so long. Down in these regions there is nothing to be had but, asphodel, and oblations, in the midst ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... smile, and both entered the boat. When Davy the ferryman returned, an hour later, he reported that his master had embarked safely on ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the cold blue river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses that grow along its banks. There are signs of a trodden slope and a ferry, and there's a rough old wooden shelter where passengers can wait; a bell hung on the top with which they call the ferryman. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... public-service companies, such as electric lighting or gas companies, to make the same rates to consumers, large or small. This also was very possibly the common law, and required no new statutes; there are cases reported as far back as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where, for instance, a ferryman was punished for charging less for the ferriage of a large drove of sheep or cattle than for a smaller number, "contrary to the common custom of the realm." Nine years before this statute is the Assize of Bread and Beer, attempting to fix ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... has been handed down from the time of the Danish invasions of Britain, explanatory of the generic name of Osmunda—an island, covered with large specimens of this fern, figuring prominently in the story. Osmund, the ferryman of Loch Tyne, had a beautiful child, who was the pride of his life and the joy of his heart. In those days, when the merciless Danes were making their terrible descents upon the coasts of Great Britain, slaughtering the peaceful inhabitants, ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... There was once a ferryman who plied a ferry across a big river, and he had two wives. By the elder wife he had five sons and by the younger only one. When he grew old he gave up work himself and left his sons to manage the boats; but the step-brothers could not agree and were always ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... good woman and on leaving her house faced the east and continued in that direction all the way. Toward evening they came to the west branch of the Winkie River and there, on the river bank, found a ferryman who lived all alone ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the men went into the hedge, and brought out a child's golden ringlet as a trophy. Lamar glanced in, and saw the small face in its woollen hood, dimpled yet, though dead for days. He remembered it. Jessy Birt, the ferryman's little girl. She used to come up to the house every day for milk. He wondered for which flag she died. Ruth was teaching her to write. Ruth! Some old pain hurt him just then, nearer than even the blood of the old man or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Wilfrid!" cries a hind: "The ferryman is weak: He cannot stem the stream and wind: Help, help! ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... tell you, Father. They saw two vagabonds by the river. Their clothing was torn and dirty, for they'd been in the water. And when it came to paying the ferryman, they'd no money. Now they're drying their clothes in the ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... later the four Northerners had taken a grateful farewell of the unsuspecting Mrs. Page, and were hurrying along the bank of the Tennessee. By four o'clock in the afternoon they had reached a point directly opposite Chattanooga. Here they found a ferryman, just as they had been given to expect, with his flat "horse-boat" moored to the shore. He was a fat, comfortable-looking fellow, as he sat in tailor-fashion on the little wharf, smoking a corncob pipe as unconcernedly ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... that these exhibitions were also the prototypes whereon D'Hancarville shows Mercury, Momus, and Psyche delineated as we see Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown on our stages. The old man (Pantaloon), is Charon (the ferryman of hell). The Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, the god of raillery and wit, and whose large gaping mouth is in ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... to me. The vapourings of the ferryman were of no importance. "Quiller," he said, "we're in the devil's own mess. What do ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... vicinity he covered with his figures and quotations. By night he read and worked as long as there was light, and he kept a book in the crack of the logs in his loft to have it at hand at peep of day. When acting as ferryman on the Ohio in his nineteenth year, anxious, no doubt, to get through the books of the house where he boarded before he left the place, he read every ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... of Gironde is remarkable for a dreadful event which happened there in the last century. There was formerly a ferry where the bridge now extends; and one day the ferryman insisted on being paid double the usual fare. There were no less than eighty-three passengers on board his boat, all of whom resisted the imposition. The "ferryman-fiend" was so enraged, that, just as they reached the shore, he ran the boat against a projecting ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and provisions, are still placed in the graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and armour in order ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... from the eastern parts came to a strait or sound, on the other side of which was a ferryman with his ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... Joel sheltered his sister from the rain as well as he could, but the wind soon became so violent that they were obliged to take refuge in the hut of the ferryman, which stood a few hundred yards from the ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... eighteenth century, the traveller to Paestum had to endure amidst other difficulties and dangers of the road the disagreeable business of being ferried across the Sele, which was then bridgeless. Owing to the malaria and the loneliness of the spot, the acting of ferryman over this river was not an agreeable post, and Count Stolberg, a German dilettante who has left some memories of his Italian wanderings, relates how a feeble dismal soured old man, a veritable Charon of the upper air, had great difficulty in conveying himself, his horse and his servant ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... honor," said the ferryman, and set to work to draw the boat over hand by a rope stretched across ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... I do," said he softly to Esau Wardrop, as they were stepping out, and with that he feigned some small expedient for tarrying in the boat, while the soldiers, taking their arms, leapt on shore. The ferryman also was out before them; and my brother seeing this, took up an oar, seemingly to help him to step out; but pretending at the time to stumble, he caught hold of Esau's shoulder, and pushing with, the oar, shoved off the boat in such a manner, that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... over them; then the hay she always put in for her team over that, and a bag of apples, and another of potatoes, or any thing she generally brought into market, placed in front so as to present the appearance of a load of marketing. As she had been over so often, she said, the ferryman hardly ever asked her for her pass, for he knew her so well. "Don't you see you are the very one to bring yourself and family here? You could drive over and take your family to either of three places: to a colored family on Macallister Street, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... so loudly that a listener twenty yards away could have heard nothing. He cast off and then hastened to the stern of the boat. The way in which he handled the helm showed that he knew the tricks of the old ferryman by wind and calm, by high and low river. He had probably learnt them with the photographic accuracy only to be attained when the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... English officers with us (ah! what gentlemen, what noblemen of nature they seemed), and they hurried off with me; leaving Kate and Anne on a crag of ice; and clambered after me over the rocks at the foot of the small Fall, while the ferryman was getting the boat ready. I was not disappointed—but I could make out nothing. In an instant I was blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. I saw the water tearing madly down from some immense height, but could get no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that appendage would not have been annexed to a story utterly without foundation, and consequently throws no incredibility on the fact that the eldest son of the young Earl of Derby was nursed at Courtfield. Thus, too, though the recorded salutation of the ferryman of Goodrich congratulates his Majesty on the birth of a (p. 012) noble prince, as the King was hastening from his court and palace of Windsor to his castle of Monmouth; yet the unstationary habits of Bolingbroke, his love of journeyings and travels, and his restlessness at ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... heaps. The shell is mingled with earth near the top, but below 2 or 3 feet the mass is of clean shell to a depth, as exposed by the river, of at least 10 feet. The bottom of the deposit is not visible, being concealed by mud piled against it in high water. The old ferryman says it is 20 feet deep. Although the shell piles are built up higher than the bottom lands to the rear or on either side, they are submerged several feet in great freshets. It is impossible to explain this fact otherwise than by the assumption that the bed of the river ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... the overflowing. These circumstances, added to the preceding ones, increased the probability of the fiction; and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these inventions, and gave ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... just one silver dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... "Never!" He seized an oar, mickle and broad, and smote Hagen (soon he rued it), that he staggered and fell on his knees. Seldom had he of Trony encountered so grim a ferryman. Further, to anger the bold stranger, he brake a boat-pole over his head, for he was a strong man. But he did ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... Like a vast river, stretching in the sun. With exultation at my feet I saw Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays, A universe of Nature's fairest forms Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst, Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay. I bounded down the hill shouting amain For the old Ferryman; to the shout the rocks Replied, and when the Charon of the flood Had stayed his oars, and touched the jutting pier, I did not step into the well-known boat Without a cordial greeting. Thence with speed Up the familiar hill I took my way Toward ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... in another moment he saw that the boat was returning from the distance. Had he lost his only chance? He glanced hurriedly at his watch; he had come more quickly than he imagined; there would still be time. He beckoned impatiently to the ferryman; the boat—a ship's pinnace, with two men in it—crept in with exasperating slowness. At last the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... burden—a half-fledged shrike and a baby gopher—picked up in her walk. It was impossible to wrap them both in her apron without serious peril to one or the other; she could not put either down without the chance of its escaping. "It's like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to take the wolf and the sheep in his boat," said Peggy to herself, "though I don't believe anybody was ever so silly as to want to take a wolf across the river." But, looking up, she beheld the approach ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... spread through the city no sounds but those of wailing were heard. Only the voice of Psyche was silent among them. She moved about as one that was sleeping, and indeed she felt as if the boat, with its grim ferryman, had already borne her across the Styx. So the days passed on, and one evening a white-clad priest arrived from the shrine to bid the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Champlain I consulted the map and decided to leave the boat at Chimney Point to find Kate Fullerton, who had written to the schoolmaster from Canterbury. My aunt had said in a letter that old Kate was living there and that a great change had come over her. So I went ashore and hired a horse of the ferryman—one of those "Green Mountain ponies" of which my uncle had told me: "They'll take any gait that suits ye, except a slow one, an' keep it to the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... bank they'll cross, sure pop. It won't do, Messenger. If that fellow attempts the fords we'll catch him, sure; if he swims we may get him in the water. The Lord knows I want him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing vedettes across the stream.... There's a ferryman over there I'm worried about, too. He'd probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And Allen was thick with him. They used to fish together. Nobody knows what they hatched out between them. It worries me, I can tell ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... on and came to a wide river over which he must go. The ferryman asked him what his trade was, and what he knew. "I know everything," answered he. "Then you can do me a favour," said the ferryman, "and tell me why I must always be rowing backwards and forwards, and am never set free?" "You shall know that," answered he; "only ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the specific purpose of leaving once they were on free soil. But as usual this enactment was not effective, because there was a loop-hole in it. The State assembly in 1831, therefore, provided that no ferryman on the Ohio River should transport slaves across from Kentucky. No other person, not owning or keeping a ferry, was to be permitted to set slaves over, or to loan them boats or watercraft. Slaves ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... not walked far before he came to the ferry at Twickenham. The view on the other side of the river attracted him: meadows dotted with cows and sheep, a verdant hill with pleasant villas here and there; and, seeing the ferryman resting on his oars, he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... last. The officers were completely worn out with their exertions, and it was impossible to continue their hold upon him any longer. Nalle was at liberty. His friends rushed him down Dock Street to the lower ferry, where there was a skiff lying ready to start. The fugitive was put in, the ferryman rowed off, and amid the shouts of hundreds who lined the banks of the river, Nalle was carried into ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... will learn to be polite, your Lordship, when you give them a chance!—Nor is it as a school of human culture, for this or for any other grace or gift, that Parliament will be found first-rate or indispensable. As experience in the river is indispensable to the ferryman, so is knowledge of his Parliament to the British Peel or Chatham;—so was knowledge of the OEil-de-Boeuf to the French Choiseul. Where and how said river, whether Parliament with Wilkeses, or OEil-de-Boeuf with Pompadours, can be waded, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... fortune, nor no hope of end To our infamous, monstrous slaveries. Gape, earth, and let the fiends infernal view A [276] hell as hopeless and as full of fear As are the blasted banks of Erebus, Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans Hover about the ugly ferryman, To get a passage to Elysium! [277] Why should we live?—O, wretches, beggars, slaves!— Why live we, Bajazeth, and build up nests So high within the region of the air, By living long in this oppression, That all the world will see and laugh to scorn The former triumphs of our mightiness In this ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... singularly suited to such a trick. The rope was the stationary half of a ferry to which I had neglected to make timely obeisance. It marked, indeed, an incipient stage in the art of suspension bridges, the ferryboat itself supporting a part of the weight, while the ferryman pulled it and himself across. We met several more in the course of the next few minutes, before which we all bowed down into the bottom of the boat, while the hawser scraped, grumbling impotently, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... to pass that by daybreak the two girls, even the Misses Weasel, had come to a broad river which they could not cross. But In The edge of the water stood a large Crane, motionless, or the Tum-gwo-lig-unach, who was the ferryman. Now truly this is esteemed to be the least beautiful of all the birds, for which cause he is greedy of good words and fondest of flattery. And of all beings there were none who had more bear's oil ready to anoint every one's hair with—that is to say, more compliments ready ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... over Jersey sands. Leaving the beach with only six dollars, he reached South Amboy penniless, with six horses and three men, all hungry, still far from home, and separated from Staten Island by an arm of the sea half a mile wide, that could be crossed only by paying the ferryman six dollars. This was a puzzling predicament for a boy of twelve, and he pondered long how he could get out of it. At length he went boldly to the only innkeeper of the place, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... bottom was quicksands. The horse was scared at the footing,—he plunged and broke the traces; however, after a tolerable wetting, we succeeded in getting safe out. A little above the place where we made the attempt, we found there was a ferry-flat. The ferryman considered our attempt as dangerous, for had we gone much further into the stream we should have shot into the quicksands in the deep current. This day the fates were most unpropitious to us; and had we had, like ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Cellier in 1680 for an obscure political libel, and the occasional value which they have acquired through the apparent loss of the English originals. We have, for example, a French account of a London ferryman, who, under pretence of conveying passengers across the river, strangled them (1586); a second, of the misdoings of a minister at Malden in Essex (1588); and a third, of the execution of two priests and two laymen at Oxford in 1590, the last ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... got there he learned that Noah Martin the fisherman who was also the ferryman between the village and its neighbor on the other side of the river, had been drowned during the early morning in a foolish attempt to row his ferry skiff across the stream. The ice which had blocked the river for two months, had begun to ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... in numbers surpassing imagination. There Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting doleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy passengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony throne and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his side sits his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... mortal habiliments of woe, crowding the banks of the fateful river, and waiting, sick with hope deferred, their turn to cross; and your eyes wander curiously along the swollen, dashing stream to catch sight of the unclean grizzly beard, Charon, the ferryman, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... probably not yet reached the summit of her social ambition. Bred to shabby gentility , Miss Alva Smith proceeded to "splurge" when she captured a Vanderbilt. She had probably never seen a hundred dollar bill until permitted to finger the fortune of the profane old ferryman who founded her husband's aristocratic family. She was a parvenu, a nouveau riche, and could not rest until she had proclaimed that fact by squandering half a million of the man's money whom she subsequently dishonored, on the ball which Mrs. Bradley-Martin ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... previously arranged with his chief equerry, Appelmann, to have a boat there in readiness for him, and also a good horse, to take across the ferry with them to the other side. So, at twelve o'clock, he and Appelmann embarked privately, with Johann Bruwer, the ferryman, and were safely landed at Mahlzow. Here he mounted his horse, and told the two others to await his return, and conceal themselves in the wood if any one approached. Appelmann begged permission to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... not for the wisest or the most pious. The idea of reward or punishment beyond the grave found little credit. The notions of future life were hazy, uncertain, doubtful and contradictory. Everybody knows Juvenal's famous lines: "That there are manes, a subterranean kingdom, a ferryman with a long pole, and black frogs in the whirlpools of the Styx; that so many thousand men could cross the waves in a single boat, to-day ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... his death beneath yonder castle's walls. That seeming birch-stump on the farther shore was the castle champion, armed cap-a-pie in silver harness and ready with drawn sword to do battle against all comers. Trim the sail, ferryman, and steer thy skilfullest! ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a man behind him; "here am I, perishing in the mob, and begging a drachma to settle with the ragged ferryman. But, Pluto take me! these new ones have not so much ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... inherited from his father, and marry the lady for whose hand the very noble Ahenobarbus for some time disputed. Therefore let me wish you both a safe voyage to the kingdom of Hades; and if you need money for the ferryman, accept now, as always, the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... obstruction is less. It certainly belongs to the science of hydraulics, for it is not such a boat as can be propelled by steam or wind. I had occasion recently to cross the Mississippi on a similar ferry, early in the morning, and before the ferryman was up. The proprietor of it was with me; yet neither of us knew much of its practical operation. I soon pulled the head of the boat towards the current, but left down the resistance board, or whatever ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... ancient writings say that having naught To pay the ferryman, the churl refused To ferry him across the swollen stream, When he was raised and wafted through the air. What matter whether that all-powerful Love Which moves the worlds, and bears with all our sins, Sent him a chariot and steeds of fire, Or moved the heart of some poor fisherman ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Miss Helen," said Duncan, the ferryman, "his lordship crossed wi' me the day; an' I'm thinking, minister," added the old man confidentially, "that ye suld just gang up to the Castle an' see him; for it's ma opinion that the earl's come back as he gaed awa, nae better ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... side, they were slowly borne over the still waters under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance at the ferryman. Evidently what she had to say was too confidential to admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him. Lily soon did address her talk to him, "So, Brown, the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... found, the desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman's toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling expenses of the soul. But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the land of the dead; the soul may return to avenge its death by helping to discover ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... sorest ill that Heaven hath Sent on this lower world in wrath,— The plague (to call it by its name,) One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,— Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire; Nor wolf nor fox now watch'd to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled; So love and therefore ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... while the ferryboat was crossing the river, I asked the ferryman to let me ride over. I was halted by a soldier who ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... N. sailor, mariner, navigator; seaman, seafarer, seafaring man; dock walloper [Slang]; tar, jack tar, salt, able seaman, A. B.; man-of-war's man, bluejacket, galiongee^, galionji^, marine, jolly, midshipman, middy; skipper; shipman^, boatman, ferryman, waterman^, lighterman^, bargeman, longshoreman; bargee^, gondolier; oar, oarsman; rower; boatswain, cockswain^; coxswain; steersman, pilot; crew. aerial navigator, aeronaut, balloonist, Icarus; aeroplanist^, airman, aviator, birdman, man-bird, wizard of the air, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... We found the ferryman at work in the field above his hut, and he was at liberty to go with us, but, being wet and hungry, we begged that he would let us sit by his fire till we had refreshed ourselves. This was the first genuine ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... of a friend. Desiring to start life again where his former insanity would be unknown, he made his way to Deadborough, the village of his birth. Arrived there, after a forty miles' walk, he refreshed himself with a glass of beer and a penn'orth of bread and cheese, and proceeded at once to Farmer Ferryman in quest of work. The farmer, who was, as usual, in want of labour, sent him to Snarley Bob to "put the measure on him." Snarley's report was favourable. "He seemed a bit queer, no doubt, and kept laughin' at nothin'; but I've knowed lots o' queer ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... the route of Feridun over the mountainous tracts and plains which lie contiguous to the banks of the Dijleh, or Tigris, close to the city of Bagdad. Upon reaching that river, they called for boats, but got no answer from the ferryman; at which Feridun was enraged, and immediately plunged, on horseback, into the foaming stream. All his army followed without delay, and with the blessing of God arrived on the other side in safety. He then turned toward the Bait-el-Mukaddus, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... an old ferryman, "if prophets had always foretold truly the universe would have fallen into the sea and been drowned long ago. I can prophesy too; if he comes, well, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger |
