"Postilion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as I want you to get this at lunch-time; and the postilion, who has undertaken to convey it to you, is here, refreshing himself ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... caleches, rattle-trap vehicles, like gigs with hoods, to carry us to Santiago, the capital of Chili. One horse was in the shafts; another on the left side was ridden by a postilion on a high-peaked saddle, with a long knife at the saddle-bow; he being dressed with a straw hat over a silk handkerchief tied round his head and the ends hanging down behind, a short jacket, coarse pantaloons, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... counts started in breathless haste for the carriage, near which the emperor's valet and the postilion were in earnest conversation; but they ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with pleasant smiles on their lips, and the light spirit of youth in their hearts—"Marys," with roses in their hair, but without carriage and postilion—flitted to and fro in ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to be done, and where? Whether on the road by day, or in the night where they stopped? In either case, there were difficulties; many parts of the road they had to pass were extremely lonely, and fit for the purpose; but then, how were they to get rid of the postilion? And as they had a fresh one at every stage, there was no time to win him to their purpose. Then, at the inns, the obstacles were also considerable, especially as the houses were generally small Tina suggested that whenever the bride dropped out of the party, she had ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Katinka hugom, for I am coming back to tell you all about it." Then he took his place in the extra post-chaise, and bade the postilion drive directly to the neighboring castle. The Nameless Castle was built on a narrow tongue of land that extended into Lake Neusiedl. The road to the castle gate ran along a sort of causeway, which was ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... of strictness, still more than the abominable jargon of the postilion, made me aware that I was about to enter the dominions of King Frederick William. As I had a corner of the coach, the tyranny of his Prussian majesty was tolerably endurable, and I soon fell fast asleep. About three in the morning, just as day was breaking, I awoke, and found that the diligence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... morn had raised her head From old Tithonus' saffron bed; And embryo sunbeams from the east, Half-choked, were struggling through the mist, When forth advanced the gilded chaise; The village crowded round to gaze. The pert postilion, now promoted From driving plough, and neatly booted, His jacket, cap, and baldric on, (As greater folks than he have done,) Looked round; and, with a coxcomb air, Smacked loud his lash. The happy ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... into the vehicle. The postilion was off in a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England. Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly bitten tongue, I prudently ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... gentleman and three ladies, entered, and in the darkness the carriage was rapidly driven a short distance from the gate of Massa, when, upon some pretext, it stopped for a moment beneath the shadow of a high wall. While some directions were given, to engage the attention of the postilion, the duchess, with Mademoiselle Lebeschu and M. de Brissac, glided out of the door unperceived, when the door was shut and the horses again set out ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... depend upon the most intense sympathy, and the best advice both with regard to moral questions and economical arrangements, dress, plans for the future, and so forth. He also gave her good advice—which however was very seldom followed—when she was playing Postilion; he also drew patterns for her tapestry work, and was very fond of reading aloud to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and postilion having likewise taken their places, the fairy said to Cinderella, "Well, my dear girl, is not this as fine an equipage as you could desire, to go to the ball with? Tell me, now, are you ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous
... the bottom of the room, and consisted of all the servants of the house, with some recently converted Papists from among the Sourcraut tenantry. All drew back in horror, to let one so anathematised pass without contact. I coiled myself up near a droll-looking little postilion, who, while turning up the whites of his eyes, was coaxing me to him with a fragment of plumb-cake, which he had stolen from the banquet-table. Dr. Direful returned to the centre of the room, and mounted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... his cane to be taken from his hand amid the noisy vociferations of the players, pacifically irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognized that face, felt an impulse to stop, and at the same instant the carriage came to a standstill; for the postilion, hemmed in by some handcarts, had too much respect for the game to call upon the players ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... carriage with four horses rolled up to the hotel. Armed servants sat on the seat at the back of the carriage; a pale thin gentleman, wrapped in a large bright-coloured dressing-gown, stretched himself within it. The postilion dismounted and cracked his long whip several times, whilst fresh horses were put to. The stranger wished to proceed, but as he desired to have an escort over the mountains where Fra Diavolo and Cesari had bold descendants, he was obliged to wait a quarter of an hour, and now scolded, half in English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Baliviere, who answered them in the firmest tone, and with the most cavalier air, that they were far enough from Versailles, and that we had got rid of all such bad people. At the following stage the postilion got on the doorstep and said to the Duchess, "Madame, there are some good people left in the world: I recognised you all at Sens." They gave the worthy fellow a handful ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... all my improvements in every kind of thing are owing to you, I am sure!—And so I think I was even with the dear man, and yet appeared grateful before his servants. They withdrew, blessing us both, as the rest had done. And then came in the postilion, and two helpers, (for my master has both here, and at Lincolnshire, fine hunting horses; and it is the chief sport he takes delight in,) as also the scullion-boy: And I said, How do all of you? And how dost do, Tommy? I hope you're very good. Here your dear ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... compleit 10 dayes, I had only the remaining mony wt in 4 pounds. Of which 20 shilings by that halfe day of posting to Dover was exhausted, comprehending also our expense for our meat, and in paying the postilion, for betuixt Gravesend and Rochester burn we payed halfe a croune; from it to Seaton, 14 miles (the former stage being but 7), 4 shillings; from it to Canterbury, 16 miles, 5 shilings; from Canterbury to Dover, 16 miles, 5 shillings: their was 17 of the 20 shil. At Dover, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the old soldier held himself upright as a steeple. His head was remarkable for the amount of powder and pomatum bestowed upon it; he looked almost like a postilion at a fancy ball. Underneath that felted covering, moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared an elderly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical admixture of arrogance,—altogether something like caricatures of the Constitutionnel. ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... standing close to the edge of the pavement, and they passed within a few feet of us. They were driving in a char-a-banes—in French parlance, "attele a la Daumont"—that is, with four horses, of which the wheelers are driven from the box by a coachman, and the leaders ridden by a postilion. The Emperor and Empress were attended by an escort of mounted Cent-Gardes, and over the carriage there was a curious awning of light blue silk, with a heavy gold fringe, probably to shield the occupants from the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... height of their enthusiasm when the half hour had expired, and the post-horses were brought out and harnessed. The postilion sounded his horn, and the coachman cracked ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... in their carriage that evening, the boy on the box making great efforts to blow out of the postilion's tasselled horn. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then our new mayor, Mr. Jourdan, chevalier de St. Louis, the vicar, Mr. Loth, and the new commandant, Mr. Robert de la Faisanderie, in his embroidered uniform, would wait for them at the gate, and when they heard the postilion's whip crack they would go forward, smiling as if some great good fortune had arrived, and the moment the coach stopped, the commandant would run and open it, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... rapidly to allow them to answer my repeated Enquiries, I gained little, or indeed, no information concerning him. "Where am I to drive?" said the Postilion. "To Newgate Gentle Youth (replied I), to see Augustus." "Oh! no, no, (exclaimed Sophia) I cannot go to Newgate; I shall not be able to support the sight of my Augustus in so cruel a confinement—my feelings ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to the letterpress. In his etching of The Dark Road, Mr. Browne developed a style of etching of which he afterwards frequently availed himself, and by which (as in "Bleak House" and "Roland Cashel") he sometimes succeeded in producing remarkable effects. It shows us a postilion driving a team of horses over a dark and dreary road bordered on either hand by dismal moorland; the streaks of the approaching dawn illuminate the edges of the landscape; the single occupant of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... there was a fearful struggle being enacted between a small party of Montaros, or inland robbers, and the occupants and outriders of a volante, which had just been attacked on the road. The traces that attached the horse to the vehicle had been cut, and the postilion lay senseless upon the ground from a sword wound in their head, while the four outriders were contending with thrice their number of robbers, who were armed with pistols and Toledo blades. It was a sharp hand to hand fight, and their steel ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... and indeed they had met several droves in the course of one day, no remark was made at the moment, till suddenly each looked at the other, and said, 'What's become of the sheep?' Quite perplexed at their sudden disappearance, they called to the postilion to stop, and all got out, in order to mount the little elevation and look around, but still unable to discover them, they now bethought themselves of asking the postilion where they were; when, to their infinite surprise, they learned that he had not ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... afterwards in the track of Moreau's army over the scene of combat. This impressive sight produced the Battle of Hohenlinden—an ode which is as original as it is spirited, and stands by itself in British literature. The poet tells a story of the phlegm of a German postilion at this time, who was driving him post by a place where a skirmish of cavalry had happened, and who alighted and disappeared, leaving the carriage and the traveller alone in the cold (for the ground was covered with snow) for a considerable space of time. At ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... seat of many generations of Bertrams into the clutches of the scoundrelly Glossin. For Colonel Mannering instantly posted off to the south, having first of all sent despatches to Mr. Mac-Morlan by the untrustworthy postilion—the same who arrived a day too ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the Russian language, have a peculiar tenderness, and are full of caressing epithets. These are even frequently applied to inanimate objects. A Russian postilion, in a simple and charming song, calls the tavern, which he never can make up his mind to pass without stopping, "his dear little mother." The words Matushka, Batushka, Starinka, which we may venture to give in ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... recalled to Scotland by his parents, and had got into his carriage at the door of the hotel, when his Dido unexpectedly made her appearance, and stepping on the forewheel of the coach to address her lover, he ordered the postilion to drive on; the consequence of which was that the lady fell, and one of the wheels going over ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... The seat is very low, so that you recline, more than sit; your feet are unpleasantly near the horse's tail; a small seat can be pulled out between you and your companion if there is a child in the party. A dusky postilion decked out in high top-boots, with enormous spurs of real silver, sits astride the horse between the shafts, and a huge sombrero ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... time now!" exclaimed her mother, hastily entering the room. "The postilion has already passed our house, and in a quarter of an hour the stage-coach will stop at our door. I have myself gone to the postmaster, and he granted it as a favor that the stage-coach should stop here, and thus save you the trouble of going to the post-office. ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... gesticulating and cracking a postilion's whip. What ho! good people! do you not hear? Dashing along at the top of his speed, Booted and spurred, on his jaded steed, A courier comes with words of cheer. Courier! what is the news, I pray? "Christ is arisen!" Whence come you? "From court." Then I do ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... road, if road it may be called, was sometimes merely a narrow ravine or trench, so closely bordered by trees and underwood, that our vehicle could scarcely force its way; and sometimes our jaded horses labored along a waggon-way which wound amidst an expanse of corn-fields. Our postilion had earnestly requested us to postpone our departure till the following morning; and he swore and cursed most valiantly during the whole of his ride. On our arrival, however, at Andelys, a few kind words from my companions served ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... for the good lady's voice was heard as she walked across the court-yard to the house scolding the unfortunate postilion who had driven her from Barchester. At the moment Miss Thorne could not but be thankful that the other guests were more fashionable, and were thus spared the fury of Mrs ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... without manifesting any feeling himself. Baruch, at a hint from his grandfather, had been to see the postmaster. At eleven o'clock that night, the two Parisians, ensconced in a wicker cabriolet drawn by one horse and ridden by a postilion, quitted Issoudun. Adolphine and Madame Hochon parted from them with tears in their eyes; they alone regretted Joseph ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Thus, if he be required to go to the right—mano (hand) is the word used; if to the left—silla (saddle) is shouted. This custom originated in the days before natives were intrusted to drive, when a postilion rode the left (saddle) pony, and guided his right (hand) animal with ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Dorrit's equipage upon the Dover road, where every red-jacketed postilion was the sign of a cruel house, established for the unmerciful plundering of travellers. The whole business of the human race, between London and Dover, being spoliation, Mr Dorrit was waylaid at Dartford, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... well," Clay replied, "for the driver sits on the first horse, like a postilion. It's a sort of tandem without reins. Haven't you seen it yet? We consider the volante our proudest exhibit." So Clay ordered the volante to be brought out, and placed them facing each other in the open carriage, while he climbed to the box-seat, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the cabriolet, and as much luggage behind, and in the Imperial, as would load a tolerably large waggon. They are generally drawn by four horses, which present a very different appearance from those under the English carnages, and they are driven by one postilion, who rides the wheel-horse. Occasionally, a second postilion and two more leaders are necessary from the weight of the carriage, or the heaviness of the roads. Carriages in France, in passing each other, take exactly different sides ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... and the blast of the postilion's horn closed the first period of my childhood. When I was four years old we went to my mother's home to attend my grandparents' golden wedding. If I wished to describe the journey in its regular order I should be forced to depend upon the statements ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached the archway of Saint-Jean—a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead compelled the postilion to stop under the vault. The prisoner's eyes shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as of a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La Force to believe that the doctor must be called in. These ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... way, and near one of them, called Semmering, a large turreted building attracted our attention. It had once been a summer residence of the Emperor; it is now a powder-magazine, and stands, as our postilion informed us, on the same spot which, during the siege of Vienna in 1529, was covered by the tent of the Sultan Solyman. But we had passed this some time, ere the scenery began to improve. When such improvement did commence, however, it was very complete. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... which league of stone, sand, and rut you rumble in a volante dragged by three horses. You know that the volante cannot upset; nevertheless you experience some anxious moments when it leans at an obtuse angle, one wheel in air, one sticking in a hole, the horses balking and kicking, and the postilion swearing his best. But it is written, the volante shall not upset,—and so it does not. Long before you see the entrance to the plantation, you watch the tall palms, planted in a line, that shield, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and felt glad I had not to set out in the dark. I rose at twilight and was expecting my carriage, and wondering at its delay, when I heard that the great diligence, several miles below, had been seized by a torrent; the horses were up to their necks in water, before any one dreamed of danger. The postilion called on all the saints, and threw himself into the water. Tire door of the diligence could not be opened, and tire passengers forced themselves, one after another, into the cold water; it was dark too. Had I been there, I had fared ill. A pair of strong men were ill after it, though ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... could pull At once a postilion's jack-boot full, And ask with a laugh, when that was done, If they could not give him the ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... loud and clattering sound was heard; and down came, in a heavy trot, with sundry ear-piercing crackings of the whip, the thundering Diligence: large, lofty, and of most unwieldy dimensions: of a structure, too, strong enough to carry a half score of elephants. The postilion is an animal perfectly sui generis: gay, alert, and living upon the best possible terms with himself. He wears the royal livery, red and blue; with a plate of the fleur de lis upon his left arm. His hair is tied behind, in a thick, short, tightly fastened queue: with powder and pomatum ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... violent peal of the doorbell; and he knowing that Mrs. Galbraith had retired for the evening, went to answer it. There indeed, in the starlight, were the handsome traveling carriage, the pair of gray horses, and the postilion. Stephen Letsom looked about him like one in a dream. He had been twenty years in the place, yet no carriage had ever stopped at ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... driven by a ploughboy in fustian, there the Earl of—— on a ten-pound pony, with the girths elegantly parted to prevent the saddle slipping over its head, while Miss——, his jockey's daughter, dashes by him in a phaeton with a powdered footman, and the postilion in scarlet and leathers, with a badge on his arm. Old Crockey puts on his greatcoat, Jem Bland draws the yellow phaeton and greys to the gateway of the "White Hart," to take up his friend Crutch Robinson; Zac, Jack and another, have just driven on in a fly. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... not appear to be general in France. On the same day a wretched-looking person begged of us, as the carriage was climbing a hill. Nothing could exceed his transport in receiving a pair of old pantaloons which were handed out of the carriage. This poor mendicant, the postilion told us, was an ancien Cure. The churches seem generally falling into decay in the country. We passed one which had been recently repaired. I have noticed, however, several young persons, men as well as women, earnestly employed in their devotions, in different churches, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte whom he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... something for them. I jumped into my carriage and drove, at my horses' best pace, to the Hotel du Reservoir. The blockade about this door was as complete as the other. The result was the same. It was very provoking, but what was to be done? My postilion had, a little officiously, while I was in the hall talking with the hotel authorities, got his horses, bit by bit, as other carriages moved away, to the very steps of ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... courier; Mercury, Iris, Ariel^, comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; cyclist; wheelman. rider, horseman, equestrian, cavalier, jockey, roughrider, trainer, breaker. driver, coachman, whip, Jehu, charioteer, postilion, postboy^, carter, wagoner, drayman^; cabman, cabdriver; voiturier^, vetturino^, condottiere^; engine driver; stoker, fireman, guard; chauffeur, conductor, engineer, gharry-wallah^, gari-wala^, hackman, syce^, truckman^. Phr. on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in July, To recommence in August—now was done. 'T is the postilion's paradise: wheels fly; On roads, East, South, North, West, there is a run. But for post-horses who finds sympathy? Man's pity's for himself, or for his son, Always premising that said son at college Has not contracted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... family are coming too; and that they are so nobly attended, they care not a fig for anybody. Sir, they have added two cart-horses to the four old geldings, because my lady will have it said she came to town in a coach and six—heavy George the ploughman rides postilion. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... part of a grain, this indefatigable minute artificer was the maker of a landau, which opened and shut by springs: this equipage, with six horses harnessed to it, a coachman sitting on the box, with a dog between his legs, four inside and two outside passengers, besides a postilion riding one of the fore horses, was drawn with all the ease and safety imaginable by a well trained flea! The inventor and executor of this puerile machine, bestowed on it, probably, as much time as ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... the discomfiture of the prude; and, lastly, there is the coachman, whose only concern is the shilling for his fare, and who refuses to lend either of the useless greatcoats he is sitting upon, lest "they should be made bloody," leaving the shivering suppliant to be clothed by the generosity of the postilion ("a Lad," says Fielding with a fine touch of satire, "who hath been since transported for robbing a Hen-roost"). This worthy fellow accordingly strips off his only outer garment, "at the same time swearing a great Oath," for which he is duly rebuked by the passengers, "that he would ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... peeped into the mouse-trap, where she found six mice. She tapped them lightly with her wand, and each mouse became a fine horse. The rat-trap contained two large rats; one of these she turned into a coachman, and the other into a postilion. The old lady then told Cinderella to go into the garden and seek for half-a-dozen lizards. These she changed into six footmen, dressed ...
— Cinderella • Anonymous
... indeed, a curious sight. A man on horseback, disguised as a postilion, his blue jacket embroidered with silver, and enormous tail from which the powder escaped in puffs, and a hat adorned with long ribbons, preceded the first carriage, cracking his whip, and crying with all his might: "Make way for the Bacchanal Queen ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that he gave that up and tried kicking. It did not make it easier for him either to know that his appearance had been quite too much for the auntly gravity of Betty, who had her hands over her face to keep herself from screaming with laughter, while the driver and the postilion were watching with their mouths ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... La Couture and Du Pre, are fine specimens of early architecture. In the chapel of the former, an inscription was once to be found on the walls, to the memory of a certain innkeeper and postilion, who, wishing that his name should be handed down to posterity, had set forth the fact of his having conducted the carriages of four kings of France, and after passing sixty-four years as a married man, died in 1509: he adds a prayer to this important record, that Heaven would provide a second ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 3d, saw a large travelling berline turn in at the big grille and draw up under the porte-cochere in front of the porter's lodge. In an instant he was out of the room, down the great stairway, and at the entrance of the rez-de-chaussee, just as the postilion, dismounting, opened the door of the carriage from which emerged a large, handsome man of about thirty-five or six, who moved with surprising agility considering the fact that he boasted but one good leg, the other member being ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... moving only because we have been in motion, with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to measure back again the very same joyless, hopeless, and inglorious track. Backward and forward,—oscillation, space,—the travels of a postilion, miles enough to circle the globe in one short stage,—we have been, and we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the loose, misplaced stones and the treacherous hollows of this rough, ill-kept, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... villain, Came riding postilion A nate little boy on the back of a baste, Big enough, faith, to ate him, But he lather'd and bate him, And the baste to unsate him ne'er struggled the laste, And an iligant car He was dhrawing—by gar! It was finer by far than a Lord Mayor's ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... November, Casanova wrote from Frankfort that a drunken postilion had upset him and in the fall he had dislocated his left shoulder, but that a good bone-setter had restored it to place. On the 1st December he wrote that he was healed, having taken medicine and having been blooded. He promised to send Francesca eight sequins ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... down from the Great St. Gothard with a carriage and four horses and only one postilion, as the most dangerous thing that a carriage and horses can do. We had two great wooden logs for drags, and snapped them both like matches. The road is like a geometrical staircase, with horrible depths beneath it; and at every turn it is a toss-up, or seems to be, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... harm, though the dusky mite gets smartly slapped by its mother for misbehaving. The cabin floor of bare earth is sure to be covered with these little naked, sprawling objects, like ants. On the way back to town Jane orders the postilion to drive into the private grounds of a palatial Cuban residence, where she boldly announces herself and party to the proprietor in good rolling Spanish. It is the home of Senor N——, a wealthy merchant of the city. We are ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... The postilion blew his horn—the horses started; gayly resounded the tones of the silver bells; with a light whizzing, away flew the sledge over the snow. It bore thence a dethroned emperor and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... was cheerfully crooked and crowded, it had the modern note of the street car, and the mediaeval one of old women, arms akimbo, in the nooks and recesses, selling big black cherries and bursting figs. Even the old women though, as momma complained, wore postilion basques and bell skirts, certainly in an advanced stage of usefulness, but of unmistakable genesis—just what had been popular in Chicago a year or ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... stopping at a cabinet-maker's shop in Church Street, a coach with four beautiful white horses, and a postilion on each near-horse; behind, in the dicky, a footman; and on the box a coachman, all dressed in livery. The coach-panel bore a coat-of-arms with a coronet, and I presume it must have been the equipage of the Earl of Derby. A crowd of people stood round, gazing at the coach and horses; and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stop here, sir," said the postilion, as he pulled up his horses short at the church-door, in the midst of the people who were congregated together ready for the service. But Mark had not anticipated being so late, and said at first that it was necessary ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... your own. Would you like a proof of it? well, you wished to conceal your journey from me, and yet I knew of your arrival half an hour after you had passed the barrier. You gave your direction to no one but your postilion, yet I have your address, and in proof I am here the very instant you are going to sit at table. Ring, then, if you please, for a second knife, fork, and plate, and we will ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... different countries. On one occasion, in Italy, he was waylaid and robbed of all he had, and narrowly escaped with his life. He had been playing and had been very successful, winning money, gold watches, and diamonds. As he was riding back to his hotel his postilion was shot. He immediately seized his pistols to defend himself, when he was struck on the back of the head with a bludgeon and rendered insensible. He did not return to consciousness until the next morning, when he found himself by the side of the road, bleeding from a terrible ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... had her chariot and four, with driver and black postilion in livery, more, perhaps, to entertain and honor her distinguished guests than for personal enjoyment. Her husband usually appeared on horseback. He loved horses, especially fine ones, and most of those in his stables were imported. To each he gave a name, suggested by some quality ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... son or to her daughter-in-law. The archdeacon had been in doubt whether he would go to the Court or to the parsonage. Could he have done exactly as he wished, he would have left the chaise and walked to the parsonage, so as to reach it without the noise and fuss incidental to a postilion's arrival. But that was impossible. He could not drop into Framley as though he had come from the clouds, and, therefore, he told the man to do as he had suggested. "To my lady's?" said the postilion. The archdeacon assented, and the man, with loud cracks of his whip, and with a spasmodic ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... prima donna was Frau Herbert-Frster, the wife of Victor Herbert, who had been a member of the Metropolitan company while her husband, afterward the most successful of writers for the American operetta stage, sat in Mr. Seidl's orchestra. The operas given were "Trovatore," "Martha," "The Postilion of Lonjumeau," Flotow's "Stradella," "La Dame Blanche," and "Les Huguenots." At other theaters, too, there were performances of operas and operettas by the Boston Ideal Opera Company and other troupes, but with them these annals have no concern. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... piercing. Sometimes—towards the end of a long stage—Kit could not help wishing it were a little warmer: but when they stopped to change horses, and he had had a good run, and what with that, and the bustle of paying the old postilion, and rousing the new one, and running to and fro again until the horses were put to, he was so warm that the blood tingled and smarted in his fingers' ends—then, he felt as if to have it one degree less cold would be to lose half the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and recognised the Primate sitting with his daughter. The Archbishop looked out of the coach, and Russell cast his cloak from him, exclaiming,—'Judas, be taken!' The Primate ordered the postilion to drive, at which Russell fired at the man, and called to his associates to join him. With the exception of Hackstoun, they threw off their cloaks, and continued firing at the coach for nearly half a mile. A domestic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... occurred, till we arrived on the edge of Marlborough Downs. There one of the four horses fell, in going down hill at a round trot; and the postilion behind, endeavouring to stop the carriage, pulled it on one side into a deep rut, where it was fairly overturned. I had rode on about two hundred yards before; but, hearing a loud scream, galloped back and dismounted, to give what assistance was in my ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... not to add fresh fuel to the excitement of the people; and I only reappeared when calm again prevailed. I was met at Sevres by the bands of straggling assassins, who bore back the bleeding heads of the king's guards: these men stopped my carriage, and fired on the postilion. Thus I, who was the pretended leader of these men, narrowly escaped being their victim, and owed my safety to a body of the national guard, who escorted me to Versailles; and as I went to wait on the king I repressed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... respectable people were often perfectly blind to the duties of charity in every sense of the word. He found that the only man in a whole company who pitied Joseph Andrews, when stripped and beaten by robbers was a postilion with defects in his moral character. In short, he knew that respectability often practised none but the strictly self-regarding virtues, and that poverty and recklessness did not always extinguish a native goodness of heart. Perhaps this ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz; and the only incident which occurred to enliven the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach. As they met, the mad little postilion gave him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out into an exclamation, which ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the sun itself loses its force and brightness! Come! let us be off. Our steeds stamp with impatience." The duke drew his friend from the room and joyfully they sprang down the stairs to the carriage, the great dog following, howling and barking after them. "Forward, then, forward! Blow, postilion, blow! A gay little air! Let it peal through the streets, a farewell song! Blow, postilion, blow! and I will moisten your throat at the gates with the thin, white stuff, which you have the boldness to call beer." The postilion laughed for joy, and the German song resounded ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... hospitable acquaintances at Strasbourg, I left the Hotel de l'Esprit between five and six in the afternoon—when the heat of the day had a little subsided—with a pair of large, sleek, post horses; one of which was bestrode by the postilion, in the red and yellow livery of the duchy ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead—and if you artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the stage-coach and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just examine the physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a hundred times as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic physiognomies, at least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are open, and you have some expression in your countenance. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... was about to be gratified, at last the servant appeared with the little carpet-bag, and placed it in the stage, and returned for the two cases, whose contents they would so greedily have known. The postilion blew his horn, the moment ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and for the first time in her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion—who frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle—she was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from Windsor, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... at length returned from the fiddler hunt, and being whisped over, and made tolerably decent, Mr. Watchorn, having exchanged the postilion saddle in which it had been ridden for a horn-cased hunting one, had mounted, and, opening the kennel-door, had liberated the pent-up pack, who came tearing out full cry and spread themselves over the country, regardless alike of the twang, twang, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... mettlesome enough, hung in the collar, refusing to draw. It was said to be an Irish horse, but how or when it got to Sardinia was as much a myth as the immigration of some of the various races by which the island is said to have been peopled in ancient times. However, Miss Edgeworth's Irish postilion and “Knockecroghery,” could scarcely have afforded us more amusement than our Sarde driver and his horse, whose good qualities he ludicrously vaunted, alternately cursing and glorifying, thumping and coaxing, the vicious beast, while we heaved at ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... attention which the poor lad received on his way. Sometimes a ragged peasant, if he happened to be his fellow-traveller, would carry his satchel so long as they travelled together, or a carman would give him a lift on his empty car; or some humorous postilion, or tipsy "shay-boy," with a comical leer in his eye, would shove him into his ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... advantage that I was brought into constant contact with the men. It also qualified me to ride in the officers' team for the regimental brake. The brake, it must be understood, was drawn by six horses, each ridden postilion fashion by an officer. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... was breaking on the fourth day of my journey as the tall spires of Munich rose to my view, amid the dull and arid desert of sand that city is placed in. At last! was my exclamation as the postilion tapped at the window with his whip, and then pointed towards the city. At last! Oh! what would be the extacy of my feelings now could I exchange the torturing anxieties of suspense for the glorious certainty ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... remarkable for the frankness of his conversation, the humanity of his disposition, and the simplicity of his manners. From Boulogne they took their departure about noon; and as they proposed to sleep that night at Abbeville, commanded the postilion to drive with extra ordinary speed. Perhaps it was well for his cattle that the axletree gave way and the chaise of course overturned, before they had travelled one-third ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Esmeralda, but shall have a plain waist, made as long as you can possibly wear it while sitting, slightly pointed in front and curving upward at the side to a point about half an inch below that where the belt of your skirt fastens, and having a very small and perfectly flat postilion, or the new English round back. Elizabeth of Austria may wear a princess habit, if it please her, but would you, Esmeralda, be prepared, in order to have your habit fit properly, to postpone buttoning it until after you were placed in the saddle, ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the least symptom before, he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... was now heard, and the landlady hurried to the door to receive her expected guests; but returned in an instant, followed by the postilion— ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... England, passed us with four horses; a postilion, dressed in a drosky driver's hat and long coat, rode the leaders, while another man in a similar costume sat on the box to steer the wheelers. The omnibuses are painted black or dark red—very sombre-looking conveyances, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... horses, three abreast, the harness and trappings of the animals being blue, elaborately embroidered with gold, while the headstall of each horse was decorated with a plume of half a dozen long blue feathers. The middle horse of each trio—that which ran between the shafts—was ridden by a postilion, who guided and controlled all three of the horses ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Riding postilion-wise, Jeff could control the horses. The dangerous curve was passed, but not the possibility of pursuit. The single leader he was bestriding was panting—more than that, he was SWEATING, and from the evidence of Jeff's hands, sweating BLOOD! Back of his shoulder was a jagged ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... a sister married to a chandler; that he knows of no parents, and of no relatives, being the maker of his own fortune, and of what he is; that his children will look no further back for ancestry than their father. One of his first cousins, a postilion, who insisted, rather obstinately, on his family alliance, was recommended by Brune to his friend Fouche, who sent him on a voyage of discovery to Cayenne, from which he probably will not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the shelter of a huge red umbrella, is choosing the ripest cluster of grapes for our supper this evening. All the street is as still as at midnight. Suddenly there breaks upon us the harsh, metallic clang of well-shod horse-hoofs upon the stony roadway—the cracking of a postilion's whip—the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... worn that they will be unfit for use by the time he has completed his journey to Philadelphia, he requests that new ones may be made, the tassels to be of better quality than the old ones; and that a new set of harness may be made for the leaders, with a postilion saddle; the saddle-cloth of which to be like the hammer-cloth, that all may be of a piece when necessary to use six horses. [This he sometimes did in travelling.] ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... Iris, Ariel[obs3], comet. pedestrian, walker, foot passenger; cyclist; wheelman. rider,horseman, equestrian, cavalier, jockey, roughrider, trainer, breaker. driver, coachman, whip, Jehu, charioteer, postilion, postboy[obs3], carter, wagoner, drayman[obs3]; cabman, cabdriver; voiturier[obs3], vetturino[obs3], condottiere[obs3]; engine driver; stoker, fireman, guard; chauffeur, conductor, engineer, gharry-wallah[obs3], gari-wala[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... so that I am a little troubled at it. Busy till late at night at the office, and Sir W. Batten come to me, and tells me that there is newes upon the Exchange to-day, that my Lord Sandwich's coach and the French Embassador's at Madrid, meeting and contending for the way, they shot my Lord's postilion and another man dead; and that we have killed 25 of theirs, and that my Lord is well. How true this is I cannot tell, there being no newes of it at all at Court, as I am told late by one come thence, so that I hope it is not so. By and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is made that poetry is wanting in our era, and it has certainly disappeared from the postal service. One remembers that the postilion was for quite a while the favorite hero of our poets, the best of whom have sung to his praises, and given space to his melancholy thoughts of modern times in which he is pushed aside. It is too true ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... has put new life in my poor old bones, I explain myself. I am arrived, I infer, at the Inn at the Red Oak; and you, monsieur, though so young, I take to be my host. I have your description, you perceive, from the good postilion. You will do me the kindness to provide me ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... had been a postilion, and the large dog in the room, had always followed him on his journeys to the lake of Geneva, over the Simplon. In the valley of the Rhone, in Canton Valais, still lived Rudy's family, on his father's side, and his father's brother was ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... whom we graciously receive as disciples for one hour daily, help considerably in this undertaking, and take such an especial delight in it that it is a sorrowful day for them when Saturnine—Don Benigno's black postilion—comes to ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... pranced into view as they cleared the gate posts. There came a moment's halt at the end of the driveway; a postilion vaulted down, threw wide the coach door and a young man sprang in. It was Harry!... Snap!! Crack!! Toot—toot!!—and they were off again, heading straight for the waiting group. Another prolonged, winding note—louder—nearer—one of triumph ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of time the driver came, hooked an ancient tin box marked "Lettres" to the dash-board, threw in a sacking-bag, and cap in hand, invited the traveller to mount with him "where there was air." The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... travelling-carriage stopped on the summit of that long descent where the road pitches from the elevated plain of Moudon in Switzerland to the level of the lake of Geneva, immediately above the little city of Vevey. The postilion had dismounted to chain a wheel, and the halt enabled those he conducted to catch a glimpse of the lovely scenery ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the voice which I had heard, and the plunging, were as easily accounted for. Near the left-hand corner of the grove which surrounded the dingle, and about ten yards from the fireball, I perceived a chaise, with a postilion on the box, who was making efforts, apparently useless, to control his horses, which were kicking and plunging in the highest degree of excitement. I instantly ran towards the chaise, in order to offer what help was in my power. 'Help me,' said the poor fellow, as ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... thus as far as Villeneuve St. George's, where relays were waiting. Then four instead of two whirled the carriage away in the direction of Melun, and pulled up for a moment in the middle of the forest of Senart. No doubt the order had been given the postilion beforehand, for Aramis had no occasion ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the road-mender's advice, retraced his steps, and, half an hour later, he passed the same spot again, but this time at full speed, with a good horse to aid; a stable-boy, who called himself a postilion, was seated on the shaft ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... silvered, is harnessed abreast, something like the Russian Furieux; and in the country, where the roads on the plantations are execrable, and quite impassable for any spring carriage, a third horse is often added, the postilion always riding the near, or left-hand horse. The body of the carriage is comfortably cushioned, and lined with bright gay colours, and generally has a stunning piece of carpet for a rug. Such is the Cuban Volante, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... eyes fixed on the clock and waited impatiently for the hands to mark the hour of ten. I was tormented with anxiety, but allowed them to see nothing. Finally, the hour arrived; I heard the postilion's whip as the horses entered the court. Brigitte was seated near me; I took her by the hand and asked her if she was ready to depart. She looked at me with surprise, doubtless wondering if I was not joking. I told her that, at dinner, she had appeared ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... there swung round the curve of the road a lady's carriage drawn by three horses abreast with a postilion upon the outer one. Very fine and rich it was, with beams painted and gilt, wheels and spokes carved in strange figures, and over all an arched cover of red and white tapestry. Beneath its shade there sat ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mestino, pintado, roan, bat horse, Bucephalus, Pegasus, Dobbin, Bayard, hobby-horse. Associated words: equine, equestrian, equestrianism, equestrienne, equerry, fractious, hostler, groom, hostlery, postilion, coachman, jockey, hippocampus, hippogriffe, manege, chack, hippology, hippophile, hippotomy, tandem, equitation, farriery, equitant, paddock, hippiatrics, hippiatry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... The postilion, after he had spoken to the woman, came to the chaise-door, and told Holloway "that he could hardly understand what she said, she talked such outlandish English; and that he could not make out where she wanted to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the mountain, whose peak closes the long vista. The diligence was an hour later than usual, and I passed the time in watching the smoke which continued to increase in volume, and was mingled, from time to time, with jets of inky blackness. The postilion said he had seen fires and heard loud noises during the night. According to his account, the disturbances commenced about midnight. I could not but envy my friend Caesar, who was probably at that moment on the summit, looking down into the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... one postilion, who has a very long whip, and drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint Petersburgh in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's: only he sits his own horse instead of standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by these postilions, are sometimes a century or two old; and are so ludicrously ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... heard I was going abroad, love, I thought I was going to die; We walked arm in arm to the road, love, We looked arm in arm to the sky; And I said, "When a foreign postilion Has hurried me off to the Po, Forget not Medora Trevilian:— ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... faint at first were the birr of wheels and the tat-tat-tat of the horses' feet. Then they grew louder and clearer and louder yet, until a pair of yellow lanterns swung round the curve, and in their light we saw the two big brown horses tearing along the high, blue carriage at the back of them. The postilion pulled them up panting and foaming within a few yards of us. In a moment we were at the window and had raised our hands in a salute to the beautiful pale face which looked out ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... crack of the postilion's whip told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was over. While peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover in the young Count; but out of danger, she despised him for the weakling that ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Cathelineau like a postilion?" said Jacques, "and I hope you will allow he is a great soldier. You know nothing of these things yet, Annot. M. Larochejaquelin is so smart because he is a young nobleman; not because ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... least hidden by the awful majesty of its execution. But, we ask, the events taking place exactly as we have described them (and sometimes even less seriously), what kind of an example can it afford? Early in the morning, the condemned is bound and thrown into a closed carriage; the postilion whips up his horses, reaches the scaffold; the ax descends, and a head falls into a basket, in the midst of the most atrocious jeerings of the vilest of a vile populace! Finally, in a hasty and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... he went first and spoke to the postboy and gave him some money, and patted the neck of his horse. Whether he made some movement that scared it or not, there was very nearly a nasty accident, for the beast started violently, and the postilion being unready was thrown and lost his fee, as he found afterwards, and the chaise lost some paint on the gateposts, and the wheel went over the man's foot who was taking out the baggage. When Lord Saul came up the steps into the light of the lamp in the porch to be greeted by Dr. Ashton, ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... not allow his impatience to require that the horses should be put to extraordinary speed. He found something tranquillising in the movement of a postilion in a smart jacket, vibrating on one horse upwards and downwards, with one invariable regulated motion like the cross-head of a side-lever steam-engine, and holding the whip quietly arched over the neck of the other. The mechanical monotony ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... cows or goats. There will be also a valuable appendix to the work, containing a correct list of all the inns on the road between Frankfort and Geneva, with a copy of the bill of fare at each, and the prices charged; together with the colour of the postilion's jacket, the age of the landlord and the weight of his wife, and the height in inches of the cook and chambermaid. To which will be added, "Ten Minutes' Advice" upon making one shilling go as far as two. If you can give me a three-halfpenny ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... not of my own. I'm nursing a little maid of five years old: the father is a government postilion and the mother in service, and so she brought her up here to see if the air and the water would strengthen her. She is their only child. No, I myself live about an hour from here: you can see my cottage amongst the cherry trees on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... still the victoria drawn by high-stepping horses, with coachman and postilion, but the automobile is evidently making rapid strides in popular favor, despite the fact that the heavy, humid air makes the odor of gasoline cling to the roadway. A high-class Arab, with his keen, intellectual face, rides by with a bright Malay ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... to travel! The passport had been taken out for Brussels, and last year, you may recollect, we went to that place by Dieppe, Abbeville, Douay, and Arras. The "Par quelle route, monsieur?" of the postilion that rode the wheel-horse, who stood with a foot in the stirrup, ready to get up, brought me to a conclusion. "A St. Denis!" the question compelling a decision, and all my doubts terminating, as doubts are apt to terminate, by taking the most ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a carriage, and reached the hall just about dinner-time. In the interior court-yard stood two calashes and an Holstein carriage; two strange coachmen, with lace round their hats, stood in animated discourse when Otto drove in through the gate. The postilion blew his horn. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... from the coach window and kindly bade me good-morning, while from the villages around the cock's clear crow echoed across the fields of gently-waving grain, and an early lark, high in the skies among the flushes of morning, soared here and there, and the Postilion wound his horn and blew, and blew—as the coach drove off, I would stand looking after it, feeling as if I could not but start off with it on the instant into the wide, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... replied the commissary. 'You are indebted to him six livres four sous for the next post from hence to St. Fons, on your route to Avignon, which being a post royal, you pay double for the horses and postilion, otherwise 'twould have amounted to no more than ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... once I had a vague notion of teaching fencing; but even had I had the means to establish myself, the profession was already over-stocked; and not a regiment of the Paris garrison but could turn out a score of prevots to button me six times for my once. I could ride, which qualified me for a postilion, and had sufficient knowledge of billiards to aspire to the honourable post of a marker; but even to such offices—could I have stooped to compete for them—I should have been held ineligible without certificates of ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... how many hours a man can sit in a caleche? Will decimal fractions support his back or strengthen his lumbar vertebrae? What system of inquiry will declare whether the weary traveller will not oversleep himself, or smash the head of his postilion for not awaking him at a frontier? How will you test readiness, endurance, politeness, familiarity ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... feared; on arresting the prince they would turn his course toward Charenton, where the postmaster was, as we have said, in the interest of Madame de Maine, take him into the courtyard, whose door would close upon him, force him to enter a traveling carriage, which would be waiting with the postilion in his saddle; D'Harmental and Valef would seat themselves by him, they would cross the Marne at Alfort, the Seine at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, reach Grand-Vaux, then Monthery, and find themselves on the road to Spain. If at any of the villages where they changed horses ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Professor, who dislikes railways very much, it was not a question of travelling by rail. He said, 'I will take you in a carriage and with horses, and we will drive the whole way from London to the North of England. And I will not only do that, but I will do the best in my power to get a postilion to ride, and we will go quite in the old-fashioned way ...' The Professor went so far that he actually built a carriage for this drive. It was a regular posting carriage, with good strong wheels, a place behind for the luggage, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... halfpenny. He saw a policeman walking slowly up and down on the sidewalk, wearing a glazed hat, and a uniform of blue broadcloth, with his letter and number embroidered on the collar. He saw an elegant carriage drive by, with a postilion riding upon one of the horses, and two footmen in very splendid liveries behind. There was a lady in the carriage, but she appeared old, and though she was splendidly dressed, her ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... to her fondness for history. She was not less addicted to voyages and travels—to any reading, in fact, which satisfied her love of adventure. She would envy at times the condition of a postilion, and the sight of a travelling carriage would set her dreaming ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Transformed, shifted or mutilated, such elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon them.... It is thus even with the fashion of the clothes men wear. The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English clergyman's bands no longer so convey their history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... moment, known pretty extensively to the neighborhood in which it occurred. It was in the county of S——. A lady married, and married well, as was thought. About twelve months afterwards, she returned alone in a post chaise to her father's house; paid, and herself dismissed, the postilion at the gate; entered the house; ascended to the room in which she had passed her youth, and known in the family by her name; took possession of it again; intimated by signs, and by one short letter at her first arrival, what she would require; lived for nearly twenty years in this state ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... godmother, "is a coach and horse, too, as handsome as your sisters; but what shall we do for a postilion?" ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... a beautiful lady took refuge in the cottage; her carriage had broken down, and she must stop till the postilion could return to the castle. At the cottage she heard Franz play and Nanette sing, and listened to the blind organist, as the cathedral bells broke on ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... hundreds of Italian laborers are putting down the shining rails in woods and glens where no sounds save the song of birds or the carol of the infrequent passer-by have heretofore been heard. For the present, however, the old-fashioned, comfortless diligence keeps the roads: the beribboned postilion winds his merry horn, and as the afternoon sun is getting low the dusty, antique vehicle rattles up to the court of the inn, the guard gets down, dusts the leather casing of the gun which now-a-days he is never compelled to use: then he touches his square hat, ornamented ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the straitness of the path; but their dumb leader hastened up the lane with unusual speed, beckoning that they should follow. From this signal it appeared that there was sufficient room, and the postilion addressed himself to proceed by so unusual ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... to tell you that they are harnessing two horses to your calash, and you may set off at full speed." The worthy man had assigned to my use the only two horses at his disposal; his son performed the office of postilion, and I set off to the no small dissatisfaction of some of the travellers who had arrived before me, and who, perhaps, had as good reasons as I to avoid ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... wings, flying like a postilion who has dropped something. And here is what is written on the belt," added the man, taking a paper from his pocket. "Mademoiselle Anicette, the Princesse de Cadignan's lady's maid, who came in a carriage" (the Cinq-Cygne ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac |
