"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the dinner, thy long ears hearing the music, and thy short discretion not enabling thee to decide which of them thou didst prefer.—Hark! is that not the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers?—Sure it cannot be that time yet? The mad old sexton has toll'd evensong an ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... that the sexton of St. Matthew's was growing old. They did not wish to change, but there must be some one to help him. The pay would not be high; but he would have a chance to work in the church, and to be near his benefactor. The ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Demon-Sexton of the Deep! Ha! ha! Ho! ho! I keep my old office. Wives may weep, and the taxpayers moan; Let the grumblers make appeal to King Science! Lords of Steel, Iron Chieftains, do ye feel when your victims groan? DAVY JONES is well content with that tribute ye have sent, with the millions ye ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... wretches! had soiled and marred Whatever to womanly nature belongs; For the marriage tie they had no regard, Nay, sped their mates to the sexton's yard, (Like Madame Laffarge, who with poisonous pinches Kept cutting off her L by inches) - And as for drinking, they drank so hard That they drank their flat-irons, pokers, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... you see yonder comes from the window of old Andrew, the sexton, and inside sits his grandson, little Roger, eating his supper of porridge. The kitchen is in apple-pie order, chairs and tables have been scrubbed as white as snow, the tins on the dresser shine like silver, the hearth is swept clean, and Grandfather's ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... in one division, the women in another. We read one or two of the names, and they were quaint and strange: "Anne Rypheria Hurloch;" "Anna Benigna La Trobe;" and one was especially interesting, James Gillray, forty years sexton to this simple cemetery, and father of Gillray, the H. B. of the past century. One thing pleased us mightily, the extreme old age to which the dwellers in this house seemed to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... this flimsy pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs. Pedagog could have us driven ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... feared would please the nervous, elderly ladies—who sometimes blamed him for a want of emotionality—and knew must grieve the judicious. While the choir was singing the closing hymn, he contrived to beckon the sexton to the pulpit, and described and located Lemuel to him as well as he could without actually pointing him out; he said that he wished to see that young man after church, and asked the sexton to bring ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... of Oolong; I only wish them sons o' guns a-grillin' down in 'ell Could 'ave their daily ration of Suchong. Hurrah! I'm off to battle, which is 'ell and 'eaven too; And if I don't give some poor bloke a sexton's job to do, To-night, by Fritz's campfire, won't I 'ave a gorgeous brew (For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea). To-night we'll all be tellin' of the Boches that we slew, As we drink the giddy victory ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... coulde not gette it of, tyll they were mynded to cutte it of with hatchettys. Thus was the wenche well iaped,[58] and for fere she ranne from her fader; her faders arme was hurte; the colyar lost his coles; the sexton was almost out of hys wyt; and the gentylman had almost broke ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... sullen he was thought; but he had no playfellow, except an owl that he kept tame, I remember, and cried when he buried him in the garden,—the only time he was ever known to cry, he was so still and stern. It was I caught him, then acting the sexton by himself, close by the high box hedge, under a great tree. I remember the spot now, and remember how angry I made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... freezing December evening, with his hands behind his bank, and his eyes intent for any envious husband who may be "with a rush retiring," monumentally counselled, after reading the Epitaph, Judge SWEENEY suddenly comes upon Father DEAN conversing with SMYTHE, the sexton, and Mr. BUMSTEAD. Bowing to these three, who, like himself, seem to find real luxury in open-air strolling on a bitter night in midwinter, he notices that his model, the Ritual Rector, is wearing a new hat, like Cardinal's, only black, and is immediately lost in wondering where he can obtain one ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... romantique named Fortnoye was reported as weeping and lavishing statues over the grave of an unknown infant in the churchyard at Laaken. It was a delicious mystery. Kind meddlers approached the sexton, who said that all he knew of the babe's mother was that she was a beautiful lady from London. Kranich carried the story dutifully to his aunt, adding his own ingenious surmise: "Can Francine have become sufficiently Anglicised to contract secret marriages with roving revolutionists, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Never have I seen such wonderful changes of face and form as he gave us that night. He was alternately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... discriminated among quite a number of members. Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Marjoribanks, the respected member for Berwickshire, were perhaps his favourites; but the one he dwelt with most pride on was Lord ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... could be done at a comparatively small expense."*[7] The vestry then called in another person, a mason of the town, and directed him to cut away the injured part of a particular pillar, in order to underbuild it. On the second evening after the commencement of the operations, the sexton was alarmed by a fail of lime-dust and mortar when he attempted to toll the great bell, on which he immediately desisted and left the church. Early next morning (on the 9th of July), while the workmen were waiting at the church door for the key, the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... tribunal. According to Czech papers, Kotek was buried among ordinary criminals outside the cemetery. The grave of the innocent martyr was not even marked with his name, and his wife was not allowed to visit it, because the military authorities forbade the sexton of the church to allow any one to see the graves of ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... In the lull of deep thanksgiving. For the wrath of heaven is lifted, Lifted from the rescued city. Gone, the sound of rolling death-cart, Hushed, the ringing, tolling belfry, Still, the bier and gloomy shovel, Still, the idle, listless sexton. Other days of anxious watching Followed, one or two years later; Days when fierce, destructive fevers Darkened many homes with mourning.[2] Yet the citizens are happy In this season of glad respite; Now the people ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... E. Cridge appears in the Gazette from an indignant American, who, with his family, had attended Rev. Mr. Cridge's preachings, and who now feels insulted at the treatment he received lately by the sexton showing a negro into the same pew occupied by himself and family, also treating other respectable Americans in the same way. He further stated that, the day being warm, the peculiar odor was very objectionable, so that several ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the untoward ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the only son of his mother, and she a widow. To-morrow the old squire, who can no more mount his cob and go after the hounds, his whip and red coat are laid aside, and the bell is going. "Behold, a dead man is carried out." Again the Sexton is working in the church-yard, and turning up the fresh smelling earth. The bell is going. For what? Up the steps and along under the avenue come little girls about a tiny coffin, over which is cast a white pall, and on which lies ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... gallery was not included in the part of the church used for the service. It was claimed by the gardener of the place, that is the sexton, to hold his gardening tools. There were a few ancient carvings in wood lying in it, very brown in the dusky light that came through a small lancet window, opening, not to the outside, but into the tower, itself dusky with an enduring twilight. And there were some broken old ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... escaped hearing the comments on his rash act. His appearance was generally considered as an impertinence, attributable only to some wanton fancy, or possibly a bet. One or two thought that the sexton was exceedingly remiss in not turning him out after discovering who he was; and a prominent pew-holder remarked, that if he couldn't take his wife and daughters to that church, without exposing them to such an influence, he would try to find some church where he could. Another ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... go comfort that knave of mine. At times he doth naught but babble of things at home—at Ferne House. This morn it was winter to him, and in this burning land he talked of snowflakes falling beneath the Yule-tide stars; yea! and when he has spoken pertly to the sexton he needs must ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... of beauty in the grave has been already quoted. That of the strong man dying is quite Shakspearian, and equally so is the picture commencing, "Death's shafts fly quick," particularly the passage about the sexton. How much he has compressed in the few ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground: he must recline on Mammon's imperial ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and your once reputed skill as a Seer goes for naught! To me the world is a graveyard full of dead, worm-eaten things, and its supposititious Creator, whom you have so be praised in your orisons to-night, is the Sexton who entombs, and the Ghoul who devours his own hapless Creation! I myself am one of the tortured and dying, and I have sought you simply that you may trick me into a brief oblivion of my doom, and mock me with the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... like leaving his pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr Arabin's allusion to his severity, and hastened to put matters right by observing that 'Sexton Clodheave looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there maybe a thought too much stick going on during sermon.' Mr Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon; and he smiled to himself ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... was left of it—resumed the Report stage of the Ministry of Health Bill. The debate was remarkable for the brevity of some of the speeches. Sir ROWLAND BLADES set a good example to new Members by making a "maiden" effort in a minute and a half. But his record was easily beaten by Mr. SEXTON, who found ten seconds sufficient for expressing his opinion that the fact that the House was trying to legislate in the small hours was sufficient proof of the necessity of extending the laws of lunacy. "Si argumentum requiris circumspice," he might have said as he gazed upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... scene is at the State House in Hartford. It is evening. The sexton is preparing the room for the meeting which ...
— The Tree That Saved Connecticut • Henry Fisk Carlton
... secretary and general manager; Paul Waples, chairman executive committee; A.W. Houston, Barnett Gibbs, B.F. Hammett, Jesse Shain, E.P. Perkins, L.L. Jester, Monta J. Moore; P.P. Paddock, executive commissioner; R.H. Sexton, resident commissioner. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... patient will be said to die of liver complaint, an affection of the lungs, marasmus, dysentery, diarrhoea, or some anomalous complication of all these affections, conveniently classed by the Doctor when he renders his account to the sexton, under the sweeping term, consumption." The medical profession will doubtless appreciate the value of the connexion which Mr. Halsted is anxious to establish between the physician and the respectable officer who acts as the last ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... down the village street through the half-opened shutters. Not a thought was in her mind; it was just a dark whirlpool of crowding images; and she watched the people passing along the street, Dan Targatt's team hauling a load of pine-trunks down to Hepburn, the sexton's old white horse grazing on the bank across the way, as if she looked at these familiar sights from the other side ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... setting on big hilltops far avay; Dis bar sun ban tired of standing, so it lak to set, yu say; And yust ven dis sun ban setting, it shine hard on Yosephine; She ban talking to the sexton, and ban feeling purty mean. "Now," she tal him, "yust be careful,... ay skol fix it op all right; Yust one teng ay lak to tal yu, Curfew ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... I put to a most horrid quaking the moment I passed the door, to perceive old Simon standing foremost in the throng about the altar, in his leather cap (which he would not remove for clerk or sexton, but threatened them, as I am told, with the law if they lay a finger on him). And seeing him there, I must needs conclude that he intended to do us an ill turn, for his face wore the most wicked, cruel, malicious look that ever ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... have been better if he had. For when they got back to the Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Paul erected a magnificent monument over him in the St. Georg Cemetery in Hamburg, on which neither marble nor gilt nor verses were spared. The monument is one of the sights of the churchyard, and pointed out to visitors with great pride by the sexton. Old Frau Brohl, too, kept green the memory of the departed friend. Her speciality now was the manufacturing of flags and banners since Paul had founded quite a number of Vereins among the settlers on his estate—latterly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... amid such simples a balm for wounded pride, I did not really deceive myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher. And all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... a poor man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years and a half, no matter how stormy the weather, the faithful ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... about it being the most costly of noises. Racah, as a boy, shouted under the windows of neighbors in whose rooms string-music was heard of hot summer evenings. On every occasion his nature testified to its lively abhorrence of tone, and once he was violently thrust forth from a church by an excited sexton. Racah had whistled derisively at the feebly executed voluntary of the organist. An old friend of the family declared that the boy should be trained as a music critic—he hated music so intensely. Racah's father would arch his meagre eyebrows and crisply say, "My ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... also sells charms, consisting of verses of the Koran written on paper, to be tied round the arm or hung on the neck. These have the effect of curing disease and keeping off evil spirits or the evil eye. Sometimes there is a mosque servant who also acts as sexton of the local cemetery. The funds of the mosque and any endowment attached to it are in charge of some respectable resident, who is known as Mutawalli or churchwarden. The principal religious officer is the Maulvi, who corresponds ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... fraud, just the mere beginning of a tomb which was never finished. Then other times he finds a tomb and after endless work at it—you can't imagine how much work it entails—he discovers that it was robbed of every single thing of value, probably by the sexton who was in charge of it when it was first built—all the jewels and scarabs and things had been looted; probably they were stolen only a few weeks after the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... stone up once myself," said Pusey, "and the ticking then seemed to come up from the ground. While I deliberated, an old man came out of yonder old sexton-looking house, and warned me not to disturb the dead. He crossed the wall, and assisted me to replace the stone, and then bade me sit down upon it, ancient mariner-like, while he disclosed the cause of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... sight of my friend Irvine. We used to see each other often and have a good chat about things in general. He said he was going to take charge of the Sea and Land Church and wanted me to come and be the sexton. It would give me $30.00 per month, rooms, coal and gas. He thought it would be a good thing for me to become reunited to my wife Mary, and I thought so too, but she had to give her consent. We had been separated for a number of years, and though I had been calling on her for over a year she ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... the tombstones, some of them all awry and weather-worn, and the Thaxtons of 1840, no living Thaxton could tell, every spiritual trace of them having disappeared more utterly than their bones. Their bones, indeed, did not disappear, and were a source of much trouble to the sexton, for in digging a new grave they came up to the surface in quantities, and had to be shovelled in and covered up again, so that the bodily remains of successive generations were jumbled together, and Puritan and Georgian Thaxtons were mixed ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... thought there was wisdom in them if there was wisdom in nothing else; he loved the church and he loved the steeple, and the parson who did the duty and the parson who did not do the duty; and he loved the clerk and the sexton and the parish beadle with his broad gold-laced hat, and cane of striking authority; and he loved the watchmen and their drowsy drawl of "past umph a' clock;" he loved the charity schools and admired beyond ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... bounds whatever to their superstitiousness. The children and the nearest family scrapes together every farthing they can call their own, an' what's still wanting, that they borrow from some rich man. They run themselves into debt over head and ears; they're owing money to the pastor, to the sexton, and to all concerned. Then there's the victuals, an' the drink, an' such like. No, sir, I'm far from speaking against dutifulness to parents; but it's too much when it goes the length of the mourners having to bear the weight of it for the rest of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... dignity, and did not quite like leaving his pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr. Arabin's allusion to his severity and hastened to put matters right by observing that "Sexton Clodheve looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there may be a thought too much stick going on during sermon." Mr. Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon, and he ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... quite dark when they found him down in a little dell upon a patch of greensward. Considering that he was a joiner, and not a sexton, he had made remarkable progress with a very creditable grave, which, he explained, was to receive the dead with which the woods were distributed. He added that it was a disgrace to leave so many corpses lying about, and pointed ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... alone With the corpse I never knew, For I fainted dead as stone: When I came to life once more I was down upon the floor, With neighbors making ado To bring me back to life. I heard the sexton's wife Say: "Up, my lad, and run To tell it at the Hall; She was my Lady's nurse, And done can't be undone. I'll watch by this poor lamb. I guess my Lady's purse Is always open to such: I'd run up on my crutch A cripple as I am," (For cramps had vexed her ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Ferguson. He was the sexton of the church and had a chance to investigate,” said Stoddard. “And now, gentlemen, I must go to my service. I’ll see you again before ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... minutes of ten. The sexton rung a merry peal from the sweet-toned bell, which was the pride of the inhabitants of Mason's Corner. Within the church the ushers, having attended to the seating of the audience, stood just within the door ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... pleasure it would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner, but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed, and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again) remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage again, and drove home in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... were not trusted in our party, and a few weaklings who could not fight an uphill battle, who went over to the enemy. Real leaders of our party fought, suffered, and starved, but they never deserted the flag. Christianity could not convert a Bradlaugh or a Holyoake; it could only bribe or allure a Sexton or a Gordon, or others of the "illustrious obscure" in Mr. Whitmore's fraudulent catalogue. In short, the "conversions" to Christianity so trumpeted are mostly dubious, generally insignificant, and all ancient. If the prophecy which Dr. Hitchens preached from is to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the pastors who had held the living. On looking, soon after seeing the three figures, at the portraits suspended in one of the aisles, he was astonished to discover in the last-placed picture an exact likeness of the man he had beheld in his bed-chamber. The sexton, with whom he entered into conversation, told him that he remembered several incumbents. "The last one," said he, "we considered as one of the most learned and amiable men who had ever resided among us. His character and benevolence ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... physician at Newcastle, being summoned to a vestry, in order to reprimand the sexton for drunkenness, he dwelt so long on the sexton's misconduct, as to draw from him this expression: "Sir, I thought you would have been the last man alive to appear against me, as I have covered so many ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... certainly," said Vane, glancing back at the gloomy, bent form of the sexton, as he stood looking up sidewise at the big, squarely-built, wholesome-looking miller. "But I couldn't improve him. I say, what shall we ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... notary bound up with a sexton; you make me pity you. Am I to teach you your part? You are ugly; be terrible, your ugliness will be forgotten. You are old; be energetic, your age will be overlooked. You are repulsive; be threatening. Since you cannot be the noble horse, who neighs proudly in the midst of his ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 56 (56) years of age. Time, with its relentless scythe, is ever busy. The Old Sexton gathers them in, he gathers them in! I keep ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... answer was insulting, and a real lady never humiliates any one. After reading it Taylor told Amy to meet him at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they would be married in the church with no one present but his brother (the only relative Taylor has in town is a bachelor brother), and the sexton, the minister, and me. She met ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... the old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants. He had been sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of the shock ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap! And oftimes the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury of charity! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged sexton, Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched group of singers, whom Hogarth so happily portrayed; whose performance with the pitch-fork excited so much wonder in little boys; and whose gesticulations and contortions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... that ushers and groomsmen are unknown at an English wedding. The sexton of the church performs the functions which are attended ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... ground; grave yard, church yard; God's acre; tope, cromlech, barrow, tumulus, cairn; ossuary; bone house, charnel house, dead house; morgue; lich gate[obs3]; burning ghat[obs3]; crematorium, crematory; dokhma[obs3], mastaba[obs3], potter's field, stupa[obs3], Tower of Silence. sexton, gravedigger. monument, cenotaph, shrine; grave stone, head stone, tomb stone; memento mori[Lat]; hatchment[obs3], stone; obelisk, pyramid. exhumation, disinterment; necropsy, autopsy, post mortem examination[Lat]; zoothapsis[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... scenery, no theatricalism. The pulpit was moved back, and four young pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed Christmas decoration. The pulpit platform, and the "wing pews" left vacant for the village players, took the place of a stage; the two aisles served for exits and entrances; and the sexton with three rings of the church bell, announced the scenes. The Carpet Committee of the Dorcas Society furnished the exposition of the first act, while sewing the last breadths of the new, hardly-bought ingrain carpet. The scrubbing of the pews ends the act, with ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it was afterward told to Mrs. Booty, who arrested Captain Barnaby in a thousand pound action, for what he had said of her husband. Captain Barnaby gave bail to it, and it came on to a trial in the Court of King's Bench, and they had Mr. Booty's wearing apparel brought into court, and the sexton of the parish, and the people that were with him when he died; and we swore to our journals, and it came to the same time within two minutes; ten of our men swore to the buttons on his coat, and that they were covered with the same sort of cloth his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... to their camp four miles below Ukiah, and finding there a unique kind of assembly-house, desired to enter and examine it, but was not allowed to do so until I had gained the confidence of the old sexton by a few friendly words and the tender of a silver half dollar. The pit of it was about 50 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet deep, and it was so heavily roofed with earth that the interior was damp and ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... listeners rambled after. But Echo's self tires of a GRAHAM's tongue, Rot blent with rudeness gentlest nymph can't pardon. Why e'en the G.O.M. his grey head hung, And wished he were at Hawarden. Like vine unpruned, SEXTON's exuberant speech Sprawled o'er the question with the which he'd grapple; PICTON prosed on,—the style in which men preach In a dissenting chapel. Prince ARTHUR twined one lank leg t'other round, Drooping a long chin like BURNE-JONES's ladies; And HARCOURT, sickening of the strident sound, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... to hear Mr. Peck preach, and Putney, who seemed to see her the moment she entered the church, rose, as the sexton was showing her up the aisle, and opened the door of his pew ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... said the doctor, hastily, calling out to the sexton's wife, who was busy at work in the squire's pew—a large square pew in the nave, near the pulpit. "Why, do you want to hide the squire's family from the congregation? You're putting quite a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Devon somewhere, and the parson was an undergraduate of Oxford. The farmers were mostly Scotch, and the village store-keeper was David Macpherson. The driver of the stage was an Irishman, and the sexton of the pretty church on the hill was an odd product of that odd corner of the world known as the Isle of Man. Certainly the two brothers found and made themselves at home. Milly perhaps was the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Church, London, fifty pounds, on the understanding that through all futurity they should cause to be tolled the big bell the night before the execution of the condemned criminals in the prison of Newgate. After tolling the bell, the sexton came at midnight, and after ringing a hand-bell, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... reduced, therefore, at one blow to the level of a pulpit moralist, or mere applier of moral laws to human actions. And in a function so exceedingly humble, philosophically considered, how could he pretend to precedency in respect of anybody, unless it were the amen clerk, or the sexton? ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... to be my own little wife and she consented. Then early one morning we went to a church and were married; no one being present except the minister, the sexton, and her friend and mine, who were engaged to each other, and her ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... whither he went, till he found himself near the enclosure of a little mountain chapel. Passing through the wicket, and peeping through the chapel window, he could not refrain from reciting a verse in Greek aloud, to the great terror of the sexton, who was just entering ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... soared and struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous cadence with a cry of individual longing, but was borne down by the dull, trampling precision of the others' formal chant. This and a certain muffled raking of the stove by the sexton brought the temperature down still lower. A sermon, in keeping with the previous performance, in which the chill east wind of doctrine was not tempered to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... and when the street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked dully out. For her, the light of ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 1834, and subsequently studied at Lane Theological Seminary (Cincinnati), of which his father was the president; began his ministerial life as pastor of a Home Missionary (Presbyterian) church at the little village of Lawrenceburg, twenty miles south of Cincinnati on the Ohio River; was both sexton and pastor, swept the church, built the fires, lighted the lamps, rang the bell, and preached the sermons; was called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, where he remained for eight years, 1839 to 1847, and where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... inequalities of society any more than those of the earth, with its varied features of swelling hill and lovely dale, to one dull, long, common level. Death, the great grim leveller, does that office both for cottagers and kings. Let it be left to the sexton's spade. The mountains which give shelter to the valleys, and gather the rains that fill their rivers and fertilise their pastures, have important uses in nature, and so have the corresponding heights of rank and wealth and power in society. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... that the bones should be allowed to lie out in the light of day, until the new corpse came to be buried. Abraham the sexton had his orders, to take such bones at once to the house which was appointed for them, and which was a mere shed in one corner of the cemetery, where it was left to each skull to discover the bones belonging to it as best it might. But when any of the ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of yours! I might have passed you in the street, and not even have said: 'God bless you.' Oh! you've got a nice rig-out. You just look as if you had your sentry-box on your back; and they've cut your hair so short that folks might take you for the sexton's poodle. Good heavens! what a fright ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father and mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... instinct was stronger than her hope, and as she raised herself into a sitting posture she saw that he had sprung upon the top of one of the side aisle pews, and thence into the window, which had been left open by the sexton. Here he lingered as if irresolute, and in an agony of dread at the thought of being ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fever brought on by grief and fretting for the loss of her best friend,—and rich and poor alike had vied with one another in assisting the weird beauty of this exceptional and strange burial, in which no sexton was employed but the wild wind, which would in due time scoop a hollow in the sea, and whirl down into fathomless deeps all that remained of a loving woman, with the offerings of a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... was an entertainment by a gentleman bearing the delightfully sepulchral name of Dr. Sexton, whose mission in life it is to "expose" the tricks of Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke. How those gentlemen are to be "exposed," seeing they only claim to deceive you by legerdemain, I cannot comprehend; but they made the Spiritualists very angry ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... along the street one day, when sent on an errand, he passed by a church which was being adorned with evergreens, as is the custom with many of the Episcopalians. The work had been finished, and the sexton was sweeping the refuse branches into the street. An idea struck him; he would have a Christmas-tree—a very small one, indeed, but then even a green branch of spruce would make things look more Christmas-like. He picked one up, and carrying it home, ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... had other friends, to be sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton's wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The cottage ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been for twenty Years Under-Sexton of this Parish of St. Paul's, Covent-Garden, and have not missed tolling in to Prayers six times in all those Years; which Office I have performed to my great Satisfaction, till this Fortnight last past, during which Time I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... English in feeling as in origin. Though rebuilt a hundred years ago, on the site of an earlier church, it has remained loyal to its history, and is the true child of the eighteenth century. Is it not fitting that the communion-plate presented by Queen Caroline should be treasured here? That the sexton should still show you, even with a cold indifference, the stately prayer-books which once contained prayers for the king? That a bell, captured at Louisburg by Sir William Pepperell, should summon to the worship ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... into Meece, wondering if the fat host of the "Black Bull" would recognize in the splendidly mounted horseman the dusty schoolboy of ten years ago. There he was in the porch, grown intolerably fatter, talking to my ancient gossip, Rupert Toms, the sexton, now heavily laden with years and infirmities. I pricked on, having no time to spare for either prayer or provender, since every moment was precious, though a tankard of double October, mulled with spice and laced with ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his residence among us, one of the most honoured inhabitants of Gandercleugh. No one thought of disputing his title to the great leathern chair on the "cosiest side of the chimney," in the common room of the Wallace Arms, on a Saturday evening. No less would our sexton, John Duirward, have held it an unlicensed intrusion, to suffer any one to induct himself into the corner of the left-hand pew nearest to the pulpit, which the Sergeant regularly occupied on Sundays. There he ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... no idea at all, we can hardly forgive him for equipping the Heart with eyes, ears, and legs:—he might just as well have said that on entering Twickenham church to visit the tomb, every Heart would take off its hat, and on going out again would put its hand in its pockets to fee the sexton. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so cordially to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... through the deserted, silent streets of Potsdam. The brilliant cavalcade moved as slowly and solemnly as a funeral procession toward the church, the lower vault of which contained the coffin with the remains of Frederick. The sexton and his assistants, bearing the large bunch of keys and a blazing torch, conducted the emperor through the dark and silent corridors, and opened the heavy, clanking iron doors leading into the vault. Napoleon entered. For a moment he stood still on the threshold and gazed in ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the burial service. All had in their hands a bayonet, from which burned a tallow candle, in place of tapers. The procession marched up the steps in single file, all bearing themselves with the greatest solemnity and sombre dignity, followed by the sexton, with a frying-pan as a shovel, and took their places around the supposed corpse. Maffett began the duties by alluding to that part of the service where "it is allotted that all men shall die," etc., waving his hand in due form to the sexton as he repeated the words, "Earth to earth and dust ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... old Simon's course was run. Billy spent the night beside him, But with next day's early dawn, With the east's first flush of scarlet, Simon's faithful soul passed on. Then, with hands outstretched before him, Half remembering what was said When a child he saw the sexton Sprinkle earth upon the dead— "Dust to dust, and then to ashes— I forget the other part— I can't say the words I want to, I can't think—all's ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... the secret places of her warm heart by the way in which those who had known her from her childhood were proud and glad of her success. All round about the news had spread; strangers came "from beyond Burnley" to see her, as she went quietly and unconsciously into church and the sexton "gained many a half-crown" for pointing ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... interest for Guy, both for the sake of Archdeacon Morville's kindness, and as the home which Philip regarded with affection, that seemed the one softening touch in his character. So Guy visited the handsome church, studied the grave-yard, and gathered the traditions of the place from the old sexton's wife, who rejoiced in finding an auditor for her long stories of the good Archdeacon, Miss Fanny, and Mr. Philip. She shook her head, saying times were changed, and 'Miss Morville that was, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sexton and a grave digger, if he is one who has a zeal for his calling, becomes something of an historian, amassing many a curious tale and strange legend concerning the people with whom he has to do, living ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of the church the use of some part of the premises subject to recall of the privilege on sufficient grounds; and—a consideration never to be slighted although often hard to get—the good-will and co-operation of the sexton. With the sexton against him, no pastor can make a church boys' club succeed. The club will make no mistake in paying the church something for ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... consisted of several scattered farms, and of groups of houses and cottages that peeped out from among thriving fruit trees. Only a few houses stood near the church; the school-house, the sexton's house, the substantial old-fashioned dwelling of the mayor of the little community, and two or three peasants' cottages. Dr. Stein's house stood quite by itself at a little distance from the others, on a slight elevation, quite surrounded by trees. The biggest ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... being a heathenish and profane plant, and therefore assigned to the kitchen. Mr. Brand made many diligent inquiries after the truth of this point. He learnt at Bath that it never came into churches there. An old Sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was by the clergyman immediately ordered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... the kitchen where I was setting the tea, and she took the key of the church off the nail in the wall. Our farm was full a mile from the village, and half way between it and the church. So we kept one key, and Jack's uncle, who was the sexton, he had ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... and in every monastery interpreters, and you shall be accredited to them all who are of that great Brotherhood. Well, 'tis settled. Go, make ready as best you can; I must write. Stay; the sooner this Harflete is under ground the better. Bid that sturdy fellow, Bolle, find the sexton of the church and help dig his grave, for we will bury him at dawn. Now go, go, I tell you I must write. Come back in an hour, and I will give you money for your faring, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... intelligent man, in general terms, that which I was forbidden to tell him in detail. But when I entered the old choir of the Barefoot Friars, when I approached the strange latticed closets in which the reverend gentlemen used to be found for that purpose, when the sexton opened the door for me, when I now saw myself shut up in the narrow place face to face with my spiritual grandsire, and he bade me welcome with his weak, nasal voice, all the light of my mind and heart was extinguished at once, the well- conned confession-speech would not cross ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Monday, February 15.—A lively sitting, with an unexpected ending. Debate on Address resumed by SEXTON in excellent speech, an effect largely contributed to by comparative brevity. Only an hour long; remarkable compression. Would have been better still had it been reduced by the twenty minutes occupied in preliminary observations. At twenty-five minutes past four he rose to move ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... my meaning," said Mr. Blackstone. "My chief, almost sole, attraction to the regions of the grave is the sexton, and not the placidity of the inhabitants; though perhaps Miss Clare might value that more highly if she had more experience of how noisy human nature ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... mind with arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind, yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry enough ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... thought a great deal from this time of Mr. Dyer; and there was a town council held to consider what they should do to express their feelings to him. He had declined six times being made selectman, and he did not want to ring the bell as sexton. There did not seem to be anything in the way of an office they could offer ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... speakers are affected by conditions, by acoustics, atmosphere, size and temper of the audience, and the speaker's own mental and physical condition. Many a good sermon has been killed by a poor sexton. Many a grand thought has perished in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... when low the water falls, The sailor sees the broken walls; The church tower peeps from out the sand, Like to the finger of a hand. Then hears one low the church bells ringing Then hears one low the sexton singing; A chant is carried by the gust: "Give earth to earth, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... any affair requiring the exercise of nice diplomatic skill-no matter whether it be of love or law. He gets people into debt, and out of debt; into bankruptcy and out of bankruptcy; into jail and out of jail; into society and out of society. He has officiated in almost every capacity but that of a sexton. If you want money, Mr. Soloman can always arrange the little matter for you. If you have old negroes you want to get off your hands at a low figure, he has a customer. If you want to mortgage your negro property, a thing not uncommon with ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... "spoke all." No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must titter. The Parson, prating of Mount Hermon, Stood still to laugh, in midst of sermon. The final Sexton (smile he must for him) Could hardly get to "dust to dust" for him. He lost three pall-bearers their livelyhood, Only with simp'ring at his lively mood: Provided that they fresh and neat came, All jests were fish that to his net came. He'd banter ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the Haygarths, it is all gossip—the merest gossip. People are so fond of gossip, you know—especially country people: I have no doubt you have remarked that. Yes, I have heard a great deal about Matthew Haygarth. My late clerk and sexton,—a very remarkable man, ninety-one when he died, and able to perform his duties very creditably within a year of his death—very creditably; but the hard winter of '56 took him off, poor fellow, and now I have a young ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Sexton," replies he, "and come to know whether the Doctor left any orders for a Funeral Sermon? and where he is to be laid? and whether his grave is to be ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Skin, bone, and gristle, In Sexton Goudie's keepin' lies, Of poet Syme, Who fell to rhyme, (O bards beware!) ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the Abbey he gave me some anecdotes of Johnny Bower to whom his father had alluded; he was sexton of the parish and custodian of the ruin, employed to keep it in order and show it to strangers;—a worthy little man, not without ambition in his humble sphere. The death of his predecessor had been mentioned in the newspapers, so that his name had ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... he returned; but, no sooner had he started, than the youngest of us slowly followed after him and seated herself close beside him. As he came back, holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation! The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white man's pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge's children there. "Oh," he said, "they will not stay there without me." But, as he could not enter, we instinctively followed him to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the rear of the church, we could see the yellow fog between ourselves and him. There were fourteen persons in the audience, and we were all huddled together in a cowardly way in the pews nearest the door: three old men, four women, and four children, besides ourselves and the sexton, a deaf little old ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, When ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the simple. The cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. At the last they won from him that he had gone to the tree where the dead Scot ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able to get him there ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the congregation had dispersed. I was making my way into the church to take a last look at a famous fourteenth-century tomb. Not a soul was visible; but the sound of a pick and the sight of fresh earth announced that the sexton was at work digging a grave. I walked to the spot. A bald head, the shining top of which was now level with the surface of the ground, raised the hope that he would prove to be a sexton of the old school. I ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... said Mrs. Jenkins, looking wistfully at the sovereign, which was a great sum of money to a sexton's wife with children, then instantly going on with her dusting; "but it ain't no use tryin' of tricks with our parson. HE ain't one of your Mollies. A man as don't play no tricks with hisself, as I heerd a gentleman say, it ain't no ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... "according to your ladyship's orders, I dug up the flower-beds of the family vault, dusted the vault and the—the coffins (added he, trembling) inside. Me and John Sexton did it together, and polished up ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... summat like a couple o' wild b'ys; they keeps the passon and the mistress in, not for to say hot water, but bilin' water, for the livelong day!' constantly declared Binks, who was the handy-man at the Vicarage, and, in fact, handy-man at the little church as well, he being both factotum and sexton. Binks was a worthy old soul whom the terriers led a troubled life by their destructive capers in the garden and lawn, which he vainly tried to keep trim. Still, on the whole, Binks, harassed as he was by the dogs, was apt to thank his stars that Splutters ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell," he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and with a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the noise of the busy street and ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... hand to welcome its visitor, had, ever since then, sufficed to make him shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... house almost full, and did not want to go again: there was so much to be done! But her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more: the servants were doing so well! he said. She yielded. He rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were floating about in them. But the floor of the church was above the water: he landed Helen dry in the porch, and led her to the organ-loft. Now the organ was one ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... culpable neglect of those who should have felt an interest in its preservation. About two feet of the top of the shaft is wanting, as may be seen by reference to the engraved sketch, (See the Cut,) which was taken in the year 1815." The sexton of the church, who was then an old man, told Mr. Rhodes in 1818, that he well recollected the missing part being thrown carelessly about the churchyard, as if of no value, until it was broken up by some of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey; and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the species varied with the season of the year. But this was the very poetry of the profession. The others whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint flavour of the gardener hung about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voted by the parish that "Colonel Putnam take care of ye new meeting-house and ring ye bell," for which service he was to receive three pounds a year. Thus the duties of sexton and bell-ringer were assumed by this many-sided man; but he had not performed them long before he was called to go on a strange voyage in quest of lands in West Florida, which were reported to have ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... ever-flowing fount of sustaining port wine and spiritually nourishing literature. The moral evolution of the village had proceeded on those lines. The prevailing feeling was vaguely hostile; neither Mrs. Gullick nor Mrs. Dodge exactly knew why. Mrs. Dodge said that her husband (who was the sexton and gravedigger) had found Mrs. Temperley always ready for a chat. He spoke well of her. But Dodge was not one of many. Mrs. Temperley was perhaps too sensitively respectful of the feelings of her poorer neighbours ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... trefoil-headed door leading into this part of the vault; and the place being at that time in great confusion with coffins, remains of bodies, some of which were dried like mummies, &c., I could find no better seat than one of the coffins. The sexton's boy, who held my light, informed me this was the coffin of Scratching Fanny, which recalled the Cock Lane story to my mind. I got off the lid of the coffin, and saw the face of a handsome woman, with an aquiline nose; this feature remaining perfect, an uncommon case, for the cartilage ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the shrine of some saint. The King started up from his seat and gazed with anger and amazement round the empty church. He groped his way towards the great door, but it was locked; then he shouted for assistance, uttered angry threats, and hammered against the door, but all in vain. At length the sexton, who lived hard by, was roused by the tumult, and, fearful lest thieves or some drunken revelers had made their way into the church, he came to the door, lantern in hand, and cried in a quavering voice: ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman |
