"Pedler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beguiled so much time, that Flint was late to breakfast. His fellow-boarders, a pedler and a fisherman, had gone about their business, and he sat down alone at the oilcloth-covered table, and twirled the pewter caster while he waited for his egg to be boiled. It was one of his beliefs that a merciful Heaven had granted eggs and oranges to earth ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... in compliance with summons, that pedler of all corruptions, Thurlow Weed, came to Washington, and with Mr. Seward, his fidus Achates, was for days or nights closeted with Mr. Lincoln, pouring into the president's soul as much poison and darkness as was possible. That ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... pedlar," answered the stranger. His voice was clear and not unmusical, with just the suspicion ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... you should so much regret those times. I knew you formerly in England as an itinerant pedlar, and occasionally as master of a stall in the market-place of a country town. I now find you in a seaport of Spain, the proprietor, seemingly, of a considerable shop. I cannot see why you should regret ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of correspondence, July 17, 1775, published Nahum Houghton as "an unwearied pedlar of that baneful herb tea," and warned all patriots "to entirely shun his company and have no manner of dealings or connections with him except acts of common humanity." A special town meeting was called on June 30, 1777, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Mr. Walters was desperate. The flattering comments that Bassett had made upon his common-sense and virtue were forgotten. Pleading fatigue he sat down by the roadside and, with his eyes glued to the open door of the Pedlar's Rest, began to hatch ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... The bold pedlar and Robin Hood. The outlandish knight. Lord Delaware. Lord Bateman. The golden glove; or, the squire of tamworth. King James I. And the tinkler. The Keach i' the Creel. The Merry Broomfield; or, the west country wager. Sir John Barleycorn. Blow the winds, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... with provender for their mules. All this every white man may command, being an homage the Indians have long been accustomed to, and some think themselves honoured into the bargain. Yet out of generosity, they sometimes meet with a small recompense. Among the British and French, a pedlar is despised, and his employment is considered as a very, mean shift for getting a living: But it is quite otherwise here, where the quick return of money is a sufficient excuse for the manner in which it is gained; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... was going forward. Tables were spread, and great preparations were making for the rustic feast. Some lads and lasses were dancing on the green before the house, while others of the young men were buying ribands, gloves, and such toys, of a pedlar at the door. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by a pedlar whose name was Stout, He cut her petticoats all round about; He cut her petticoats up to the knees, Which made the old woman to ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... undoubted Scottish specimen was drawn from this pedlar's pack, we know, from the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists and other evidence, that Border minstrelsy had already raised echoes in London town, before King Jamie went thither with Scotland streaming in his train. During the last troublous half century of Scotland's history as an independent ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... was a lean, emaciated, sickly young man, but his eyes had the fire of a lion's, and his glance was as a god's. When he spoke his voice pierced you, and when he was silent his presence filled the room. From Eliphaz the Pedlar (who knew everything but the Law) I learnt at last that he was an emissary of Rabbi Baer, the celebrated chief of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning on a tree in Orso Graf's allegory, while the cynical knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts his hand into the basket of Duerer's tattered pedlar; he leers hideously at the stirrup of Duerer's armed and stalwart knight. No gods of youth and Nature; no Hercules, no Hermes, no Venus, have invaded his German territories, as they invaded even his own palace, the burial-ground at Pisa; the antique has not perverted ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... cool by the attentive housewife, While cheerful groups at every door conven'd Bawl cross the narrow lane the parish news, And oft the bursting laugh disturbs the air. But see who comes to set them all agag! The weary-footed pedlar with his pack. How stiff he bends beneath his bulky load! Cover'd with dust, slip-shod, and out at elbows; His greasy hat sits backward on his head; His thin straight hair divided on his brow Hangs lank on either side his glist'ning cheeks, And woe-begone, yet ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... else. That contemplation, like an aged weed, Engender'd thousand sects, and all those sects Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues. Grammarians some, and wherein differ they From beggars that profess the pedlar's French?[111] The poets next, slovenly, tatter'd slaves, That wander and sell ballads in the streets. Historiographers others there be, And they, like lazars, lie[112] by the highway-side, That for a penny ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... his nobles and attendants, and in fact was particularly fond of lonely adventures. Another of his favourite amusements was to give out that he was not well, and could not be seen; and then, with the knowledge only of his faithful Grand Wazeer, to disguise himself as a pedlar, load a donkey with cheap wares, and travel about. In this way he found out what the common people said about him, and how his judges and ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... from beneath, unfasten it from the hook to which it was fixed, when it had served its office; she made up a bundle of worthless old clothes in order that we might the better preserve our characters of a travelling pedlar and his wife; she stuffed a hump on her back, she thickened my figure, she left her own clothes deep down beneath a heap of others in the chest from which she had taken the man's dress which she wore; and with a few francs ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... and pedlar, a character illustrating Yankee peculiarities, and remarkable for his wit, his knowledge of human nature, and his use of "soft sawder," a creation of JUDGE HALIBURTON'S ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... she thought and thought how she could manage to make an end of her, for as long as she was not the fairest in the land, envy left her no rest. At last she thought of a plan; she painted her face and dressed herself like an old pedlar woman, so that no one would have known her. In this disguise she went across the seven mountains, until she came to the house of the seven little dwarfs, and she knocked ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... having been appropriated for that purpose, with the view of giving to each of the eight districts of the Province, a schoolmaster having a salary of L100 a year; the Act imposing licenses on Hawkers, Pedlars, and Petty Chapmen,—to the amount of three pounds for every pedlar, with twenty shillings additional for a hawker with a horse; eight pounds for every chapman sailing with a decked vessel and selling goods on board;—five pounds for the same description of traders sailing in an open boat; and eight pounds ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... 'one-sided,' but yet it is a moral duty to emphasize and strengthen our hate for England. Not only because we will hate, but because we must. Hatred ennobles when it is directed with full force against the evil and bad. And what is the evil? For an answer consider how the English pedlar-spirit with cunning and lies, has subjugated the world ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... a glimpse of practical sense, at least.' And a pedlar who sat next him, a bold, black-whiskered bully, from the Potteries, hazarded ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... manager of a large plantation have as good a time on a rainy day as his day-labourers who spend it in gambling. The accumulation of wealth is always accompanied by its evils; no Rothschild nor Rockefeller can be happier than a poor pedlar. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the moon was rising, I met a ghostly pedlar Singing for company beneath his ghostly load,— Once, there were velvet lads with vizards on their faces, Riding up to rob me on the ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... extend also to the itinerant potters, and the number of their children: or if the potters take out a Hawker's and Pedlar's licence, a return of their numbers might be obtained from the proper office. There is reason to think that many of these dealers have acquired property, who, nevertheless take lodgings for the winter, instead of renting houses; whereby they, equally with Gypsies, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... bed! you must make some fresh excuse;—you're famous at them to me;—you have got into the nobble and must get out of it as well as you can; I shall go and consult my friend, Dame Wrigrim; and Alice, should the pedlar woman come, desire her not to leave any more of ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... him gifts, corals, and pearls, and turkisses. As for gold he scarce heeds it now: he has a tribe of little elves that wash it out of the sand for him, and gather it up, like bees, into balls and grains, and then carry it like honey, and stuff his cane with it. Ay, ay, my worthy smooth-faced pedlar of all wisdom's small wares! this is why the old man is for ever moping so, and never dares laugh; this is why he loses his wits if he chances to hear music, which gladdens the heart of every godly man; this is why he never goes into ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... spoke, Moses came slowly on foot, and sweating under the deal box, which he had strapped round his shoulders like a pedlar. "Welcome, welcome, Moses! Well, my boy, what have you brought us from the fair?" "I have brought you myself," cried Moses, with a sly look, and resting the box on the dresser. "Ay, Moses," cried my wife, "that we know; but where is the horse?" "I have sold him," cried Moses, "for three pounds ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... But manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar. Indeed we had some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been the great event since ever we came here—the wildest excitement the island can afford?" she said, "the arrival of the pedlar! A snuffy old man comes into the room, with a huge bundle wrapped up in dirty waterproof. Then there is a wild clatter of Gaelic. But suddenly, don't you know, there are one or two glances at me; and the Gaelic stops; and Duncan or John, or whatever they call him, begins to stammer in English, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... himself, over his snuff-mull of an evening, that he was a very ordinary character, but a certain halo of horror was cast over the whole family by their connection with little Joey Sutie, who was pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whistled when he went past the minister. Joey became a pedlar, and was found dead one raw morning dangling over a high wall within a few miles of Thrums. When climbing the dyke his pack had slipped back, the strap round his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... disrobe whilst sitting on the top of the wall, and was terrified in case some pedlar might chance along. I tied my face and head veil round my waist, but the habarah, that big black cloak—by the way it belongs to one of my women, and I borrowed it with the excuse that I wanted it copied, mine you see are rather ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... then my dainty Girles, I make no doubt But I my selfe as strangely found her out As either of you both; in Field and Towne, When like a Pedlar she went vp and downe: For she had got a pretty handsome Packe, Which she had fardled neatly at her backe: And opening it, she had the perfect cry, Come my faire Girles, let's see, what will you buy. 100 Here be fine night Maskes, plastred well within, To supple wrinckles, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... a pedlar, whose name was Stout, He cut her petticoats all round about; He cut her petticoats up to the knees, Which made the old woman to shiver ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... religion is brought forward—prominently and conspicuously—in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it Christianity? No—it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, would be ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... principles. The Church is the medium by which the despised and degraded classes assert the native equality of man, and vindicate the rights and power of intellect. It made, in the darkest hour of Norman rule, the son of a Saxon pedlar Primate of England, and placed Nicholas Breakspear, a Hertfordshire peasant, on the throne of the Caesars. It would do as great things now, if it were divorced from the degrading and tyrannical connection that enchains it. You would have other sons of peasants Bishops ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly attractive from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes at you, and with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching. The lurid smurkiness of the torches lends an appropriate weirdness to the figure of the uncouthly clad pedlar who, with the politeness of the arch-fiend himself, displays to an eager group the fatal fascinations of some new conceit. Here the latest thing in inventions, a gutta-percha rat, which, for reasons best known to the vender, scampers about squeaking with a mimicry to shame the original, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... might almost be sure," said the pedlar. "In fact, now I look into your face, even if I can't say you are sure to win, I can say that I never saw anything look more like winning in ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... but his dreams were bad. When he woke in the morning, his heart was glad; For every leaf that his boughs could hold Was made of the brightest beaten gold. I tell you, children, the tree was proud; He was something above the common crowd; And he tinkled his leaves, as if he would say To a pedlar who happened to pass that way, "Just look at me! Don't you think I am fine? And wouldn't you like such a dress as mine?" "Oh, yes!" said the man, "and I really guess I must fill my pack with your beautiful dress." So he picked the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... to make some attempt at refuting the base falsehoods that had been bruited by that time-serving vassal Guicciardini, and others of his kidney, whom the upstart Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere—sometime pedlar—in his jealous fury at seeing the coveted pontificate pass into the family of Borgia, bought and hired to do his loathsome work of calumny and besmirch the fame of as sweet a lady as Italy has known. But this poor chronicle of mine is rather concerned ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... serpent as well as the harmlessness of the dove; e.g., they obtained access to the higher classes in the character of pedlars. Having displayed their goods, chiefly of an ornamental kind, and a purchase had been concluded, if the pedlar were asked, "Have you anything else for sale?" he would reply, "I have jewels far more precious than these, and if you will not betray me to the clergy I will make you a present of them." Being answered satisfactorily on this point, he would proceed to say, "I have a pearl so brilliant that by ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... cavern where the wind moaned, and now watching the clear-obscure effects of the dimly-lighted room. Presently a trap stopped outside, and in walked the aubergiste, accompanied by a sprightly little man who I afterwards learnt was a pedlar. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... offices than you can count on your ten fingers; but there was always something—my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or died, or dismissed me. I've been travelling-dentist, auctioneer, commission-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder; but it all came to the same thing—ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I have swept crossings in the city, and camped out in the wilderness among the bears and opossums. One day I thought I'd come home. 'There's George,' I said to myself; 'if I can get ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... twenty-eight years of age. He is not thriving, and he must needs be content with simple bread and cheese. A roll of cheap "pirated" music lies on his knee and proclaims his method of living. His life has its dangers, for he has great difficulty in providing five shillings for his pedlar's licence, and he runs great risk of having his stock seized by the police, and being committed to prison for a fine ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... was not exercised; otherwise, as Gourlay has remarked, "we should have seen, perhaps, the Duke of Ontario leading in a cart of hay, my Lord Erie pitching, and Sir Peter Superior making the rick; or perhaps his Grace might now have been figuring as a pettifogging lawyer, his Lordship as a pedlar, and Sir Knight, as a poor parson, starving on five thousand acres of Clergy Reserves."[31] We were spared the spectacle of such absurdities, and life members of the Legislative Council were the nearest approach ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... be his! In real life, and, I trust, even in my imagination, I honour a virtuous and wise man, without reference to the presence or absence of artificial advantages. Whether in the person of an armed baron, a laurelled bard, or of an old Pedlar, or still older Leech-gatherer, the same qualities of head and heart must claim the same reverence. And even in poetry I am not conscious, that I have ever suffered my feelings to be disturbed or offended by any thoughts or images, which the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... queen was very much alarmed; for she knew that the glass always spoke the truth, and was sure that the servant had betrayed her. And she could not bear to think that anyone lived who was more beautiful than she was; so she disguised herself as a pedlar and went her way over the hills to the place where the dwarfs dwelt. Then she knocked at the door, and cried, "Fine wares to sell!" Snow-White looked out of the window, and cried, "Good-day, good woman; what have you to sell?" "Good wares, fine wares," said she; "laces ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... the steps, stood a cart, loaded with boxes and hampers. Its owner, a thin pedlar with a hawk nose and mouse-like eyes, bent and lame, was putting in it his little nag, lame like himself. He was a gingerbread-seller, who was making his way to the fair at Karatchev. Suddenly several people appeared on the road, others ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... packman had come into the village and brought the report that the King had been defeated, and had fled from the field. They knew no more, and Walter pronouncing it to be all a cock-and-bull story of some rascally prick-eared pedlar, declared he would go down to the village and enquire into ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up upon a large scale. This latter work I expect to have finished before the month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of 'The Pedlar,'[25] which Coleridge read you, is part, and I may have written of it altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I hope, of about ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 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 pedlar 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 in a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... "He was a smouser" (pedlar), she went on, "a little cowering man, with a black beard and a white face, who spoke Kafir better than he spoke the Taal. He sold thimbles and pills and hymn-books to the wives and daughters of Burghers, and grand watches and cheap diamonds to the Kafirs. It was a dirty ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... me to take this course. He had his reasons, he said, for wishing to go to the northward, and would accompany me. Though his appearance was not attractive,—for he looked more like an old Jew pedlar than a son of the prairies, as he called himself,—I had confidence in him. I should have said that my new friends were accompanied by a small party of Indians, who acted as guides. To these people Pablo had an especial aversion, the cause of which he did not divulge to me; but I believe ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... grievances here, and grievances there, which the committee, he said, had not ventured, to enumerate. 'Sir,' I exclaimed, 'let us cure what we have got here first!' pointing to the report before me. But no; nothing that I could say would induce this pedlar to face his own report; and I soon found that it had the same effect upon all the members, and that, like the repelling end of a magnet, I had only to present it to the Radicals to drive them from the very object which his majesty's government expected would have possessed attractions." On his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... through all the ordinary vicissitudes of an American life, beneath those pursuits which are commonly thought to be confined to the class of gentlemen. He had been farmer's boy, printer's devil, schoolmaster, stage-driver, and tin-pedlar, before he ever saw the sea. In the way of what he called "chores," too, he had practised all the known devices of rustic domestic economy; having assisted even in the washing and house-cleaning, besides having passed the evenings of an entire ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... them. There was considerable bustle and stir about the little port; but it was the bustle of people who looked for the most part to be beggars; and I saw no shop in the bazaar that seemed to have the value of a pedlar's pack. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem. Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R—— for petty larceny? I will promise to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from a blind pedlar. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis—the compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedlar's widely ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... as a tom-fool at a holiday feast," said the hunchback to his companion. "Spade and axe have I lifted these twenty years, and what the better am I o' the labour? A groat's worth of wit is worth a pound o' sweat,' as my dame says. I'll turn pedlar some o' these days, and lie, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... legend of the Chapman, or Pedlar, of Swaffam, in Norfolk, handed down, as it has been, from one credulous generation to another, with the most minute details and perfect local colour, throws quite into the shade all other versions or variants of the ancient tale of the poor man of Baghdad. Blomfield, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... hurried to the great courtyard, where many of the servants and retainers were already gathered to look at the contents of the pedlar's pack. At that period the arrival of a travelling merchant was an event at a remote country house, and even Sir Mervyn himself did not disdain to examine the cloths and buy an ell or two of velvet for a doublet. The pedlar, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... This latter work I expect to have finished before the month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of 'The Pedlar,' which Coleridge read to you, is part; and I may have written of it altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I hope, of about ten ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... book-pedlar. There are firms of publishers who never advertise in any literary weekly or any daily, who never publish anything new, and who may possibly be unknown to Simpkins themselves. They issue badly printed, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... in a workhouse in Southwark a pedlar who used to sell odds-and-ends on a tray on London Bridge, and who pretended to be deaf and dumb. It is said that, though clothed in rags, he was a Swiss gentleman of means who, stung by remorse, had vowed not to open his lips for ten years, to go bareheaded and barefooted, and to abandon for twenty ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... with his own impudence, and with the malice of a devil, bring in both Houses of P—— to say and mean the same thing.... It is matter of wonder ... to see the greatest ministers of state we ever had (till now) treated by a poor paper-pedlar, every Thursday, like the veriest rascals in the kingdom.... I could, if it were needful, bring a great many instances, of this licentious way of the scum of mankind's treating the greatest peers in the nation" ("A Letter to the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... A pedlar from a hovel, The lowest of the low, The father of the Novel, Salvation's first Defoe, Eight blinded generations Ere Armageddon came, He showed us how to meet it, And Bunyan was ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... that the poorer classes in our country are much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbours. If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts? Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was a bandit first of all, as I have heard him say over and over again. He beat his wife to death, because she scolded him for being drunk, then he took to the woods. The first he killed was a Jew pedlar, then he burnt down the house of the head-man of a village because he had put the police on his track. He killed him as he rushed out from the door, and his wife and children were burnt alive. He killed four or five others on the road, and when he was betrayed, as he was ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... court they had exhibited the marionette show now packed away in the donkey's saddle- bags, once, twice or thrice as the case might be, until Giovanni had succeeded in gaining audience with the wife of the ruler. He carried pedlar's goods of very choice varieties, which might well appeal to ladies of the court in those days of slow transportation ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... a Welsh pedlar—a woman. Its genuineness may be relied upon. I find it a common belief that fairies have power over witches, and the witch-hare is commonly believed in; also a witch-fox. I have heard of no evil fairies in ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... shade—they seem to have no idea of time. Women are a sore trial to the patience of the agriculturist in a busy time. If you want to understand why, go and ensconce yourself behind a hedge, out of sight but in view of a field in which ten or twelve women are hoeing. By and by a pedlar or a van comes slowly along the turnpike road which runs past the field. At the first sound of footsteps or wheels all the bent backs are straight in an instant, and all the work is at a standstill. They stand staring at the van or tramp for five or six minutes, till the object of attention ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... yet further with a window at the Eastern end, of glass stained with colours marvellous to behold. Men said indeed that Merchant Roger clearly owed that window to the Saint, seeing that when he first entered the town scarce a dozen years before, he came but as a poor pedlar, possessed of naught but 'a hap, a halfpenny, and a lambskin,' whereas these few years spent under the shadow of the Saint's protection had made him already a man ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... have to add to it; but you shall e'en take it all upon yourself, as the wives do in Holland; so you will pay for it that way too, for all the drudgery shall be yours. Thirdly, I intend to condemn you to the constant bondage of my impertinent company, for I shall tie you like a pedlar's pack at my back. I shall scarce ever be from you; for I am sure I can take delight in nothing else in this world." "Very well," says I; "but I am pretty heavy. I hope you'll set me down sometimes when you are aweary." "As for that," says he, "tire ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... instincts, who could be easily led into revolution and sedition from the side of his ambition. He saw before him the traditional cunning, quick-witted merchant of Media, pale-faced and easily frightened; no more capable of a daring stroke of usurpation than a Jewish pedlar of Babylon. He was evidently a mere tool in the hands of the queen; and Darius stamped impatiently upon the floor when he thought that he had perhaps been deceived after all—that the queen had really written to Phraortes simply on account ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... levy of black mail in old times was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night; the modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating pedlar; but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones; and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a certain direct good. It is far better ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one man scornfully. "It doesn't have to be gypsies, we've got enough tramps and vagabonds of our own. Didn't they kill the pedlar for the sake of a bag of tobacco, and old Katiza for a couple ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... golden guineas and a crown, I should, most probably, like the generality of people who come into the possession of unexpected wealth, have become extravagant, had it not been for the timely advice of my kind monitor, Mr. Y——. When I showed him a pair of Chinese tumblers, which I had bought from a pedlar for twice as much as they were worth, merely because they pleased my fancy, he shook his head, and observed that I might, before my death, want this very money to buy a loaf of bread. 'If you spend your ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... fiction we have ever read in this coarse, homely, but genuine class, is one called "Metallek." It may be in circulation in this city; but we bought it in a country nook, and from a pedlar; and it seemed to belong to the country. Had we met with it in any other way, it would probably have been to throw it aside again directly, for the author does not know how to write English, and the first chapters give no idea of his power of apprehending the poetry of life. But happening ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... early career as a pedlar and keeper of a Cheap Jack bazaar was forgotten and who, after the great fire, which wiped out so many pasts and purified and pedigreed Chicago's present aristocracy, called himself William G. Howland, merchant prince, had, in his ideal character for ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the something to be? I had also thought of that; and you shall hear what it was. I chanced to have upon my shoulders a pair of braces, and fortunately they were good ones—no pedlar's stuff, but stout braces of buckskin leather. This was the something by which I intended to ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... dallied with the butterflies lazily afloat over the meadow-sweet and cow-parsley beside the line; we exchanged gossip with station-masters, and received the congratulations of signalmen on the extraordinary spell of fine weather. It did not matter. Three market-women, a pedlar, and a local policeman made up with me the train's complement of passengers. I gathered that their business could wait; and as for mine—well, a Norman porch is by ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a fisher of frogs. Antoninus, a lackey. Commodus, a jet-maker. Pertinax, a peeler of walnuts. Lucullus, a maker of rattles and hawks'-bells. Justinian, a pedlar. Hector, a snap-sauce scullion. Paris was a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... got the auld wife on his back; (Hey, and the rue grows bonnie wi' thyme), And, like a poor pedlar, he's carried his pack; And the thyme it is wither'd, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and yet reckless with discouragement, and scarcely noticed the anxious pedlar, who stood waiting for some ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... taking up the burdens of others. Master Godolphin and Sir Oliver between them, quoth the justice, had got up this storm of theirs. A God's name let them settle it, and if in the settling they should cut each other's throats haply the countryside would be well rid of a brace of turbulent fellows. The pedlar deemed them a couple of madmen, whose ways were beyond the understanding of a sober citizen. The others—the fishermen and the rustics—had not the means to follow even had ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... he soon found a little old pedlar woman, quite perfect in the trade, to whom he said he should take it as a particular favour if she would do one thing, for which he would reward her handsomely. Upon this she declared her readiness to serve him in anything he pleased. "For you know," she added, "it is my business ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... any harm." "I am sure, however," replied Leonora, "I should not have laughed if I had——" "No, to be sure you wouldn't, because Louisa is your favourite. I can buy her another mandarin the next time that old pedlar comes to the door, if that's all. I can do no more. Can I?" said she, turning round to her companions. "No, to be sure," said ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... fair-spoken man, very attentive to the main chance, and the idol of the old women, because he never played at skittles or danced with the girls; and, indeed, never took any recreation but that of drinking on Saturday nights with his friend Harry, the Scotch pedlar. His supporters called him Sweet William; his enemies the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... towards Devizes, he overtook a Scotch pedlar. Dyer it seems knew him, and called him by his name, asking him if he had any good handkerchiefs, upon which the poor man let down the pack off his back and showed him several. Dyer told him, after looking over the goods, that he ...
— 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
... is a painting of a man with a dog on one of the windows. In reference to this, we learn by tradition that a piece of ground near Westminster Bridge, containing one acre and nineteen roods (named Pedlar's Acre), was left to this parish by a pedlar, upon condition that his picture, and that of the dog, should be perpetually preserved on painted glass on one of the windows of the church, which the parishioners ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... this same year of 1740 Mr. Waite says that "an itinerant pedlar of the Royal Arch degree is said to have propagated it in Ireland, claiming that it was practised at York and London,"[359] and in 1744 a certain Dr. Dassigny wrote that the minds of the Dublin brethren had been lately disturbed ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... from door to door by the paupers from the Workhouse, by pedlars driving dog carts, or by gipsies, and the trade of match-makers obtained the dignified title of "Carvers and Gilders." At by-ways where a tramp, a pedlar, or a pauper, did not reach, paterfamilias, or materfamilias, became "carver and gilder" to the household, and made their own matches. In one case I find the Royston Parish Authorities setting up one of the paupers with a supply of wood "to make ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... such substance as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak: 'She had a face as long as a wet week' Said he, telling the tale in after years. With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears, Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall. As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times. On sleepless ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... that I did not lose my Virgil after all. Here it is on the table as I write, still the dearest of all my books. On each side of the healing an irregular curve of teeth-marks cuts into the yellowing parchment. Dear, brave Cherry-Cheeks sent it home by the hands of a vagrom pedlar, laboriously and exactly writing on the package the inscription she found on the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the other prisoners) was one John Williams, an Irishman, whom he found on board the Spanish vessel. Williams was a Papist, who worked his passage from Cadiz, and had travelled over all the kingdom of Mexico as a pedlar. He pretended that by this business he got 4,000 or 5,000 dollars; but that he was embarrassed by the priests, who knew he had money, and was at last stripped of all he had. He was, indeed, at present all in rags, being but just got out ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... much frightened; for she knew that the glass always spoke the truth, and was sure that the servant had betrayed her. And she could not bear to think that anyone lived who was more beautiful than she was; so she dressed herself up as an old pedlar, and went her way over the hills, to the place where the dwarfs dwelt. Then she knocked at the door, and cried, 'Fine wares to sell!' Snowdrop looked out at the window, and said, 'Good day, good woman! what have you to sell?' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... "And the night I had my match there with the Pedlar, when I'd spent my last bean on a month's trainin' expenses, and the Pedlar's backer was wavin' a thousand-dollar side bet under my nose, this Mr. Blickens chucked me his roll and told me to ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... pedlar's pack to carry through Vanity Fair; but how good for us to turn aside into some of Nature's holy places which she keeps so fair and sweet and untainted, and to take a long draught of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Tzetzes, in which are some amusing specimens of those felicities of language Longinus is here laughing at. Stones are the "bones," rivers the "veins," of the earth; the moon is "the sigma of the sky" ((lunate Sigma) the old form of (Sigma)); sailors, "the ants of ocean"; the strap of a pedlar's pack, "the girdle of his load"; pitch, "the ointment of doors," ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... had bought at last Lammas fair; then she recollected that red was an unlucky color, and changed it for a blue ribbon, tied in a true lover's knot; but suddenly calling to mind that poor Jacob had bought this knot for her of a pedlar at the door, and that she had promised to wear it for his sake, her heart smote her, and she laid it by, sighing to think she was not fated to marry the man who ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... and sounds, Past English church-bells ringing, The Turkish watchman on his rounds, The Turkish pedlar singing Through narrow streets above the sea ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... which we quite believed. There were other people beside the gentleman at the hall who made great profit by marrying people, both at Springfield and Gretna, and a list of operators, dated from the year 1720, included a soldier, shoemaker, weaver, poacher, innkeeper, toll-keeper, fisherman, pedlar, and other tradesmen. But the only blacksmith who acted in that capacity was a man named Joe Paisley, who died in 1811 aged seventy-nine years. His motto was, "Strike while the iron's hot," and he boasted that he could weld the parties together as firmly ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? ''Twas just the same as though one hadn't his wits about him!' Listen. I'll tell the tale to you ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his admiration in his own peculiar way: peasants point with their fingers; soldiers gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and blackguard apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... some ingenious blacksmith, I fancy. But it had fairly good shooting qualities—several times I brought down wild pigeons from the tree tops with it. Rabbits, gray squirrels, partridges, also fell before it. I bought it of a pedlar for three dollars, paying on the instalment plan, with money made out ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... know what is a modern constitution—it is the credit of a charlatan—it is the stock of a political pedlar, made only for sale to simpletons—it is an umbrella, to be taken down when it rains—it is a surtout in summer, and nakedness in winter. It is, in short, a contrivance, to make a reputation for a sciolist, and to govern mankind on the principles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... certainly breaks down as a whole. The Solitary of The Excursion, who has not been cured of his scepticism by living among the medicinal mountains, is, so far as we can see, equally proof against the lectures of Pedlar and Parson. Wordsworth apparently felt that this would be so, and accordingly never saw his way clear to finishing the poem. But the treatment, whether a panacea or not, is certainly wholesome inasmuch ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... months dreary work. There were no banquets in hall, nor shows came to the Castle, nor even so much as a pedlar, that we children saw; only the same every-day round, and tired enough we were of it. All the music we ever heard was in our lessons from Piers le Sautreour; and if ever child loved her music lessons, her name was not Agnes de Mortimer. ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... had thought like enough to go farther up that morning, seeing he'd come so far, wanting, maybe, to see if all the place was quite deserted, if it could be true every man on the place was gone. But seeing these pedlar-folk so set on going on, it hinders him, and he tells them again and again they're mad to try. Aronsen is furious himself, marches down in front of the caravan, turning round and shouting at them, barking at them, trying to keep them out of his ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dance, in its twisting and turning, disclosed a soiled stocking, the typical Jewish features of a street pedlar of sponges, red fingers protruding from black mitts, a swarthy moustached face, an under-petticoat soiled with the mud of night before last, a second-hand-skirt, stiff and crumpled, of flowered calico, the cast-off finery of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a little alarming. As the Chelsea sage investigated the philosophy of clothes, so Mr. Ashby-Sterry has set himself to discover the poetry of petticoats, and seems to find much consolation in the thought that, though art is long, skirts are worn short. He is the only pedlar who has climbed Parnassus since ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Teezle. "Square Peasley seen a light, and heerd a gugglin' groan where the pedlar had his throat ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... not habitual eaters of mullo balor, or 'dead pork;' they do not devour everything like dogs. We cannot ascertain that the Jat is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket-maker, a rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a pedlar. We do not know whether they are peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to old age, as do pure-blood English Gipsies. All of these things are, however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... when he was back, she thought she owed it to herself to grow a haunter of the neighbourhood of Durrisdeer. The Master could scarce go abroad but she was there in wait for him; a scandalous figure of a woman, not often sober; hailing him wildly as "her bonny laddie," quoting pedlar's poetry, and, as I receive the story, even seeking to weep upon his neck. I own I rubbed my hands over this persecution; but the Master, who laid so much upon others, was himself the least patient of men. There were strange scenes enacted in the policies. Some say he took his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... method in getting passengers and their baggage off the wharf and into boats and on board was almost incredible....[38] There was a vein of amusement, I remember, when I can get my mind off the annoying parts of our "Embarkation." I got a chanter from a Chinese pedlar in the street in the morning—heard the unmistakeable reedy notes coming along the street as I did business in the the cool office of Messrs Cook & Co., and leaving papers and monies went and met the smiling Chinese pedlar of sweetmeats who sold me his chanter. The position of the notes ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Nurses provided, 2. Hospital tickets, 26. Sent to Consumption Sanatorium, 1. Twenty-nine persons, whose cases being chronic, were referred to the Poor Law Guardians. Work found for 19 persons. (Cheers.) Pedlar's licences, 4. Dispensary tickets, 24. Bedding redeemed, 1. Loans granted to people to enable them to pay their rent, 8. (Loud cheers.) Dental tickets, 2. Railway fares for men who were going away from the town to employment elsewhere, 12. (Great cheering.) Loans granted, 5. Advertisements for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... greater, value, though of quite a different character. With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends. Let them calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of the young Brahmachari at Dehradun. Those who were present when the statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... always hovering round inventions like a bee over a flower, and lived in a dream of patents. He had with him a patent medicine, for instance, the composition of which he had bought years ago for five dollars from an American pedlar, and sold the other day for a hundred pounds (I think it was) to an English apothecary. It was called Golden Oil; cured all maladies without exception; and I am bound to say that I partook of it myself with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the country. He is pedlar mans. He walk und he walk und he walk mit all things what is stylish in a box. On'y nobody wants they should buy somethings from off of my papa. No ma'an, Missis Bailey, that ain't how they makes mit my poor papa. They goes und makes dogs should bite him on the legs. That's how he ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... loyall man (If England ere bred any), He bang'd the pedlar back and side, Of Scots he killed many. Had General King (21) done what he should, And given the blew-caps battail, Wee'd make them all run into Tweed By droves, like sommer cattell. The King sent ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... perceive a boat crossing the river ahead of me; nor was it till my boat's nose struck her full in the side that I was aware of the obstacle. The man and woman in the boat (which seemed to be a floating pedlar's shop plying among the ships), swore at me roundly, and I had much ado to persuade them that no harm was done, and that if any one had a right to complain, I had. I was rowing on, to put an end to the parley, when my eye caught sight ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Dervish pedlar or merchant trading with the tribes of the Soudan, who slips into Wadi Halfa or Assouan or Suakin and undertakes the work. Of course his risk is great. He would have short shrift in Omdurman if his business were detected. So it is not to ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Captain Whittier, human nature is pretty strong. If a pedlar comes along here with ribbons and fal-lals, and offers them to the girls at half the price at which they could buy them down at Poole, you can hardly expect them to take lofty ground, and charge the man with ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.—What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burtonheath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen- pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt |
