"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to plead guilty to forgery, who had robbed a poor woman of every farthing she possessed, who was to pass years, perhaps, in prison, really her father? Who had been sometimes so affectionate to them all, always so loving and indulgent to her; who had sat in the square family pew with them all on the Sunday morning, and said grace every day at meals; who had often told them funny tales, shouting with laughter over his own jokes; who had banged the tambourine and joined in Sir Roger de Coverley only a few ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... it's realism they want I'm still waiting to see something more realistic than Pew or Long John Silver. Realism may depend as truly on a blind man's tap with his stick upon the ground as on any ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... said the doctor, lowering his tone in imitation of Eleanor's—"I shall be happy to be your instructor. I have been that, in some sort, ever since you were five years old—a little tot down in your mother's pew, sitting under my ministrations. What is it, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... with you this afternoon. With all my heart, said my master. I was sorry for it; but was resolved my duty should not be made second to bashfulness, or any other consideration; and when divine service began, I withdrew to the farther end of the pew, and left the gentlemen in the front, and they behaved quite suitably, both of them, to the occasion. I mention this the rather, because Mr. Martin was not very noted for coming to church, or attention ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Lisbeth or the lassie's staying at home with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children besides the baby, and being but a woman, it was the pride of her life to march them into the T'nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared not disbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. The congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his pew, the first one on the right, close to the choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and Raphaele, Rosa the Jade, and the two pumps occupied the second seat, in company ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... spoke nor moved. He could not. Deep floods were surging through him. For one brief moment he saw in vision a little ivy-coloured church in its environment of quiet country lanes in far-away England, and in the church, the family pew, where sat a man stern and strong, a woman beside him and two little boys, one, the younger, holding her hand as they sat. Then with swift change of scene he saw a queer, rude, wooden church in the raw frontier town in ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... situation, station; fundament, buttocks, bottom, breech; chair, sofa, tete-a-tete, divan, settee; banquette, dickey, rumble; bench, form; pew. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... parish; and an omen of the dule that ensued, was in a sacrilegious theft that a daft woman, Jenny Gaffaw, and her idiot daughter, did in the kirk, by tearing off and stealing the green serge lining of my lord's pew, to make, as they said, a hap for their shoulders in the cold weather—saving, however, the sin, we paid no attention at the time to the mischief and tribulation that so unheard-of a trespass boded to us all. It took place about Yule, when the weather was cold and frosty, and poor Jenny was ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... everybody that they were a county family, and they didn't look like it. They were too large and coarse, and took up far too much room. There they sat, six big creatures in one pew, all restless, all with big chins, hard eyes, jutting eyebrows, and a dreadful look as if they were buccaneering. As a matter of fact they all felt rather timid and flat, and meant to behave beautifully, though Sir Peter needn't have blown his nose like a trumpet ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... who passed, and as quickly pricked a mark against his name on the chapel lists. As the freshman went by, they made a careful study of his person, and took mental daguerreotypes of his features. Seeing no beadle, or pew-opener (or, for the matter of that, any pews), or any one to direct him to a place, Mr. Verdant Green quietly took a seat in the first place that he found empty, which happened to be the stall ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... adorned with white ribbons, a straw hat with many flowers and feathers, and to finish off her costume, her gloves and shoes and sunshade were white. As these cool colours rather toned down the extreme red of her healthy complexion, she really looked very well; and when Gabriel saw her seated in a pew near the pulpit, behaving as demurely as a cat that is after cream, he could not but think how pretty and pious she was. It was probably the first time that piety had ever been associated with Bell's ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of the ruin, two rafters had fallen crosswise, and protected a clear space no larger than a pew in church. Into this the lads silently lowered themselves. There they were perfectly concealed, and through an arrow loophole commanded a view upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He had no time for such trivialities. Fox-hunting, horse-breeding, and kennel lore were his vocation. He rode straight, lived hard, exercised such creative faculties as he had on his work, and found it very good. Three times a year he stated in the Undern pew at Wolfbatch that he intended to continue leading a godly, righteous, and sober life. At these times, with amber lights from the windows playing over his well-shaped head, his rather heavy face looked, as the Miss Clombers ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the pastor's pew, And prayed for self-forgetfulness With deep humility, she knew She gave her figure and her dress To careful eyes ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... years—or a thousand for that matter—count as one day, it is that throughout his life he detested stained-glass. Through this very window, indeed, now obscured ad majorem gloriam Dei et in memoriam Johannis Unonii medicinae doctoris, he loved—for it faced his pew—to watch during sermon-time the blue sky, the clouds, the rooks at their business in the churchyard elms. He has even recorded (in an essay on 'Visions' read before the Tregantick Literary and Scientific Society ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to the kirk on the Sabbath, and sat, not in the minister's pew, but in the very seat where Allison used to sit with her father and her mother and Willie before trouble came. And when the silence was broken by the minister's voice saying: "Oh! Thou who art mighty to save!" did not her heart respond joyfully to the words? ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... assembled and met together, five-and- twenty strong, was not that Her voice that shot like light into the darkest places, thrilling the walls and pillars as though they were pieces of his heart! What time, too, Madame Dor in a corner of the high pew, turning her back upon everybody and everything, could not fail to be Ritualistically right at some moment of the service; like the man whom the doctors recommended to get drunk once a month, and who, that he might not overlook it, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... life have I conceived what might have been, if I had had the skill to paint it, an immortal picture. It was thus. I was attending a Christmas morning service in a big parish church. I was in a pew facing east; close to me, in a transept, in a pew facing sideways, there sat a little old woman, who had hurried in just before the service began. She was a widow, living, I afterwards learnt, in an almshouse hard by. She was old and feeble, very poor, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drop of this luetin be introduced beneath the skin of a child who has inherited the disease, or of a person who has suffered from its obscurer symptoms, there may be produced a "reaction." This may take the form of "a large, indurated, reddish papule" which in a pew days become of a dark, bluish-red colour; or the inflammation may be of a severer type, resulting in a "pustule." A positive result is more frequently obtained when the disease is of long standing, or comparatively inactive. But may not this "reaction" occur in every case, whether or ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... vargueno, vitrine. chamber, apartment, room, cabin; office, court, hall, atrium; suite of rooms, apartment [U.S.], flat, story; saloon, salon, parlor; by-room, cubicle; presence chamber; sitting room, best room, keeping room, drawing room, reception room, state room; gallery, cabinet, closet; pew, box; boudoir; adytum, sanctum; bedroom, dormitory; refectory, dining room, salle-a-manger; nursery, schoolroom; library, study; studio; billiard room, smoking room; den; stateroom, tablinum, tenement. [room for defecation and urination] bath room, bathroom, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... deal of free inquiry at Homerton Academy, which, however, Mr. Fox assured me, gradually subsided into the right amount of orthodoxy as the time came for the student to exchange his sure and safe retreat for the fiery ordeal of the deacon and the pew. My father and Johnson Fox had been fellow-students, and for some time corresponded together. The correspondence in due time, however, naturally ceased, as it was chiefly controversial, and nothing can be more irksome than for two people who have ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... subject, and a few minutes later he was following her rustling skirts up the broad centre aisle to the pew four rows back from the pulpit. He wished it had not been so far forward, because the worshippers interested him, if only by reason of their sameness of type. You could see they were all people of position, with regular incomes and ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... hair and sky-blue eyes, and a doll's face? Does she sit in the pew under the reading-desk with three other dolls?" ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the piece was endangered. This reminds one of Mr. A. Ward's account of a high-handed outrage at "Utiky," where a young gentleman of good family stove in the wax head of "Jewdas Iscarrit," characterizing him at the same time as a "pew-serlanimous cuss." ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... column-like straight up to a lucent green canopy, always twinkling and shifting in the wind and the sunlight. Below grew a thin screen of underbrush, through which we had no difficulty at all in pushing, but which threw about us face-high a tender green partition. The effect was that of a pew in an old-fashioned church, so that, though we shared the upper stillnesses, a certain delightful privacy of our own seemed assured us. This privacy we knew to be assured also to many creatures besides ourselves. On the other side of the screen of broad leaves ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... to put his rifle in its accustomed place, and on seeing the chamber filled with the various paraphernalia of a woman's toilet, he started, with the exclamation, "What the deuce! I reckon I've got into the wrong pew," and was going away, when Mabel called him back. "Meb, you here?" said he. "You in this little tucked-up hole, that I always thought too small for me and my ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... curl outside her bonnet on each side of her face. Her bonnet was tied under her chin with a green ribbon, and she had a little feathery green wreath around her face inside the rim. Her wide silk skirt was shot with green and blue, and rustled as she walked up the aisle to her pew. People stared after her without knowing why. There was no tangible change in her appearance. She had worn that same green shot silk many Sabbaths; her bonnet was three summers old; the curls drooping on her cheeks were ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... found that the unfortunate recollection of the Pew-Opener had awakened in his young pupil a melancholy train of reflections, seemed now to compassionate the sadness which hitherto he had reproved, and walking silently by her side till she came to Soho-Square, said in accents of kindness, "Peace light ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... mother, as her husband brushed his thin gray hair in front of his chiffonier, while the merry sound of their children's voices came floating down to them through open doors, "thank the dear Lord for me in my stead when you sit in the pew to-day. I'll be with you in my thoughts. It's such a blessed thing that our little middle girl is at home ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... and his family were in their pew and the minister was speaking. Prescott paused a few moments at the entrance to the aisle. No one paid any attention to him; soldiers were too common a sight to be noticed. He felt in the inside pocket ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... his mother was at church, but the matter was so urgent that he went straight to the pew and brought her out, which caused even the minister to pause in his sermon and made all the congregation look surprised. Kit took her home, packed her box and bundled her into the coach which the Stranger brought, and away they went ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... he had not withstood the eye-attack and he surrendered at discretion, compromising on a receipt for the pew-rent. Thus the small matter of business was concluded; but Miss Margery was not yet ready to go. From St. John's and its affairs official she passed deftly to the junior warden of St. John's and his affairs personal. Was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... one feels himself so abundantly at home, we enter the church. From the depths of this thicket of lights, the good priest murmurs the great infinite speech to us, blesses us, embraces us severally and altogether, like father and mother both. In the manorial pew, the foremost of all, one glimpses the Marquis of Monthyon, who has the air of an officer, and his mother-in-law, Baroness Grille, who is ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... little fussy about his hat in church, and so it was that Malcolm and Mrs. Godfrey were still in their places when the Jacobis passed their pew. Malcolm seized his opportunity and looked well at Miss Jacobi, but she did not ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Lady Roehampton never absent on a Sunday, and their carriages, it was whispered, were often suspiciously near to St. Rosicrucius on week-days. Mr. Sidney Wilton too was frequently in Lady Roehampton's pew, and one day, absolutely my lord himself, who unfortunately was rarely seen at church—but then, as is well known, critical despatches always arrive on a Sunday morning—was successfully landed in her pew by Lady Roehampton, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... at last. The minister had listened to it in perfect silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,—still, and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Venners had a pew in the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr. Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there enough capital of humanity in his somewhat limited nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... to the Duke. And first calling upon Mr. Coventry at his chamber, I went to the Duke's bed-side, who had sat up late last night, and lay long this morning. This being done, I went to chapel, and sat in Mr. Blagrave's pew, and there did sing my part along with another before the King, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... recollection of his first appearance there. He did not accompany the Deckers, nor did he go into their pew, but came in as the service commenced, and took a seat quietly in one of the back-pews. By some mysterious instinct, his presence became presently known to the congregation, some of whom so far forgot themselves, in their ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... exhibit themselves in becoming costume. If a bazaar were held, their ready-money was always forthcoming. At flower shows, galas, croquet parties, they challenged comparison with all who were not confessedly of the Dunfield elite. They regularly adorned their pew in the parish church, were liberal at offertories, exerted themselves, not without expense, in the Sunday school feast, and the like. How—cried all Dunfield—how in the name of wonder was ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... coat and great peruke, to see that my tenants' cottages be sound and wholesome, to pat the touzled heads o' the children, bless 'em! And to have word with every soul i' the village. To snooze i' my great pew o' Sundays and, dying at last, snug abed, to leave behind me a kindly memory. And what for you, Martin? What see you ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... to church that night, after they had had their supper. It was a big, comfortable, and roomy church, and the lads were shown into a corner pew under the gallery, where they were not conspicuous. The music of choir and organ was soothing and comforting. One of the tunes sung was "Dundee," and each boy thought of their singing the song of "The Kansas Emigrants," as the warbling measures drifted down to them from the organ-loft, lifting ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... could be mentioned—if there was anything to mention—they arrived at the porch of the church, passed under it without speaking, walked up the aisle and took their places in the family pew, Maria occupying the comfortable ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... their lace ruffles, and their high crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap! And oft-times the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... observed, 'this wealthy young man will take an entire pew.' (The annual auction of rented pews was soon to come off, and Mr. Myrtle liked marvellously to see strong competition. It ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... any private affairs; he's a public character. There!" she laughed, as she poured the coffee, "I mustn't discourage you. But don't you see that every mother's son—and, for that matter, every daughter and children's child unto the third and fourth generation—feel that, so long as they pay pew rent or put a cent in the collection, they own a share in you. And we always keep a watch on our investments down this way. That's the Yankee shrewdness you read so much about, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... been into the church before, and was struck with the fine windows, and the monuments of the Guiscards, and the famous tomb of the Crusader in the wall of the chancel pew where they sat; and all through the service she gazed at his carven face, so exactly like Tristram's, with ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... corners like an old-fashioned four-posted bed. Sometimes two feet above the top of the woodwork there were brass rods on which slender curtains ran, and were usually drawn during sermon time in order that the attention of the occupants of the pew might not be distracted from devout meditations on the preacher's discourse—or was it to woo slumber? A Berkshire dame rather admired these old-fashioned pews, wherein, as she naively expressed it, "a body might sleep comfortable without all ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... heard him breathlessly; they loved his simple, Irish common sense. He held them in the hollow of his hands. The half hour allotted had been reached, and his story was told, and yet, not fully told. For a moment he paused, while his eyes sought a happy face in the nearest pew. Belle gently drew her watch. Mindful of their careful plan, he stopped at the signal, raised his hands, and said, "Let us pray." With one great sigh, the congregation kneeled before him, and with ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... evening that the Mayor's office of Glendale had reeked of brimstone, for hours, and the next Sunday Aunt Augusta sat in their pew at church, militantly alone, while he occupied a seat in the farthest limits of the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... festoons of evergreens, conjuring him the while not to disappoint our hopes, but to take Richmond. Alas! you may know, by this time, that he can't; but in lack of news since a week ago, I can but hope for the best. I've taken a pew and we contrive to squeeze into it in this wise: first a child, then a mother, then a child, then an Annie, then a child, the little ones being stowed in the cracks left between us big ones. Mr. R., the parson, looking fit to go straight into his grave, was up here to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... counter object of attention for the gay worshippers in the side pew. A little woman in black came hurrying up the aisle and entered the seat before them. She put down on the narrow shelf her prayer-book and a tumbled red handkerchief, and then bowed her head. Suddenly, in the midst of her devotions, she hastily withdrew the offending radical handkerchief, and substituted ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... itself, and which (horresco referens) I did not in the least scruple to seize, occurred at the Church of the Reverend Doctor Drummummupp, where I found myself established, one Sunday, just at sermon time, not only in the pew, but by the side, of that worthy and communicative little friend of mine, Miss Tabitha T. Thus seated, I congratulated myself, and with much reason, upon the very flattering state of affairs. If any person knew anything about Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith, that person, it was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... present to the living; and I am not at all sure that I shall let George have it. He is fond of processions, and all that stuff. The only procession in the Church of England is that of the lord of the manor to his pew. I will be the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to whom life was a very pretty thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he must have pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope for the making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped him like a church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's only friend, but Prosper's ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... joining audibly in the responses, and keeping his eyes pretty steadily on the prayer-book, which he found lying there. He even rebuked Huckaback for whispering (during one of the most solemn parts of the service) that "there was an uncommon pretty gal in the next pew!"—He thought that the clergyman was a remarkable fine preacher, and said some things that he must have meant for ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... six-year term on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange beginning in 1997. He currently serves on many public policy and organizational boards, including as Chair of the Pew Oceans Commission and Co-Chair of the California Council ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... we get a front pew," said Allerdyke. "Hurry up, and let's be off! Our best plan," he went on as they made for a cab, "will be to get as near the platform as possible, so that I can make certain sure this is the woman I saw at Howden yesterday morning—when I positively ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... her two younger boys that he could avoid thinking of Barbara. There was a busy exchange of presents after dinner, and next day he accompanied his parents to church, as he had done for five and twenty years, finding peace and a welcome in the worm-eaten pew, the cobwebbed window, the top-heavy decorations and the familiar musty books. The state prayers were invoked therein on behalf of "Victoria, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales and all the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... increased; but he said no more. "My bre—thren!" responded he a second time; his teeth chattered louder; his cheeks became clammy and death-like. "My brethren!" stammered he a third time emphatically, and his knees fell together. A deep groan echoed from his mother's pew. His wildness increased. "My mother!" exclaimed the preacher. They were the last words he ever uttered in a pulpit. The shaking and the agony began in his heart, and his body caught the contagion. He covered his face with his hands, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... see the front of her dress—she wore a very floppy scarlet teagown—rising and falling rapidly in the intensity of her passion. I understood more or less what she felt. If God is at all what we think He is, sublime, then there is something a little grotesque about requiring a cushioned pew, a good system of heating and a nice fat footstool as aids to communion with Him. Yet I am not convinced that man is incapable of the highest emotion when his body is at ease. Some degree of physical comfort seems to be required if the excursions of the soul are to be successful. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... preached a sermon in Hawaiian, I, not understanding a word, looked at the side pews where the old folks sat, and tried to picture the life they had known in their youth, when the great Kamehameha reigned. In the pew next to the side door sat Mr. Sea-shore, straight and solemn as a deacon, and his wife, a fat old woman with a face that looked as if it had been carved out of knotty mahogany, but which was irradiated with an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Mr. Fraser's breast. All three horses reared at the report and flash, and Mr. Fraser fell dead on the ground. Karim galloped off, followed at a short distance by the trooper, and the two peons went off and gave information to Major Pew and Cornet Robinson, who resided near the place. They came in all haste to the spot, and had the body taken to the deceased's own house; but no signs of life remained. They reported the murder to the magistrate, and the city gates ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... prayed, an' they sang, i' ther owd fashioned way, Until a gert chap says, "I've summat to say;" An', bi t'heart, I'st a fallen dahn sick i' mi pew, But I thowt at toan hawf he sed worn't trew; Fer he charged Parson Ball wi' bein' drunk i't'street, 'At he'd been put ta bed three times i' ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... hard times these are indeed with the Church," he informs the promoters of this ecclesiastical benefit, "to send her to the playhouse to gather pew-money. For shame, gentlemen! go to the Church and pay your money there, and never let the playhouse have such a claim to its establishment as to say the Church is beholden to her.... Can our Church be in danger? How is it possible? The whole nation is solicitous and at work for ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... childish. She dropped her bouquet as we went towards the vestry. She was passing the front pew at the time, and it fell over into the pew. There was a moment's delay, but the gentleman in the pew handed it up to her again, and it did not appear to be the worse for the fall. Yet when I spoke to her of the matter, she answered me abruptly; and in the carriage, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Meanwhile he continued to thrive, and one of the old-fashioned New England families of ten children gathered about him. As they grew towards maturity, he bought a share in the Library Association, built a pew for his family in the church, and comported himself in all ways as became a prosperous farmer and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... own favourite daughter; for indeed there can be no doubt, as Mrs. Pigeon asserted vigorously, that a substantial grocer, whose father before him had established an excellent business, and who had paid for his pew in Salem as long as any one could recollect, and supported every charity, and paid up on all occasions when extra expense was necessary, was in every way a more desirable son-in-law than a poor minister who was always dependent on pleasing the chapel folks, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... she said once, 'I can't pray in the meeting-house with my eyes shut—I can't, I can't. I seem to know what they're all wishing for when they pray,—for more riches, and more comfort, and more security, and more importance. And God is such a long way off. I can't feel Him, and the pew hurts my back.' She used to read me some, out of a book of poetry, and one verse I got by heart—I guess her prayers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an almost general unrest. For when he sat down in one of the pews, every one of the peasants seated in it moved along to the extreme farther end, and when he moved along toward them they finally deserted the pew altogether. This moving along and getting up was repeated in three or four pews, so that the aristocratic gentleman, who was attending this little country service with the best of intentions, was finally obliged to give ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... The squire's pew was one of the old-fashioned high ones, and Milly's head did not reach the top of it. Very quiet and silent she was during the service, and very particular to follow her uncle's example in every respect, though she nearly upset his gravity at the outset by taking off her hat in ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... of the neighboring people of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, furnished with richly-gilded prayer-books, and decorated with their arms upon the pew doors; of the villagers and peasantry, who filled the back seats and a small gallery beside the organ; and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... rank, employments, and rate of pay. The rows of seats were all marked with the class of employers that were expected to sit in them. Labourers were near the door. The others were in successive rows forward, until the pew of the "Admiral Superintendent," next the Altar rails, was reached. I took my seat among the "artificers," being of that order. On coming out of church the master-attendant, next in dignity to the admiral-superintendent, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... went in one of the pews which the lady had pointed out to him. Then he remembered that in his haste, he had forgotten to take his hat with him. He proceeded to fetch it. The lady who was occupying the pew with her husband and daughter handed him his hat, ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North Church. The chime of eight bells naively stating, "We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America"; the pew with the inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of Honduras"—visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in 1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... of the women attached to this office, if your lady is too wideawake or too nice-looking to be dealt with by a man. There will be cab hire, and postage-stamps—admissions to public amusements, if she is inclined that way—shillings for pew-openers, if she is serious, and takes our people into churches to hear popular preachers, and so on. My own professional services you shall have gratis; but I can't lose by you as well. Only remember that, and you shall have your way. By-gones shall be by-gones, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and confident of ingress, boldly rang the bell. Unfortunately, Elsie chanced that day to be on post as sentinel, and, though she immediately recognized the visitor as the mother of the small colony of Spiewells who crowded every Sunday morning into the pew of the pastor, she courtesied, and gave ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... qualify as notaries. In addition to the title of "Sieur," baronies are created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms emblazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... end of the palace is the Cathedral San Giovanni Battista. To the left of the altar is the pew of the royal family. Behind the altar, and approached by two staircases of 37 steps each, is the Cappella del Sudario (open till 9 A.M.), acircular chapel, separated from the church by a glass screen. It was built by Guarini in 1694, and ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... neighbour's was. And I knew another to whom God had given health and plenty; but a wife that nature had made peevish, and her husband's riches had made purse- proud; and must, because she was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a law-suit with a dogged neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... so happened that although Theodore had been for years a member of the same Sabbath-school with this young lady, and had seen her sitting in the Hastings' pew in church on every Sabbath day, still this was the first time that he had met her face to face, near enough to speak to her, since that evening so long ago when they conversed together on a momentous subject. Theodore's ...
— Three People • Pansy
... came on the air a cracking sound, and one of the boards which served the purpose of a pew broke in the centre and came down with a crash, precipitating nearly half a score of buxom, screaming girls into a promiscuous heap upon the floor. This was too much for Fernando. He could not but attribute the disaster ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is, if you had all the churches ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... criticism or archaeology or any of the departments of scientific research into the subject-matter of religion. Most of my readers will understand quite well what I mean. Everyone knows that, broadly speaking, certain ways of stating Christian truth are taken for granted both in pulpit and pew; the popular or generally accepted theology of all the churches of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant alike, is fundamentally the same, and somehow the modern mind has come to distrust it. There is a curious want of harmony between our ordinary views of life ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... groom receives the bride from her father's hand. The latter steps back a few paces, but remains near enough to "give away the bride." When this point in the ceremony has been passed, the father quietly joins the mother in the front pew. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient. This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain. I will mention some facts. Mr. Pew had one of these writs, and when Mr. Ware succeeded him, he endorsed this writ over to Mr. Ware; so that these writs are negotiable from one officer to another; and so your honors have no opportunity of judging the persons to whom this vast power is delegated. Another ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... very satisfactory, even to myself. In the first place I belonged to another branch of the church; then I had only one leg and could not kneel at the altar, and would have felt while standing something like a beggar in dirty rags in a fine pew among silks and satins; then again I would have lost my influence over many of my fellow-prisoners. I may have been wrong in all this, but as I once said to my fellow-prisoners when appealed to on the subject of religion, "There are only three cardinal points in my religious belief, and these are ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... behind his niece and Mrs. Dunn up the center aisle to the Warren pew. He wrote his housekeeper afterwards that he estimated that aisle to be "upwards of two mile long. And my Sunday shoes had a separate squeak for ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... singing-seats the fiddle and the bass—viol formed the sole link (and an unconscious one) between the simple song-service of the Puritan meeting-house and the orchestral accompaniments to the high masses of European cathedrals. The men still sat at the end of the pew—a custom which had grown up in the days when they went to the meeting-house gun in hand, not knowing when they should be hastily summoned forth to fight the Indians. In the earliest days the drum was the martial summons to worship, but soon European bells sent forth their milder call. Behind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... had just left, but he saw a few persons entering, and he joined them. The interior of the church was far more gorgeous than the plain village meeting-house which he had been accustomed to attend with his mother. He gazed about him with a feeling of awe, and sank quietly into a back pew. As it was a week-day evening, and nothing of unusual interest was anticipated, there were but few present, here and there one, scattered ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... salary was made up by pew-rents; but pew-rents are, according to James ii. 1-6, against the mind of the Lord, as, in general, the poor brother cannot have so good a seat as the rich. 2. A brother may gladly do something towards my support if left ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... loftily. "Prayer-meeting isn't on Sunday. Besides, I sat away at the back in a dark seat and nobody saw me. You were sitting right up front where every one saw you. And I took the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of the pew right up in front where every one saw you. And I took the gum out of my mouth for the last hymn and stuck it on the back of the pew in front of me. Then I came away and forgot it. I went back to get it next morning, but it was gone. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Chapel, at the corner of Tremont and School streets, is a most interesting landmark, which was completed in 1753. Entering, you find a decidedly old-fashioned atmosphere in the high-backed, square pews and handsome decorations. George Washington's pew will be pointed out ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... early in their pew, and the Twins watched the other worshipers as they came slowly up the aisle and took their places before time for the service to begin. Sandy winked at them most indecorously across the church, but his mother poked him to remind him of his duty, and he sent no more silent messages ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... man struck him on the nose, knocked him down, kicked him in the ear, and when pulled off by a policeman, he said no holyghoster could call his dead father names, not around him. The minister said he couldn't have been more surprised if some one had paid a year's pew rent, than he was when that ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... changes now," said Ezra, "an' seems as if I wuz in the old frame meetin'-house. The meetin'-house is on the hill, and meetin' begins at half-pas' ten. Our pew is well up in front,—seems as if I could see it now. It has a long red cushion on the seat, and in the hymn-book rack there is a Bible an' a couple of Psalmodies. We walk up the aisle slow, and Mother goes in first; then comes Mary, then me, then Helen, then Amos, and then Father. ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... in the dim pulpit at the other end a man was speaking. Elizabeth dropped breathlessly and embarrassed into the pew nearest the door. She had no idea what this gathering was for or who the speaker was. Mrs. Jarvis attended the regular Sunday morning services in St. Stephen's, whenever a headache did not prevent, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... beholding her admirer (for that everybody admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt) in the next pew to her at St. James's Church last Sunday; and the manner in which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon—though from under his fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful rapture towards Jocasta—deeply moved and interested her. On coming out of church, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... always remember as a day of smells, the smell of the pew-cushions in the empty church, the smell of the lilies-of-the-valley, that dear, sweet, scatter-brained Fanny-Rain-In-The-Face (she rushed to town an hour after getting my wire) insisted on carrying, the smell of the leather in the damp taxi, the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... following my awakening I had no care for sounds outside, no eyes for my bouquets, though they stood at either hand of the pulpit; I got permission to sit in Aunt Keren's pew, where I could see Aunt Em'ly's face; and all through the sermon I studied it with ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Perpendicular moulding, window, Christchurch, Oxford Diagram of a manor Ancient plan of Old Sarum A Norman castle Tournament A monk transcribing Ockwells manor-house Richmond Palace Doorway and staircase, Ufton Court The porch, Ufton Court Window of south wing, Ufton Court Ancient pew-work, Tysoe Church, Warwickshire Early English screen, Thurcaston, Leicestershire Norman piscina, Romsey Church, Hants Lowside window, Dallington Church, Northamptonshire Reading-pew, seventeenth century, Langley Chapel, Salop. Chalice and paten, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... you will mind some friends of Miss Avies sitting with you in your pew to-morrow evening. She has especially asked—two of them ... ladies, I believe. But it seems that there will be something of a crowd, and as your pew is always half empty— He would not have asked except that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... parts of his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge. To complete ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... so, for it has been pulled down to make room for the Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. When I did not dine there, I attended a quaint survival of last century's coffee-houses in Glasshouse Street: Tall, pew-like boxes, wooden tables without table-cloths, panelled walls; an excellent menu of chops, steaks, fried eggs, sausages, and other British products. Once the resort of bucks and Macaronis, Ford's coffee-house I found frequented by a strange ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... this church the individuals whose place was in the pew must not be forgotten. The minister passes from church to church; the layman remains. In hurried review there comes to mind Alethea Tanner, who rescued the church when it was about to be sold at auction. There were George Bell and Enoch Ambush, who operated in this church basement a large school ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... was nearly drowned by the people weeping, and he came down from the pulpit and passed up and down through the church, exhorting and directing them, as many as three and four persons being in an agony of spirit in every pew. Even after the service closed, the cries and groans of anxious persons could be heard at a considerable distance up and down the harbour. At Harbor Grace, Port a Grave, Bay Roberts and other places, similar scenes were witnessed, of deep conviction for sin, and ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... excellent one, and the accommodations are first-class. It bears a very appropriate name. After partaking of a hardy supper, I walked out to "take a look at Europe!" At 6:45 p.m., I entered St. Peter's Church, and was conducted to a pew. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the young and the old of both sexes occupy the same seat together. One of the little boys of the family occupying the same pew with me, gave me a hymn-book. A part of the exercises consisted in chanting psalms. The eagle lectant and the Bible characters ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... from my knees, put a little money in the plate which the sacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two old sponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put on her bonnet ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... must give them both to the slave."—"Give 'em the larnin' after y'u've sot 'em free!" said he; "I'll fight for 'em; don't want to hear nuthin' 'bout nuthin' else but liberty to them that's bound." He stooped and pulled a long whip and a tin pail from under the seat of the pew where he had been sitting, making considerable noise, so that the people, as they passed out, turned, and the sight of him and his accoutrements made great sport for some whose opinions and feelings were the least to be regarded. I saw in him, dear Aunty, a fair specimen of native, inbred ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep and had woke up; but no! if I had been asleep I had been waking in my sleep, struggling, striving, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Angus McRae and showed him to his seat this morning with a happy bustle, for his pride and joy in the Lad's return was only second to his own father's. Roderick sat beside his father in their old pew near the rear of the church, gazing about him happily at the familiar scene. The people were filling up the aisles, with a soft hushed rustle. There was Fred Hamilton and his father, and Dr. Archie Blair and his family. Dr. Blair was rarely too busy to get ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... adjusted. How the carriages rattle up, and deposit their richly- dressed burdens beneath the lofty portico! The powdered footmen glide along the aisle, place the richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each other through their glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the few shabby people in ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... Poet at the Breakfast Table Over the Teacups Elsie Venner The Guardian Angel A Mortal Antipathy Pages from an Old Volume of Life Bread and the Newspaper My Hunt after "The Captain" The Inevitable Trial Cinders from Ashes The Pulpit and the Pew Medical Essays Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science Scholastic and Bedside Teaching The Medical Profession ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... walks on the moors, the tales under the thorn-trees must henceforth be incomplete. The two elders of that little band were no longer to be found in house or garden—they lay quiet under a large paving-stone close to the vicarage pew at church. The three little sisters, the one little brother, must have often thought on their quiet neighbours when the sermon was very long. Thus early familiarised and neighbourly with death, one of them at least, tall, courageous Emily, grew up to have no dreary thoughts of it, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... done you good to see Hiram on Sunday, elaborately dressed, going to church with the Widow Hawkins on his arm, followed by the two Miss Hawkins. Walking up the aisle, his countenance composed and serious, he would open the pew-door and wait reverently for Mrs. H. and the young ladies, to pass in. They, 'the young ladies,' would flutter along and enter the pew with a pleased, satisfied air—they were already in love with Hiram—and after the usual turnings and twistings and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thought to such things at all. Mrs. Lancaster supported Virginia's suspicions by memories of young men who had suddenly and mysteriously appeared, to ask her to accept them as boarders, and young attorneys who had their places in church changed to the pews that surrounded the Lancaster pew. But Susan dismissed these romantic vapors, and in her heart held Mary Lou in genuine admiration, because Mary Lou had undoubtedly and indisputably had a real lover, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... trap-door at the bottom of the pew," said Henry; "it is not only secured down, but it is locked likewise, and I have the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Sabbath morning saw Donald and Elsie in the courts of Zion, and great peace was upon their brows. When I ascended the pulpit stairs, they were already in their ancestral pew, now the property of Hector Campbell, who had abandoned it with joy, only asking that he be given one in the gallery from which he ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... some good result from the incident. A waggish clergyman once saw a pompous clerical brother march quite to the head of the aisle of a crowded church to find a seat, with an air of expectation that all pew-doors would fly open at his approach. But as every seat was full, and nobody stirred, the crestfallen brother was obliged to retrace his steps. As he retreated by the pew, far down the aisle, where the clerical wag was sitting, that pleasant man leaned over the door, and ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioner as a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving the Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who disapproved of the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the old church, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the old vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a conventicle, a conventicle, too, which was not protected by the Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers without hearers; and such ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which Dr. Muscroft was surgeon. I had assisted all day in bringing in the wounded from the field-hospital, in the rear of the battle-ground. The boys of the 10th and 3d Ohio were crowded into a little church, each pew answering for a private apartment for a wounded man. One of the surgeons in attendance requested me to assist in holding a patient while his leg was being amputated. This was my first trial, but the sight ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett |
