"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I went with the rest and soon came to the church. I went in and was at once conducted by an old man, who I believe was the sexton, to a large pew close against the southern wall. The inside of the church was dimly lighted; it was long and narrow, and the walls were painted with a yellow colour. The pulpit stood against the northern wall ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... with the sun shining dazzlingly on the white grave stones in Kensal Green. The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again. A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up the grave—Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... in our village is dark after nine o clock. There is a street light—a kerosene lamp—on a post in front of the Methodist meeting house, but the sexton forgets it, generally speaking, or, at any rate, neglects to fill it except at rare intervals. Simmons's front windows are ablaze, of course, and so are the dingy panes of Simpson's barber shop. But these two centers of sociability are both at the depot road corner, and when they are passed the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the side of the grave, where he mingled with the attendants. The parties remained for some little time looking at the coffin after it was lowered, and the clergyman slipped away, unobserved even by his dog. An hour after, as he sat at dinner with his friends, his sexton requested to speak with him. He was admitted into the room, when he said it was impossible to close the grave, and that he did not know what to do. "Why?" asked the gentleman, "Because Sir, your terrier stands there, and flies so fiercely at us whenever we attempt ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... thistle, Skin, bone, and gristle, In Sexton Goudie's keepin' lies, Of poet Syme, Who fell to rhyme, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... good run would not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and sallied forth. The register was not in the vestry; the church-wardens knew nothing about it; the clerk—a new clerk, who was also the sexton, and rather a wild fellow—had gone ten miles off to a wedding: every place was searched; till, at last, the book was found, amidst a heap of old magazines and dusty papers, in the parlour of Caleb himself. By the time ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noted men, now known in history; there many a personage whom tradition told about, making wondrous qualities of strength and courage for him;—all these, mingled with succeeding generations, turned up and battened down again with the sexton's spade; until every blade of grass was human more than vegetable,—for an hundred and fifty years will do this, and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first little mound was piled up in the virgin soil. Old tombs there were too, with ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and exchange in that way numbers of times. I was credibly informed, that one person paid half a pound of tenpenny sugar and a penny to have a tooth drawn; and there is a credible neighbour of mine told me, that he had heard that the sexton had been paid for digging a grave with sugar and tea: and before I came off, knowing I had to give evidence upon these things, I asked this friend to enquire ofthe sexton, whether this was a fact: the sexton hesitated for a little time, on account of bringing into discredit the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... sacristy door remains firmly shut. Surely 'tis time for the groom and his best man to appear there; one minute of eight and no sign. Who in all that crowd could dream that Ray and Blake have vainly stormed the vestry door and found it locked? By some unaccountable error the sexton has barred their entrance as well as that of the intrusive uninvited whom he meant ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... so that there was no making her hear, though the solemn chants, played with great fervour, reached them as they waited in the porch. They had their own seats in the Minster, and therefore could not wait till the sexton should ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a thousand pound action, for what he had said of her husband. Captain Barnaby gave bail to it, and it came on to a trial in the Court of King's Bench, and they had Mr. Booty's wearing apparel brought into court, and the sexton of the parish, and the people that were with him when he died; and we swore to our journals, and it came to the same time within two minutes; ten of our men swore to the buttons on his coat, and that they ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Sabbath of April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade to secure standing and cordial ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Daughter." He found seated beside the mound a lady and a young girl, the latter reading aloud, in a full, melodious voice, the touching tale of the Christian maiden. The tourist turned away, and soon after was told by the sexton that those pilgrims to that humble grave were the Duchess of Kent and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... one. After reading it Taylor told Amy to meet him at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they would be married in the church with no one present but his brother (the only relative Taylor has in town is a bachelor brother), and the sexton, the minister, and me. She met and ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... waggoner, and Stevens, the Sexton, all saw Everard going on the upland path to Swaynestone. But the blacksmith swore to seeing him in the village street at the same hour. A keeper saw him going to the copse at the same time that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the church the use of some part of the premises subject to recall of the privilege on sufficient grounds; and—a consideration never to be slighted although often hard to get—the good-will and co-operation of the sexton. With the sexton against him, no pastor can make a church boys' club succeed. The club will make no mistake in paying the church something for ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Maskery lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things won't go far wrong ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... church for to pray; She went to the stile and there rested awhile; She went to the door and there rested a little more; She went up the aisle and there rested awhile; She looked up; she looked down; She saw a corpse lie on the ground; She said to the sexton, must I look so When I ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... their hands a bayonet, from which burned a tallow candle, in place of tapers. The procession marched up the steps in single file, all bearing themselves with the greatest solemnity and sombre dignity, followed by the sexton, with a frying-pan as a shovel, and took their places around the supposed corpse. Maffett began the duties by alluding to that part of the service where "it is allotted that all men shall die," etc., ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... her shift, she thrice crossed the King's Highway and was thus married to avoid payment of her first husband's debts. It is not far from the old Church Foundation of St. Paul's of Narragansett, and the tumble-down house of Sexton Martin Read, the prince of Narragansett weavers in ante-Revolutionary days. Weaver Rose learned to weave from his grandfather, who was an ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Here and there a human voice soared and struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous cadence with a cry of individual longing, but was borne down by the dull, trampling precision of the others' formal chant. This and a certain muffled raking of the stove by the sexton brought the temperature down still lower. A sermon, in keeping with the previous performance, in which the chill east wind of doctrine was not tempered to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, followed. A spark of ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... it's plain as a marlin-spike, you ain't used to snakes and wimmen. In that partiklar your education's been shamefully neglected. Never kill a rattlesnake arter he's shut in his fangs and turns on his back for mercy—its sneakin' business. Never think a woman is dead till the sexton sends in his bill. Snakes and feminine wimmen is hard to kill. Now any landshark, as has his eyes out of his heart, could see that Miss Lina's only took a faintin' turn, that comes after a skeer like hers, axactly as sleep stills a tired baby. Just give her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... conquest of Michoacan, hang in the trees before it. Inside, an old woman left her sweeping to pull aside the curtains of the reputed Titian, a "Descent from the Cross," while I photographed it from the pulpit, for which privilege the young peon sexton appeared in time ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... among quite a number of members. Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Marjoribanks, the respected member for Berwickshire, were perhaps his favourites; but the one he dwelt with most pride on was Lord ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... group of stragglers recognised him, and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so cordially ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... people thought a great deal from this time of Mr. Dyer; and there was a town council held to consider what they should do to express their feelings to him. He had declined six times being made selectman, and he did not want to ring the bell as sexton. There did not seem to be anything in the way of an office they could offer him that he ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... sign when we are once to come to study how to excuse King is offended with the Duke of Richmond's marrying Mrs. Stewart's sending the King his jewels again Much difficulty to get pews, I offering the sexton money My people do observe my minding my pleasure more than usual My wife this night troubled at my leaving her alone so much Never was known to keep two mistresses in his life (Charles II.) Officers ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... that further responsibility was taken from him and he had only to carry Toni as far as the railway. But the Pastor sent down to his sexton, an older, kindly man, who had given him a helping hand for years in many matters of responsibility. He was commissioned to take Toni with all care to the great sanitarium in Bern and to give the letter to the doctor there, a good friend of the Pastor's. A half hour later, the open carriage ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... gait. He will trot to church on Sundays, and trot, trot, down the aisle after meeting has begun, or, if he likes, up into the gallery. When two of these obstinate old dogs once met before the pulpit they indulged in a whirlwind of fight. The minister requested the sexton to put them out, but they showed him their teeth and fought until satisfied. Then the minister administered a grave rebuke to the farmers for desecrating the house of God by bringing dogs to church. Whether ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... fine thing, I sat down. I wish now I had done that earlier. I wish now I had sat down before I got up. I was the last man out of the church—and I hurried. But they beat me out—all nine of them. When I went out the door, the old sexton said as he jiggled the key in the door to hurry me, "Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse than that. You're all right, bub, but you don't ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... handsome equipages, but most prefer to walk, and there is usually a good deal of smiling talk in groups before parting, in which Mr. Euston likes to join. He leaves matters in the vestry to the care of old Barlow, the sexton, and makes, if one may be permitted the expression, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... strain of music sounded, all the things that the Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Englishman, the blacksmith was a Cockney answering to the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler was from South Devon somewhere, and the parson was an undergraduate of Oxford. The farmers were mostly Scotch, and the village store-keeper was David Macpherson. The driver of the stage was an Irishman, and the sexton of the pretty church on the hill was an odd product of that odd corner of the world known as the Isle of Man. Certainly the two brothers found and made themselves at home. Milly perhaps was the only native Canadian that came in their way. It was a thoroughly ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years and a half, no matter how stormy the weather, the faithful animal made the graveyard his home, only leaving ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... alone, and when the street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked dully out. For her, the light ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that stood in the middle of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to when COOKE again appeared on scene; with increased impressiveness of manner argued against BEACH's proposal. Prince ARTHUR began to look uneasy; no knowing where this sort of thing would end if it spread. What with SEXTON on one side correcting grammar of Ministerial Resolutions, and RADCLIFFE COOKE on the other amending their procedure, it really seemed time to go to the country. Something like condition of paralysis stealing over Treasury Bench when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... present churchyard is the site of the priory, but on this point the labours of the sexton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... natur' than the babe unborn. Reg'lar goney. Dunno whether he's jokin' or in sober airnest. Good mind to sail into him anyhow. Guess 't 'll do, though, to leave him to Natur'. He'll stuff himself to death fast enough ... pitchin' into p'is'n ... sexton ... six-board box ... coroner's verdick ... run over by a fry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the month, and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up—as she often did. David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of five—Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the sexton, and a baker-church-warden—into six by his unvarying attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement attracted quite a considerable ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... was ready to do even the services of a sexton. When Rabbi Akiba died in prison, Elijah betook himself to the dead man's faithful disciple, Rabbi Joshua, and the two together went to the prison. There was none to forbid their entrance; a deep sleep had fallen upon the turnkeys and the prisoners alike. Elijah and Rabbi Joshua ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... MR. SEXTON (of Illinois): "When you consider your place for your next convention tell Chicago what you want, and in response to that Chicago will answer you. 'We will give ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... interested me. La Fosseuse was born here in the town. Her father, a laborer from Saint Laurent du Pont, was nicknamed Le Fosseur, which is no doubt a contraction of fossoyeur, for the office of sexton had been in his family time out of mind. All the sad associations of the graveyard hang about the name. Here as in some other parts of France, there is an old custom, dating from the times of the Latin civilization, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... attempted, the presence in this Parliament of eighty Irish members—a number which had been found to be sufficient to initiate an Irish constitution—would be found sufficient to protect an Irish constitution when it was given.'—Mr. Sexton, Feb. 13, 1893, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... Let the requiems rest silent In the lull of deep thanksgiving. For the wrath of heaven is lifted, Lifted from the rescued city. Gone, the sound of rolling death-cart, Hushed, the ringing, tolling belfry, Still, the bier and gloomy shovel, Still, the idle, listless sexton. Other days of anxious watching Followed, one or two years later; Days when fierce, destructive fevers Darkened many homes with mourning.[2] Yet the citizens are happy In this season of glad respite; ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... afflicted and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of religion wherever he goes. It enjoys the favour of ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... received the rudiments of education in the best establishment for the purpose that the neighborhood afforded. It was what was called, in popular parlance, an "old field school-house;" humble enough in its pretensions, and kept by one of his father's tenants named Hobby, who moreover was sexton of the parish. The instruction doled out by him must have been of the simplest kind, reading, writing, and ciphering, perhaps; but George had the benefit of mental and moral culture at ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... it was not customary to close shops or suspend business on Good Friday or Ash Wednesday: not more than half of the City churches possessed an organ: on Sunday afternoons the children were duly catechised: if boys misbehaved, the beadle or sexton caned them in the churchyard: the laws were still in force which fined the parishioners for absence from church and for harbouring in their houses people who did not go to church. Except for Sunday services, sermons, and ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... large table, spread with wine and roast meat and a beautiful fish. The farmer's wife and the sexton sat at the table, but there was no one else. She was filling up his glass, while he stuck his fork into the fish which was ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... mother set me thinking. I visited the vestry where the meetings had taken place, and examining the register, discovered at the bottom of one of the pages, compressed into a very small space, the entry of Sir Felix Glyde's marriage with the mother of Sir Percival. Hearing from the sexton that an old lawyer in the neighbouring town had a copy of this register, I visited him, and found that his copy did not contain ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was a village of about six cottages and as many bigger houses; a damp, mouldy place, that always impressed the children with a sense of hunger and death. They rarely saw anyone about but the sexton, and he seemed to be perpetually at work digging graves in the churchyard. Then, too, there was no shop, and they had no friends in the village, and after the long walk from home all that could be hoped for ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... deprived of this flimsy pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs. Pedagog could have us driven to our various places of business every morning, returning for us in the ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... 1812, was sexton of a church and porter in the State bank. Extreme poverty prevented Andrew from receiving any schooling, and at the age of ten he was apprenticed to a tailor. A gentleman was in the habit of visiting the shop and reading to the workmen, generally from the 'American Speaker.' Andrew became ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... has contributed various poems to the literature of the country, which have stamped him as being possessed of a more than ordinary share of the divine afflatus. Among them is "The Sexton's Spade," which has gained a world-wide celebrity. The writer has been connected with Mr. Burnett in the publication of two or three papers, which, somehow or other, never won their way into popular favor: ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... costly of noises. Racah, as a boy, shouted under the windows of neighbors in whose rooms string-music was heard of hot summer evenings. On every occasion his nature testified to its lively abhorrence of tone, and once he was violently thrust forth from a church by an excited sexton. Racah had whistled derisively at the feebly executed voluntary of the organist. An old friend of the family declared that the boy should be trained as a music critic—he hated music so intensely. Racah's father would arch his ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... morning broke it found him still in the cheerless room where he had passed the entire night and from which he went forth strengthened, as he hoped, to do what he believed to be his duty. This was on Saturday, and on the Sunday following there was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the sexton said; "hard sick, too, he had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... This church is capable of "seating" fifteen hundred persons, has galleries running entirely around it, and is sustained at the roof within by composite pilasters of plaster, and at the pulpit by columns of mongrel Corinthian; the tout ensemble is very excellent; a darkey sexton gave us a pew, and there were some handsome ladies present, dark Richmond beauties, haughty and thinly clothed, with only here and there a jockey-feathered hat, or a velvet mantilla, to tell of long siege and privation. We saw that those who dressed ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... away at the report stage of Land Bill; don't get any forrader; been at it a week, and to-night just as many Amendments on the paper as there were on Monday. All night upon a single new Clause. Everybody wearied to death. Even WINDBAG SEXTON a little moody; not had such a good night as usual; the debate lasting throughout sitting, and, there being only one Motion before the House, SEXTON (with the SPEAKER in the Chair) could speak only once; that he did, at considerable length. But a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... the filthy and horrible gang had assembled, 'for wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles (vultures) be gathered together.' They were perched on the ridges of the temple, and even on small trees and bushes, within a few feet of the body; and so greedy were they that the sexton and his assistants had to beat them off many times before the coffin could be opened. They seemed to know that there would be but a mouthful for each, if divided among them all, and the pack of greedy dogs besides, that waited for their share. The body was taken ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... treated. The aged and infirm, who but for the Gospel would have been dealt with as Moo-koo-woo-soo dealt with his mother, had the warmest place in the little home and the daintiest morsel on the table. I have seen the sexton of the church throw wide open the door of the sanctuary, that two stalwart young men might easily enter, carrying in their arms their invalid mother, who had expressed a desire to come to the house of God. Tenderly they supported her until the service ended, and then they ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... prohibition against the shooting of deer by the peasants was actually issued in 1538, both measures helping to provoke the widespread uprising that broke out in Smaland in 1541. It was named the "Dacke feud" after its principal leader, the peasant-chieftain Nils Dacke, to whom the Sexton refers in the second scene of the last act—also ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... with its varied features of swelling hill and lovely dale, to one dull, long, common level. Death, the great grim leveller, does that office both for cottagers and kings. Let it be left to the sexton's spade. The mountains which give shelter to the valleys, and gather the rains that fill their rivers and fertilise their pastures, have important uses in nature, and so have the corresponding heights of rank and wealth and power in society. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... himself for a few minutes; he had to step over and speak to the sexton. Maud would take Howard round the garden, show him her room, "just our simple background—we ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be an interlude while Mr. Neff, the sexton, adjusts the connection, during which the four little girls stand undecided whether to brave it out or cry. As a compromise they giggle and are herded back into the wings by Mrs. Drury, amid applause. When the lights ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... laurel doubtless indicates "Victory." Not only is this an early and well-accomplished effort, but it is remarkable for the presence of a lower jaw, which is seldom seen on a gravestone. The skull turned up by the sexton is usually the typical object, and to that we may presume the nether jaw is not often attached. It is found, however, on a headstone of a somewhat weak design ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because, in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was laughing at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only two!—I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.—But I ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... statement. During a long series of years an average of about 150 corpses has been annually deposited in Ecclesfield churchyard, which has rendered it an extremely crowded cemetery. But, notwithstanding these frequent interments, my late sexton told me that he remembered when there was scarcely one grave to the north of the church, it being popularly considered that only suicides, unbaptised persons, and still-born children ought to be buried there. However, when a vicar died about twenty-seven years ago, unlike his ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... away the weeds from this epitaph, the little sexton drew me on one side with a mysterious air, and informed me in a low voice that once upon a time, on a dark wintry night, when the wind was unruly, howling and whistling, banging about doors and windows, and twirling weathercocks, so that the living were frightened out of their beds, and even the ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... George Wilmot, keeper of the turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank, near Dudley; and among the descendants of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III., we may mention Mr. Stephen James Penny, the late sexton at St. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... sexton, had observed Clare standing there, and drew nigh. "Ah, sir, now that's a man who didn't want to lie here, but wished to be carried to Kingsbere, where ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... been better if he had. For when they got back to the Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Pick up anybody. Came staggerin' into the church full of booze, so a pal o' mine told me, and got half-way down the aisle before they could fire her. Drop in there sometime when you go by and ask the sexton if I'm a-lyin'. No more of that for me, I'm through. There ain't but one place for that kind, and that's Blackwell's Island, and that's where they fetch up. I went through hell afore I saw you because of her, and I'm just pullin' out and I ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... gives extracts in his 'Chronicle of the Town of Wolgast,' p. 346, without as much pain as emotion. [Footnote: Only one of these robbers was seized-he was whipped and banished; the second hanged himself, and the other escaped. One was a Jew; the other two were the sexton and gravedigger ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... but a notary bound up with a sexton; you make me pity you. Am I to teach you your part? You are ugly; be terrible, your ugliness will be forgotten. You are old; be energetic, your age will be overlooked. You are repulsive; be threatening. Since you cannot be the noble horse, who neighs proudly in the midst of his wives, be ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... to have a look at the remains of Pedro Claver to-day," his new friend remarked. "The old sexton scraped and bowed with huge joy as he led me behind the altar and lighted up the grewsome thing. I suppose he believed that Pedro's soul was up in the clouds making intercession with the Lord for him, while he, poor devil, was toting tourists ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog Speed. It was four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes; for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... on a Diarist's power to cancel our Burial Service. Not alone the cleric's good work is upset by him; but the sexton's as well. He howks the grave, and transforms the quiet worms, busy on a single poor peaceable body, into winged serpents that disorder sky and earth with a deadly flight of zig-zags, like military rockets, among the living. And if these are given to cry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... well whom he should find standing there, old Adam, the village sexton and grave digger, who always stopped when he saw a light ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... yet. There are still some of the hard Radicals from Scotland who have never wavered in the idea that the Irish members ought to remain at their full total. They have been partially relieved by what Mr. Sexton had said. But then Scotchmen are proverbially tenacious of opinion; and not even his appeal—joined to the appeal of their leader—will altogether change the purpose of those rugged sons of bonnie Scotland. And so, Mr. Shaw, the member for Galashiels, gets up to ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... either side The want of argument supplied: They rail, reviled; as often ends The contests of disputing friends. Fables: Sexton and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... [39] Monk, or Bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard! [xix] Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy Muse a Sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibb'ring spectres hailed, thy kindred band; 270 Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P.! [40] from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... said his say, Which pierced him like a needle— He summoned straight away His sexton ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Newcastle, being summoned to a vestry, in order to reprimand the sexton for drunkenness, he dwelt so long on the sexton's misconduct, as to draw from him this expression: "Sir, I thought you would have been the last man alive to appear against me, as I have covered so ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the altar Miss Bloatie Bondee. The wedding took place at the Church of St. Blare; The fashion, the rank and the wealth were all there— No person was absent of all whom one meets. Lord Mammon himself bowed them into their seats, While good Sir John Satan attended the door And Sexton Beelzebub managed the floor, Respectfully keeping each dog to its rug, Preserving the peace between poodle and pug. Twelve bridesmaids escorted the bride up the aisle To blush in her blush and to smile in her smile; Twelve groomsmen supported the eminent groom To scowl in his scowl and to gloom ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... at the State House in Hartford. It is evening. The sexton is preparing the room for the meeting which is ...
— The Tree That Saved Connecticut • Henry Fisk Carlton
... length, yet finding the patience of the listeners all too short! The degenerate descendants carried the day, however, the most bigoted of their opposers becoming disabled by rheumatism. The old sexton, resignation to inevitable evils being a lesson he had had much opportunity to learn, submitted with a good grace, though very much of opinion that fires in a church were an absurdity and a waste. The stoves ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... he," replied the female; "it is old Goodman Powheid, who has the charge of the muniments," (meaning probably monuments,) "that is, such part of them as you English have left standing; I mean the old sexton of the kirk of Douglas, who can tell more stories of these old folk, whom your honour is not very fond of hearing named, than would last us from this ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... used to smite for Jimmy More the blacksmith till 'a hurt his arm—they'd have no less than eleven children if they'd not been lucky t'other way, and buried five when they were three or four months old. Now every one of them children was given to the sexton in a little box that any journeyman could nail together in a quarter of an hour, and he buried 'em at night for a shilling a head; whereas 'twould have cost a couple of pounds each if they'd been christened at church.... Of course there's ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... theater bills, and the highest church dignitaries were advertised side by side with actors, singers, and clowns. Of course, I was shocked by it, but in a moment I bethought me—if it be all right and dignified to hire a sexton to ring a bell when the minister is going to preach, it is all the same to silence the bell and hire a bill-sticker to tell the same news, the essential thing being to tell the truth every time. The remedy for the lying ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... death by a military tribunal. According to Czech papers, Kotek was buried among ordinary criminals outside the cemetery. The grave of the innocent martyr was not even marked with his name, and his wife was not allowed to visit it, because the military authorities forbade the sexton of the church to allow any one to see the graves of ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... Traveler), continually used in churches by those small wits who thought that nothing could be good English which was not half Latin, and forgot that in our country the traveler must have stayed already to visit the sexton before he can possibly do so in compliance with the advice of the monument. For the poor there were public burial-grounds, called puticuli, a puteis, from the trenches ready dug to receive bodies. Such was the ground at the Esquiline gate, which Augustus gave Maecenas for his gardens. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was newly made, Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade; His work was done, and he paused to wait The funeral train at the open gate. A relic of bygone days was he, And his locks were white as the foamy sea; And these words came from his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him throughout his ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... when they got to her; and, only stopping to give the man a lecture, mamma picked up her silly little girl, and the procession moved off. First came Cy, as grave as a sexton; then the wheelbarrow with Poppy, white and limp and speechless, all in a bunch; then mamma, looking amused, anxious and angry; then Nelly, weeping as if her tender heart was entirely broken; while the man watched them, with a grin, saying ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... about hys necke caused his hed so to swell, that they coulde not gette it of, tyll they were mynded to cutte it of with hatchettys. Thus was the wenche well iaped,[58] and for fere she ranne from her fader; her faders arme was hurte; the colyar lost his coles; the sexton was almost out of hys wyt; and the gentylman had almost ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... adopted a working beam, that is, a beam working on a centre or trunnion. At one end of the beam was the pump, at the other was an iron cylinder with an iron piston in it; both ends of the beam were arched or sexton-shaped, and had a chain on each, one connected to the pump rod, the other to the piston rod. When about to start work, the piston being up near the top of the cylinder, steam was let in under it and a jet of water was let in which ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... was finished, when the rest of the church was still, the sexton led up the aisle a grim- looking man, with a shaggy coat and a very dirty face, and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew— as if he would fain bring him in. Mr. Molyneux was at the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from the aisle, and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... not at securing toleration but at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal services were held there alternately with the regular services until the overthrow of Andros. The pastor, Samuel Willard, was son of the gallant veteran who had rescued the beleaguered people of Brookfield in King Philip's war. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... wretchedness sprang from sin at the head of the social fountain. But I now wish to notice especially misery, degradation, and moral eclipse, resulting directly from giant evils, which are tolerated in all our large cities, though known to every thoughtful person, from judge to artisan, from clergyman to sexton, from editor to reporter, from wealthy matron to the humble sewing woman. Every earnest thinker knows that there are evils feeding the furnaces of physical, mental, and moral destruction; that there are flourishing nurseries, common schools, and universities ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... the glorious sky And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie Within the silent ground, 'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June, When brooks send up a cheerful tune, And groves a joyous sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich, green mountain ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... opened my eyes, the very last man of the congregation was actually making his exit through the doorway; and it was quite as much as I could manage to put on my top-coat and gloves and reach the door before the sexton closed it. This rushing habit in the House of God strikes a stranger as rude and irreverent. You meet with no indications of private devotion, either preceding or following public worship. A man marches into his pew, or his pulpit, sits down, wipes his nose, and stares at all about him; and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... reputation had the shrine of this saint risen, it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine. On windy days the beadle and sexton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions are ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... "Sexton's a skilful man, and I don't think she could be in better hands; however, Bryan, I shall feel obliged if you will send down occasionally to let me know how she gets ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... church steps without having met even the sexton; somewhat disappointed, it was not with indifference that he saw a stranger standing in the churchyard among the graves; by the grave, it chanced, of a child who died in October, five years old. When the organist perceived this, a purpose which ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... much comfort for Paul. He had other friends, to be sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton's wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The cottage was a slatternly sort of place, where he did not feel ashamed ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some dire mystery was connected with these phantoms, which he was called upon to unravel. After breakfast he wandered out, and lost in the maze of thought, sauntered, ere he was aware of it, into the churchyard. Shortly afterwards the church-door was opened by the sexton, who kept his pickaxe and mattock in a corner of the belfry, and Frantz remembering that as yet he had not entered the church, followed him in, and was struck with the appearance of many portraits which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... of Sarah Sexton, Who as a wife did never vex one; We can't say that for her at the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the president; began his ministerial life as pastor of a Home Missionary (Presbyterian) church at the little village of Lawrenceburg, twenty miles south of Cincinnati on the Ohio River; was both sexton and pastor, swept the church, built the fires, lighted the lamps, rang the bell, and preached the sermons; was called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, where he remained for eight years, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... discovered who settled here a few years ago. He attended a meeting of the members of the church to which he had attached himself, and hearing something said that pleased him, he cried out "hear him! hear him!" Upon which the sexton came over to him, and told him that, unless he kept himself quiet, he would be under the necessity of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... The pall-bearers appeared and I withdrew to make room for them. The coffin was lifted and carried down, and the procession began to move. First came the school children with cross and banner, then the priest and the sexton. Directly behind the coffin marched the two children of the butcher, and behind them came the parents. The man moved his lips incessantly, as if in devout prayer, yet looked constantly about him in both directions. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Fast-day, and it was just before sermon; but, Lord! how all the people in the church stared upon me to see me whisper to Sir John Minnes and my Lady Pen. Anon I saw people stirring and whispering below, and by and by comes up the sexton from my Lady Ford to tell me the news, (which I had brought) being now sent into the church by Sir W. Batten in writing, and passed from pew to pew. But that which pleased me as much as the news, was, to have the fair Mrs. Middleton at our church, who indeed ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... myself. After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings—two rooms over the shop of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and sexton. There was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and the rest of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time I took charge did not exceed ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... as the weather shall occasion. The font was hewen hollow like a canoa, and there were two bells in the steeple at the west end. The Church was so cast as to be very light within, and the Lord Governour caused it to be kept passing sweet and trimmed up with divers flowers. There was a sexton in charge of the church, and every morning at the ringing of a bell by him, about ten o'clock, each man addressed himself to prayers, and so at four of the clock before supper. There was a sermon every Thursday and two sermons every Sunday, the two preachers taking their ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... yesterday. Ah, me! I never go and wander in that dingy churchyard, where the sound of the great roaring city is hushed to a sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the sexton comes to bring the keys of the church on a Sunday morning he should find the mere body of me lying there, my head leaning on the stone that bears her name—not his name—her name, her one dear name by which I ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... man, in general terms, that which I was forbidden to tell him in detail. But when I entered the old choir of the Barefoot Friars, when I approached the strange latticed closets in which the reverend gentlemen used to be found for that purpose, when the sexton opened the door for me, when I now saw myself shut up in the narrow place face to face with my spiritual grandsire, and he bade me welcome with his weak, nasal voice, all the light of my mind and heart was extinguished ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... complained, it would have been very hard, and everybody in the diocese, from Monseigneur the Bishop to his sexton, would have risen with indignation and called him, "Ungrateful wretch." For Ridoux was favoured above all his colleagues; above all his colleagues Divine Providence bad overwhelmed him with its favours. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France |
