"Peddler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was within, taking note willfully, but I hope not wantonly, what an absurdly limp figure he was for a peddler of starch,—"certainly from you, brave fellow;" and the package being taken from his basket, the man turned to go away, so very wearily, that a cheap philanthropy protested: "For shame! ask him to sit down in-doors and drink a glass ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... is Extension peddler down in Kentucky, working on fruits and nuts and berries, and naturally that takes me into a good many counties. We have 120, and I have been in all of them. Some places didn't have anything, so no reason to go back. But I pick up a lot of conversation, people give you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... heard, when I see myself here in this great city of Paris, surrounded by all the illustrious names and distinguished minds within its limits, and then recall my father's peddler's stall! For I was born in a peddler's stall. My father sold old iron at a street corner in Bourg-Saint-Andeol! It was as much as ever if we had bread to eat every day, and stew every Sunday. Ask Cabassu. He knew me in those days. He can tell you if I am lying. Oh! yes, I have known what ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... a country peddler. I'm willing to accept a sample, and see if they are durable. Though I can't for the life of me see why you'd be coming here ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... madake—strips of bamboo to the thickness of an inch tightly wound together with hempen cord, and making an exceedingly flexible and painful scourge. The blood quickly was spurting from his shoulders. Aoyama and his chamberlain sat enjoying the scene immensely. At the seventieth blow the peddler fainted. "A wicked knave! Off with him until restored." Then he settled himself for the day's pastime; for the torture had come to have the zest of an exhilarating sport. The cries of pain, the distortions of agony under the stones, or the lobster, or suspension, the noting of ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... equivalent vulgarisms which give the spirit where the letter would be unintelligible. We object, however, to a phrase like "vest-pocket," where we find it in the narrative, and not in the mouth of one of the personages. It is tailor's English, which is as bad as peddler's French. But this is a trifle where there is so much to commend in essentials, and we hope the translators will be encouraged to go on in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... his conceit. "You are a merry peddler," he said, and took out of his pouch a few coins, from which he counted scrupulously the sum that the bookseller had asked, and gave it to him. Then he moved slowly away from the stall, reading in his new purchase ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... admit that he was not always fastidious as to the role he played. He had cruised about the Mediterranean as assistant cook on a millionaire's yacht, and had listened to secrets between meals. He had wandered about the country with a monkey and a hand-organ in search of a peddler he suspected of a crime. He had helped along a revolution in South America, and had gone up in a captive war balloon which had broken loose and ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... river. News of his determination to try the Tiber having preceeded him to Orte, he was royally received by the authorities and populace. When the start was made, the mayor escorted him to the river, lustily blowing a horn all the way, like a fish peddler trying to attract attention. The Tiber is an uninteresting stream, running through the Roman Campagna, and is made up of great bends. He left Orte in the afternoon, and night came on terribly cold. Now and then he would get a cheer from people along the banks; but ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... A peddler who travels about the country with a heavy pack on his back is not so contented as his persecutors imagine. The seven-hour day will convert all of his kind into workmen. They are good, misunderstood people, ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... of Christmas. They are preparing for a kind of fair in the square with the colonnade, putting up booths filled with colored cotton and woolen ware, bright shawls and kerchiefs, mirrors, ribbons, brilliant pewter lamps; the whole turn-out of the peddler in "Winter's Tale." The pork-shops are all garlanded with green and with paper flowers, the hams and cheeses stuck full of little flags and green twigs. I strolled out to see the cattle-fair outside the gate; a forest of interlacing horns, an ocean ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... story, the handsome peddler had accosted you at the exit of the post-office and asked you to ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... this time in a little louder voice, "O, peddler boy, peddler boy, please give me a banana, just one little, ripe little, sweet little banana." The image of wax answered never ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... authority, and found Jim and wrote back aunt Achsy all about him and just how unfortunate he'd been. They knew when I had my teeth out and a new set made; they knew when I put on a false front-piece; they knew when the fruit peddler asked me to be his third wife—I never told 'em, an' you can be sure HE never did, but they don't NEED to be told in this village; they have nothin' to do but guess, an' they'll guess right every time. I was all tuckered out tryin' to mislead 'em and deceive 'em and ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I yield second place to none in my interpretation of Juvenal. On the pre-Cadmean alphabets I am—in my humble way—quite an authority. But these magnificent talents," he added with a self-depreciatory smile, "do not enable me to run a business as successfully as a Greek fruit peddler or a Russian Jew vender of ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... in which the extremes of solitariness and of activity are combined. Separated from his nearest neighbor by a journey of half a day, visited only rarely at his hato or farm-house by some casual traveller, or by the itinerant Galician peddler, whom he contemptuously denominates the merca-chifles, the silent horseman lives wrapt up in ignorance of all but the care of the roving beasts that are ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... if you sold them," he replied, looking admiringly at the girl. "You'd be a pretty fair peddler of flowers, Sis." ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... I say, sat a big St. Bernard dog, squat on his haunches, his head well up, like a grenadier on guard. His eyes commanded the approaches down the road, up the road, and across the street; taking in the passing peddler with the tinware, and the girl with a basket strapped to her back, her fingers knitting for dear life, not to mention so unimportant an object as myself swinging down the road, my iron-shod ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Anna Street had moved into a house a trifle better suited to her exalted station in life; one where the view was better, and the society worthy of a fish-peddler's family. Accordingly we transferred the Kennetts into Number 32, an honor which they took calmly at first, on account of the odor of fish that pervaded the apartments. The three and four year old Kennetts were now members ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Street, and past Portsmouth Square. At this hour the little park was cleared of its human wreckage, and dowdy sparrows hopped unafraid upon the deserted benches. A Chinese woman and her child romped upon the green; a weather-beaten peddler stooped to the fountain and drank; the three poplar-trees about the Stevenson monument trembled to silver in the frank sunshine. Suvaroff could not remember when the city had appeared so fresh and innocent. It seemed to him as if the gray, cold drizzle of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... something poetical in connection with nocturnal noises, which she hoped Mrs. Crossman felt also. Fanny conveyed the note, and read it likewise, as Mrs. Crossman declared her inability to read writing with her new spectacles, which a peddler had cheated her with lately. She laughed at it, and sent word to Veronica that she was the curiousest young woman for her age that she had ever heard of; that the dog slept in the house of nights, for he was blind and deaf now; but that Crossman should get a new dog with a loud bark, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... cautiously by remembered landmarks the way we had come, and so, after a dreary march of a mile or so through desolation, issued into welcome sunshine and warmth at our point of departure. When I said "we," I did not include the grave-stone peddler. He, like a sensible fellow, had determined to stay and eat berries rather than breathe fog. While we wasted our time, he had made the most of his. He had cleared Katahdin's shoulders of fruit, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... to testify as a witness in regard to the shooting. He had heard the informer ask the peddler of charcoal and the farmer to run against the effigy with their teams; had seen the snowballs and brickbat fly, the shooting, and had assisted in caring for the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Guido found thousands of his fellows sleeping twenty in a room and over-crowded into the street: some who had but just arrived, and others who had already learned to swear in English, and had their street-cleaning badges and their peddler's licenses, to show that they had not been overlooked by the kindly society of Tammany, which sees that no free and independent voter shall ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... make a very good peddler," he thought. Although his grace of address was involuntary, like any keenly intelligent and retrospective man, he could not avoid being aware of it. He felt that he could outstrip that saturnine Syrian ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... romance. During the first campaigns of Germany, being charged with a message from the French government to one of the most prominent persons in the Austrian army, he passed among the enemy disguised as a German peddler, furnished with regular passports, and provided with a complete stock of diamonds and jewelry. He was betrayed, arrested, and searched; and the letter concealed in the double bottom of a gold box was found, and very foolishly read before him. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... dulcimer slung like a peddler's bos at his side, and with a comic movement of respect, which no presence or position could check, he made a bow to the stranger, that forced him to smile in ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... who should come along but a peddler with a pack of tin cans, rattling away on his back, and of course he made more noise than all the singing school ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... in the pear-tree. Joyce shivered and stepped down to the limb below, but paused in her descent to watch a peddler going down the road with ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and enlarging upon my first idea, I arranged the mechanism for keeping off the flies, and playing a music-box for the amusement of the baby! This cradle was bought of me afterwards by a delighted peddler, who gave me his 'whole stock in trade' for the exchange and the privilege of selling the patent in ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... to his mother, "there comes a peddler." He pointed down the road at the figure of a man briskly ascending the lane toward the house, with a pack on his back and some strange appendages ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "O, peddler boy, peddler boy," he said to him, "please give me a banana." The image of wax answered never ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... My pa was a slave over twenty years. He belong to Master Will Walker, and his white mistress was Ann. They brought him from 'round Athens, Georgia. He was heired through his master. His own mother died at his birth and he was the son of a peddler through the country. He was a furriner but pa never could tell. His young master never told him. His ma was the nurse about the place. The peddler was a white man of some kind. He kept coming about selling goods. The dogs made a bad racket. They never bought nothing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... like your story. Ne'th'less, tis like a strolling peddler, in that it carries a great deal of ills to begin with, to get rid of them all before it gets to the end of its journey. However, tis as you say—it ends with everybody merry and feasting, and so I like it. But now methinks our little friend yonder is big ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... young man I lived on the square, I never had any pocket change and I hardly thought it fair; So out on the crosses I went to rob and to steal, And when I met a peddler oh, how happy ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... busy unwrapping the picture which he had brought with him, and he reminded the Little Doctor of a loquacious peddler opening his pack. He was much more genial and unpretentious since Chip entered the room, and she wondered why. She wanted to ask about that reference to the water, but he stood the painting against the wall, just then, and she forgot everything ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... expectation fell upon the crowd as Culverhouse led his betrothed love before the priest; and when the ring, bought from an old peddler who always attended at such times and found ready sale for his wares, was placed on Kate's slim finger, a murmur of applause and sympathy ran through the crowd, and Kate quivered from head to foot at the thought ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... looks like a small prune, and like it is stewed in sirup, is a great favorite; and the coolies in the foreign quarters, while resting under their burdens, are not backward in disposing of a saucer of sweetmeats obtained from the nearest peddler. These sweetmeats, of all kinds, are esteemed very good by Europeans, and no doubt are quite the same as we receive from China put up in big-bellied blue jars; but as sold in the streets, the lack of cleanliness in the entire outfit of the shop, and the necessity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area. I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include marching up to the front door like a rug peddler. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... no priest, but holy peddler!" cried Gabord roughly. "This is not mating as Christians, and fires of hell shall burn—aho! I will see you all go down, and hand of mine shall not be lifted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... picturesque old fountain at the head of the Calle Centrale. Here he will find at almost any time of the day scores of weary burros slaking their thirst; busy water-carriers filling their red earthen jars; the street gamin wetting his thirsty lips; the itinerant fruit peddler seeking for customers; the gay caballero pausing to water the handsome animal he bestrides; while the tramway mules seek their share of the refreshing liquid. Dark-hued women are coming and going with earthen jars poised upon their heads, wonderfully ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... he made twenty cents, and a good-natured peddler gave him a large sponge, and taught him how to rinse out the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... none of his neighbors had horses about that place. They must be stray horses; or must belong to some traveler who had lost his way, as the track led nowhere. He accordingly followed it up, until he came to an unlucky peddler, with two or three pack-horses, who had been bewildered among the cattle-tracks, and had wandered for two or three days among woods and cane-brakes, until he was ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... spectators) by half-past twenty-one. But the night was forbidding; a cold rain fell heavily. Moreover, just as I had thought that it was perhaps worth while to run the risk of another illness—one cannot see the Madness of Count Orlando every day—there came into the room a peddler laden with some fifty volumes of fiction and a fine assortment of combs and shirt-studs. The books tempted me; I looked them through. Most, of course, were translations from the vulgarest French feuilletonistes; the Italian reader of novels, whether in newspaper or volume, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... a petition to the King and Lord Kitchener was never proceeded with—two questions alone interested us: (1) which was the best polish, and (2) which was the quickest and easiest system of polishing. The shabby peddler-cum-boot-maker who had somehow established, at that period, a monopoly of the minor trade of our camp, vended a substance (in penny tins) called Soldier's Friend. This was a solidified plate-polish ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... protested the peddler, "haf n't I always dealt fair mit you?" He fumbled in his half-opened pack, and shoving three razors out of sight, he produced a fourth, which he held out to the servant. "Dot iss only dree shillings, und it iss ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... slaaping, our friends along shore have been carried away, and we're lift to make ourselves comfortable, as the peddler said when he hung himself ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... in New-York about the close of the French Revolution, was a rude German, from Baden Baden, whose life in the New World was commenced as a laborer. He afterward became a peddler of fancy goods, and eventually a dealer in peltries. In 1791 there appeared at Number 40 Little Dock street, the unpretending name of John Jacob Astor, and here the foundation of his estate was laid. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a considerable fortune and left the path of life much easier for his kin to pursue. Having met a peddler one day, he bought a table cover made of a combination of burlap and paint. Such things were a luxury in the country at that time, and Ezekiel Bailey was shrewd enough to foresee a big demand for them if the cost could be moderated a bit. While thinking, an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... hardware—merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a professor. The hardware-man looks as if he might be 'touter' to a broken-down brigand. All the razors in his box couldn't keep the small part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been blown up with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... all disposed to keep holiday in Miranda's honor. Old Cap'n 'Kiah had donned a collar so high that it sawed agonizingly upon his ears, little Dr. Pingree, a peddler of roots and herbs, who was occasionally obliged to seek winter quarters at the poor-house, wore a black satin vest brocaded with huge blue roses, which had appeared at his wedding forty years before, and "Marm Bony" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... money is a disease. My saving and hoarding as I do is irrational, and I know it. It pains me to pay five cents for a streetcar ride, or a quarter of a dollar for a dinner. My pleasure in accumulating property is morbid, but I have felt it from the time I was a foot peddler in Charlotte, Campbell, and Pittsylvania counties, in Virginia, until now. It is a sort of insanity, and it is incurable; but it is about as good a form of madness as any, and all the world ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... I ever knew was a maligned cobbler, armed with a poniard, who drove a peddler's wagon, using a mullein stalk as an instrument of coercion to tyrannize over his pony shod with calks. He was a Galilean Sadducee, and he had a phthisicky catarrh, diphtheria, and the ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... have been able to see the invisible. "In the mountains," says Wordsworth, "did he feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashioned young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Had he lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his own importance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as most likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minutes what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour and three quarters. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... been a poor man, being the son of an apple peddler, who died and left him nothing but a donkey and a fiddle. But that was enough for Cole, who never bothered his head about the world's goods, but took things as they came and ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... voice that was keyed to a pitch almost as high as the bugle's strains. "Hold your yawp! Don't you hear that?" Lanigan screamed. "Don't you know the difference between that and a fish-peddler's horn? That's the tune we fellers heard the Huns play just before Armistice Day. That's retreat! Come on, Legion!" he urged, frantically. "Ram back ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Every year there is some common experience which welds the population, increases acquaintance and intensifies social unity. The tillage of the soil in those farming communities from which the blacksmith, the storekeeper, the peddler and the shoemaker have departed, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely upon ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... peddler, carrying two large packs. He was a small man with a swarthy olive-colored skin, and dark beady eyes, set ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Fortnoye contemporaneously with my departure, he had become more enthralled than he ever confessed to this radiant traveler—whom he called a packman, but regarded as a Mercury—and his pretty scheme of matrimony in motion. Even now, if I can believe my eyes, he goes up to the "vintner" and "peddler" of his objurgations, and meekly whispers into his ear with the air of a conspirator reporting a plot to his chief. Having engaged to produce me at the wedding of Fortnoye, and finding me unexpectedly recusant, he had adopted a little stratagem for bringing me to the scene while ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... say?" Sue wanted to know, while the Italian balloon peddler stood looking at the two children, as if wondering what they ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... "you ought to sue that peddler. Yo' britches hain't shrunk the same. One leg's shorter ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... man cannot be modest, as the above quotation would indicate, and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and belief in God, and at the same time a political ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... speech &c. (metaphor) 521; byword. colloquialism, informal speech, informal language. substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy[obs3], thingumbob; je ne sais quoi[Fr]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... away. He had used his eyes to purpose, and was quite assured that the bottle he wanted was not there. But the woman's words had given him his cue, and when later in the day a certain old Jew peddler went his rounds through this portion of the city, a disreputable-looking fellow accompanied him, whom even the sharp landlady in Cuthbert Road would have failed to recognise as the same man who had occupied the snuggery the night ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... physiognomy, but they are far less sociable than the Russians. Nature seems to have made them silent and morose, whilst their conditions of life have made them shy and distrustful. The Tartar, on the other hand, is almost sure to be a lively and amusing companion. Most probably he is a peddler or small trader of some kind. The bundle on which he reclines contains his stock-in-trade, composed, perhaps, of cotton printed goods and especially bright-coloured cotton handkerchiefs. He himself is enveloped in a capacious greasy khalat, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... all liked so much. As they parted on the doorstep Peggy was sure that the last shadow of their misunderstanding had lifted, for Mrs. Snooks turned to say, "I got a new cooky cutter from the tin peddler the other day—real pretty. And any time you'd like to ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... good-nature of which amazed Virginia. She had not dreamed that one of these sour, silent people could laugh like that. "No, land no, Abby! She's as soft-spoken as anybody could be, poor thing! She ain't got nothin' to say. That's all. Why, I can git more out'n any pack-peddler that's only been from here to Rutland and back than out'n her ... and she's traveled all summer long for five years, she was tellin' us, and last year went around ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... about half an hour ago," said the colored cook, "an' den, all to oncet, I didn't see him ag'in. I wonder if dat ole peddler could hab took him?" she ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... not half so clumsy as they looked, and they were armed with long, sharp, cruel claws that were bent in a curve, like the teeth of the big shell comb Dot's mother bought of the peddler for her back hair. Then, too, when his mouth opened wide, as it did when he made one of his lazy, sleepy yawns, the teeth he showed were something dreadful to look at. Teeth of that size were never needed for eating such things as blackberries. They looked a great deal more as if they were meant ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... years, and they were punching each other with relentless vigor, when suddenly they heard a voice, and stopping their fight, saw before them an humble-looking man with a pack on his back. He was a peddler known in the neighborhood, and noted for his honesty and his silence, but the boys had never seen him. They stood abashed before him, dazed with the blows they had received, and not a little ashamed; for ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... emigrated from the north of Ireland as a young boy. He had contrived to buy a few cheap odds and ends likely to attract women buried in the country far from shops. He had somehow known exactly what odds and ends to select. That was genius; and he had coined money as a peddler. In his wandering life he made acquaintance with many tramps and saw how he might make even the lowest useful. After a few years he scraped up enough capital to start a small store in New York, far downtown, where ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... since he got back from Harvard, that I was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way of talking to me in a quizzical, condescending style, in the belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while; and it was easy to see he regarded me as a "character" and thought he was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness of politics in a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Brydges. "Seems your night for deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know—he looks like a peddler—has a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and even in the villages peddlers went along the streets selling these chapbooks, as they were called. Imagine how the children, and the grown people too, must have flocked around the peddler as he began taking out one after another of his queer little books, for he had something to please every one. The boys might choose stories like The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, A Wonderful and Strange Relation of a Sailor or The True Tale of Robin Hood, and we can see them almost getting into ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sickness, when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner escaping from shipwreck clutches this first of his treasures and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the peddler in his crowded pack; cheers him at eventide when he sits down dusty and fatigued; brightens the freshness of his morning face. It blesses us when we are born, gives names to half Christendom; rejoices with us; has sympathy for our mourning; tempers our grief to finer ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... for every capital. He even operates in Washington, I have heard. He's a blackmailer, who aims high—a broker in secrets, a scandal-peddler. He's a bad lot, I tell you. I've had my best men after him, and they've just been here to report another failure. If you have nothing better to ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... was not yet 11 o'clock, several people in bathing suits were making for the sea. A little goat wagon with children aboard was passing the tents, and after it came the cart of the "hokey-pokey" peddler, drawn by a donkey that wore without complaint a decorated straw bathing hat. Morrow, looking at the feet of the donkey, saw in the sand something that shone in the sunlight. He picked it up and found that it was a gold bracelet studded ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 1768 a German peddler, named George Gist, left the settlement of Ebenezer, on the lower Savannah, and entered the Cherokee Nation by the northern mountains of Georgia. He had two pack-horses laden with the petty merchandise known to the Indian trade. At that time Captain Stewart ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... the other day a peddler was selling spectacles and somehow the old men trying them on and squinting for "near" and for "far," seemed so quaint and countrified and like a lot of old Yankees around a country store trying to get a "new pair of eyes, by Heck." In Chinatown the tong men do not seem at all real and ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... signing passports to the army. But yesterday, during the interregnum, the Beaverdam Depot was burnt by the enemy, information of its defenseless condition having been given by a Jew peddler, who obtained ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to the plow, and Mosher started heavy with his peddler's pack and returned light. It was no trick now for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring in the door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, undertake household chores of water lugging, furniture heaving, marketing with baskets that strained her arms ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... birthright for the gain of the profiteer or the influence of the politician. Other men abhor these greater forms of dishonor, but in little things are petty and mean. They are like the woman who prides herself on her cleverness when she cheats the milkman out of a quart of milk or the peddler out of a paper of pins. When a boy undertakes to look out for himself, he must learn to deal with these petty meannesses in others or be ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... him about it, asking him what he had done with his hair, and, encouraged by Melchior's pleasantries, threatening to smack it. He was the first to laugh at them, and put up with their treatment of him patiently. He was a peddler; he used to go from village to village with a pack on his back, containing everything—groceries, stationery, confectionery, handkerchiefs, scarves, shoes, pickles, almanacs, songs, and drugs. Several attempts ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one departure from the severe simplicity of her dress, for neither bright-hued calicoes nor muslins found their way to Walton. Once in a long while, a print, at five times the present prices, was introduced into the social circles of Walton by an occasional peddler, or possibly by the adventurous spirit of Swan Day. But these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... farmers. Nor, she learned, were they the "hicks" of humor. She could never again encounter without fiery resentment the Broadway peddler's faith that farmers invariably say "Waal, by heck." For she had spent an hour talking to one Dakota farmer, genial-eyed, quiet of speech. He had explained the relation of alfalfa to soil-chemistry; had spoken ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered cloak looking ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... enforce the laws of the country. And it was no easy place to enforce laws of certain kinds. The whole region around Fort MacLeod, as the necessarily crude outpost was called, being conveniently near the boundary line, had been for years the favourite stamping ground of the whisky-peddler. There had been no one to interfere with his activities. The Hudson's Bay Company regime, never very active in that locality, had been out of commission for four years, and nothing had taken its place. For Canadian authority, governing in a long-distance ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... chin and high cheek-bones, prominent nose and soft thin hair, seeming to belong wholly to the type of New England villager, and by no possibility to the rough and desperate native of the Fourth Ward. Born in his own place on some quiet inland farm, he would have turned peddler, or, nearer the sea, have chosen that for his vocation; but it was impossible to look upon him as an ex-convict or to do away with the impression of respectability which seems part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... but it's not my religion. [Sarcastically..] Every man can't be blessed like you with the soul of a market gardener—a peddler of turnips. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... allow him to bring in as directors two men whose pliancy, he said, could be depended upon. These were Jay Gould, demure and ingratiating, and James Fisk, Jr., a portly, tawdry, pompous voluptuary. In early life Fisk had been a peddler in Vermont, and afterwards had managed an itinerant circus. Then he had become a Wall street broker. Keen and suspicious as old Vanderbilt was, and innately distrustful of both of them, he nevertheless, for some ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... trust too much to the second-hand dealer. Avoid subscription books. Do not buy of a book peddler; in nine cases out of ten you can find better and cheaper books at the stores. A well selected and judiciously purchased library, with such works of reference as are needed, will cost, on an ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... riles him wuss than a peddler, unless it's a woman selling tickets to a church fair. The feller swelled up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat would ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with strangers to my dying day. Infamous Dubourg! If I could have got into Browndown that night, I should have liked to have done to him what a Mexican maid of mine (at the Central American period of my career) did to her drunken husband—who was a kind of peddler, dealing in whips and sticks. She sewed him strongly up one night in the sheet, while he lay snoring off his liquor in bed; and then she took his whole stock-in-trade out of the corner of the room, and broke it on him, to the last article on sale, until he was ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... to wait long. Unfortunately for romance, the Reverend Clarence was detained at the home of another parishioner a trifle longer than he had planned and the first masculine to pass the Winslow home was old Jedidah Wingate, the fish peddler. Mrs. Diadama Busteed, who was acting as nurse in the family and had been sworn in as witness to the agreement between husband and wife, declared to the day of her death that that death was hastened by the shock to her nervous and moral system caused by Captain Thad's language ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Harding, as he lit one of my cigars, "the harder it is to decide. Mrs. Cadgers has pointed out that under our present system the wife of a college professor is not allowed to vote, whereas an illiterate Greek fruit peddler may. But Mr. Rattler replies that the college professor, too, seldom votes, and if he does he spoils his ballot by trying to split his ticket. Why, demands Mrs. Cadgers, should women who pay taxes be refused ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... the door of the old homestead in the valley; sometimes it was a distinguished Quaker from abroad, but oftener it was a peddler or some vagabond begging for food, which was seldom refused. Once a foreigner came and asked for lodgings for the night—a dark, repulsive man, whose appearance was so much against him that Mrs. Whittier ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... 'E and 'is gang believed in nykedness, vegetables, socialism, no religion, and no drugs. The nytives think they're bug-'ouse, like Prince Hinoe, and I don't think they 're all there, but you couldn't cheat him. 'E'd myke a Glasgow peddler look ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... successful—and he was generally successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends and needed little sleep and pursued his business with ferocious energy by ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... life-class and its models. Not the nude. Whatever may have been clone in the studios, in the class-room it was always the draped model that posed —the old woman who washed for a living on the top floor, or one of her chubby children or buxom daughters, or perhaps the peddler who strayed in to sell his wares and left his head behind him on ten different canvases and in as ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not been great. Wise librarians have, with a smile, regretted the paucity of proper material; literary men have predicted rather a thin volume; in short, the general opinion of men is condensed in the sly question of a peddler who comes to our door, summer and winter, his stock varying with the season: sage-cheese and home-made socks, suspenders and cheap note-paper, early-rose potatoes and the solid pearmain. This shrewd old fellow remarked roguishly "You're gittin' up a book, I see, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... wonder and inquire why Mr. Andrew Bush took such an "interest" in her—a mere stenographer. Well, she told herself, she did not care—so long as Jack Barrow's ears were not assailed by talk. She smiled at that, for she could picture the reception any scandal peddler would get from him. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... folks'll hev, when they go home," said a spare tin-peddler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store: nobody speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round; go to the wharf: nobody weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes at the cart: baker won't ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... all three, was the wagon of a travelling peddler, a wagon drawn by his own arms, which had stopped in the ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... dislike him, because he was told that Mr. Grant was a Scotchman, and he had a prejudice against Scotchmen; all of whom he believed to be cunning and avaricious, because he had once been over-reached by a Scotch peddler. Grant's friendly manners in some degree conquered this prepossession but still he secretly suspected that THIS CIVILITY, as he said, "was all show, and that he was not, nor could not, being a Scotchman, be such a hearty friend ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... but was such a repulsive-looking personage as to render his long stay objectionable. In order to be rid of him Mrs. Barkswell made a small purchase, after which, finding that he could sell nothing further, the peddler thrust his wares back into the tin box and shuffled ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... purchased of a peddler, and differing in color from its natural mate, perpetually getting out of focus ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... patience. He settled his affairs so as to leave her all his little property in the most manageable shape, and left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and peddler of silver and brass sleeve-buttons of his own manufacture. It made him an officer and then an armorer in the Continental service. As a fabricator of patriotic weapons, he incurred the displeasure of his Methodist brethren by working ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... moment in dreary thought; then he gave his shoulders a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him—it was like a peddler shifting his pack—as though to rid himself of too cruel cares, and again took up the burden every man carried with him, which bows his back, more or less, according to his courage or his strength, and went into de Gery's ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... and his voice needed a cough to prime it. The fire, glowing in Emma Morton's eyes, steamed up George Brotherton's will—the will which had sent him crashing forward in life from a train peddler to a purveyor of literature and the arts in Harvey. Deeds followed impulses with him swiftly, so in an instant the floor of the Morton cottage was shaking under his tread and with rash indifference, high and heroic, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled; his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... game of quoits together" "He had slain him with his own hand" "With such returning spring" "The country people warned him" "He sank, exhausted, upon the steps" "As they followed its winding course" "But St. Leonard drew his sword" "Shut up in the turret-chamber" "In the disguise of a peddler" "She fell into the court yard below" "The sweet blossoms of a tiny flower" "A great doorway in the rock" "Once more upon the bleak mountain side" "He could hear the voices of the priests" "'The Star of Bethlehem' men call it" "The bright messenger ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... the telephone. We drove on down the lane, eyed somnolently by spotted cows and incurious sheep, and all the way Miss Emily talked. She was almost garrulous. She asked the hackman about his family and stopped the vehicle to pick up a peddler, overburdened with his pack. I watched her with amazement. Evidently this was Mr. Staley's Miss Emily. But it was ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... been to market with my butter and eggs,—for the price of both is so high, one can soon get rich nowadays,—and, being tired, I stopped to rest a bit, but fell asleep by the road. Somebody—I think it's a rogue of a peddler who sold me wooden nutmegs, and a clock that wouldn't go, and some pans that came to bits the first time I used them—somebody cut my new gown and petticoat off all round, in the shameful way you see. I thought I never should get home; for I was such a fright, I actually didn't know myself. But, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... he collides at the entry with Corporal Broyer, who is running down the street like a peddler, and shouting at ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... together his pointed staff, sketching box, and other traps. These implements were evidently not familiar objects in the professor's experience, as he supposed they might be part of the gear of a peddler, and hence conceived a certain distrust of his guide. The artist was tall and handsome, with a vigorous frame, a long, waving beard, a slouched hat, and garments rather the worse for much exposure to the suns, winds, and rains of a summer spent in the open air. One who did not examine the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... quite want to reduce—comb down the list of varieties like the apple grower has. When you go to Boston and ask a peddler or hawker about "apples," he won't know what you are talking about. Apples?—they wonder what the word is. It is "McIntosh." They will go around the street shouting, "McIntosh, McIntosh." You won't hear the word ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... this time, and Rochas continued to gesticulate and brandish his long arms in the obscurity. His historical studies had been confined to a stray volume of Napoleonic memoirs that had found its way to his knapsack from a peddler's wagon. His excitement refused to be pacified and all his book-learning burst from his lips ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... telephone had not then reached the countryside, and our driver brought the latest bulletins. The death of a horse in Little Boston, the burning of a barn in Sanfordtown, the elopement of an otherwise estimable lady with a peddler, marked the beginning of our intimacy with the ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her," whispered Chantel, and, kneeling like a peddler among the bazaar-stuffs, spread on the floor a Java sarong, blue and brown, painted with men and buffaloes. On this he began to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... given by servants, serfs, who had told the events to their masters. Nobody of distinction had remained in Moscow, none of the nobility, the clergy, the merchants. The persons from whom the following accounts are given were the nun Antonine, a former slave of the Syraxine family, the little peddler Andreas Alexieef, a woman, Alexandra Alexievna Nazarot, an old slave of the family Soimonof by the name of Basilli Ermolaevitch, the wife of a pope, Maria Stepanova, the wife of another pope, Helene Alexievna. A Russian lady has collected what she had learned ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... world of peace and sunshine—of droning bees and the nameless fragrance of summer fields it was! And the struggling nomads of the dusty road! Diane felt a kindred thrill of interest in each one of them. Now a Syrian peddler woman, squat and swarthy, bending heavily beneath her pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering "assortment of everything," ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... human flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda groaned to Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as she would with the minister; she always sets beside the barefooted young ones at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin' that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to everybody ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gossip, and observing popular scenes and characters. His father used to be vexed with him for this wandering propensity, and, shaking his head, would say he fancied the boy would make nothing but a peddler. As he grew older he became a keen sportsman, and passed much of his time hunting and shooting. His field sports led him into the most wild and unfrequented parts of the country, and in this way he picked up much of that local knowledge ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Burlingame, were in open revolt. Mr. Lincoln's speeches were confined largely to a defense of General Taylor, but at the same time he denounced the free-soilers for helping to elect Cass. Among other things he said that the free-soilers had but one principle and that they reminded him of the Yankee peddler going to sell a pair of pantaloons and describing them as "large enough for any man, and ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... will find occasional lapses in taste or expression, and the quibbling peddler of rhetoric will gloat over some doubtful construction; but neither purist nor peddler of rhetoric has ever been able in his writing to display the ease, the rush, the naturalness, the sparkle which were as genuine in Roosevelt as were the features of his face. On reading these ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... "Indians" that shot Steel, the sheriff, at Andes, and it was charged that the bullet from his pistol was the one that did the fatal work. At any rate, he had had to flee the country, escaping concealed in a peddler's cart, while close pressed by the posse. He went South and was absent several years. After the excitement of the murder and the struggle between the two factions had died down, he returned and was not molested. And here ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... implements of husbandry, the coarse woven fabrics of the contadini, hats with cockades and rosettes, feather brooms and brushes, and household things, with here and there the tawdry pinchbeck ware of a peddler of jewelry, and little quadretti of Madonna and saints. Extricating ourselves from the crowd, we ascend by a stone stairway to the walk around the parapets of the walls, and look down upon the scene. How gay it is! Around the fountain, which is spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... he is called a "druggist," but "chemist" is better, even though it confuses a mere peddler of ammoniated quinine with Sir WILLIAM RAMSAY and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler's cart that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... quietly, "I believe I will carry a bunch of those violets;" and she waited for him to go back through the fountain spray, find the peddler, and rummage among the perfumed heaps in the basket. "Because," she added, cheerfully, as he returned with the flowers, "I am going to the East Tenth Street Mission, and I meant ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... and alive: when Tom's birthday came, a surprise-feast of raspberries and cake; when Jem's new trousers were produced, they had been made up over-night, a dead secret, ten shining dimes in the pocket, fresh from the mint; even the penny string of blue beads for Catty, bought of Sims the peddler, was hid under her plate, and made quite a jollification of that supper. You may be sure, the five years just gone in that house had been short and merry and cozy enough for the children. Before that—Here Jem's memory flagged: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the ordinary course of trade. Contrariwise, a tax on sales discriminatory in its incidence against merchandise because of its origin in another State is ipso facto unconstitutional. The leading case is Welton v. Missouri,[569] decided in 1876, in which a peddler's license tax confined to the sale of goods manufactured outside the State was set aside. The doctrine of Welton v. Missouri ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin |
