"Pawnbroker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Simmons and Alice W——n are one has been found in the circumstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of Alice's real children. Bartrum was a pawnbroker in Princes Street, Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... house of his old friend the pawnbroker—that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete. "I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, "with some family plate, of which I beseech you to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people did not notice that he was a rogue as he passed along the street. Why, he stared at every body he met, as if he was afraid they were going to give him an invitation to walk to the police office. The first thing he did was to call at several pawnbroker's offices, where he tried to sell me. No one would give him what he asked. He wanted ten or twelve dollars, I believe. Well, he gave up that project before night, and I heard him mutter to himself, "If I only had the money for ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... weeks. Gnecco had a few valuables in the shape of a gold watch and chain, a pearl breast-pin, and a fur-lined coat, and he soon had recourse to my friendly help to dispose of these articles to the best advantage with a pawnbroker, and on the proceeds, eked out by some small help which he received from his family, he managed to rub along, and he and his mandolin were soon familiar features at the office. But with Bonafede the case was different. He ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean stage, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of the laborer by the manufacturer so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... and abatement if not of mental powers, at least of mental energy. The non est tanti grows fast at my time of life. We reached Carlisle at seven o'clock, and were housed for the night. My books being exhausted, I lighted on an odd volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, a work in which, as in a pawnbroker's shop, much of real curiosity and value are stowed away and concealed amid the frippery and trumpery of those reverend old gentlewomen who were the regular correspondents ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... on him, and while I was there a young man of not more than twenty-five, wearing thread-bare clothes, and looking as hard as if he had not seen a sober day for a month, came in with a little package in his hand. Tremblingly he unwrapped it, and handed the articles to the pawnbroker, saying, 'Give me ten cents.' And, boys, what do you suppose that package was? A pair of baby's shoes; little things with the buttons only a trifle soiled, as if they had been worn once or twice. 'Where did ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... 'Gene, but it will not pay the rent. Listen." The timid flush mounted to her cheek as she made the suggestion, "Go to the pawnbroker's. Take these trinkets of mine. Beg him to loan you sufficient for your rent. Now, don't refuse. You may redeem them when you can. Besides, you gave them to me." She looked down with affectionate regret at the bracelets, the bangles, the rings, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... get over you. What can the pawnbroker do to you? Most people call him uncle, so I expect he's ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... not been two hours together, before I knew his history from beginning to end. He had already been married eight years, and his only trouble was a debt of twenty-four dollars, which the illness of his wife had caused him. This money was owing to the pawnbroker, who kept his best clothes in pledge until he could pay it. "Senor," said he, "if I had ten million dollars, I would rather give them all away than have a sick wife." He had a brother in Puerto Principe, Cuba, who sent over money enough ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... One day, in a pawnbroker's shop, he lighted upon a rarity indeed, which might or might not have a history attributed to it, but was in itself more than interesting for the beauty of both material and workmanship. The sum asked for it was large, but with the chance of ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... taken to the Rootville jail and searched, and a pawn-ticket for the stolen watch found in his vest pocket. The ticket was on a Middletown pawnbroker, and showed that fifteen dollars had been loaned on the timepiece. Buddy had more than this amount in his pocket, and some time later the money was forwarded to the pawnbroker, and then the precious watch and chain came back to Dick, in as ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... to acquaint my father at once with what I had done, and get his advice as to whether or not I should inform the police of my adventure. He heard me with more consideration than I expected, but insisted that I should immediately make known to you my experience in this Bowery pawnbroker's shop. ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; "I have a small pawnbroker's business at Coburg Square, near the city. It's not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him, but ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... financier is a man who makes money without a trade or profession, and Mulhausen had made a great deal of money, despite this limitation, during his twenty years of business life, which had started humbly enough behind the counter of a pawnbroker's in ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... no money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short. He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two to spare, and I feel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... same, I will not touch a penny of your money; but I know you are long-headed and may think of some scheme for me. I've got nothing to sell of any value; I parted with my father's watch—and it's still at the pawnbroker's; worse luck!" (His pitilessly selfish mother had borrowed ten pounds and forgotten the debt, and he had been compelled to apply to his "Uncle.") Shafto found his salary a very tight fight; eleven pounds a month seemed to melt away in board, clothes, washing ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... bedding, which had been tossed aside by Hayes and his crew, and which even the natives of Ujilon had regarded as too worthless to take away, though many a poor sailor man, shivering in northern seas, would have clutched at them as eagerly as a Jew pawnbroker would clutch at a necklace of pearls or a diamond-set tiara. The panelling of the main cabin was painted in white and gold, and presented a very handsome appearance, and on the door of every stateroom was an exceedingly well-painted picture of some saint renowned in history—evidently ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... edge of the footway next the street. On the eastern side of the way, there are fewer lights to be seen now than there were an hour ago. The tradespeople over there, generally, have put up their shutters, and the time for closing the drinking-saloons is at hand; but lights are yet lingering in the pawnbroker's establishments, for the Mont de Piete is an institution of an extremely wakeful, not to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... I sped, and being conducted to this person, who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day laborer in your city—the merest bird of passage, with my watch at the pawnbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go—and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day's paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite fair—even—since I am ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... different story of the house's abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt, shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining years been a familiar figure on the roads ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... and consoles our afflicted compatriot. A heart-rending scene, Mr. Vendale! The household gods at the pawnbroker's—the family immersed in tears. We all embraced in silence. My admirable friend alone possessed his composure. He sent out, on the spot, for a ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... lend him a little; and he gave him at once all he had, amounting to six pounds,—a wonderful amount for Roger to have accumulated; with the help of which we got on to the end of Jemima's month. The next step I had in view was to take my little valuables to the pawnbroker's,—amongst them a watch, whose face was encircled with a row of good-sized diamonds. It had belonged to my great-grandmother, and my mother had given it ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... a pawnbroker's shop, thought I, full of heterogeneous pledges; and if you would take anything out, experience stands at the counter, and makes you pay her compound interest, while many articles of value are lost for ever, because memory cannot produce ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of a chromo you've got up there," remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. "But I kind of enthuse over the girl with the shoulder-blades and red bunting. Would an offer of $2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and wasting. The palace in which Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan—Kings, in their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia—is said to be a waiter in a French cafe. So royalty withers and power fades. There is no title to ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... "We certainly did not return the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the thief is the most notorious in the city—when his picture has been in the paper a thousand times? ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... three or four thousand pesetas, and with this capital he established a little grocery. His wife stood behind the counter while he continued to work in the bakery and hoard his earnings. When his son grew up he assigned to the boy the running of a tavern and then of a pawnbroker-shop. It was during this prosperous epoch that Uncle Patas' wife died, and the man, now a widower, wishing to taste the sweets of life, which had thus far proved so fruitless, married again despite his fifty-odd years; the bride, a lass that came from his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... type. And there were women, too, some old—at least, they looked so—and haggard; some young, but with wretched-looking faces, and dressed in tawdry garments, yet generally faded, some torn and some patched, and all seeming to be brought from the pawnbroker's ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... have the grubbing soul of a pawnbroker. Or real estate broker," he added. He bent his head and ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... piece of faded curtain and washed vigorously. Afterwards he changed his clothes, putting on a dress suit produced from the trunk. When he had finished, he stepped back and laughed softly to himself. His clothes were well cut. His studs, which had very many times been on the point of visiting the pawnbroker's, were correct and good. He was indeed an incongruous figure as he stood there and, with a candle carefully held away from him in his hand, looked at his own reflection. For some reason or other, he was feeling elated. Ruth's words ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is—as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers' trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son. I was a member, at that time, of the select committee; and I mention the Society here, because my precious and admirable friend, Mr. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... The pawnbroker looked from money to jewels and from jewels to money with an expression of curiously mingled grief and greed. Finally, taking Ricketty by the coat-tails, he dragged him towards the door, saying, "I nefer go pack by anydings vat mine vife does, meester, but ven you haf shewels ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Mrs. Morris had defended her apparent lavish expenditure by saying that there was no possibility of saving money. She bought useful things, and when her husband was out of work she could always get a large percentage of their cost from the pawnbroker. The pawnshop, she had tearfully explained to Miss Johnson, was the only bank of the poor. The idea of the pawnshop as a bank, and not as a place of disgrace, was new to Miss Johnson, but before anything further could ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... satin gown embroidered with flowers of gold and silk, a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop; and I must add that I never before saw so low cut a corsage display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a large turban, constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put the finishing touch to a costume so little in harmony ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... know it doesn't sound nice; but it was much the safest plan. I redeemed it the day before yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker cleared out ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... and haggard women; and I drew near faster, but still cautiously, to hear what they were saying. Surely on them the spirit of death and decay had descended; I had no education to dread here: should I not have a chance of seeing nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not have been more practical and commonplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said to the woman upright—this and nothing more: 'Eh, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than 1 pound 2s. 6d. from an intelligent pawnbroker to whom I stated the circumstances and with whom I pledged the ring, my sympathies with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous people were at once enlisted. I could not help wondering that in rich England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a young and lovely woman like the fair author of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... I wish you to understand, that, if I am not 'posted,' as you say, I do know my rights, and I shall take proper measures to get possession of my property. You have no more hold upon it than a pawnbroker has upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the pawnbroker's, then to the rag-market, and the little man trotted home with an armful of old boots and shoes, some without soles, some without uppers; all, as I should have thought, picked out of dust-bins and rubbish heaps, his sunken eyes sparkling ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... there happens to be a highly respectable pawnbroker's shop; in the pawnbroker's window the chances are that you might still find a motley collection of umbrellas, mandolines, family Bibles, ornaments and clocks, strings of watches, trays of purses, opera-glasses, biscuit-boxes, photograph frames and cheap jewellery, all of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... He's foiled me this time!" muttered Coleman. "Shall I take the watch? No; it might expose me, and I could not raise much on it at the pawnbroker's. He must have left his money with the clerk downstairs. He wouldn't think of it himself, but probably he was advised to do so before he left home. I'll get up early, and see if I can't get in ahead of ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... face, or what would be a greater punishment should fairly accept him. Old maids he would not treat with such severity, because he supposes they are not so by their own fault; but he hears that many have received offers, and refused them. Miss Squeeze, the pawnbroker's daughter, had heard so much about money, that she resolved never to marry a man whose fortune was not equal to her own, without ever considering that some abatement should be made as her face was pale and marked with the small-pox. Sophronia loved Greek, and hated men. She rejected fine ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... person whose portrait I have recently met with in my parish? The individual from whom I procured it could give me no other history of it, but that he had bought it at the sale of the effects of a respectable pawnbroker in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... HOWARD'S advice, I made the purchase from a pawnbroker of a lethal instrument, provided with a duplicate bore, so that, should a bird happen by any chance to escape my first barrel, the second will infallibly make ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... it go through one stage of decadence after another. First it was rented, by its new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with his numerous family. Good, honest folk they were, who tried to make the house look fine, and the five daughters made the front stoop resplendent of summer evenings. But they had long ago moved up-town. Then it was a ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... knew till it got to be too much for her ag'in. It was partly trouble, I will say, for my father was weakly an' goin' with consumption, an' she was fond of him. But this time there was no stoppin' her. She'd pawn everything: she's taken the jacket off me in a winter's day an' sent me with it to the pawnbroker's, an' I not darin' not to go. To the last minute my father did what he could. I was six when he died, an' he'd dress me himself an' try to keep me decent. She was drunk the very night he died, an' not a soul ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the morning, and now in his feeble way he began to talk of his mother, and to wonder if John would ever see her. Her name was Pincher, and she was a good woman. She lived in Crook Lane, Crown Street, Soho, and kept house for his brother, who was a pawnbroker. But his brother, poor fellow! was much given to drink, and perhaps that had been a reason why he himself had left home. John promised to call on her, and then Brother Andrew began to cry. The sprawling features of the great fellow were ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Richard Burke. Oh, such a lovely face! Looking lovelier in powder and lace frill. But a charming thing, with an old-fashioned stanza in English deploring his early death, and a motto in Latin. It was a great find, and I carried it home from the Pawnbroker's in triumph!— ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... will go to some other pawnbroker in the future. In that case, we must begin again. On the other hand, he has had a fair price and no questions asked, so if he is in need of ready-money he will probably come back to Bovington's. I will ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... daughter of Mr. Hezekiah Popps, a highly respectable pawnbroker, residing in —— Street, Bloomsbury. Being an only child, from her earliest infancy she wanted for 0, as everything had been made ready to her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... 'cause it ain't my line to play tricks on the police. You'll find my name in the books downstairs more'n any other driver in London! I reckon I've brought enough umbrellas, cameras, walkin' sticks, hopera cloaks, watches and sicklike in 'ere, to set up a blarsted pawnbroker's!" ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... him half a crown and a large silver medal, which she said would pawn for five shillings, and appointed to meet him the next night at the same place. In the morning Lewis goes with the silver piece to a pawnbroker at Houndsditch; the broker said he would take it into the next room and weigh it, and about ten minutes after returned with a constable and two assistants, the medal having been advertised in the papers as taken with eleven guineas in a green purse out of a gentleman's ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... room was neither the one nor the other, but a weazened white-faced Londoner, with a shrewd eye and the false, cringing smile of a small shopkeeper. He explained in the strident vernacular of the Cockney that his name was Henry Hobbs—"Enery Obbs" was his own version of it—and he kept a pawnbroker's shop in the Caledonian Road. It was his intention to have called at Scotland Yard earlier, he explained, but his arrangements had been upset by a domestic event ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... establishment. He had never suffered so much, had never imagined that one could suffer so much. After this ray of hope, so abruptly put out, the clouds lowered over him thicker and more hopelessly. He was worse off than the shipwrecked sailor; the pawnbroker had taken his last resources. All the romance with which he had invested the idea of his suicide now vanished, leaving bare the stern and ignoble reality. He must kill himself, not like the gay gamester who voluntarily leaves upon the roulette ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Rosinantes, on superannuated oxen, with fragmentary reins, rope reins, and no reins; spurring, swearing, hallooing, and gesticulating toward Memphis, in mortal terror lest the rebels would capture them again, and some of their hard-earned gains. Pauvre Juils! They would have excited the pity of a pawnbroker, if he had not known them, so frightened and anxious and disconsolate they looked. They could not have appeared more miserable if they had just learned that a brass watch they had sold for silver had turned out gold. The mule trotted along ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... lay in wrinkles at the foot of a curtainless walnut-wood bedstead; dingy curtains, begrimed with cigar smoke and fumes from a smoky chimney, hung in the windows; a Carcel lamp, Florine's gift, on the chimney-piece, had so far escaped the pawnbroker. Add a forlorn-looking chest of drawers, and a table littered with papers and disheveled quill pens, and the list of furniture was almost complete. All the books had evidently arrived in the course of the last twenty-four hours; ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Prefecture de Police, to the company who took charge of printing and posting handbills promising rewards for the restoring to their owners of lost objects, to the famous "Montde Piete," the great central pawnbroker's of Paris, even—— For a week and more Auntie and the two girls, so far as it was possible for them to help her, did little else than exhaust themselves in such efforts, seizing every suggestion held out by sympathising friends, from the concierge ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... many-coloured glass butterfly (a present from James Green), and her neck, arms, waist (at least what ought to have been her waist) were hung round and studded with mosaic-gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, etc., looking for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop, or the lump of beef that Sinbad the sailor threw into the Valley of Diamonds. In the right of a gold band round her middle, was an immense gold watch, with a bunch of mosaic seals appended to a massive chain of the same material; and a large miniature ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... I made a mistake about the object of the sale. I said 'For the poor,' and it's for a public library, isn't it?" he said to Howard, who replied, "Seems to me you are getting daft on the Rummage. I don't care for it much. It will be like a Jews' or pawnbroker's bazaar, with mostly old ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... patrono, modelo. Paunch ventro. Pauper malricxulo, almozulo. Pause pauxzo. Pave pavimi. Pavement pavimo. Paving-stone pavimero. Pavilion tendo, paviliono. Paw piedego. Pawn (chess) soldato. Pawn garantiajxo. Pawnbroker pruntisto. Pawnbroker's pruntoficejo. Pawn-office pruntoficejo. Pay pagi. Pay (military) soldo. Pay (in full) elpagi. Payable pagebla. Payment (wages, etc.) pago. Pea pizo. Peace paco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... up in wan iv thim furrin counthries, an' he's thrained f'r to be a king. Hivin may've intinded him f'r a dooce or a jack, at th' most; but he has to follow th' same line as his father. 'Tis like pawn-brokin' that way. Ye niver heerd iv a pawnbroker's son doin' annything else. Wanst a king, always a king. Other men's sons may pack away a shirt in a thrunk, an' go out into th' wurruld, brakin' on a freight or ladin' Indyanny bankers up to a shell game. But a man that's headed ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... together, and don't she think she ought to send in somethin' also? When she asks what he thinks would be about right, Marc Anthony is gonna say that he guesses she ought to keep the pen she wrote the check with as a souvenir, but that everything else she had, includin' anything a pawnbroker would give a ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... must be speedily accomplished, for we are sadly in need of funds, and all my best dresses are at the pawnbroker's. Alas, that my beauty should be destroyed—that beauty which would have captured the hearts and purses of so many rich admirers! I am almost inclined to rejoice that my eyesight is gone, for I cannot see my deformity. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... outrageous. He met a poor man, as he calls him, in Westbourne Grove, who was one of his Christian brethren (is that the right expression?) and who declared he was next door to starving. So what must Ronald do, but run into a pawnbroker's—I shouldn't have thought he could ever have heard of such a place—and sell his coat, or something of the sort, and give the man (who was doubtless an impostor) all the money. Then he positively walked home in his shirt sleeves. I call it a most unchristian thing to do—and to walk straight ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... pawnbroker sprawled back in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed, in the beady, ratlike eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated gaze, half ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... way, and the bag was heavy. His first attempt at barter was alarming, for the pawnbroker, who had just been cautioned by the police, was in such a severe and uncomfortable state of morals, that the boy quickly snatched up his bundle again and left. Sorely troubled he walked hastily along, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... ground-glass screen, and entering details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of petits chevaux, and just round the corner is Monte Carlo. Very brisk was the business done by M. Gandinot, the pawnbroker, and very frequent were the pitying shakes of the head and clicks of the tongue of M. Gandinot, the man; for in his unofficial capacity Ruth's employer had a gentle soul, and winced at the evidences of tragedy which presented themselves ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... damask silk made like a girl's, his anklets and bracelets, gold chains and jeweled girdle, and a mitre-shaped coiffure of black and gold studded with enormous diamonds, any one of which would make the fortune of a Pall-Mall pawnbroker. A score of attendants about his own age were standing at the back of the young heir, while four diminutive dwarfs and four jesters in comic garb crouched at his feet, and innumerable other subordinates—such as the fan-holder, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... not a pawnbroker," said the inflexible lady. "You must either pay your lawful debt to me in ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. All this is profoundly significant, knowing as we do that this was produced when Gissing's worldly prosperity was at its nadir. He was living at the time, like his own Harold Biffen, in absolute solitude, a frequenter of pawnbroker's shops and a stern connoisseur of pure dripping, pease pudding ('magnificent pennyworths at a shop in Cleveland Street, of a very rich quality indeed'), faggots and saveloys. The stamp of affluence in those days was the possession of a basin. The rich man ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker's shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean's teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde who had formerly been a mistress of the Duke of Cumberland. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the dressing-room. However, she identified a gold and turquoise letter-weight; and the setting of a seal, whence the stone with the crest had been extracted, both of which had been found in the man's pocket, together with some pawnbroker's tickets, which represented a buhl-clock and other articles from Beauchamp. She was made to give an account of the robbery. Honor had never felt prouder of any of her favourites than of her, while listening to the modest, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and rapidly gained fame as a Cabalist and worker of miracles. Many stories of his powers were current. He would cause a small taper to remain alight for weeks; an incantation would fill his cellar with coal; plate left with a pawnbroker would glide back into his house. When a fire threatened to destroy the Great Synagogue, he averted the disaster by writing four Hebrew letters on the pillars of the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... slunk along like a criminal. But strong as that fear was, I would rather have met him than faced my father. Soon I came to a wharf where a steamer was taking aboard passengers for California. At once my determination was made. I hurried to a pawnbroker's shop, and from my watch and what little jewelry I had I realized enough money to buy a steerage ticket, and in a few hours was on my way, under ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... has fronds of a delicate yellow-green, "the greenest of all green things growing." Its ternate character is shown even in the uncoiling of the fronds, the three round balls suggesting the sign of the pawnbroker. The parts of the oak fern develop with great regularity, each pinna, pinnule and lobe having another exactly opposite to it nearly always. In rocky woods, common northward; also in Virginia, Kansas ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... fortune. In Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is a desire, and hatred a whim; there's no true kinsman but the thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker. This universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the salon, as in the street, there is no one de trop, there is no one absolutely useful, or absolutely harmful—knaves or fools, men of wit or integrity. There everything is tolerated: the government ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... all. Me and little Biddy Mahoney's going to leave some duds at the pawnbroker's for her mother, who's ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... garments of every kind, quality and condition, upon which money to about a fourth of their real value had been loaned; and not having been redeemed, they were now to be sold for the benefit of the pawnbroker. ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... of his friends and his own little fund of money were both exhausted; and, one by one, the relics of his former prosperity, even to his wife's trinkets, found their way to the pawnbroker. He was a sanguine man, as inventors need to be, always feeling that he was on the point of succeeding. The very confidence with which he announced a new conception served at length to close all ears to his solicitations. In the second year of his investigation he removed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... with mud, and in front with a darker color. An old patch hid a part of the front; but a close examination showed two holes over the breast. It was "No. 4"'s lost jacket. I asked the shopman about it. He had bought it, he said, of a pawnbroker who had got it from some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year from some old soldier. He readily sold it, and I took it back with me; and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... don't matter one way or 'nother," he replied; "but it was like this. The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at last I went with my watch to the pawnbroker's. You said you'd wait till I got back, though you knew not where I was goin'. When I got back, you were still broodin'. You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist's lamp where you had read the letter. It's not for me to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I can't get any one to go for me, I must go myself," said Barry, who was quick to perceive that his companions thought nothing of a man having to avail himself of a pawnbroker's shop, but did think it exceedingly improper to be seen entering ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... however, a handsome pair of opera-glasses, which he converted into change (on the gratuitous plea that he had forgotten his purse) at the first pawnbroker's on the confines of the city. The pawnbroker talked Greek ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead, "I have a small pawnbroker's business at Saxe-Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a job to pay him but that he is ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year; and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet!" How original and profound! Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... all feeling merged in the appalling interest of listening. The evidence was very short. Testimony of the hotel-keeper where Walenn had been staying, the identification of his body, and of a snake-shaped ring he had been wearing at dinner that evening. Testimony of a pawnbroker, that this same ring was pawned with him the first thing yesterday morning by the prisoner. Testimony of a policeman that he had noticed the man Evan several times in Glove Lane, and twice moved him on from sleeping under that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Tom, "why it is a Pawnbroker's duplicate for a Hunting Watch, deposited with his uncle this morning in St. Martin's Lane, for two pounds—laughable enough—well, you may dismiss your fears for the present; but I'll try if I can't find my man by this means—if he ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker's duplicates in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth without a dozen oaths: then we should consider the Puritan (even though he did quote Scripture ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... thought of the abundance of clothing her neighbor possessed, and that some articles could be spared for a short time, probably without detection; and if she should be detected before she could redeem them, her friend would excuse her. She devised means to enter, and conveyed to the pawnbroker's two parcels of clothing, upon which she realized nine dollars; she made some purchases for the house, redeemed a coat for her husband, and then started for the asylum for the purpose of fetching him to her home. But on her arrival ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... inclined to feel it safe to be civil, and answering his summons went up to him, and being called in, was paid her long unpaid dues from the little heap on the table, the seeing of which riches almost blinded her and sent her off willingly to the pawnbroker's to bring back the pledged breeches ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was the first time Mrs. Norman had ever had command of much money. Her mother had made a good appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs. Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the pawnbroker's so well that if she threw them in the street they would roll into ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Miss Johnson shall not be made to pay our debts. There's Uncle John's gold watch, left as a kind of heirloom, and very dear on that account. I've carried it long, but now it must go. There's a pawnbroker's office opened in Frankfort—take it there this very afternoon, and get for it what you can. I never shall redeem it. There's no hope. It was in my vest pocket when ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... seventy per cent. of the great landowners in the great travelling counties are manufacturers, or merchants, or lawyers, by one or two descents. In Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, or Warwickshire, examine closely, and you will find it so. As a general rule, a rich pawnbroker retired will make a better landlord than a poor baronet. But in this country two generations will make one of the baronet's sons a successful shopkeeper, and the pawnbroker's a ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... somewhat hasty and premature. Still, I declined to purchase the jewels; and when he left the store I ordered one of our private detectives to follow him and report to me. In the course of an hour the detective returned and reported that the young man had sold the jewels to a pawnbroker for less than one-fourth their actual value. About half an hour later I heard the news of the robbery at Fair Oaks, and that the family jewels were missing; and knowing that Mr. Whitney was here, I immediately telephoned to him the facts which I have just stated. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... camel is gibbous. The bison's back is humped. The badger's left legs are shorter than the right, That fact is decided by Aristotle, in his treatise on the walking of animals. There are those amongst you who have but two shirts—one on his back, and the other at the pawnbroker's. I know that to be true. Albuquerque pawned his moustache, and St. Denis his glory. The Jews advanced money on the glory. Great examples. To have debts is to have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... you that we have the same chef as when I was kindergarten teacher here in the school years ago. He 's prosperous as a pawnbroker. He gave me a radiant greeting. "How are you, Tanaka?" quoth I. "All same like damn monkey, Sensei," he replied. But he is unfailingly cheerful and the cleverest grafter in the universe, with an artistic temperament highly ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... birds often get into good society, but British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... I will do, Phil," said Paul, after a moment's thought. "I know a pawnbroker's shop on Chatham Street where there is a fiddle for sale. I don't think it will cost very much; not more than five ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the autumn of 1750, by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker in Monmouth-street, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. Maclaine impeached his companion, Plunket, but he was not taken. The former got into verse: Gray, in his ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... pity?" Morris retorted. "I seen Max Kirschner in the subway this morning and he looks like he needs pity, Abe. He's got diamonds stuck on him like a pawnbroker's window." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... told Jurgis—he was afraid to stay there now, on account of the police. The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that he had never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to a "fence" in the rear of a pawnbroker's shop, and thence to a number of assignation rooms, in one of which Duane ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... many of the most famous writers have trod the streets ragged and hungry in their early days. There were times when they would have sold their epics, their novels, their essays, for the price of a square meal. Think of the booty that would accumulate in the shop of a literary pawnbroker. The early work of famous men would fill his safe to bursting. Later on he might sell it for a thousand times what he gave. There is nothing that grows to such fictitious value ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next his silk shirt, and finally his very underclothing—"and then," added the minister, "he came to himself." Only by unresting vigilance can you evade verbal discords, if not of this magnitude, at least of much ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Dublin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar's, who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:(177) he learned his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... good character and integrity shall exercise the calling. They must have been dreamers who framed this law, or they must have known but little of the class who carry on this business. The truth is, that there is not a pawnbroker of "good character and integrity" in the city. In New York the Mayor alone has the power of licensing them, and revoking their licence, and none but those so licensed can conduct their business in the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the supposition that they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin |
