"Ostler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still cautiously upon his nurse's shadow he raised himself very softly, his fat hand pressed against the wall, his mouth tightly closed, and from between his teeth there issued the most distant relation of that sound that the traditional ostler makes when he is cleaning down a horse. His knees quivered, straightened; he was up. Far away in the long, long distance were piled the toys that yesterday's birthday had given him. They did not, as yet, mean anything ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes a-shining ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found 'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to give them a wide berth. It would be no joke to have old Murdock topple over on to you. I left them 'wug-an-tooreying,' and went out to look after the trap, which was ordered to be at the door at half-past ten. I found Murdock's ostler very drunk, but sober compared with that rascally help whom we had been fools enough to take with us. They had got the trap out and the horses in, but that old rascal Satan was standing so quiet that I suspected something wrong. Sure enough, when I came to look, they had him up to the cheek ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words "post-chaise," the "great North Road," "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now look forward to a goodly harvest ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are walking across the bowling-green, we will see what has taken place outside the inn. Tom's presentiments of danger were not, it appeared, without foundation. Scarcely had the ostler brought forth our two highwaymen's steeds, when a post-chaise, escorted by two or three horsemen, drove furiously up to the door. The sole occupant of the carriage was a lady, whose slight and pretty figure was all that could be distinguished, her face being ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the ostler's darkening countenance decided Pitman. 'All right,' he said desperately, 'you drive. I'll tell ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... upper part of his face, except a dark quick eye of uncommon fire; and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in concealing the lower part of the countenance. On descending from the coach, the German with some difficulty made the ostler understand that he wanted a post-chaise in a quarter of an hour; and then, without entering the house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour. While the maid-servant was covering the table with bread, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seemed hesitating whether to approach or to run away; and when he determined on the former, it was to assail me with a loud, clamorous, and exaggerated report of the anxiety of all at the Shepherd's Bush for my personal safety; how my landlady had wept, how Sam and the ostler had not the heart to go to bed, but sat up all night drinking—and how he himself had been up long before daybreak to go in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... round to the stable where Bunker was housed, chattered with the blue-chinned ostler, and then, for a moment, was alone with the dog. How much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat him? Bunker was tired; he relapsed ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Pozieres—you understand—and accompanied her to her poor lodging—in a most verminous place, sir—where we discoursed upon the problems of life and love. O youth! O war! O hell!... My horse, that brute who resented me, was in charge of an 'ostler, whom I believe verily is a limb of Satan, in the yard without. It was late when I left that lair of Circe, where young British officers, even as myself, are turned into swine. It was late and dark, and I was drunk. Even now I am very drunk. I may say that ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... situated about a mile from Rewtham House (which had just passed into the hands of the Bellamys), and two from Bratham Abbey, and thither Arthur had himself driven. His Jehu, known through all the country round as "Old Sam," was an ancient ostler, who had been in the service of the Rewtham "King's Head," man and boy, for over fifty years, and from him Arthur collected a good deal of inaccurate information about the Caresfoot family, including a garbled ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... living today amidst the din of the high school orations on "The Age of the Young Man" and the Ostler idea that you are going down hill at fifty. Imagine Moses living on "borrowed time" when he becomes the leader of ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... head-quarters where Trevis the Pharisee was expected; and I had scarce got into my room, before the victorious mob of his enemy, who had routed his advanced guard, broke open the gates of our inn, and almost murdered the ostler-and then carried him off to prison for being murdered. The cathedral is pretty, and has several tombs, and clusters of light pillars of Derbyshire marble, lately cleaned. Gothicism and the restoration of that architecture, and not of the bastard breed, spreads extremely in this part of the world. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Principall Actors in all these playes.—William Shakespeare; Richard Burbadge; John Hemmings; Augustine Phillips; William Kempt; Thomas Poope; George Bryan; Henry Condell; William Slye; Richard Cowly; John Lowine; Samuell Crosse; Alexander Cooke; Samuel Gilburne; Robert Armin; William Ostler; Nathan Field; John Underwood; Nicholas Tooley; William Ecclestone; Joseph Taylor; Robert Benfeld; Robert Goughe; Richard Robinson; John Shancke; ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... They're a' hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... a fine and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience, augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities; then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, and made ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... should have been drowned, but we soon got clear of the jetty; some threw us one thing and some another; at length James Nicholson got into a boat, took us in, and landed us safe ashore. I went to a public house, where I got a glass of brandy, and borrowed the ostler's clothes, and I ailed nothing afterwards. The young woman remained at New Holland all night, and took her departure next morning, without leaving behind her even a single expression of verbal gratitude ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... ma'am. I'll look up the concern and try my chance. Would you call it too great a come-down to have father an 'ostler after being first rider in the 'Great Golden Menagerie, Circus, and Colosseum,' hey Ben?" asked Mr. Brown, quoting the well-remembered show-bill with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Inn wrapped in slumber, like every house or cottage they had passed; but a lantern shone within an open door in the quadrangle round which house and stables were built. One of the Fareham grooms was there, with an ostler to wait upon him, and three horses were brought out of their stable, ready saddled, as the travellers rode under ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... pour cats and dogs, an' I was nigh washed out o' the buggy, besides losin' my way and gettin' inter ditches and puddles, and I hed to stop at Staples' Half-Way House and put up for the night. In the mornin' I riz up early and goes into the stable yard, and the first thing I sees was the 'ostler. 'I hope ye giv' my hoss a good scrub down,' I sez, 'as I told ye, for his color is that delicate the smallest spot shows. It's a very rare color for a hoss.' 'I was hopin' it might be,' sez he. I was a little huffed at that, and I sez: 'It's considered a very beautiful color.' 'Mebbe it ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... staff, court. attendant, squire, usher, page, donzel^, footboy^; train bearer, cup bearer; waiter, lapster^, butler, livery servant, lackey, footman, flunky, flunkey, valet, valet de chambre [Fr.]; equerry, groom; jockey, hostler, ostler^, tiger, orderly, messenger, cad, gillie^, herdsman, swineherd; barkeeper, bartender; bell boy, boots, boy, counterjumper^; khansamah^, khansaman^; khitmutgar^; yardman. bailiff, castellan^, seneschal, chamberlain, major-domo^, groom of the chambers. secretary; under secretary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Manvers to the ostler, "give this horse half a feed of corn, then some water, then the other half feed; but give him nothing until you have cooled him down. Do these things, and I present you with one peseta. Omit any of them, and I give you nothing at ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... the door, give the horse to the sleepy Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among the glasses and bottles. She heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on the landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the room where ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... an inn; the horses were changed; the flight was resumed. Wogan had not moved during this delay, neither had Misset nor O'Toole come to the door. But an ostler had flashed a lantern into the berlin, and for a second the light had fallen upon Wogan's face and open eyes. Clementina, however, did not cease; she sang on until the lights had been left behind and the darkness was about them. Then she ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least stiff or fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he arrived time enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and to present his elbow to the ladies as they alighted from ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... street, a young fair-haired man, in a heavy coat lined with sheepskin. His delicately made face—naturally merry and bon enfant—was flushed and scowling. He climbed into one of the sledges, complained of the lateness of the start, swore at the ostler, who made him take another seat on the plea that the one he had chosen was engaged, and finally subsided into a moody silence, pulling at his moustache, and staring out over the snow, till at last the signal was given, and the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when we reached Gastford, that we had to rouse the ostler before I could get Lilith attended to. I bathed the injured leg, of which the shoulder seemed wrenched; and having fed her, but less plentifully than usual, I left her to her repose. In the morning she was considerably better, but I resolved to leave her where she was, and, sending a messenger ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... too bright for business, on the shelves. I beheld a Punch's Show leaning against a wall near Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It was deserted, and there were none to heed its desolation. In Belgrave Square I met the last man - an ostler - sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat, eating ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... name of the peacock from the peak, or tuft of pointed feathers, on its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... why Mr. Mountjoy should have troubled himself to write the letter at all. "If he knows the young lady who is staying at the doctor's house," she said, "why doesn't he call on Miss Henley?" She handed the letter back to her daughter. "There! let the ostler take it; he's ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... no moral purpose at all. The natural result was that Fielding and his set looked on Richardson as a grave, dull, respectable old prig; Richardson on Fielding as a low rake, who wrote like a man who had been an ostler born in a stable, or a runner in a sponging-house. "The virtues of Fielding's heroes," the vain old printer used to say to his feminine clique, "are the vices ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... thirty years of age, tall, well-proportioned, and with a thin face, clean-cut and high-featured. He was attended by a servant whom he called Robert, a stout ruddy fellow, who was very jovial with every post-boy and ostler on the road. The gentleman, being placed next to me by the chance of our billets, lost no time in opening the conversation, a step which my rustic backwardness would long have delayed. He invited my confidence by a free display of his own, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... first edition, from the recitation of a gentleman, who professed to have forgotten some verses. These have, in the present edition, been partly restored, from a copy obtained by the recitation of an ostler in Carlisle, which has also furnished ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... nodded, surly enough: so, Billy's cider being now drunk and Molly given over to an ostler, we set out down the hill together, Billy shouldering a pipe and walking after with the groom that led Sir Ralph's horse. Be sure the General's courtly manner of speech set my blood tingling. I seem'd to grow a full two inches taller; ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... whisper in Welsh to his professional adviser. Not wishing to hear any of their conversation I finished my breakfast as soon as possible and left the room. Going into the inn-yard I had a great deal of learned discourse with an old ostler about the glanders in horses. From the inn-yard I went to my own private room and made some dottings in my note-book, and then went down again to the parlour, which I found unoccupied. After sitting some time before the fire I got up, and ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... creed; Shook by a dream, he next for truth receives What frenzy teaches, and what fear believes; And this will place him in the power of one Whom we must seek, because we cannot shun." Wisp had been ostler at a busy inn, Where he beheld and grew in dread of sin; Then to a Baptists' meeting found his way, Became a convert, and was taught to pray; Then preach'd; and, being earnest and sincere, Brought other sinners to religious fear: Together grew his influence ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst—the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... was old Alec Jewler, the ostler at the Tor Cross posting-house—had told me that here and there along the coast, but most of all in Cornwall, near Falmouth, there had once been arsenic mines, now long since worked out. Their shafts, he said, could ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... won his game of backgammon, hunted up his hat, made his adieux, and went to the shed for his wagon. He perceived a figure apparently busy in buckling Dolly between the shafts, and, supposing it to be the ostler, called to him to know whether ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts; and Mr. Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow books;—dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. There were ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Tuttleville is not strictly a part of this record. Briefly I may state, however, that after Jovita had been handed over to a sleepy ostler, whom she at once kicked into unpleasant consciousness, Dick sallied out with the bar-keeper for a tour of the sleeping town. Lights still gleamed from a few saloons and gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped before several closed shops, and by ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
