"Verger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cathedral testified that there "had been no superintendence at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... came up in groups and families, touching their fingers to the sacred slab and kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father would take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to the grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frail and so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of the mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that pretty white-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and pulling ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... took a fly (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gloom of Valhalla. It was Alice's first view of Valhalla, though of course she had heard of it. In old times she had visited Madame Tussaud's and the Tower, but she had not had leisure to get round as far as Valhalla. It impressed her deeply. A verger pointed them to the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had not the courage to ask for It. Priam could not speak. There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come out of his ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... neighbourhood. She was the owner of the "Cock and Bottle," a very decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two large houses in the High Street, and a ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... day of exultation came, and I and Enoch, with Miss and her Mamma, for I could not be satisfied with less than the whole family, repaired early to the cathedral, bribed the verger, procured ourselves places, and rallied our devout emotions as stedfastly as we could, amid the indecent riot of boys, the monotony of the responses, and the apathy ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... married in a parish where neither of them was known; he had got a special licence, and there was nobody in the church but the verger and Sangster, and a deaf uncle of Christine's, who thought the whole affair a great bother, and who had looked up a train to catch back home the very moment that Christine should have safely passed out of his keeping into ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... they had come was closed. Jack shook it, and hammered it with his fists, but he could not open it; it was locked, and they were prisoners in the tower. The verger who had the charge of the door had remembered that he had left it unfastened, and had turned the key in the lock soon after the children had entered the tower. No one had been near when they had crept ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... the morning La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest. At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father's breakfast. With a great ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... more sharply in the Cathedral, which is depicted as a living organism with all its great history behind it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the Canons—down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, England; behind England, the world, all moving ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... reading-desk and pulpit were occupied by a lot of brickmakers, among whom the parson from Barchester did not venture to attempt to make his way, although he was fortified by the presence of one of the cathedral vergers and by one of the palace footmen. I can hardly believe about the verger and the footman. As for the rest, I have no doubt it is all true. I pity Crawley from my heart. Poor, unfortunate man! The general opinion seems to be that he is not in truth responsible for what he does. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... looked on coldly, but not irreverently, and was glad to see the funeral service so well performed, and very glad when it was over. What struck me as singular, the person who performed the part usually performed by a verger, keeping order among the audience, wore a gold-embroidered scarf, a cocked hat, and, I believe, a sword, and had the air of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... companion; "we are in good time; this is the outer chapel. Yes, I know all that you are thinking, but you need not speak; I did not want to speak the first time I came to St. Hilda's. Just follow me quickly. I know this verger; he will put us into two stalls; then ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... that he was to be married in October, and in these circumstances Mrs. Gibson, Miss Banks, and Mrs. Church put their banns up. This acted as a specific, and Captain Barber, putting the best face he could on the matter, went and interviewed the verger on his ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... coincidence, not ridiculously beyond the ken of a verger, when Doris went to church on Sunday morning, she found herself beside ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... asked what was to be seen. Nothing here but churches and monks. One of the little girls, three years old, looked with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out, "Quel jolie poupee!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall ye be taught wisdom." The old man dropped her hand, and looked as if he would have lighted the faggots had ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... were married by a bishop, with two priests and three curates to assist. The ceremony was held at the great stone church; and as the procession came out, the verger had a hard time to keep the crowd back, so that the little girls in white could go before and strew flowers in their pathway. The organ pealed, and the chimes clanged and rang as if the tune and the times were out of joint; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... que nos peres preferoient l'utile a l'agreable: aussi ont ils mieux aime construire de grands greniers que de jolis appartemens; mais en revanche ils out jette quantite de petites mansardes sur un autre cote du logis. Ce dernier donne sur un verger qui fait mes delices, il est precede d'un petit parterre, et finit ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... placed there the bells in the church tower began ringing and the pastor, the sexton, and the verger came out from the vestry and took their places at the ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... society of many who would not otherwise have sought her. Hundreds admired Miss Mitford on account of her writings for one who ever connected the idea of Miss Austen with the press. A few years ago, a gentleman visiting Winchester Cathedral desired to be shown Miss Austen's grave. The verger, as he pointed it out, asked, 'Pray, sir, can you tell me whether there was anything particular about that lady; so many people want to know where she was buried?' During her life the ignorance of the verger was shared by ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... Joseph Yorke, Ambassador at the Hague. He died Lord Dover. A fourth son, John, married Miss Elizabeth Lygon, of Madresfield. The fifth son, James, entered the Church, became Bishop of Ely, and was the ancestor of the Yorkes of Forthampton. I had the luck many years ago to have a talk with an old verger in Ely Cathedral who remembered Bishop Yorke, and who told me that he used to draw such congregations by the power of his oratory and the breadth of his teaching, that when he preached, all the dissenting chapels ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... loved that girl, so gaunt and tall, Who whispered loud, 'Sweet Thing!' Scanning your figure, slight yet all Round as your own gold ring. At Salisbury you stray'd alone Within the shafted glooms, Whilst I was by the Verger shown The brasses and the tombs. At tea we talk'd of matters deep, Of joy that never dies; We laugh'd, till love was mix'd with sleep Within your great sweet eyes. The next day, sweet with luck no less And sense of sweetness past, The full tide of our happiness Rose higher than the last. At ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... like to come here every day," said Mellicent softly, "every single day. I should like to be a verger, and spend my life in an abbey. I think I could be awfully good if I lived here always. It makes one feel so small and insignificant, that one wouldn't dare to be selfish, and think one's own happiness so important. I can't believe that ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... l'Hermitage, prenant d'un bout, vers le sud aux terres de Joseph Bedard, et Jean Baptiste Le Roux dit Cardinal, et allant en profondeur vers le nord quatorze arpents ou environ, jusqu'a la vieille cloture du verger, icelui verger compris en la presente concession et vente, les dix arpents de front joignant du cote du sud-ouest ou fief de la Trinite, appartenant au Seminaire, et du cote du nord-ouest a la terre de Jean Chattereau, ensemble ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... materials which they had brought at fairs, and then been unable to dispose of, now suddenly become tradeable, and go off with a rush. For instance, on one occasion a lady appeared at Mass in a bustle which filled the church to an extent which led the verger on duty to bid the commoner folk withdraw to the porch, lest the lady's toilet should be soiled in the crush. Even Chichikov could not help privately remarking the attention which he aroused. On one occasion, when he returned to the inn, he found on his table a note ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... every minute, and Guest gazed anxiously now toward the door, but the arrivals were all female; and save that the clerk or verger was arranging cushions and books up by the communion table, he was alone, and the centre upon which all eyes ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... disposed to explore the upper parts of the church, facilities are afforded by a staircase commencing at the south-west Transept leading to the western Tower; and by another leading from the north Transept; but permission must be obtained, for which an application should be made to the Verger in attendance. The ascent, though tedious, is not dangerous, if due caution be used. Many parts will be found worthy of attention; the timber work of the Octagon is a very curious piece of carpentry executed in ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... that there is evidence in Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. i. p. 79., that remains of the painted figure of Chaucer were to be seen in Nolleken's times. Smith reports a conversation between the artist and Catlin, so many years the principal verger of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... hose," in a wonderful piece of wrought-iron work. Whether next day, after viewing the cathedral, the tricycles pursued their journey, is not told. The pilgrimage ends, as it should, at the shrine,—that is, where the shrine had been; for the verger, after saying solemnly that they had come to the shrine of St. Thomas, solemnly added, "'Enery the Heighth, when he was in Canterbury, took the bones, which they was laid beneath, out on the green, and had them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the fees for clerk, verger, bell-ringers, and every person, connected with the church, who could possibly have a tip ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Channel squadron lay off the port. Excursion steamers came in from England, bringing members of Parliament and miscellaneous British subjects, of the sort once indignantly denounced to me by the little old verger of a Midland cathedral as 'them terrible trippers.' The active and good-natured railway porters at the station were worn out with throngs of travellers pouring in from all the country round about. There was much animation everywhere, but nowhere any enthusiasm, though Calais, I suppose, must ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the forts of St. Nicholas, and Des Moulines, Isle Dieu, Belle Isle, Fort du Pilier, Mindin, Ville Martin; Quiberon, with Fort Penthievre; L'Orient, with its harbor defences; Fort Cigogne; Brest, with its harbor defences; St. Malo, with Forts Cezembre, La Canchee, L'Anse du Verger, and Des Rimains; Cherbourg, with its defensive forts and batteries; Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Cherbourg, Brest, and Rochefort, are great naval depots; and Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... at Gert again, when the Bishop's Secretary enters, preceded by a verger, who calls ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... ranker. succour, sucker. sailor, sailer. cellar, seller. censor, censer. surplus, surplice. symbol, cymbal. skip, skep. tuber, tuba. whirl, whorl. wert, wort (herb, obs.). vial, viol. verdure, verger ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... patron Saint (as he was, until superseded by Saint George in the thirteenth century), and there I indulged in overt acts of superstition violating Article XXII. of 'the Church of England by law established.' A verger, with some colonial tourists, arrived during our devotions, but his voice was lowered out of regard for our feelings. Indeed, both he and the tourists adopted towards us an attitude of respectful curiosity ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... often seen each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I have been ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a little while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice of multitudes of sad souls. Very soon the music ceased with a kind of sob and the verger, with his skirts flapping round his feet, came to warn those isolated human creatures that they must face ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... through the open doors—a grand wedding, with choral service, was in course of celebration. Sally begged Amelius to take her in to see it. They tried the front entrance, and found it impossible to get through the crowd. A side entrance, and a fee to a verger, succeeded better. They obtained space enough to stand on, with a view of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the hush which pervades the building; and there is much entertainment in various ways if one goes early and watches the well-dressed congregation filing in. The costumes and the women are pretty, and, in his own particular line, the ability of the verger is something at which to marvel. Regular attendants, of course, pay for and have reserved their seats, but it is in classing the visitors that the verger displays his talent. He can cull the commoners from the parvenu aristocrats, and put them in their respective places as skilfully as an expert ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... how he indulged in Drolleries and Raileries in the very edifice itself. He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, the Rich Framing of the Relics, and all he came across, seeming no more impressed by their solemnity than the Verger Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. "Surely," I thought, "there must be something wrong in a Faith whose Professors make so light of its ceremonies, and turn Buffoons in the very Temples;" nor could I help murmuring ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... until the door of the pew was shut, when a folding wooden flap was lowered across the aperture, on which he seated himself, with his back resting against the pew door. At the conclusion of the service the Verger always opened the pew door with a sudden "click." Should the Aide-de-Camp be unprepared for this and happen to be leaning against the door, with any reasonable luck he was almost certain to tumble backwards into the aisle, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the embrace: it seemed to have no effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie. He stood beside his daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a demeanour of stately calm, as she waited for the arrival of the Darcy family, but even she felt a tremor of excitement when the verger hobbled up to the square pew and stood holding the door open in his hand. The heads of the villagers turned with one consent to the doorway; only one person in the church disdained to move her position, but she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs from without, and presently the little ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the result being, that as they waited with many others in the aisle, Denys found herself put into a row where there was but one seat, and she could only look helplessly on while Charlie was marched by the verger, who knew him but did not know Denys, right up ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... as if he were dazed. The verger came forward. "My hat, good Stephano, I left it just back of the fair lady." He handed the man a piece of silver and the verger disappeared. Petrarch was sure he could not find the lady—she was only a vision, a vision seen by him alone. He ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made for a special service. There being no pews or sittings in the chapel, but a few plain chairs for hire, we paid the verger two cents for the use of a chair and waited. Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding a ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... they were not suffered, by law, to travel beyond it: but whether this law restricted them from entering Suabia, or Bavaria, I could not learn. I approached the church, and with the aid of a good-natured verger, who happened luckily to speak French, I was conducted all over the interior—which was sufficiently neat. But the object of my peculiar astonishment was, that Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, all flocked alike, and frequently, at the SAME TIME, to exercise their particular ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, though in large churches there were representatives of all these various officials. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger in blue stood guard. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... only to enhance the cool brown emptiness of the church, the rows and rows of empty pews, disengaged prayerbooks and abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... You go for the ring. R'c'lect it'll be on the top of my right-hand little finger, and just be careful how you draw it off, because I shall have the Verger's fees ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... north porch there was a small oak door studded with nails. Generally this was kept locked, but to-day, by a miracle of good fortune, it happened to be open. It was, of course, a very unorthodox thing for the verger to go away and leave the Abbey unattended, even for half an hour, but vergers, after all, are only human, and enjoy a cup of tea as much as other people who do not wear black cassocks. He was safely seated ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... that has so many sacred recollections to me," says Mr. Tusher (and Harry remembered how Tom's father used to flog him there)—"a house near to that of my respected patron, my most honoured patroness, must ever be a dear abode to me. But, madam, the verger waits to close ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lance tumbled himself out of the train on something so little bigger or older than himself. He says the way we all talk of "my eldest brother" made him expect something taller than Clement, and more imposing than the senior verger; but he understood it all when he saw him and Lance together. They have two very nice rooms; and Felix has put Lance into the bedroom, which is luckily cool, and sleeps on a sofa bed in the parlour; and the landlady will do anything ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... VERGER. From the Latin Virga, a Rod. One who carries the mace before the Dean or Canons in a Cathedral, or conducts the congregation ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—mais c'est ires curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service ... vous savez ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I pass one of the tombs on my way to the Chapel of Abbot Islip. Anon the verger will have stepped briskly forward, drawing a deep breath, with his flock well to heel, and will be telling the secrets of the next tomb on his ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... a big, old-fashioned, high-walled pew, and no one had ever sat in it as long as the children could remember; though Mrs. Jinks; the verger's wife, dusted it well and beat up the cushions with great energy every Thursday when she cleaned ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... that one accomplice was an official of the Queen's chapel, in her residence, Somerset House: a kind of verger, in a purple gown. This is highly important, for the man whom he later pretended to recognise as this accomplice was not a 'waiter,' did not 'wear a purple gown;' and, by his own account, 'was not in the chapel once a month.' Bedloe's recognition of him, therefore, was worthless. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... incumbent, chaplain, curate; deacon, deaconess; preacher, reader, lecturer; capitular^; missionary, propagandist, Jesuit, revivalist, field preacher. churchwarden, sidesman^; clerk, precentor^, choir; almoner, suisse [Fr.], verger, beadle, sexton, sacristan; acolyth^, acolothyst^, acolyte, altar boy; chorister. [Roman Catholic priesthood] Pope, Papa, pontiff, high priest, cardinal; ancient flamen^, flamen^; confessor, penitentiary; spiritual ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... children, Owen gave him the twopence, and they afterwards learned that the Easter Offering for that year was one hundred and twenty-seven pounds, which was made up of the amounts collected from the parishioners by the children, the district visitors and the verger, the collection at a special Service, and donations from the feeble-minded old females elsewhere ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... thus settled, the clock no sooner struck twelve, than they all set out together; they who laid the wager being resolved not to be imposed on by his tampering with the verger. As they passed along, a scruple arose, which was, that though they saw him enter the church, how they should be convinced he went as far as the vault; but he instantly removed their doubts, by pulling out a pen-knife he had in his ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... qui produis Les fleurs dont le jardin se pare, Et que, sans toi, toujours avare, Le verger n'aurait ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... "A verger, I suppose," thought Wingfold.—"Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... it was a church, to get her cramped legs warm again, and just as she was thinking what she was to do to get out, the door opened, to her delight, and in came the man who had care of the church—what we call a verger—followed by the old body who cleaned and ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... after his arrival, or confessing at all, in a church to which, as far as we knew, he was not attached? His tall and portly form looked magnificent and commanding as he stepped forth into the shadowy aisle, and, preceded by a verger, or suisse, bearing a lighted flambeau and a staff of office, was soon lost ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... due to the Very Rev. the Dean, the Rev. E. J. Nash, Mr. George Payne, F.S.A., and Mr. S. S. Brister, for kindnesses and helpful suggestions, as also to the head-verger, Mr. Miles, who, having been connected with the fabric for more than half a century, has a personal knowledge of its history ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... and calling upon him in a straightforward way; but Paula seemed afraid of it, and they went out in the morning on foot. First they searched the church of St. Sauveur; he was not there; next the church of St. Jean; then the church of St. Pierre; but he did not reveal himself, nor had any verger seen or heard of such a man. Outside the latter church was a public flower-garden, and she sat down to consider beside a round pool in which water-lilies grew and gold-fish swam, near beds of fiery geraniums, dahlias, and verbenas just past their bloom. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... dungeons that there was little space left for a visit to the very remarkable Church of St. Ours adjoining the chateau, which, as Viollet le Duc says, has a remarkable and savage beauty of its own. After seeing what is left of the girdle of the Virgin, which the verger thought it very important that we should see, we spent what time we had left in gazing up at the interesting corbeling of the nave and the two hollow, stone pyramids ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cafes, or lounging inside, sipping, as far as I could make out, syrup and soda water. This love of syrup I have seen in Holland and Belgium and in France, and I fancy is universal in hot countries. We visited the church, which I had been in three months before. An old verger—for such I took him to be—took us round, a venerable old fellow with kindly eyes, and long beard, long robe, and tall brimless hat. He pointed out everything, talking a mixture of French and Greek; showed us the Bible on the altar, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... chambre to the King G L Madame du Portal, abbess of Joui G L The Marquis de St. Didier G R Two of the legionary chiefs of the national guard G L Pichard, president of Bourdeaux G L Vicq. D'Asyr, a celebrated physician at Paris G R D'Aoust, De Lattre and Du Verger, three generals of the republican army G L The Abbe de Salignac de Fenelon, aged 85 years G L De Fenelon, son of the ambassador at the Hague G L De Bacquencourt, counsellor of state G L The duke de Gesvres, cordon bleu G L The Prince ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... pursued the other, after sipping at his refilled glass, "I lived just by an old church in the City, and I knew the verger, and he used to let me look over the registers. I think that's what gave me my turn for genealogy. I believe there are fellows who get a living by hunting up pedigrees; that would just suit me, if I only knew how to start ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... own language with perfect propriety, and seemed to consider himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the people, and to entertain a just respect both for himself and them. They would no more have such a man for a Verger in Westminster Abbey, than they would let the people in (as they do at Bologna) to see the monuments for ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... to it, remain in the room: the Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as if the lord chamberlain was the verger and was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... persisted Edith, as the girls giggled. "It happened to my sister. She always plays at the Band of Hope concerts in our village at home, and she goes down to the school to practise her solos on the piano there. Old Thomas is the verger, and he's such a queer old character. He really did think she didn't know how to play properly when she crossed her hands over, and he told her so. It was a tremendous joke in our family, because Maisie considers herself musical. She was squashed ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... pastourelle gentille Et ung bergier en ung verger L'autrhyer en jouant a la bille S'entredisoient, pour abreger: Roger Bergier Legiere Bergiere, C'est trop a la bille joue; Chantons ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... his dagger he faced the armed assassins, flinging their treason in their teeth, and by his shouts and gestures turned their attention upon himself, thus enabling Piso to escape despite his wounds. Piso, reaching the temple of Vesta, was mercifully sheltered by the verger, who hid him in his lodging. There, no reverence for this sanctuary but merely his concealment postponed his immediate death. Eventually, Otho, who was burning to have him killed,[72] dispatched as special agents, Sulpicius Florus of the British cohorts, a man whom Galba had recently enfranchised, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the windows. The tombs and the statues peered dimly from the shadow, and the great east end window, with its deep purple light, seemed to draw the whole nave up into its heart and hold it there. All was space and silence, light and dusk; a little doll of a verger moved in the far distance, an old woman, so quiet that she seemed only a shadow, passed him, wiping the little chairs with ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... he said, addressing the verger, though his words were heard by all present, "Enough of the service has been said! Lower the coffins into the earth!" and turning on his heel he prepared to walk away. But Aubrey Leigh ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... said she, curtseying and smiling. 'It's a great compliment to me to hear it from your own lips; not that it's unexpected. Miss Violetta's a sweet saint, just like her ma, she is, an' her ma's a saint if there ever was one. Mr. Higgs, the verger, says that to see her pray that length of time on her knees after the service is over in church is a ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... at once conventional and improbable—with whimsically ugly names; while his invented names are whimsically perfect: that of Vholes for the predatory silent man in black, and that of Tope for the cathedral verger. A suggestion of dark and vague flight in Vholes; something of old floors, something respectably furtive and musty, in Tope. In Dickens, the love of lurking, unusual things, human and inanimate—he wrote of his discoveries delightedly in his letters—was ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... show the character of the wall, built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite is the back of John of Wheathampstead's ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... description, and they flounder about in most comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it was considered a good likeness. He was staggered for a moment, and then replied hurriedly that it was. But, thank goodness, here comes the lunch. I feel as hungry as an ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; however, it obtained the name of St. Stephen's Chapel. It was rebuilt by King Edward III., anno 1347, who placed in it a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along the Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at the dissolution of monasteries in the reign of Edward VI. amounted to near eleven ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... glance could be obtained of the Raffaelle, the glorious Rubens's,* the Vandycks, and the almost equally fine Sir Joshuas. But even the glance they had was but a passing one, as the servant trotted them through the rooms with the rapidity of locomotion and explanation of a Westminster Abbey verger; and he made a fierce attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, and other trifling ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible, and had made springs come out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... near the front door, and does his best to prevent visitors from either losing themselves, swooning, or becoming miserable. In this quarter there is also stationed another official, a beadle, or verger, or something of the sort, who is quite inclined to be obliging; but he seems to have an unsettled, wandering disposition, is always moving about the place as if he had got mercury in him, can't keep still for the life of him more than two minutes ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the boast and glory of this church is that of the famous MARSHAL SAXE; who died at the age of 55, in the year 1755. While I was looking very intently at it, the good verger gently put a printed description of it into my hands, on a loose quarto sheet. I trust to be forgiven if I read only its first sentence:—Cette grande composition reunit aux richesse de l'art des Phidias et des Bouchardon, les traits de la grande poesie." ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Church of Shirland (one of the manors of the De Greys), and others, of his manor of Portpoole, called Gray's Inn.[111] This was probably in 1371. Similar feoffments-in-trust were made by successive Lords de Grey until 1506, when Edmund, Lord de Grey of Wilton, sold the manor to Hugh Denys, verger of Windsor Castle, and others, the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... that Katy might have the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,— ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... It was like having a spy in the enemy's camp. In this frame of mind, grateful for the accidental meeting with Planchet, pleased with himself, D'Artagnan reached Notre Dame. He ran up the steps, entered the church, and addressing a verger who was sweeping the chapel, asked him if ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Saint Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe Roustan's ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... dismissal of his ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, and to turn the balance of the mind, as it did in ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... is often such a dull one, like a verger throwing one over a cathedral and destroying its mystery and its beauty with every word he speaks. When one is young one does not feel that one needs a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... intended; but Gall, in his "Antiquities of Winchester," gives the following inscription as having existed on the monument:—"Hic jacet Willielmus comes de insula Vana, alias Wincall;" the parish of that name lies on the river Itchin, and might formerly have been insulated. The verger of Winchester Cathedral, in reply to an inquiry made by the editor of the "Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet," said, it was a knight of the name of Fox, evidently meaning De Foix. This figure suffered severely from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... though on their knees, never forgot their epaulets or their quarters of nobility. This mixture of religion and worldly pride seems incongruous at first; but have we not at church at home similar relics of feudal ceremony?—the verger with the silver mace who precedes the vicar to the desk; the two chaplains of my Lord Archbishop, who bow over his Grace as he enters the communion-table gate; even poor John, who follows my Lady with a coroneted prayer-book, and makes his conge as he hands it ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the verger's lodge noticed a little brown bird flitting about the Cathedral precincts, and admired its beautiful singing. "But it is a pity," said they, "that all that warbling should be lost and wasted far out of hearing up on the parapet." They were ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... the information which the two men obtained from a verger, whom they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them expressed either ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... him to get over those last hours. Thus he found himself in Barchester at eleven o'clock, with nothing on his hands to do; and, having nothing else to do, he went to church. There was a full service at the cathedral, and as the verger marshalled him up to one of the empty stalls, a little spare old man was beginning to chant the Litany. "I did not mean to fall in for all this," said Crosbie, to himself, as he settled himself with his arms on the cushion. But the peculiar charm of that old man's voice soon attracted ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... itself even here. For praying one day in the cathedral, like a good Catholic as he was all his life, his attention was arrested by the great lamp which, after lighting it, the verger had left swinging to and fro. Galileo proceeded to time its swings by the only watch he possessed—viz., his own pulse. He noticed that the time of swing remained, as near as he could tell, the same, notwithstanding the fact that the swings were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... islands, located in the said city of Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet there—especially the Chinese, who have observed this condition—it is very annoying ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... place quite like this church. The Manor lies in its parish and Uncle Dick would know if a single limpet was knocked off. The only time I ever saw him really angry was once when some Americans—I'm an American, too, you know, so I can tell this story—tried to bribe the verger to scrape one down for them. There was rather a row and Uncle ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... training of the choir. Much of her own personal and religious character were imparted to the performances, which in tone and manner were admirable and precise. She made the boys understand the sense of the words they sang, till I have seen them even in tears during the singing. The "chaste old verger" (as our reporter called him), who headed the procession at least four times a day, up and down the church, was a very important and successful part of the machinery, and from him, up to the highest official, everything was carried ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... During no portion of his Parliamentary career had Mr. Browborough's name been treated with so much respect in the grandly ecclesiastical city as now. He dined with the Dean on the day before the trial, and on the Sunday was shown by the head verger into the stall next to the Chancellor of the Diocese, with a reverence which seemed to imply that he was almost as graceful as a martyr. When he took his seat in the Court next to his attorney, everybody shook hands with him. When Sir Gregory ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... 1875, being again in Venice, I inquired from the Verger of St. Mark's if Dragonetti's Violone was in the church, and I could see it. The reply was in the affirmative, but as the Fabbricieri had the care of the instrument, under lock and key, it would be necessary to see them and get ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart |
