"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is Mrs. Moseley, darlings, and ef you're content with a werry small closet for you and yer dog, why, yer welcome, and I'll promise as it shall be clean. Why, ef that'll do for the night's lodging, you three jest get back into the church pew, and hide Toby well under the seat, and I'll have done my work in about an hour, and then we'll go back home ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... successfully contested by the statement of the next witness, a respectable tradesman in the town. He had seen the newspaper report of the first examination, and had volunteered to present himself as a witness. A member of Mr. Gracedieu's congregation, his pew in the chapel was so situated as to give him a view of the minister's daughters occupying their pew. He had seen the prisoner on every Sunday, for years past; and he swore that he was passing the door of the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... and cry with mingled amusement and vexation. Charlie winked rapturously at her behind his mother's fan; Mac openly pointed to the tall figure beside her; Jamie stared fixedly over the back of his pew, till Rose thought his round eyes would drop out of his head; George fell over a stool and dropped three books in his excitement; Will drew sailors and Chinamen on his clean cuffs, and displayed them, to Rose's great tribulation; ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... which is dedicated to St. Peter, is a quaint old building with a Norman porch, the rest of it being of more modern construction. It contains a raised pew, which is approached by a winding flight of stairs, and is covered in, so that it resembles nothing so much as a four-post bedstead. This pew used to belong to the Milbanke family, with which Lord Byron was connected. Mr. Dodgson found the chancel-roof in so bad a state ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick Church from the school-pew to the reading-desk. This infatuated young man used sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had been presented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that Washington had no library, which accounted for his originality. He was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church; and to see his tall and graceful form as he moved about from pew to pew collecting pence for Home ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... a colorless little woman who retained only the dim outline of her girlhood's beauty, sat gracelessly in her pew, but her stepdaughter, Maud, by her side, was carrying to early maturity a dainty grace united with something strong and fine drawn from her father. She had his ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter of more authority—a stout, potential old man, with a double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a churchwarden's pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and to Chappell, which being most monstrous full, I could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire. Dr. Creeton, the Scotchman, preached a most admirable, good, learned, honest, and most severe sermon, yet comicall.... He railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin and his brood, the Presbyterians, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the annual speech day. The very pretty church, which stands hard by within the grounds, was undergoing restoration in 1873 and by this time the only existing portion of the former internal fittings is the family pew, in which the boys sat on drowsy summer afternoons, doing what they could to keep their impressions of the second sermon distinct from their reminiscences of the morning. Here Macaulay spent four most industrious years, doing less and less in the class-room as time went on, but enjoying ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... they sat side by side in the Milo pew at St. Giles; and after Sue's sixteenth birthday, though Wallace might have to be left at home with his father, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to accept invitations, even to the home of a girl friend, unless she herself ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... hardy frame. He was harshly religious, and had there been a church in the Black Rim country you would have seen Aleck Douglas drive early to its door every Sunday morn, and sit straight-backed in a front pew and stare hard at the minister through the longest of sermons,—providing, of course, that church and minister were ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... since that April afternoon when General Wilks, judge of the circuit court, left the bench and personally beat a drum on the court-house steps to summon volunteers to avenge the firing upon Sumter had anything quite touched the dramatic heights of this incident. And Mrs. King's pew in Center Church was Number 2 on the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... very interesting account of the boy Borrow being taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham, where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston, B.D., who was himself patron of the living, which ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... attorney, and I have heard very old people refer to him as "Lawyer Redin," and speak of the green baize bag which he always carried back and forth to his office, the forerunner of the present-day brief case, and I know an old lady who can remember him in his pew in Christ Church. He had five daughters and one son. The young man, Richard Wright Redin, soon after his graduation from Princeton, fell a victim to cholera, that terrible disease brought to George Town in its ships. It also carried off a young sister, ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... until the service is half finished. Should you attend at the usual hour of commencing service, you might be supposed guilty of rising in the morning as early as nine or ten o'clock, and by that means be thought shockingly ungenteel—and if seated quietly in the pew, you might possibly remain unnoticed; but, by thundering along the aisle in the midst of prayer or sermon, you are pretty sure to command the attention of the audience, and obtain the honour of being thought by some, to have been ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... field of knowledge which he has not made especially his own. I like to read Montaigne's remarks about doctors, though he never took a medical degree. I can even enjoy the truth in the sharp satire of Voltaire on the medical profession. I frequently prefer the remarks I hear from the pew after the sermon to those I have just been hearing from the pulpit. There are a great many things which I never expect to comprehend, but which I desire very much to apprehend. Suppose that our circle of Teacups were made up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and Aunt Melinda led their part of the procession, and Jack and his father followed them in. There were ten Ogdens, and the family pew held six. Just as they were going in, some one asked Mary to go into the choir. Little Sally nestled in her mother's lap; Bob and Jim were small and thin and only counted for one; Bessie and Sue went in, and so did their ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... lifted column-like straight up to a lucent green canopy, always twinkling and shifting in the wind and the sunlight. Below grew a thin screen of underbrush, through which we had no difficulty at all in pushing, but which threw about us face-high a tender green partition. The effect was that of a pew in an old-fashioned church, so that, though we shared the upper stillnesses, a certain delightful privacy of our own seemed assured us. This privacy we knew to be assured also to many creatures besides ourselves. On the other side of the screen of broad leaves ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... one day there was preaching in the Markdale church in the middle of the week because it was sacrament time and Miss Jemima Parr and her family all went because her father was an elder. My mothers uncle Thomas went too and set in the pew just behind Miss Jemima Parrs family. When they all bowed their heads at prayer time Miss Jemima Parr didnt but set bolt uprite and my mothers uncle Thomas bent over and wispered in her ear. I dont know what he said so I cant right it but Miss Jemima Parr blushed that is ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... upon those clerical members of the faculty who conducted the services. Personally he was drawn thither by the peculiar flavour which the exercises gave his daily life. It was pleasant to sit alone in his pew against the wall above the tiers of students, to watch the morning sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows, and to listen to the antiphonal singing of a fine old Rouen meditation. Occasionally the services began with a Sapphic ode by Gregory ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... with a reassuring pressure, and so with clasped hands the two sat throughout the service. And a memorable service it was. While the minister preached, the men took turns in patrolling the building and watching the horses. Beside every pew stood a musket, ready for instant use. Even in the house of God these people were not secure from the attacks ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... children, on whom the neighbours looked with an awful and a tender curiosity, was there. Lord Townshend, too, was in the viceregal seat, with gentlemen of his household behind, splendid in star and peruke, and eyed over their prayer-books by many inquisitive Christians. Nutter's little pew, under the gallery, was void like Sturk's. These sudden blanks were eloquent, and many, as from time to time the dismal gap opened silent before their eyes, felt their thoughts wander and lead them away in a strange ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie, an apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the occasion with a lightnin' jump, an' then When he hits the face o' these United States Doesn't linger half a second till he's in the air agin— Occupies the earth an' then evacuates. Isn't any sense o' comfort like a-settin' in a pew Listenin' to hear a sleepy parson spout When you're up on top a broncho that has got it in fur you An' is desputly a-tryin' ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands how they ought to treat their wives—and, though I noticed that some of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well—I now take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... nod. A whisper in this place is very often of great use, as it serves to convey the most secret intelligence, which a lady would be ready to burst with, if she could not find vent for it by this kind of auricular confession. A piece of scandal transpires in this manner from one pew to another, then presently whizes along the channel, from whence it crawls up to the galleries, till at last the whole church hums ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... in New Utrecht used as a prison by the British, he had for companions, Daniel Duryee, William Furman, William Creed, and two others, all put into one pew. Baylis asked them to get the Bible out of the pulpit and read it to him. They feared to do this, but consented to lead the blind man to the pulpit steps. As he returned with the Bible in his hands a British guard met him, beat him violently ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... who has inherited the disease, or of a person who has suffered from its obscurer symptoms, there may be produced a "reaction." This may take the form of "a large, indurated, reddish papule" which in a pew days become of a dark, bluish-red colour; or the inflammation may be of a severer type, resulting in a "pustule." A positive result is more frequently obtained when the disease is of long standing, or comparatively inactive. But may not this ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... his discomfiture than ever, Dr. Fairfax had seated the strange pair directly across the aisle from him in the pew ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... up the broad aisle, she saw nothing in the building or the people around her that was not strange no familiar face, no familiar thing. But it was a church, and she was alone, quite alone in the midst of that crowd; and she went up to the empty pew and ensconced herself in the far corner of it, with a curious feeling of quiet and of being at home. She was no sooner seated, however, than, leaning forward as much as possible to screen herself from observation, bending her head upon her knees, she burst into ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... as he found himself in white, by clerical and theological zeal. These feelings impelled him to produce a creaking of the heavy vestry door, a well-known signal for his daughter to slip out of the chancel pew and come to him. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... churches generally were hostile to the movement and methods of the anti-slavery agitation. There was an intense prejudice against the blacks. The only negro in town was a servant girl, who used to sit solitary and alone in the colored people's pew in the gallery. When three families of black folks moved into a deserted house in Boscawen, near Beaver Dam Brook, and their children made their appearance in Corser Hill school, a great commotion at once ensued in the town. After the Sunday ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... gave her a side glance; she did not know that her neighbor in the pew was a girl without baptism, without Christianity, without the slightest knowledge of holy religion, a heathen—and knew less than a heathen, for such a one has his teachings, although they are not Christian. Miss Rudenskoeld thought the girl's question came of a momentary forgetfulness, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she had been observing the comings and goings of the boys and girls of their neighbourhood one young man had begun to stand out from the rest. Elizabeth was nearly sixteen, and when she saw him now in a pew a few seats ahead of her she made a ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... eyes with his own handkerchief and led her in to the service. Their own pew was already full. He had to take her back into ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... green patches down the white walls where the rains had got in. So the handful of people that came to church were glad enough to get the other side of the screen in the chancel, where at least the pew floors were boarded over, and the panelling of oak-work kept off ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... indifferent as to its intimate connexion with the former. I look at the stars, and my thoughts are of women—I look at the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven—I frequent the opera, and moralize upon the world and its vanities—I sit in my pew at church, and my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of the parson to boot—I live in town all the year, because it's the fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... tears of pity put out the fires of hell; and he literally laughed the devil out of court. This man, more than any other man of his century, made the clergy free. He raised the standard of intelligence in both pew and pulpit, and the preachers who denounced him most, often were, and are, the most benefited by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Duke. And first calling upon Mr. Coventry at his chamber, I went to the Duke's bed-side, who had sat up late last night, and lay long this morning. This being done, I went to chapel, and sat in Mr. Blagrave's pew, and there did sing my part along with another before the King, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the beginning of prayers to the end of the sermon, by ringing the bells, and going into the gallery to spit below"; while at yet another time "a fellow came into church with a pot of beer and a pipe," and remained "smoking in his own pew until the end of the sermon." Going to church at Hayes in those days must have been quite an exciting experience. No one knew what ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the palace is the Cathedral San Giovanni Battista. To the left of the altar is the pew of the royal family. Behind the altar, and approached by two staircases of 37 steps each, is the Cappella del Sudario (open till 9 A.M.), acircular chapel, separated from the church by a glass screen. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... talk about 'equality,' about 'meeting the whole neighborhood,' and that sort of thing; but I intend to establish a family; and I set my face against all promiscuous assemblages of different classes of society. It is bad enough on Sundays, when each man can sit buttoned up in his own pew; but a festival for all sorts and conditions of children,—its is contrary to the genius of our republican institutions." His wife thought quite differently; but the poor thing did not dare say her soul was her own in his presence. Aunt Kindly ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... angle, there was a small pen for female offenders, and, on the south, a more commodious enclosure appropriated to the master-debtors and strangers. Immediately beneath the pulpit stood a large circular pew where malefactors under sentence of death sat to hear the condemned sermon delivered to them, and where they formed a public spectacle to the crowds, which curiosity generally attracted on ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. Pharmacy (science) farmacio. Pharos lumturo. Pharynx faringo. Phase fazo. Pheasant fazano. Pheasantry ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... straight down into the tall Rectory pew, and once or twice his eyes involuntarily sought its occupants. Once, indeed, he paused in his discourse. It was after the words— "We are totally mistaken if we persuade ourselves that Christ was lenient towards sin. ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... besides, he hoped to sell the landlord his colt and cutter, and he did not care to prejudice that matter. Some bills from storekeepers, which he thought he had paid, were handed to him by the landlord, and each of the churches had sent in a little account for pew-rent for the past eighteen months: he had always believed himself dead-headed at church. He outlawed the latter by tearing them to pieces in the landlord's presence, and dropping the fragments into a spittoon. It seemed to him that every soul in Equity was making a clutch at the rapidly diminishing ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... throne, making too much of their petitions, in the presence of the gentry. Here and there sobs were to be heard. Lady Anstruthers followed the service timorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side, by the round table in the centre of the great square Stornham pew, which was like a room, bowed her head upon her folded arms, and prayed her own ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... eleven o'clock. It was a hard trial for him to go to "Preparatory Lecture" with his boots in the condition they were in; yet at two o'clock he went, still praying that God would send him a new pair of boots. During the service, a merchant in the town took a seat in the same pew with him, and at the close of the service, without a word being spoken on the subject, the merchant, after shaking hands with H—— and inquiring of his welfare, asked him if he would do him the favor of going down town to a certain boot and shoe store and select from the stock as good a pair ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... was waiting at the altar. Madame and Aunt Matilda sat down together in a front pew; there was a moment's solemn hush, then the beautiful ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... night in a barn, in the eastern part of Farmington, and reaching Hartford the next day, where we joined the other companies, and all started for New London. The first night we slept in a barn in East Hartford, and the second one in an old church in Marlboro. I remember lying on the seat of a pew, with my knapsack under my head. We arrived at New London on Saturday, marching the whole distance in the first week in August, and a hotter time I have never experienced since. We were dressed in heavy woolen ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... enough, but soon found that their end was not to be gained in a day. Many were waiting locally, anxious enough to get in, and with social equipments which the Cowperwoods could scarcely boast. After being blackballed by one or two exclusive clubs, seeing his application for a pew at St. Thomas's quietly pigeon-holed for the present, and his invitations declined by several multimillionaires whom he met in the course of commercial transactions, he began to feel that his splendid home, aside from its final purpose as an art-museum, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... with Virginia as a kind of maid of honor, hovering near. It was well for Donald Maxwell that his memory served him faithfully in conducting the service, for his eyes were in misty conflict with his bright smile. Nickey from the front pew, watched his mother with awestruck eyes, and with son-like amazement at her self-possessed carriage under the blaze of ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... little thing. I came to see you about renting a pew in St. John's; that is our church, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... close to it, were the boys' school and girls' school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton's energy; then came a neat little grocer's shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer's wife the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house. And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, as it were, away from Framley Court; and just beyond the turn ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... could surely comprehend, than she would find that the elusive subject had slipped from her grasp, and her whole mind would be fixed upon the problem of how long it would take a fly to crawl all the way across the expansive back of Mrs. Graham, who sat in the pew ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... offered them his pew, the first one on the right, close to the choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and Raphaele, Rosa the Jade, and the two pumps occupied the second seat, in company with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... had gained nothing for the world was pretty evident to the minister the following Sunday—from the lofty watchtower of the pulpit where he sat throned, while the first psalm was being sung. His own pew was near one of the side doors, and at that door some who were late kept coming in. Amongst them were a stranger or two, who were at once shown to seats. Before the psalm ended, an old man came in and stood by the door—a poor man in ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... better believe there was a starin' and a wonderin' next Sunday mornin' when the second bell was a tollin', and the minister walked up the broad aisle with Huldy, all in white, arm in arm with him, and he opened the minister's pew, and handed her in as if she was a princess; for, you see, Parson Carryl come of a good family, and was a born gentleman, and had a sort o' grand way o' bein' polite to women-folks. Wal, I guess there was a rus'lin' among ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... little staggered. He remembered having written, but he would scarcely perhaps have described his letter as "sweet," as he had not done much more than enclose a cheque for his son's account and object to the items for pew-rent and scientific lectures with the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... tumble-down church, from whose wooden belfry the call proceeded. It really seemed to be buried in the earth, and the little side windows looked out into a ditch. There were two steps to go down into the deep porch, and within there seemed to be small space between the roof and the top of the high square pew into which they were ushered by Master Hewlett, who, it seemed, was ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little fussy about his hat in church, and so it was that Malcolm and Mrs. Godfrey were still in their places when the Jacobis passed their pew. Malcolm seized his opportunity and looked well at Miss Jacobi, but she did not ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... church of his seigneury the lord of the manor continued, however, to have various other prerogatives. For his use a special pew was always provided, and an elaborate decree, issued in 1709, set forth precisely where this pew should be. In religious processions the seigneur was entitled to precedence over all other laymen of the parish, taking his place directly behind ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... being the most solemn, reverent, and best mannered. In his own church the place did not seem to become the house of God till services began; and one morning in particular, two old farmers in the pew behind him talked in smothered tones of stock and crops, till it fairly made him homesick. The sermon of the priest, too, filled him with amazement. It weighed the claims of various Protestant sects to be reckoned as parts of the one true ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... elephant of the sea when I, held up in my nurse's arms, saw Brunel's blunder pass Greenore Point. I was hardly eligible for "Etons" when our present King was married. When first taken to church I was most interested, as standing on tiptoe on the seat in our square family pew, and peering into the next pew, I saw a young governess, at that moment the most talked-of woman in Great Britain, the niece of the notorious poisoner Palmer. She had just returned from the condemned cell, having made that scoundrel confess ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... democratic element, that he met with the most violent opposition, and was often insulted when he went into the street. A bride was expected to make her first appearance, and the minister told the singers not to perform the anthem. On their declaring they would, he had the large pew which they usually occupied locked; they broke it open: from the pulpit he told the congregation that, instead of their singing a hymn, he would read a chapter; hardly had he uttered the first word, before up rose the singers, headed by a tall, fierce-looking weaver, who gave out a hymn, and all ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... subtle manner, been permitted to live again. People dropped in occasionally and sat and thought of the dead parson. Sometimes Marcia Lowe welcomed them and coaxed them to tell her of her dear uncle. She always sat in what she called "the minister's pew," and there were times in her lonely detached life when she seemed to see the calm, fine face looking down at her from the poor pulpit. He never looked the weak man who was afraid of Ann Walden; to his loving niece he was ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the narrow streets from all the churches round, while the great bell beat out its summons from the Norman tower. The church was filled from end to end as they came in, meeting Dr. Carrington at the door, and they all passed up together to the pew reserved for the churchwarden, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... screen. Note (1) the font (Norman) with unusual carving on the bowl; (2) Perp. stone pulpit, attached to one of the pillars of the arcade; (3) the seat ends and oak benches (the original width of the latter may be seen in the last pew on the S. side); (4) the brasses, three on the floor before the chancel, and another (of John Martok, succentor of Wells, and physician to Bishop King) in the vestry. This vestry contains some old Flemish glass (brought from ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... mind. She had informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none but the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches in watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and a pair of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the writing-desk in her drawing-room. General ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last prelate who filled it. Some fine old monuments, and warlike trophies of neighbouring wealthy families, adorned the walls, and within the nave was a magnificent pew, with a canopy and pillars of elaborately-carved oak, and lattice-work at the sides, allotted to the manor of Read, and recently erected by Roger Nowell; while in the north and south aisles were two small chapels, converted since the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... by the dread of "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel." Or, again, where John himself says, "there was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat was Flint's. The devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... led us up one of the thickly carpeted aisles to a front pew; there was a young lady already seated in it. I entered first, and Max followed me. The young lady was possessed of imperial beauty. She looked at us both quite boldly, without shrinking, and smiled a little. We sat down. They were singing a song—I could not call it a hymn; it was all about ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... trying to buy his conscience with the money he makes dishonestly, or, in other words, he is a sinner on week-days and a saint on Sundays. Why, they tell me he has started in business for himself, and with what he can gouge from the just wages of his employees he pays pew rent and gives to the heathen. It is the same old story—hypocrisy and greed! Drain the blood of the poor in order to build monuments ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... those present showed how much love the dead woman had sowed and reaped. The sisters, when they first looked around them, saw with grateful joy the father of the young man who had fallen in the duel with Wolff, old Herr Berthold Vorchtel, his wife, and Ursula. On the other hand, the pew adorned with the Eysvogel coat of arms was still empty. This wounded Els deeply; but she uttered a sigh of relief when—the introitus had just begun—at least one member of the haughty family to which she felt allied through Wolff ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... memorable Sunday for Slimak and his wife. She had bought a silk kerchief at a stall, given twenty kopeks to the beggars, and sat down in the front pew, where Grybina and Lukasiakowa had at once made room for her. As for Slimak, everyone had something to say to him. The publican reproached him for spoiling the prices for the Jews, the organist reminded him that it would be well to pay for an extra Mass for the souls of the departed, even the policeman ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... inquired Miss Pew, in that awful voice of hers, at which the class-room trembled, as at unexpected thunder. A murmur ran along the desks, from girl to girl, and then some one, near that end of the long room which was sacred to Miss Pew and her lieutenants, said that Miss Palliser ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... house—can you tell Just where it stood before it fell Prey of the vandal foe,— Our dear old temple, loved so well, By ruthless hands laid low? Where, tell me, was the Deacon's pew? Whose hair was braided in a queue? (For there were pig-tails not a few,)— That's what I'd like ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... betwixt these statues and those of the Transalpine churches. The Italian sculptors seemed to possess some secret by which they could make the marble live. Some half-dozen of priests, with red copes (I presume it was a martyr's day, for on such days the Church's dress is red), ranged in a pew near the altar, were singing psalms. Whether the good men were thinking of their dinner, I knew not; but they yawned portentously, wrung their hands with an air of helplessness, and looked at us as if they half expected ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... obliged to ride away upon his round of visits. Accordingly, Mr. Talcott walked twice to and fro across the green, with Miss Amelia tripping demurely by his side, and served as the target for a thousand eyeshots as he stood up at the head of the Doctor's pew during the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the past. They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... pulpit, piled one above another, had a symmetrical effect, to which the umbrella-shaped sounding-board above gave a distant resemblance to a Chinese pagoda. The only things which gave warmth or colour to the interior as a whole were the cushions and pew curtains. There were plenty of them, and they were mostly red. These same curtains added to the sense of isolation, which was already sufficiently attained by the height of the pew walls and their doors and bolts. I think it was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... did not attract the attention he had expected. His entrance into the pew was attended by no hilarious uprising en masse. He found his place in the gallery, between Pebble Stone and Duke Straus, who sleepily asked his name and went off for a supplementary nap on the shoulder of D. Tanner. Stone ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... carefully avoided. It is to be noted that The Offertory is an important part of worship. It is not an impertinence, but stands in the line of duties along side of prayer and singing. To give money each time you go to church, and in the appointed way will bring blessings from God. Pew rent is not "giving" in this sense, any more than paying the butter bill or for a seat at the opera house. We refer to the offering to God for religious or charitable purposes, regularly through the Offertory ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... established a free reading-room in Bellemore, saw that every employee had his regular vacation each summer or whenever he preferred it, encouraged them to be frugal and moral, gave them good advice, forbade coarseness of language or profanity, and hired a pew in each of the two leading churches, which were always at the disposal of his young men ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... outright. I could see no reason why. He looked a dignified old gentleman in his grey hair and tightly buttoned frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance. But when he came level with our pew I understood. Hurrying back from his morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... family kept for actual use and suitable to their condition, and the trunks or other receptacles necessary to contain the same; one musket or rifle and shot-gun; all private libraries, family bibles, portraits, pictures, musical instruments, and paintings, not kept for the purpose of sale; a seat or pew occupied by the debtor or his family in any house of public worship; an interest in a public or private burying ground, not exceeding one acre for any defendant; two cows and calf; one horse, unless a horse is exempt as hereinafter provided; ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... things at all. Mrs. Lancaster supported Virginia's suspicions by memories of young men who had suddenly and mysteriously appeared, to ask her to accept them as boarders, and young attorneys who had their places in church changed to the pews that surrounded the Lancaster pew. But Susan dismissed these romantic vapors, and in her heart held Mary Lou in genuine admiration, because Mary Lou had undoubtedly and indisputably had a ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... that certain kinds of men seem to take love very unpleasantly. Aggie, however, maintains that the deeper the love the greater the misery, and that Mr. Wiggins once sent back a muffler she had made for him on seeing her conversing with the janitor of the church about dust in her pew. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... where, (though an enemy to superstition,) she will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary's salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear by my ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the kirk on the Sabbath, and sat, not in the minister's pew, but in the very seat where Allison used to sit with her father and her mother and Willie before trouble came. And when the silence was broken by the minister's voice saying: "Oh! Thou who art mighty to save!" did not her heart respond ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... smuggler, who was brought in to listen to the discourse and prayers before execution, made his escape. The congregation were coming into church while all the bells were ringing, when the criminal, watching his opportunity, sprang suddenly over a pew, and was next heard of in Holland. When, a few weeks afterwards, Wilson, another smuggler, was executed, Carlyle, with some of his school-fellows, was in a window on the north side of the Grass-Market, and heard Porteous order his guard to fire on the people. A young lad, who had been killed by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should be displayed his coat of arms. But if these pictures inspired his fancy and cheered his spirit, they were never to become realities. In 1687 he was, apparently, in need of money, and he resolved ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Fortune thought, her last hope of seeing Robert Roy again, either at church—where he usually sat in the Dalziel pew, by the old lady's request, to make the boys "behave"—or walking down the street, where he sometimes took the two eldest to eat their "piece" at his lodgings. All was now ended; yet on the hope—or dread—of ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... reverently, each passing at once to his own place, Andrew to his prominent pew at the side of the pulpit, Duncan to his modest seat behind the stove. They never addressed each other after entering the sanctuary, but sat with bowed heads in meditation and prayer until the commencement of the service. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... daughter rustle into their pew at church—placed next in honour to that of the proprietor of the soil—all eyes are turned upon them. The old-fashioned farmer's wife, who until her years pressed heavily upon her made the cheese and butter in her husband's dairy, is not so old but that ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... dissatisfied, as always happened to him on those rare occasions when she missed the appointment; but he had thought little of the circumstance. Nor had he been disturbed on Sunday at seeing the Slocum pew vacant during both services. The heavy snow-storm which had begun the night before accounted for ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... plain little place with plastered walls, and green glass windows, and one large square pew under the pulpit. The other pews were modern and very bare, occupied sparsely by villagers who all had their faces turned over their shoulders and were ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... three years for this new notion of yours to wear itself out. You think just now you're going to spend the rest of your life as an amateur buccaneer. In three years, at the outside, you'll be using your 'loot,' as you call it, or the interest of it, to pay your taxes and your tailor, your pew rent and your club dues, and you'll be what the biographers call 'a respectable member of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... met him frequently in the woods, and down by the brook where he went to fish. They had thus become pretty well acquainted, and from him Emma had learned the name of the pretty girl who sat in the pew in front of their own at church—the little girl who wore a black ribbon upon her bonnet, and whose manner in the house of prayer was both quiet and devout. Edwin had told her that the name of this pretty girl was Mary Palmer; ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... Savoy, when enter Wife No. 1 who explains that she was a married woman when she met Cuthbertson, and therefore, a fair, or rather unfair, bigamist. Upon this Cuthbertson (who is conveniently near in a pew, wearing the unpretentious uniform of the Royal Horse Artillery), rushes into the arms of the lady who has erroneously been numbered Wife No. 2, when she has been in reality Wife No. 1, and all is joy. Now I need ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or two it quite gave me the creeps. What's ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... touched his supersensitive nerves annoyingly. After a while he grew more accustomed to it, but he did not like it, and he said so loudly enough to bring him a stern glance from his father and smiles from some of the people in the pew ahead. During the brief ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... to seen, though, how his face an' argymunce an' figgers Drawed tears o' real conviction from a lot o' pen'tent niggers! It warn't like Wilbur's meetin', where you're shet up in a pew, Your dickeys sorrin' off your ears, an' bilin' to be thru; Ther' wuz a tent clost by thet hed a kag o' sunthin' in it, Where you could go, ef you wuz dry, an' damp ye in a minute; Au' ef you did dror off a spell, ther' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... pine-apples—the common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... letters on a black ground, and each four-sided, to contain ten persons; the rotting damask cushions in many of them told of a former aristocracy, while now all the congregation could be assembled in a single pew, and worship was unknown but once a year, when the bishop came to read his liturgy to dust ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy, and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... horses and carriage under the shed at the rear of the church, all the family went into church and up the middle aisle to their pew near the front. ...
— Prince and Rover of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton |
