"Ferryman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was placed in the mouth of the deceased to pay Charon the ferryman who was to take it across the rivers of the lower world, the body was laid out in the vestibule, with its feet toward the door, wearing the simple toga, in the case of an ordinary citizen, or the toga prtexta in case of a magistrate, and flowers and leaves were used for ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... wont do," said she. "The only other time that I was ever really saved was by a ferryman, and father gave him some money, which was all right for him, but wouldn't do for you two, you know; and another time there wasn't really any danger, and I'm sorry the man got anything; ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Michael, the ferryman, drove by, breaking a track along the blotted road. His ancient corduroys, known to every river-man from Bismarck to Baton Rouge, were hidden beneath layers of overcoats. Through the wool cap pulled down to his collar, two wide holes gave him outlook; a third, and smaller ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... well on her way when a violent storm arose. The ferryman and his mate, both Highlanders, held a consultation, and after a short debate the ferryman turned to his passengers and remarked, anxiously: "We'll just tak' your tuppences now, for we dinna ken ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Lacedaemon, and there she found a hole leading to the Underworld. A ghostly ferryman rowed her over the River of Death, and took one of her copper coins. Then a monstrous dog with three heads sprang out, but Psyche fed him with one of her honey-cakes, and entered the hall of Proserpine, the queen of the dead. Proserpine filled the casket, and by means of the last honey-cake ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... The ferryman was a poor man, and was likely to remain a poor man to the end of his life. Hardly a day passed in which he did not sigh to be rich, and complain of the unequal and unjust distribution of property. He could point to a score ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... a ferryman who plied a ferry across a big river, and he had two wives. By the elder wife he had five sons and by the younger only one. When he grew old he gave up work himself and left his sons to manage the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... short the waking hours of this our night," and quoth Shahrazad:—It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that Mubarak and Zayn al-Asnam came upon a lake where, behold, they found a little craft whose planks were of chaunders and lign-aloes of Comorin and therein stood a ferryman with the head of an elephant while the rest of his body wore the semblance of a lion.[FN33] Presently he approached them and winding his trunk around them[FN34] lifted them both into the boat and seated them beside himself: then he fell to paddling till he passed through the middle of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Heaven hath Sent on this lower world in wrath,— The plague (to call it by its name,) One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,— Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire; Nor wolf nor ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... King's-ferry before the morning was far advanced. He did not now, as on former occasions, cross the Swale to Elmley or Harty, with a view to avoid observation, but threw himself into the boat of Jabez Tippet, the ferryman, to whom, as it may be supposed, he was ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and when the news spread through the city no sounds but those of wailing were heard. Only the voice of Psyche was silent among them. She moved about as one that was sleeping, and indeed she felt as if the boat, with its grim ferryman, had already borne her across the Styx. So the days passed on, and one evening a white-clad priest arrived from the shrine to bid the king ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... they were carried down more than a mile, loudly calling for help as they went along; but what aid could we render them? No craft, none, at least, which were on the banks of the river, could live in such a boiling torrent as that; for it was during one of the high spring freshets. But the ferryman was of a different opinion, and could not brook the thought of their dying before his eyes without his making a single effort to save them. "How could I stand idly looking on," he said to me afterward, "with a tough ash oar in my hand, and a tight ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... gipsy fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring henroost.' Mr Reach witnessed an altercation, respecting passage-money, between a party of these wanderers and a ferryman of the Garonne; and it ended in the vintagers refusing to cross the river, rather than submit to the overcharge, as they contended it was, of a sou. 'A bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... puffed at her cigar. "Do you know the history of the family?" she asked. "The founder was a rough old ferryman. He fought his rivals so well that in the end he owned all the boats; and then some one discovered the idea of buying legislatures and building railroads, and he went into that. It was a time when they ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... over them; then the hay she always put in for her team over that, and a bag of apples, and another of potatoes, or any thing she generally brought into market, placed in front so as to present the appearance of a load of marketing. As she had been over so often, she said, the ferryman hardly ever asked her for her pass, for he knew her so well. "Don't you see you are the very one to bring yourself and family here? You could drive over and take your family to either of three places: to a colored family on Macallister Street, by the name of Hall; or to Levi Coffin's, on the corner ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... of the heart. Socrates called this plant the "Chaplet of the Infernal Gods," because of its [142] narcotic effects. Nevertheless, the roots of the asphodel were thought by the ancient Greeks to be edible, and they were therefore laid in tombs as food for the dead. Lucian tells us that Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of the departed over the river Styx, said: "I know why Mercury keeps us waiting here so long. Down in these regions there is nothing to be had but, asphodel, and oblations, in the midst of mist and darkness; whereas up in heaven he finds it all ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... side, they were slowly borne over the still waters under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance at the ferryman. Evidently what she had to say was too confidential to admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him. Lily soon did address her talk ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who successfully combined in his single person the varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dollar and a shilling in copper coin. He insisted that the ferryman should take the coin. He said of this liberal sense of honor afterward that one is "sometimes more generous when he has little money than when ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... gazing upon all these things, I turned my head to look back, and saw Ignorance come up to the river side; but he soon got over, and that without half that difficulty which the other two men met with.[330] For it happened that there was then in that place, one Vain-hope,[331] a ferryman, that with his boat helped him over; so he, as the other I saw, did ascend the hill, to come up to the gate, only he came alone; neither did any man meet him with the least encouragement. When he was come up to the gate, he looked up to the writing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... writings say that having naught To pay the ferryman, the churl refused To ferry him across the swollen stream, When he was raised and wafted through the air. What matter whether that all-powerful Love Which moves the worlds, and bears with all our sins, Sent him a chariot and steeds of fire, Or moved the heart of some poor fisherman ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... been handed down from the time of the Danish invasions of Britain, explanatory of the generic name of Osmunda—an island, covered with large specimens of this fern, figuring prominently in the story. Osmund, the ferryman of Loch Tyne, had a beautiful child, who was the pride of his life and the joy of his heart. In those days, when the merciless Danes were making their terrible descents upon the coasts of Great Britain, slaughtering the peaceful inhabitants, and pillaging ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... continued Chupin, "was present at all the conferences held at Lacheneur's house. The proof of this is as clear as daylight. Being obliged to cross the Oiselle to reach the Reche, and fearing the ferryman would notice his frequent nocturnal voyages, the baron had an old boat repaired which he had ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... awaited results. They had not very long to wait. For no sooner had the ghost, armed with the stone club, stepped down to the sea-shore than he called imperiously for the ferry-boat. It soon hove in sight, with the ghostly ferryman in it paddling to the beach to receive the passenger. But when the prow grated on the pebbles, the artful ghost, instead of stepping into it as he should have done, lunged out at it with the stone club so forcibly ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... ferryman at work in the field above his hut, and he was at liberty to go with us, but, being wet and hungry, we begged that he would let us sit by his fire till we had refreshed ourselves. This was the first genuine ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... am not yet weary of life, O king, and I wish not to drown in these broad waves. Better that men should die by my sword in Etzel's land. Stay thou then by the water's edge, whilst I seek a ferryman along the stream." ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... the waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay. Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her lodging, some two miles up the stream. The house stood beside a more ancient ferry, now disused, to which it had formerly served as a tavern. It rested on stout oaken piles driven deep into the river-mud; ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... later asserted) a fee to Charon the ferryman to Hades, but simply a "minimum precautionary sum, for the dead man's use" (Dr. Jane Harrison), placed in the mouth, where a Greek usually kept his ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... at this day. As Charon was a temple near the catacombs, or place of burial; all the persons who were brought to be there deposited, had an offering made on their account, upon being landed on this shore. Hence arose the notion of the fee of Charon, and of the ferryman of that name. This building stood upon the banks of a canal, which communicated with the Nile: but that which is now called Kiroon, stands at some distance to the west, upon the lake [360]Moeris; where only the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... in a cavern in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could lie down) a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The companion of my transit was M.A.C., with whom I had been long in love, and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... "Never!" He seized an oar, mickle and broad, and smote Hagen (soon he rued it), that he staggered and fell on his knees. Seldom had he of Trony encountered so grim a ferryman. Further, to anger the bold stranger, he brake a boat-pole over his head, for he was a strong man. But he did it to his ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... you were ferryman at Charon's ford, And I came down the bank and called to you, Waved you my hand and asked to come aboard, And threw you kisses ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... belongs to the science of hydraulics, for it is not such a boat as can be propelled by steam or wind. I had occasion recently to cross the Mississippi on a similar ferry, early in the morning, and before the ferryman was up. The proprietor of it was with me; yet neither of us knew much of its practical operation. I soon pulled the head of the boat towards the current, but left down the resistance board, or whatever it is called, at the bow as well as at the stern. This, of course, impeded our progress; ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... and Phao is, very shortly, as follows. Phao, a poor ferryman, is endowed by Venus with the gift of beauty. Sapho, who in Lyly's hands is stripped of all poetical attributes and becomes simply a great Queen of Sicily, sees him and instantly falls in love with him. To conceal her passion, she pretends to her ladies that she ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... I asked them if there had ever been any Mormon preachers in that country. They said there had not been any there. The young women were modest and genteel in behavior. I passed on to the Cumberland River, was set over the river by the ferryman, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... was windless and genial; the morning stepped out from the east bearing the promise of a fine day; the tide was running strongly to the sea. At Newnham the ferryman stood knee-deep in the water washing his boat and hoping for a fare. The man in black came down and was carried across to Arlingham. He asked many questions concerning the tides and the sands. The water ran ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... baby gopher—picked up in her walk. It was impossible to wrap them both in her apron without serious peril to one or the other; she could not put either down without the chance of its escaping. "It's like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to take the wolf and the sheep in his boat," said Peggy to herself, "though I don't believe anybody was ever so silly as to want to take a wolf across the river." But, looking up, she beheld the approach of Sam ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... later the four Northerners had taken a grateful farewell of the unsuspecting Mrs. Page, and were hurrying along the bank of the Tennessee. By four o'clock in the afternoon they had reached a point directly opposite Chattanooga. Here they found a ferryman, just as they had been given to expect, with his flat "horse-boat" moored to the shore. He was a fat, comfortable-looking fellow, as he sat in tailor-fashion on the little wharf, smoking a corncob pipe as unconcernedly ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... an old ferryman, "if prophets had always foretold truly the universe would have fallen into the sea and been drowned long ago. I can prophesy too; if he ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... of the Grecian theatre; and that these exhibitions were also the prototypes whereon D'Hancarville shows Mercury, Momus, and Psyche delineated as we see Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown on our stages. The old man (Pantaloon), is Charon (the ferryman of hell). The Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, the god of raillery and wit, and whose large gaping mouth is in ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous piles of merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough to shake hands with her ferryman. And though such a proceeding on the part of his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop squared it easily with the fact that she ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... sorest ill that Heaven hath Sent oil this lower world in wrath,— The plague (to call it by its name), One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich, Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire: Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled, So love and therefore ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the horse trotting hard, and Dick running easily alongside, they crossed the remainder of the fen, and came out upon the banks of the river by the ferryman's hut. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chief equerry, Appelmann, to have a boat there in readiness for him, and also a good horse, to take across the ferry with them to the other side. So, at twelve o'clock, he and Appelmann embarked privately, with Johann Bruwer, the ferryman, and were safely landed at Mahlzow. Here he mounted his horse, and told the two others to await his return, and conceal themselves in the wood if any one approached. Appelmann begged permission to accompany his Highness, which, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... he takes, or the hardship that he endures, or the risk that he runs, in rendering the service desired. If all the labour to be undergone, or damage incurred, or risk encountered, by the sailor who goes about by private bargain to be my ferryman, is fairly met by the remuneration of a thirty-shilling watch, he has no right to stipulate for any more, not though the passage that he gives me sets me on the way to a throne. The peculiar advantage that I have in prospect does not come ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... is now at hand, named after an old Swedish ferryman. The village has not only a delightful location but it is also beautiful in itself. In 1781 it was Washington's headquarters, and the old house, still standing, is famous as the spot where General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Nevertheless, no court more certainly awaits its wealthy lord, than the destined limit of rapacious Pluto. Why do you go on? The impartial earth is opened equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful Prometheus. He confines proud Tantalus; and the race of Tantalus, he condescends, whether invoked or not, to relieve the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... night when he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman by the river, Siddhartha had a dream: Govinda was standing in front of him, dressed in the yellow robe of an ascetic. Sad was how Govinda looked like, sadly he asked: Why have you forsaken me? At this, he embraced Govinda, wrapped his arms around him, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... chaplain alone would return alive to Worms, she told Hagen that he would find a ferryman on the opposite side of the river, farther down, but that he would not obey his call unless he declared ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to assert, that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an empty epitaph to the "Lodgings to let:" it stood empty, reader, for the first passenger that the immortal ferryman should carry over ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... neolkaesai, maede diapsuxai to skaphidion."] The reply that then follows of Mercury shows that not a remnant was left of Nineveh in the very ancient time of Croesus, and that nobody even then knew of its site: "Nineveh, O Ferryman, is quite destroyed, and not a trace of it is left now, nor can you tell where it used to be": [Greek: "Hae Minos men, o porthmen, apololen aedae, kai ouden ichnos eti loipon autaes oud an eipois hopou pot' ae"] (Charon 23). Strabo ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... cut up the river, at whose lagoon-mouth craft can be hired. Our ferryman with his single canoe wasted a good hour over the work of a few minutes. We then remounted hammock and struck the 'true coast,' a charming bit of country, gradually upsloping to the north and east. The path passed through the plantation-villages, Benya and Arabo, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... church. He didn't convince himself he was wrong; he bothered himself, so he didn't at last know right from wrong. If other folks had talked freely, they would have met him on the road, and told him, 'You have lost your way, old boy; there is a river a-head of you, and a very civil ferryman there; he will take you over free gratis for nothing; but the deuce a bit will he bring you back, there is an embargo that side of the water.' Now let me alone; I don't talk nonsense for nothing, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... an elaborate system of sacrifice; even where ancestor-worship is not found, the desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman's toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling expenses of the soul. But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the land of the dead; the soul may return to avenge its death by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak vengeance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... scrupulously aloof from any over-stepping of his functions; and within his own limits his authority is infallible. Why, then, should we not accept his account of the infernal regions as trustworthy? He tells us that Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls across to the nether world; Minos the judge who sentences them; Pluto (whom we confuse perhaps a little with Plutus) a great personage in those regions. Furies sit over the inner gate; Gorgons and Harpies play their parts. Holy Scripture has nothing to say against these ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... These circumstances, added to the preceding ones, increased the probability of the fiction; and thus to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron, in the boat of Charon the ferryman, and to pass through the doors of horn and ivory, which were guarded by the mastiff Cerberus. At length a civil usage was joined to all these inventions, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... came to a wide river over which he must go. The ferryman asked him what his trade was, and what he knew. "I know everything," answered he. "Then you can do me a favour," said the ferryman, "and tell me why I must always be rowing backwards and forwards, and am never set free?" "You ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Cocytus. Charon there, Grim ferryman, stands sentry. Mean his guise, His chin a wilderness of hoary hair, And like a flaming furnace stare his eyes. Hung in a loop around his shoulders lies A filthy gaberdine. He trims the sail, And, pole in ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... overhead, rubbing their palms together spitefully. There was mockery of our foolhardy enterprise in the soft whispering sough of the water, as I heard it lapper beneath the ferry-boat that lay ready to cross to the other side. Old Hans, the Prince's ferryman, snored in his boat. Above in the women's chambers a light went to and fro. I judged that it was in the bower of the Lady Ysolinde. But not a string of my heart moved. For pity is so weak and love so strong ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... must sometimes take place with fearful rapidity, for when Rosamond, having guilelessly accepted the statement and allowed the ferryman to help her to the broad cushioned seat in the stern of the boat, asked innocently, "How much is it—for both ways, I mean? for I want to come back, if you don't mind waiting a little," he answered, with a look of becoming humility, "It is five ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... possible to see more than fifty yards ahead of you, so thickly grew the banksia trees. After crossing the ferry, we lost sight of the river for several miles, and then diverged from the dismal road by a path which we had been directed by the ferryman to look out for, and which brought us to a sandy beach at the bottom of a beautiful bay, called Freshwater Bay. From this point to the opposite side was a stretch of several miles, and the broad and winding river, or rather estuary, with its forest ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... dies, certain men who are the hereditary undertakers call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, "His soul ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... shoulder, somewhat as it was wont to lie on Growler's head. And in spite of Master Willis's opinion, he rode home to the gulley a new man, assuring Patience, on the donkey by his side, that there was more staunchness and kindness in little Emlyn than ever they had thought for. Even the ferryman who put them over the river declared that the doctor must have done Master Kenton a power of good, and Stead smiled and did ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on these monsters with his sword, when the Sibyl informed him that they were no real beings but merely phantoms. Then they came to the Styx—the river of Hades, over which the ferryman Cha'ron, grim and long-bearded, conveyed the departed spirits, in his iron-colored boat, using a pole ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... the eighteenth century, the traveller to Paestum had to endure amidst other difficulties and dangers of the road the disagreeable business of being ferried across the Sele, which was then bridgeless. Owing to the malaria and the loneliness of the spot, the acting of ferryman over this river was not an agreeable post, and Count Stolberg, a German dilettante who has left some memories of his Italian wanderings, relates how a feeble dismal soured old man, a veritable Charon of the upper air, had great difficulty in conveying ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... as if they had some announcement to make. Perhaps they talked of him who, as a little boy, had taken away their eggs and their young; of the peasant's son, who had to wear an iron garter, and of the noble young lady, who ended by being a ferryman's wife. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the boat; it was so convenient, he said, because one person could so easily manage it with a pair of oars. She should herself learn how to do this; there was often a delicious feeling in floating along alone upon the water, one's own ferryman and steersman. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... along. There was, however, no occasion for haste, for the ferry was but four miles away, and the boat would not cross until dawn. Ali, however, had gone down on the previous day and had bargained with the ferryman to be ready, as soon as it was light, to take over a party who had a long journey to make. Dawn was just breaking as they reached the banks of the river. A few moments later the ferryman arrived. He looked surprised at seeing an Arab with four peasants, ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... bright morning ten days later, I was visiting other worlds than those of finance and gas; but on the tenth day they told me I had eluded the grim ferryman and, barring accident, might get out into the world again in five weeks. A suspicion which owed its origin to that glimpse of Addicks on the first night of my illness awakened in my mind, and the following day I sent for my principal ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... floating on the breeze from over the river, seeming to proclaim, with their melodious tongues, peace and good-will to all. Eock River, with its 300 yards in width of unbridged waters, now obstructs my path, and the ferryboat is tied up on the other shore. "Whoop-ee," I yell at the ferryman's hut opposite, but without receiving any response. "Wh-o-o-p-e-ee," I repeat in a gentle, civilized voice-learned, by the by, two years ago on the Crow reservation in Montana, and which sets the surrounding atmosphere in a whirl ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... prophecy of Scott, read the description of Netley Abbey,[47] in a letter to Nicholls in 1764. "My ferryman," writes Gray in a letter to Brown about the same ruin, "assured me that he would not go near it in the night time for all the world, though he knew much money had been found there. The sun was all too glaring and too full of gauds for such a scene, which ought to be visited ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... glided into the breakers. I had received some warnings about this, but it was supposed that we could cross in a ferry scow, of which, however, I only found the bones. The guide and the people at the ferryman's house talked long without result, but eventually, by many signs, I contrived to get them to take me over in a crazy punt, half full of water, and the horses swam across. Before we reached the top of the ravine, the last redness of twilight had died from off the melancholy ocean, the black ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... into his proper vein. Three cuts conclude the first part. In the first the gates close, black against the glory struggling from within. The second shows us Ignorance—alas! poor Arminian!—hailing, in a sad twilight, the ferryman Vain-Hope; and in the third we behold him, bound hand and foot, and black already with the hue of his eternal fate, carried high over the mountain-tops of the world by two angels of the anger of the Lord. "Carried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ferry. It was now getting dusk, and they had come to the conclusion as they walked that it would be too late to attempt to get on that night beyond Burnham. The storm was as wild as ever, and although the passage was a narrow one it was as much as the ferryman could do to row ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... inquired about the ferry, and learned that the ferryboat no longer plied, as, since the troubles began, there was so little traffic that it did not pay the ferryman to remain there. As they had already decided to cross by the ford, four miles higher up, this did not matter. As none of them was aware of its exact position, they decided to wait ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... good meeting; the church had been revived, and there had been important additions. I took dinner with Bro. Brown, and in the afternoon we rode toward Ripley. On crossing the ferry at Crooked Creek, "Old Rob Burton," the ferryman, a tall, stalwart Kentuckian, looking down on me, asked, "Are you the man that's goin' ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Dragon, how it was he couldn't get clean water in his well?—how another had bidden him ask, what had become of his daughter, who had been lost many years since?—and how a queen had begged him to ask the Dragon what had become of her gold keys?—and, last of all, how the ferryman had begged him to ask the Dragon, how long he was to stop there and carry folk over?? When he had done his story, and took hold of the sword, he could lift it; and when he had taken another drink, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... at the bank of the river, where they found that the ferryman was at the other side, and his boat with him. He was lying on the stern seat, in the sun, and an empty whiskey bottle beside him sufficiently denoted the reason of his inertia. When the Colonel called to him, he answered in endearing terms, but moved not; and when the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bank. He had not walked far before he came to the ferry at Twickenham. The view on the other side of the river attracted him: meadows dotted with cows and sheep, a verdant hill with pleasant villas here and there; and, seeing the ferryman resting on his oars, he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... The ferryman screwed his head around on his neck as though he had not heard correctly. "Did you say 'cut in two'?" ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the niggers what had been Collins' slaves come and stole all mama's children, toted us off on their backs at night. Where we come to cross the river, Uncle George Tunnel was the ferryman. He had raised mama at his cabin at slavery. He took us to his white folks. We lived with them a year and then mama moved on Bill Cropton's place and we lived there forty years. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration |
