"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be sure that we have got into a very unpleasant mess, which we may have some difficulty in getting out of. You sent over Tom Cutter, to see if he could not persuade young Scantling, Lord Selby's gamekeeper, to remember something about the marriage, when he was with his old father the sexton. Now, how he and Tom manage their matters, I don't know; but Tom gave him a lick on the head with a stick, which killed him on the spot. As the devil would have it, all this was seen by two people, a laborer working in a ditch hard by, and Scantling's son, a boy of ten years old. The end ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... for God's sake!' said a trooper, laying his hand upon his bridle. 'Sergeant Sexton hath sprung in even now, and horse and man ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... listening, he pressed up closer to the speaker, his broad shoulders already making themselves felt in a crowd, his eyes beginning to glow with the dissenter's hatred of parsons. In the full tide of discourse, however, the orator was arrested by an indignant sexton, who, coming quickly up the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little bedroom on that tempestuous night, and brought to my mind how creditable to me was my conduct through the whole night, and how barren it was of moral spot or fleck during that entire period: he said Mr. X was sexton, or something, of the Episcopal church in his town, and had been for many years the competent superintendent of all the church's worldly affairs, and was regarded by the whole congregation as a stay, a blessing, a priceless treasure. But he had a couple of defects—not large defects, but they seemed ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the wedding cards, pays the florist and the caterer, the expense of opening the church and the service of the sexton; the music, carriages for the bridal party, in short, the bills are for the family to pay. Where a wedding is very elaborate, the details are sometimes turned over to a "manager," who sees to everything, and receives a fat fee for ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... theological institution had filled his mind with arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind, yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry enough ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... May 21.—House resumed to-day, after so-called Whitsun holidays. Weren't to have come back till Monday. OLD MORALITY settled that before he went off to Southern climes. But next day WINDBAG SEXTON and JOKIM got to loggerheads. WINDBAG insisted that Committee should specially sit to hear him move new Clause. JOKIM demurred; pointed out that luxury might be enjoyed by House only upon condition of shortening holidays. WINDBAG didn't see ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... his adversary at ten paces. After church, he disappeared as quietly as he had entered, and fortunately escaped hearing the comments on his rash act. His appearance was generally considered as an impertinence, attributable only to some wanton fancy, or possibly a bet. One or two thought that the sexton was exceedingly remiss in not turning him out after discovering who he was; and a prominent pew-holder remarked, that if he couldn't take his wife and daughters to that church, without exposing them to such an influence, he would ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... The sexton should be duly informed what preparations to make at the church; the awning at the entrance, the ribbon barrier across the aisle, the floral decorations, etc., by whomever arranged and executed are under the supervision of this functionary, ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... church-porch, we found the parson rebuking the gray-headed sexton for having used mistletoe among the greens with which the church was decorated. It was, he observed, an unholy plant, profaned by having been used by the Druids in their mystic ceremonies; and though it might be innocently employed in the festive ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... groom and his best man to appear there; one minute of eight and no sign. Who in all that crowd could dream that Ray and Blake have vainly stormed the vestry door and found it locked? By some unaccountable error the sexton has barred their entrance as well as that of the intrusive uninvited whom he ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Brent buried the dead Mayor in St. Hathelswide's Churchyard, privately and quietly. He stayed by the grave until the sexton and his assistants had laid the green turf over it; that done, he went round to the Abbey House and sought out Mrs. Saumarez. After his characteristic fashion he spoke out what ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... not people be deprived of this flimsy pretext for staying at home if their homes could be towed up to the church door? Or, better yet, granting that the churches followed out the same plan, and were themselves constructed like canal-boats, how easy it would be for the sexton to drive the church around the town and collect the absentees. In the same manner it would be glorious for men like ourselves, who have to go to their daily toil. For a consideration, Mrs. Pedagog could have us driven to our various places ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... characters in the piece. Never have I seen such wonderful changes of face and form as he gave us that night. He was alternately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor as he was an ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 'Religio Medici'), now visiting the afflicted and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of religion ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... platform outside a group of stragglers recognised him, and there was a hearty cheer followed by frantic handshakes. The incident pleased him, and he spoke to each man singly, calling him by name. The sheriff was one of them, and the clerk of the court, and the old negro sexton of the church. There was a fervour in their congratulations which brought the warmth to his eyes. He was glad that the men who had known him in his poverty should rise so cordially to approve ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... settled here a few years ago. He attended a meeting of the members of the church to which he had attached himself, and hearing something said that pleased him, he cried out "hear him! hear him!" Upon which the sexton came over to him, and told him that, unless he kept himself quiet, he would be under the necessity of turning him ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... well whom he should find standing there, old Adam, the village sexton and grave digger, who always stopped when he saw a light ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... vision, but she saw that it was a genuine certificate of marriage between Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Marquis of Arondelle, and, Rose Cameron, signed by James Smith, Rector of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, and witnessed by John Thomas Price, Sexton, and Ann ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... contrast, certainly," said Vane, glancing back at the gloomy, bent form of the sexton, as he stood looking up sidewise at the big, squarely-built, wholesome-looking miller. "But I couldn't improve him. I say, what shall ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... close to it, were the boys' school and girls' school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton's energy; then came a neat little grocer's shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer's wife the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house. And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, as it were, away from Framley Court; and just beyond ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... United States Minister and his wife which had now taken the place of the Canterville family pictures. He was simply but neatly clad in a long shroud, spotted with churchyard mould, had tied up his jaw with a strip of yellow linen, and carried a small lantern and a sexton's spade. In fact, he was dressed for the character of "Jonas the Graveless, or the Corpse-Snatcher of Chertsey Barn," one of his most remarkable impersonations, and one which the Cantervilles had every ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... steeples, towers, or bells; while St. Peter's, Albany, if not actually St. Peter's, Rome, was a building of which a man might be proud. A little to our surprise, we found the Rev. Mr. Worden and Mr. Jason Newcome had met at the door of this edifice, having sent a boy to the sexton in quest of the key. In a minute or two, the urchin returned, bringing not only the key of the church, but the excuses of the sexton for not coming himself. The door was opened, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... way in which, as the story proceeded, Tupper of Swinsthwaite winked at Ned Hoppin of Fellsgarth, and Long Kirby, the smith, poked Jem Burton, the publican, in the ribs, and Sexton Ross said, "Ma word, lad!" spoke ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... distant tapers, seeming remoter than reality, the kneeling crowds, the heavy vesper chime, all combined to realize, H. said, her dreams of romance more perfectly than ever before. We could not tear ourselves away. But the clash of the sexton's keys, as he smote them together, was the signal to be gone. One after another the tapers were extinguished. The kneeling figures rose; and shadowily we flitted forth, as from some ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... De Walton? Nor, if she did, could I avail myself of a change in favour of myself, at the expense of my friend and companion in arms. It were a folly even to dream of a thing so improbable. But with respect to the other business, it is worth serious consideration. Yon sexton seems to have kept company with dead bodies, until he is unfit for the society of the living; and as to that Dickson of Hazelside, as they call him, there is no attempt against the English during these endless wars, in which that man has ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it remains to try whether you be a man of good utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs. Let me hear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... clergyman in Protestant churches to expect or to receive fees for conducting funerals, yet it is in perfectly good taste to offer him a fee. In the Roman Catholic Church the rate of fees for funerals is fixed. There are, besides, fees for the sexton, ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... good fellow? I was the son of Lawyer Pepper, a shrewd old dog, but as hot as Calcutta; and the grandson of Sexton Pepper, a great author, who wrote verses on tombstones, and kept a stall of religious tracts in Carlisle. My grandfather, the sexton, was the best temper of the family; for all of us are a little inclined to be hot in the mouth. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Welland, including warbling waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the gardener at the Great House, the steward and agent, the parson, clerk, and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of St. Cleeve's death. The sexton had been going to see his brother-in-law, nine miles distant, but promptly postponed the visit for a few days, that there might be the regular professional hand present to toll the bell in a note of due fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... I proceeded directly to Charlottesville, and stopped at the old mansion, which I had not seen for six long years. Alas! it was tenanted by strangers. A new tombstone was in the village grave-yard, and on one side of it the name of my father, and the other bore my own. I asked the sexton, who was just opening the church for an evening lecture, when Richard Colman died. He replied very readily,—'O, about a year since. The old gentleman heard of the loss of the vessel in which he sailed, and dropped ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... writer that he had suffered severe financial loss through installing this action. After expending considerable time (and time is money) in getting it to work right, the whole thing would be upset when the sexton started up the heating apparatus. The writer is acquainted with organs in New York City ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... Morning prayer. There was no one to play the organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up—as she often did. David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of five—Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the sexton, and a baker-church-warden—into six by his unvarying attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women and a few sheepish youths; so that his father ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... answer was insulting, and a real lady never humiliates any one. After reading it Taylor told Amy to meet him at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, and they would be married in the church with no one present but his brother (the only relative Taylor has in town is a bachelor brother), and the sexton, the minister, and me. She met and the ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... if the fat host of the "Black Bull" would recognize in the splendidly mounted horseman the dusty schoolboy of ten years ago. There he was in the porch, grown intolerably fatter, talking to my ancient gossip, Rupert Toms, the sexton, now heavily laden with years and infirmities. I pricked on, having no time to spare for either prayer or provender, since every moment was precious, though a tankard of double October, mulled with spice and laced with brandy, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... was now in an uproar. A shrill yapping sounded among the choir. Mrs. Airedale swooned; the Bishop's progress up the aisle was impeded by a number of ladies hastening for an exit. Old Mr. Dingo, the sexton, seized the bell-rope in the porch and set up a furious pealing. Cries of rage mingled with hysterical howls from the ladies. Gissing, trembling with horror, surveyed the atrocious hubbub. But it was high time to move, or his retreat would be cut off. He abandoned his manuscript and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... childhood. He learned to read, write, and cipher at a small school kept by Hobby, the sexton of the parish church. Among his playmates was Richard Henry Lee, who was afterward a famous Virginian. When the boys grew up, they wrote to each other of grave matters of war and state, but here is the ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... sallied forth. The register was not in the vestry; the church-wardens knew nothing about it; the clerk—a new clerk, who was also the sexton, and rather a wild fellow—had gone ten miles off to a wedding: every place was searched; till, at last, the book was found, amidst a heap of old magazines and dusty papers, in the parlour of Caleb himself. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was a decent, godly woman, and the bold manners and evil words of street vagrants were terrible to her; and so, when the church gates were open for daily morning and evening prayers, she had often begged the sexton to let her little ones come in and hear the singing, and wander hand in hand around the old church walls. He was a kindly old man, and the children, stealing round like two still, bright-eyed little ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... evening discourse was dry and long, and the congregation gradually melted away. The sexton tiptoed up to the pulpit and slipped a note under one corner of the Bible. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson[1] had had a father ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... the presence in this Parliament of eighty Irish members—a number which had been found to be sufficient to initiate an Irish constitution—would be found sufficient to protect an Irish constitution when it was given.'—Mr. Sexton, Feb. 13, 1893, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... Lux, the sexton's boy, who preferred pulling the bell-rope and being violently drawn up by it to sitting in school, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... When, accompanied by a masculine escort, she entered the sacred edifice, the gentleman (?) demurred to removing his hat. While in dispute on this point of etiquette, Madam's pet dog attempted to join her. On being informed by the sexton that such canine companionship was inadmissible, her anger was aroused and she withdrew in ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and the flowers. No priest stood to pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. H. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... our door, she answered. My husband is the sexton; he put up her large white marble tomb-stones;——they are the largest and whitest in the whole burying-ground; and so, indeed, they ought to be, for never was there a person who deserved ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... have been away during the three years that you have been in the habit of visiting us,—and partly because Mr. Axtell, and his sister, too, I think, have a very decided way of avoiding us. What induces Mr. Axtell to perform the office of sexton is more than any one in the congregation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... The sexton, whose name was Peter Ostertag, usually lighted the gymnasium for them, and then went over to his own cottage near by. It was his usual habit to return at about ten o'clock, when the meeting disbanded, in order to put out the lights, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... through the kitchen where I was setting the tea, and she took the key of the church off the nail in the wall. Our farm was full a mile from the village, and half way between it and the church. So we kept one key, and Jack's uncle, who was the sexton, he had ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... died exactly ten years after him. A report had been spread that he had been lifted and taken to dissecting-rooms in Glasgow, which at that period was the fate of many a more seemly corpse than Davie's; and the young men—for Manor had no sexton—who dug the sister's grave in the vicinity of her brother's, stimulated by curiosity to see if his body had really been carried off, and if still there what his bones were like, lifted them up, and carried them to Woodhouse, where they lay a considerable time, till they were sent to Mr. Ballantyne, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... reached the churchyard, they found the old sexton beside the grave, leaning on his spade, ready to fill it again at the shortest notice. The vicar put on his bands, and read the funeral service. "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, but the spirit to God who gave it." The coffin was lowered into its narrow house and the earth thrown ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... account elpagi. Settle decidi. Seven sep. Seventh (music) septimo. Seventeen dek-sep. Seventy sepdek. Sever disigi. Several diversa. Several multaj. Severally diverse. Severe severa. Severity severeco. Sew kudri. Sewer defluilego. Sewing machine stebilo. Sex sekso. Sexton servisto de pregxejo. Sexual seksa. Shabby (worn out) eluzita. Shabby malnobla. Shackles malhelpoj, baroj, katenoj. Shade (screen) lumsxirmilo. Shade ombrajxo. Shade (tint) nuanco. Shade nuanci. Shadow ombro. Shadowy hximera. Shaft (of vehicle) timono. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... (The sexton's little house stood by the gate leading into the churchyard. His wife came out when the carriage stopped, wiping soap-suds from her bare arms with her apron. Beth leaned forward and held out her hand to her, and the woman smiled a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... happened upon the memorial to the unfortunate Robinsons. An old man was stooping over the turf beside it, engaged in gathering mushrooms, numbers of which grew in the grass around this stone, but nowhere else in the whole enclosure. The old man, who proved to be the sexton, assured us not only of this, but also that previous to the interment of the Robinsons no mushrooms had grown within a mile of the spot. He added that, albeit regarded with abhorrence by the more superstitious inhabitants of Pewsey, the fungi were ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... sexton to eat the bell-rope from knot to knot whenever the latter awakened him too early for the sermon. This preacher has also a rope around his neck—make him also eat it up before he finishes ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that stood in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... sexton came to the house on a visit, and the father bewailed his trouble, and told him how his younger son was so backward in every respect that he knew nothing and learned nothing. "Just think," said he, "when I asked him how he was going to earn his bread, he actually wanted to ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... party huddled together in a little crowd as they repaired homewards; particularly when they passed a lonely field where a man had been murdered; and he who had farthest to go and had to complete his journey alone, though a veteran sexton, and accustomed, one would think to ghosts and goblins, yet went a long way round, rather than ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in merely counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us, he offered some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to see the Beauchamp chapel. . . . . On one side of it were some worn steps ascending to a confessional, where the priest used to sit, while the penitent, in the body of the church, poured his sins through a perforated auricle into this unseen receptacle. The sexton showed us, too, a very old chest which had been found in the burial vault, with some ancient armor stored away in it. Three or four helmets of rusty iron, one of them barred, the last with visors, and all intolerably weighty, were ranged in ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she soon reached the Church of St. Lawrence, which the old sexton was just opening. She was the first person who entered the stately house of God that morning and knelt in one of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... now the clownish sexton Narrow courtier-rules rebukes; First he shows the grave of Goethe, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the nearest family scrapes together every farthing they can call their own, an' what's still wanting, that they borrow from some rich man. They run themselves into debt over head and ears; they're owing money to the pastor, to the sexton, and to all concerned. Then there's the victuals, an' the drink, an' such like. No, sir, I'm far from speaking against dutifulness to parents; but it's too much when it goes the length of the mourners having to bear the weight of it for the rest ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... not themselves directly connected with the business affairs of a church probably realise how much of the orderly conduct of the church depends upon the sexton. To many people he is simply the man who looks after funerals, sees that the furnace fires are properly managed, the church swept, etc. In Plymouth Church the sexton was always a man of considerable importance, and I feel it a duty which ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... particular freezing December evening, with his hands behind his bank, and his eyes intent for any envious husband who may be "with a rush retiring," monumentally counselled, after reading the Epitaph, Judge SWEENEY suddenly comes upon Father DEAN conversing with SMYTHE, the sexton, and Mr. BUMSTEAD. Bowing to these three, who, like himself, seem to find real luxury in open-air strolling on a bitter night in midwinter, he notices that his model, the Ritual Rector, is wearing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... place," to improve the note-books of visitors, set about manufacturing an extraordinary instance of longevity. A gravestone was chosen in an out-of-the-way place, in which there happened to be a space before the age (72). A figure 1 was cut in this space, and the age at death then stood 172. The sexton was either deceived, or assented to the deception; as the late vicar, the Rev. J. Clayton, learned that it had become a practice with him (the sexton) to show strangers this gravestone, so falsified, as a proof of the extraordinary age to which people ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... sons, Feodor and Dmitri. Feodor, who succeeded his father, was twenty years of age, weak, characterless, though quite amiable. In his early youth his chief pleasure seemed to consist in ringing the bells of Moscow, which led his father, at one time, to say that he was fitter to be the son of a sexton than of a prince. Dmitri was an infant. He was placed, by his father's will, under the tutelage of an energetic, ambitious noble, by the name of Bogdan Bielski. This aspiring nobleman, conscious of the incapacity of Feodor to govern, laid ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... church at Varages, in Provence, to such a degree of reputation had the shrine of this saint risen, it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine. On windy days the beadle and sexton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... especially misery, degradation, and moral eclipse, resulting directly from giant evils, which are tolerated in all our large cities, though known to every thoughtful person, from judge to artisan, from clergyman to sexton, from editor to reporter, from wealthy matron to the humble sewing woman. Every earnest thinker knows that there are evils feeding the furnaces of physical, mental, and moral destruction; that there are flourishing nurseries, common schools, and universities of crime, degradation, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... place, burial ground; grave yard, church yard; God's acre; tope, cromlech, barrow, tumulus, cairn; ossuary; bone house, charnel house, dead house; morgue; lich gate^; burning ghat^; crematorium, crematory; dokhma^, mastaba^, potter's field, stupa^, Tower of Silence. sexton, gravedigger. monument, cenotaph, shrine; grave stone, head stone, tomb stone; memento mori [Lat.]; hatchment^, stone; obelisk, pyramid. exhumation, disinterment; necropsy, autopsy, post mortem examination [Lat.]; zoothapsis^. V. inter, bury; lay in the grave, consign to the grave, lay in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the sexton with him and let him have the pick and shovel from the cemetery. I gave him food and thanked God as I watched him eat, that grace was working ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... eminence, and the park-wall interposed; but a little way down was a stile affording access to the road, and by this we approached the iron gate of the churchyard. I saw the church door open; the sexton was replacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which he had just been digging a grave in the churchyard, in their little repository under the stone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sweeping change of scene. A host of monuments and gravestones reflected the sunlight, while a broad river ebbed and flowed between high banks. A sexton and a watchman stood by a granite vault, the heavy door of which they had opened with a large key. Hard by were some gardeners and labourers, and also a crowd of curiosity-seekers who had come to witness the last sad rites. Presently a funeral procession ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... had her house almost full, and did not want to go again: there was so much to be done! But her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more: the servants were doing so well! he said. She yielded. He rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were floating about in them. But the floor of the church was above the water: he landed Helen dry in the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... at Rothwell Church, in Northamptonshire; and at both places skulls and thigh bones were piled up, in mural recesses, with as much regularity as bottles in the bins of a wine-cellar. At Rothwell there was (twenty years ago) a great number of these relics. The sexton spoke of there being 10,000 skulls, but this, no doubt, was an exaggeration; and he gave, as the local tradition, that they had been gathered from the neighbouring field of Naseby. A similar story prevails ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... not one who replies with invective, when sinking under the weight of argument; I am not a man who denies the necessity of parliamentary reform, at the time that he approves of its expediency, by reviling his own constituents, the parish clerk, the sexton, and the grave-digger; and if there be any man who can apply what I am not, to himself, I leave him to think of it in the committee, and contemplate upon ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... plunges into messuages and building-lots; then, after changing his coat again, back to our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering around him as it does on the old folios that fill the shelves all round the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one day denying these articles, with many more, the next day confessing the same, thus manifestly incurring perjury." Six days before the visitors' access to his monastery "he committed theft and sacrilege, confessing the same. At midnight he caused his chaplain to seize the sexton's keys, and took out a jewel, a cross of gold with stones. One Warren, a goldsmith in the Chepe, was with him in his chamber at that hour, and there they stole out a great emerald, with a ruby. The said Warren made the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and dreadful sepulchre there is little more to tell. From monarch to monarch we marched on till at length we grew weary of staring at bones and gold. Even Quick grew weary, who had passed his early youth in assisting his father, the parish sexton, and therefore, like myself, regarded these relics with professional interest, though of a different degree. At any rate, he remarked that this family vault was uncommonly hot, and perhaps, if it pleased her Majesty, as he called Maqueda, we might take the rest ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... made to create Protestant schools in the Scandinavian countries. In Denmark writing-schools for both boys and girls were organized, and the sexton of each parish was ordered to gather the children together once a week for instruction in the Catechism. In Sweden little was done before 1686, when Charles XI ordained that the sacristan of each parish should ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... from the alley; the surroundings were not such as they liked. Did you notice that bit of a house landing modestly back from the road, at the further corner of those ample grounds that surround the South End Church? It is the sexton's house, and that church, and those Sunday-school rooms, and those grounds, and everything pertaining to them, are under his care. The father is the sexton, it is true, and attends the furnace and rings ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... smile, I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while, Because my homely phrase the truth would tell. You are the fools, not I—for I did dwell With a deep thought, and with a softened eye, 40 On that old Sexton's natural homily, In which there was Obscurity and Fame,— The Glory and the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... would not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... direction of passengers, to go with more security to and from the water side, all night long, to be placed at the north-east corner of the parish church of St. Botolph, from the Feast Day of St. Bartholomew to Lady Day; out of which sum L1. is to be paid to the sexton for taking care ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... need anything. I—I shall have to see to things for the funeral, you know. And don't forget to thank your mother for the cheese. It looks real good, and Georgie doos like it the best of anything for breakfast. I guess I'll get on my bonnet, and go to see Abel Mound, the sexton." ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... in the Rocky Mountains Clifton Johnson Trails of the Pathfinders G.B. Grinnell Stories of California E.M. Sexton Glimpses of California Helen Hunt Jackson California: Its History and Romance J.S. McGroarty Heroes of California G.W. James Recollections of an Old Pioneer P.H. Bennett The Mountains of California John Muir Romantic California ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... chances that men in religion are more hard of heart to believe than laymen and the simple. The cure, therefore, having made all due search, and found none living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. At the last they won from him that he had gone to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... task was done he came toward them, wiping the drops from his forehead. The sexton was poor, but out of the feeble strength left to his old age, he had given something to alleviate distress greater than his own. A consciousness of this made his voice peculiarly gentle, as he called a man from the trench to aid in the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... exclaimed, "it is Anne-Marie! now we shall have the news. And how is Mr. Such-an-one, the priest? How is the Vicar So-and-So? Does he still look as well as ever? and Mr. Jacob, of such a place. And the old sexton, Niclausse, does he still ring the bells at Dann, and at Hirschland, and Saint Jean? He must begin ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... himself for them, and Paul erected a magnificent monument over him in the St. Georg Cemetery in Hamburg, on which neither marble nor gilt nor verses were spared. The monument is one of the sights of the churchyard, and pointed out to visitors with great pride by the sexton. Old Frau Brohl, too, kept green the memory of the departed friend. Her speciality now was the manufacturing of flags and banners since Paul had founded quite a number of Vereins among the settlers on his estate—latterly a Military Verein, and one for Conservative ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... talking at the gate, one of them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with the soil of graves. Their very aspect was delightful to me; and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick up some snatch of sexton gossip, some 'talk fit for a charnel,' {9b} something, in fine, worthy of that fastidious logician, that adept in coroner's law, who has come down to us as the patron of Yaughan's liquor, and the very prince of gravediggers. Scots ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... use of some part of the premises subject to recall of the privilege on sufficient grounds; and—a consideration never to be slighted although often hard to get—the good-will and co-operation of the sexton. With the sexton against him, no pastor can make a church boys' club succeed. The club will make no mistake in paying the church something for ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... were being married he stamped and swore so that the high-spirited Katharine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church, he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full in the sexton's face, giving no other reason for this strange act than that the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking. Never sure was there such a mad marriage; but Petruchio did but put this wildness on the better ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... visit to their camp four miles below Ukiah, and finding there a unique kind of assembly-house, desired to enter and examine it, but was not allowed to do so until I had gained the confidence of the old sexton by a few friendly words and the tender of a silver half dollar. The pit of it was about 50 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet deep, and it was so heavily roofed with earth that the interior was damp and somber as a tomb. It looked like a low tumulus, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... decked the grave. The earth that covered it was drawn back like a floating drapery. She sunk down, and the spectre covered her with a black cloak; night closed around her, the night of death. She sank deeper than the spade of the sexton could penetrate, till the churchyard became a roof above her. Then the cloak was removed, and she found herself in a large hall, of wide-spreading dimensions, in which there was a subdued light, like twilight, reigning, and in a moment her child appeared ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Abbey he gave me some anecdotes of Johnny Bower to whom his father had alluded; he was sexton of the parish and custodian of the ruin, employed to keep it in order and show it to strangers;—a worthy little man, not without ambition in his humble sphere. The death of his predecessor had been mentioned in the newspapers, so that his name had appeared in print throughout the land. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... to such dreadful uses, the outside was treated quite as badly. Shops of all kinds were built up against the cathedral, and sometimes the noise which the carpenters made greatly disturbed those at the service within. It must have been shocking indeed! It is said that for a very small sum, the sexton would allow boys to climb up and ring the bells as much as they liked; and, on the day of Queen Mary's coronation, she saw a Dutchman standing on ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... it was afterward told to Mrs. Booty, who arrested Captain Barnaby in a thousand pound action, for what he had said of her husband. Captain Barnaby gave bail to it, and it came on to a trial in the Court of King's Bench, and they had Mr. Booty's wearing apparel brought into court, and the sexton of the parish, and the people that were with him when he died; and we swore to our journals, and it came to the same time within two minutes; ten of our men swore to the buttons on his coat, and that they were covered ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... making merry at a friend's house in a country village, when the sexton of the parish church entered the room in a sort of surprise, and told us "that, as he was digging a grave in the chancel, a little blow of his pick-axe opened a decayed coffin, in which there were several written papers." Our curiosity was immediately raised, so that we went to the place where ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... in the dead of night, it would ring all alone and throw two or three notes in the darkness, seized by a singular mirth, awakened one knew not why. All the peasants in the neighborhood then thought that the bell had been bewitched; and no one except the Priest and the Sexton ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... merry; Let the requiems rest silent In the lull of deep thanksgiving. For the wrath of heaven is lifted, Lifted from the rescued city. Gone, the sound of rolling death-cart, Hushed, the ringing, tolling belfry, Still, the bier and gloomy shovel, Still, the idle, listless sexton. Other days of anxious watching Followed, one or two years later; Days when fierce, destructive fevers Darkened many homes with mourning.[2] Yet the citizens are happy In this season of glad respite; Now the people of the township Open wide the doors ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a good haul," said Ann Bartlett, whose father had been sexton for thirty-eight years, and who, in consequence, looked upon herself as holding some subtly intimate relation with the church, so that when the old carpet was "auctioned off" she insisted on darning the breadths before they were put up for sale. "What money can do! Just ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... By myself.—The Sexton will go at once to Bascom's and procoor the identicle bottle from wich this wretched man, who stands charged with thus lowerin hisself, drunk, and bring it hither. The Court desires to know for herself whether it was really whisky. ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... Dickens wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious old inn facing the church—such a lovely ride—such forest scenery—such an out-of-the-way rural place—such a sexton! I say again, Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place; and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens wrote over sixty years ago, one cannot fail to have a keen desire to see ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... ready for burial, the wasp sexton proceeded to open the tomb. Seizing one stone after another in her widely opened jaws, they were scattered right and left, when, with apparent ease and prompt despatch, the listless larva was drawn towards the burrow, into whose depths he soon disappeared. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Sole child that survived to thee, oh, aged pastor of Esthwaite. Clad in his morning gown, the reverend priest at a table Of sculptur'd stone was seated; and his seat was a massy but easy Settle of oak, which in youth his ancient servitor, Isaac, Footman, sexton, and steward, butler and gardener also, Carved by the winter fire in nights of gloomy November, And through many a long, long night of many a dark December. 21 The good man's heart was glad, and his eyes were suffus'd with a rapture Of perfect love as they settled on her—that pulse ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a look at the remains of Pedro Claver to-day," his new friend remarked. "The old sexton scraped and bowed with huge joy as he led me behind the altar and lighted up the grewsome thing. I suppose he believed that Pedro's soul was up in the clouds making intercession with the Lord for him, while he, poor devil, was toting tourists around to gaze at the Saint's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... quaint little village church, and as churches and church services were matters of great interest to us just then, the two parsons, the churchwarden, five elder scholars and myself got the key from the sexton and ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... trudged home alone, and when the street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked dully out. For ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only two!—I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.—But I only ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... cozen him. But after many ceremonies done, He calls for wine: 'A health!' quoth he, as if He had been abroad, carousing to his mates After a storm; quaff'd off the muscadel, And threw the sops all in the sexton's face, Having no other reason But that his beard grew thin and hungerly And seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking. This done, he took the bride about the neck, And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack That at the parting all the church did echo. And I, seeing this, came thence for very ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn't abide spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton |
