"Gentry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... born in a certain way; ingens, "vast, huge, great,"—"not gens," i.e. "born beyond or out of its kind"; gentilis, "belonging to the same clan, race, tribe, nation," then, with various turns of meaning, "national, foreign," whence our gentile, genteel, gentle, gentry, etc.; genus, "birth, race, sort, kind"; ingenium, "innate quality, natural disposition"; ingeniosus, "of good natural abilities, born well-endowed," hence ingenious; ingenuus, "native, free-born, worthy of a free man," hence ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Sidney, Marquess of Carabas, held public days twice a week at his grand castle. And now came the neighbouring peer, full of grace and gravity, and the mellow baronet, with his hearty laugh, and the jolly country squire, and the middling gentry, and the jobbing country attorney, and the flourishing country surveyor; some honouring by their presence, some who felt the obligation equal, and others bending before the noble host, as if paying him adoration was almost an equal pleasure with that of guzzling his ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... endeavoured to take advantage of this circumstance, by discharging incessant flights of arrows into the town. On receiving orders from De Sousa to march against the enemy, the discontented troops exclaimed, "That the rich gentry might march if they would; but that they only came to make up by plunder for the pay of which they had been unjustly deprived." Gracia de Sa went out against the enemy with a few lances; but after several charges, almost the whole of the Portuguese shamefully ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... "there will never be justice for the like of us. We cannot send bailiffs to the Government to demand our dues for us; and as the wallet must be filled somehow," he said, striking his stomach, "we cannot afford to wait. Moreover, these gentry who lead snug lives in government offices may talk and talk, but their words are not good to eat, so I have come back here again to draw my pay out of the commonalty," he said, striking ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world—that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all dislike her new authority, with the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... wonder much that the chivalrous Black Horse gentry have expressed their contempt of Northern "mudsills and greasy mechanics," and have made their brags that we could never match them. But then it is said that these Southrons were born in a saddle, and were always trained in horsemanship. They generally perform their pleasure excursions, go on ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... is a very well-known character in the neighborhood of Pocklington Square. He waits at the parties of the gentry in the neighborhood, and though, of course, despised in families where a footman is kept, is a person of much importance ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lots o' gentry lives in good style and no money per rannum, as we calls it, at all. But you think he ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... thy gentry be but young, As the flow'r that this day sprung, And thy father thee before, Never arms nor scutcheon bore; First let me have but a catch of thy gold, Then, though thou be an ass, By this light Thou shalt pass For a knight; For here ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... of the oldest and best-known houses in the country. The home of Norman Wentworth was known to be one of the most elegant in the city, as it was the most exclusive, and both Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth were recognized as representatives of the old-time gentry. Mrs. Wickersham might have endured the praise of the elegance of the mansion. She had her own ideas as to house-furnishing, and the Wentworth mansion was furnished in a style too quiet and antiquated to suit her more modern tastes. If ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... mention an expedient?—'If I am to be watched, banished, and confined; suppose, Sir, it were to be at your house?'—Then the neighbouring gentry will the less wonder, that the person of whom they used to think so favourably, appear not at church here; and that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... such as you are, get their dinners about one o'clock, but the gentry and big bugs dine at three. As for representatives we dine at four, and the aristocracy and the Senators don't ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... slowly forward with his thumbs in his girdle and a sour smile on his fat cheeks. Master Franois addressed him sternly, twitching as he did so the landlord's greasy cap from his pate and sending it flying down the room. "Why do you not salute gentry when they honour your pot-house? A mug of your best Beaune, Master Beggar-maker, to drink ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... are of an absolute directness and frankness. They blink nothing of the sordid, the mean, the vicious, the wicked in that life, from which they rarely rise in some glimpse of the state of the neighboring gentry, and yet they abound in beauty that consoles and encourages. They are full of keen analysis, sly wit, kindly humor, and of a satire too conscientious to bear the name; of pathos, of compassion, of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Whole families fled to the mountains, and no one was safe from robbery and violence. The mandarin of Chaocheng, fearful lest massacres should take place in the county under his jurisdiction and desiring at any cost to keep the peace, called together some of the leading gentry and asked for advice as to the problem facing them. "I know," said he, "that calling upon the Christians to recant will be useless, but can we not issue tickets to them upon which are the very words they use in entering the Church, 'I promise to repent?' ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... so delighted at the circumstance, that it was with the utmost difficulty we could prevent him from taking us to a plain outside the town, where the horse-fair was going on, as he assured us that there we should see all the monde. As we were quite aware of the style of gentry assembled, by the quantity of blue frocks and berrets which we saw from a distance, and by the neighing of steeds which reached our ears, we declined joining the commercial party, and contented ourselves ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... That long-faced gentry is always in church! Where else should they be? But, Rosie, it isn't even half past ten yet; and when the service is over the bells ring. No, and you needn't be ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... destroy his sense of duty.] He is by all means, you say, to be kept out of all such pernicious company, in which it is impossible he can learn any lesson but one,—an aversion to good morals, just laws, virtuous kings, a polished and benevolent gentry, and learned and pious teachers. Well; let him be kept as far as possible from the mischief of all such books and knowledge; let him hardly know that there was an ancient world, or that there are on the globe such regions and wonders as travellers have described; or that a reason ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... is said to have taken place a memorable event, which the Scottish people called the "Barns of Ayr." It is alleged that the English governor of Ayr had invited the greater part of the Scottish nobility and gentry in the western parts to meet him at some large buildings called the Barns of Ayr, for the purpose of friendly conference upon the affairs of the nation. But the English earl entertained the treacherous purpose of putting the Scottish gentlemen to death. The English soldiers had halters with ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... September 1st he gained his first victory at Tippermuir, near Perth, on which he had marched with his Highland host. From Perth he marched on Aberdeen, gaining some reinforcements from the northern gentry, and in particular from the Earl of Airlie. Once again Montrose fought a battle which delivered the city of Aberdeen into his power (September 13th), but now he was unwilling or unable to protect the captured ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... dishes were being placed on the table. The master and his entire establishment took their meals together, except the married men, who lived in the quadrangle with their families. There was no division by the salt- cellar, as at the tables of the nobles and gentry, but the master, his family and guests, occupied the centre, with the hearth behind them, where the choicest of the viands were placed; next after them were the places of the journeymen according ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... measuring, but the amount must be very great—by the fact that communication of thought is practically impossible between people who are neighbours? How much would it not contribute to the national alertness, to national efficiency, if the local dialects could be swept away and the peasantry and gentry of all England—nay of the British Isles—talk together easily in one tongue? It is impossible not to believe that this ease in the interchange of ideas must in itself contribute greatly to uniformity of thought and character in a people. Possessing it, it is not easy ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... that those Hottentots have not searched the house! I declare that if I see one of the red-trousered gentry enter the house, I ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously by ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... customers, those, I mean, who want live Rats wherewith to try their dogs. Amongst mine I have the honour to include clients of highest rank and position, barristers, magistrates, solicitors and a host of sporting gentry. If the Rat-catcher's efforts commend themselves to such gentlemen, and he always maintains a respectable appearance, he will obtain some very nice outings in the country. Oft-times a party of gentlemen have sent for me in the summer, having arranged with me to bring ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... the Earls of CHESTER to this day: and, in token of feudal alliance, from the middle of the thirteenth century, "one or more garbs," in the words of Mr. PLANCH, "are seen in the majority of Coats belonging to the nobility and gentry of the County Palatine of Chester." Thus, since the year 1390, the arms of GROSVENOR have been—Az., ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... Rattar to Mr. James Bisset. Even without an introduction, Mr. Carrington would have been welcome, for though Mr. Bisset's sway over Keldale House was by this time almost despotic, he had begun to find that despotism has its lonely side, and to miss "the gentry." With an introduction, Mr. Carrington quickly discovered that Mr. Bisset and the mansion he supervised were alike ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... his scarlet and black, drew his sister into a corner of the hall in which the gentry of the Lords that were there had already dined. It was a vast place, used as a rule for hearing suitors to the Lord Privy Seal and for the audit dinners of his tenantry in London. On its whitened walls there were trophies of arms, and between the wall and ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... 1770's, were surprised to find Virginia and other American colonies to be economically prosperous, socially mature, and attractive places in which to live. Englishman after Englishman wrote about Virginians who lived in a style befitting English country gentry and London merchants. Over and over again they noted the near absence of poverty, even on the frontier. Their discoveries matched English political needs. Not only was it necessary for the Americans to assume a greater share of the financial burdens, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... public property. With his diminutive stature and his per- pendicular spirit, his flushed face, expressive protuber- ant eyes, high peremptory voice, extreme volubility, lucidity, and neatness of utterance, he reminded me of the gentry who figure in the revolutions of his native land. If he was not a fierce little Jacobin, he ought to have been, for I am sure there were many men of his pattern on the Committee of Public Safety. He knew absolutely what ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... it, I can assure you. And I can't get the proud old Scot to retrench. Why doesn't he let that baronial hall of his, instead of sticking to it and mortgaging it in order to keep up appearances and entertain half the gentry in the county? Why doesn't he take a five-roomed cottage, and let his daughter teach the harp that she ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... just as natural for a subordinate in a "grocery" to levy upon the till, for material aid to his own pocket, as for the sparks to fly upwards or water run down hill. Innumerable stories are told of the peculations of these "light-fingered gentry," but one of the best of the boodle is a story we are now about to dress up and trot ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... supposed to be one of the first houses built on the grant of the Rock of Dumbarton, and was intended for the "overlooker" of that part of the grant. It was a very plain but comfortable house, and was the home in the early part of the century of Hezekiah Miller who, like many of the gentry in those days, was in charge of government work. His department dealt with the Indians, and he had the distribution of money and supplies to certain tribes to whom he went from time to time, and also looked after them when they came to Washington. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... who, as we have already mentioned, are called "cookees," there seems to be also a pretty numerous class, distinguished by the name of rungateedas, or, as it has been more recently written, rangatiras, which appears to answer nearly to the English term gentry.[AX] It consists of those who are connected by relationship with the families of the chiefs; and who, though not possessed of any territorial rights, are, as well as the chiefs themselves, looked upon as almost of a different species from the inferior orders, from whom they are probably ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... twenty years after his first novel. Except for La Vendee, his third novel, set in France during the Revolution, all his previous works were set in England or Ireland and dealt with the upper levels of society: the nobility and the landed gentry (wealthy or impoverished), and a few well-to-do merchants—people several strata above the social levels of the characters popularized by his contemporary Dickens. Most of Trollope's early novels were set in the countryside or in provincial towns, with ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the ministers were scarcely more than the agents. Little doubt was felt as to the successful issue of the war; public spirit was aroused, and the cause of England was generally held to be just. The landed gentry and the professions of the Church, the army, and the law were strongly on the king's side. Self-interest largely decided the attitude of the mercantile class: some of its members were opposed to the war because it injured their trade; others ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... I could not tell what robbers had to do in Iceland. Pirates had often come to the island; but for these gentry this cavern was too far from the sea. I cannot even imagine beasts of prey to have been there; for the whole country round about is desert and uninhabited, so that they could have found nothing to prey upon. In fact, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... picture of courtiers. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton's designation, and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... unhappy country has been, at once for natural and political advantages, and for misery, turbulence, and crime. A Government, to command the obedience of the people by its firmness, and their confidence by a marked consideration for their feelings and welfare; a gentry, united with them as their leaders, protectors, and friends; and a Church, winning them to a purer faith by the unobtrusive display of benefits and excellences: all these blessings might have been its own. But by fatal mismanagement, the gentry, those of them ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... promises repose to his pen, in the last chapter of 'Don Quixote'. Oh! that our voluminous gentry would follow the example of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... three-and-twenty summers, dressed in all the extravagance of a lavish and extravagant age. Upon his head he wore an immense peruke of ringlets, such as had been introduced at Court the previous year, and which was almost universal now with the nobles and gentry, but by no means so amongst the citizens. The periwig was surmounted by a high-crowned hat adorned with feathers and ribbons, and ribbons floated from his person in such abundance that to unaccustomed eyes the effect was little short of grotesque. Even the absurd high-heeled ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... promises. For eleven years he ruled in a despotic way without Parliament. In 1642 civil war broke out between the Puritans, on one side, and the king, nobles, landed gentry, and adherents of the Church of England, on the other. The Puritans under the great Oliver Cromwell were victorious, and in 1649 they beheaded Charles as a "tyrant, traitor and murderer." Cromwell finally became Protector of the Commonwealth of England. The ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... The ancient, perhaps the extinct, spirit of Englishmen was once expressed by our proverb, "Better be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion;" i.e., the first of the yeomanry rather than the last of the gentry. A foreign philosopher might have discovered our own ancient skill in archery among our proverbs; for none but true toxophilites could have had such a proverb as, "I will either make a shaft or a bolt of it!" signifying, says the author of Ivanhoe, a determination ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... conscripts were almost invariably from the cities—the refuse population of the wharf, bar-room and hotel. Unwilling to volunteer, these gentry skulked behind every excuse to avoid conscription; but when forced off at last, they and the substitutes banded in an unholy brotherhood to make ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the commencement exercises of the class graduating the following year: "Quite a number of the gentry, and the teachers of the government schools for young men, had asked to come to attend the graduating exercises; and of course we were very much pleased to have them. They did seem to enjoy it very much. Some of them have told my friends that they were ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... France, who seem to have loved their niece with sincere affection, determined to accompany her for a short distance, as she set out on her journey from Nancy. Of course, many of the courtiers went too. These together with the great number of English nobles and gentry that were attached to the service of the bride, made so large a company, and the dresses, caparisons, and trappings which were exhibited on the occasion were so splendid and fine, that the cavalcade, as it set out from the city of Nancy on the morning when the ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... duck points, I with a fowling-piece I was all but too young to carry, and brought back a hundred red-heads or canvas-backs in our bags. He went with unfailing regularity to the races at Annapolis or Chestertown or Marlborough, often to see his own horses run, where the coaches of the gentry were fifty and sixty around the course; where a negro, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a pipe of Madeira was often staked at a single throw. Those times, my children, are not ours, and I thought it not strange that Mr. Carvel should delight in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the mysteries of housekeeping. But the time was not all devoted to labor. There were lighter hours in which the maidens took daily rides. There was also much dining about among the officers, their families, and the neighboring gentry of the town and neighborhood. As the weather became warmer picnics followed in the near-by woods, so that there was no lack of diversion. In these pastimes Clifford was an almost constant attendant. Mr. and Mrs. Owen had pressed him to become an inmate of their home, which, being ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... at that. I'm not talking of the days of Igor, of course. And besides it all comes of idleness. Everything in Russia comes of idleness, everything good and fine even. It all springs from the charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of our gentry! I'm ready to repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don't know how to live by our own labour. And as for the fuss they're making now about the 'dawn' of some sort of public opinion, has it so suddenly ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... most becoming manner, the family in black coaches, with their handkerchiefs up to their noses, ready for the tears which did not come; the undertaker and his gentlemen in deep tribulation; the select tenantry mourning out of compliment to the new landlord; the neighbouring gentry's carriages at three miles an hour, empty, and in profound affliction; the parson speaking out the formula about "our dear brother departed." As long as we have a man's body, we play our Vanities upon it, surrounding it with humbug and ceremonies, laying it in state, and packing ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... longest suspensions, the nobility, with large retinues, continually resorted to the court. But an intercourse more constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the agency of the two universities. Already, in the time of James I., the growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth of a new interest in political questions, had begun to express itself at Oxford, and still more so at Cambridge. Academic persons stationed themselves as sentinels at London, for the purpose of watching the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... this raillery had been a safety-valve for her envy. Now, however, and from henceforward, the case would be very different. Now the Lookalofts would boast that their aspirations had been sanctioned by the gentry of the country; now they would declare with some show of truth that their claims to peculiar consideration had been recognized. They had sat as equal guests in the presence of bishops and baronets; they had been curtseyed ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... city had still its regular winter season of fashionable gayety, during which sedan chairs were to be seen carrying through its streets, to its evening assemblies, the more elderly members of the beau monde. The nobility and gentry of Scotland came up from their distant country residences to their town-houses in "Auld Reekie," as they now come up ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... other hand, settled down permanently with his wife and family in the island of his choice. Barbados and Jamaica are the only two tropical countries under the British flag where there was a resident white gentry born and bred in the country, with country places handed down from father to son. In these two islands not one word of any language but English was ever to be heard from either black or white. The English parochial system had been transplanted bodily, and successfully, with guardians and overseers ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... understand, she could not even realise that she might possibly be mistaken. Quite seriously she thought that what she ignored could be hardly worth knowing. People talk of the advance of education; there may be a little among the lower classes, but it is inconceivable that the English gentry can ever have been more illiterate than they are now. Throughout the country, in the comfortable villa or in the stately mansion, you will find as much prejudice and superstition in the drawing-room ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... kind treatment. Like us when we "stand at ease," you know, a bit baggy, that's all. You should see him after a twenty miles spin along our Wickham roads, when my wife and I are doing a round of visits among the neighbouring gentry. Ah, Bogey, Bogey, old boy—kissing his nose—I don't know what Mrs. G. and the girls will say when they hear I've parted with you—if I do, if ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... remain in considerable numbers, to this day. A passage to this point will be found in Mr. Hallam's valuable work. "It is," observes this able historical writer, "an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... full that evening, and the platform was prettily and appropriately decorated with flags and plants in pots. There was a sprinkling of local gentry on the front benches, and Miss Todd, who had returned after the holidays, and was entertaining some visitors at the Abbey, brought her whole house-party. The villagers had turned up in full force, thoroughly prepared to enjoy themselves. The Fleming family sat at the end of the second ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... suspicions before I became certain. Moreover, harassed as I had been by personal ill-treatment and other cares, I did not so keenly feel the horror of my situation. Indeed, I had begun to fancy that I had got among real pirates, for these gentry were not uncommon at the time, and I am certain a gang of picaroons would not have been one whit more vulgar and brutal than were the crews of the Pandora. It was rather a relief, therefore, to know they were not pirates—not that their business was any better,—but ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... earth-born that their mother's lap soon takes furrows in which they may run. The charcoal-burners' life was no exception: hard work from dawn to dusk, food your only recreation, sleep your only solace. The weather is no new thing to you, to gape at and talk about. As well might the gentry talk about the joys of their daily bath. You have no quarrels, do no sins, for you have neither women nor strong waters in your forest tents. And if you knew how, you would thank God that you are incapable of thought, since ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Redlintie a curran years after, but both the gauger and his wife were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughters. They were Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well off as was expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother's town, and started a school for the gentry there. I dinna doubt but what it's the school that Esther Auld's ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... figger. Of course we-alls never asks his name none, as askin' names an' lookin' at the brands on a pony is speshul roode in the West, an' shows your bringin' up; but he allows he's called 'Old Bill Gentry ' to the boys, an' he an' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... might attempt of the family life at Steventon, which closed soon after I was born, could be little better than a fancy- piece. There is no doubt that if we could look into the households of the clergy and the small gentry of that period, we should see some things which would seem strange to us, and should miss many more to which we are accustomed. Every hundred years, and especially a century like the last, marked by an extraordinary ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... And there are several fine orchids, habenaria, and cypripedium, the latter very rare, once common in the Valley near the foot of Glacier Point, and in a bog on the rim of the Valley near a place called Gentry's Station, now abandoned. It is a very beautiful species, the large oval lip white, delicately veined with purple; the other petals and the sepals purple, strap-shaped, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... applied to Cassell, and made arrangements to have the whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to meet (as Cassell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle and artisan class; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring on a new sale. I did not then know that Cassell's had numerous serials already on hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... East-end was the most effective of protests against that severance of class from class in which so many of its evils take their rise. When speaking of the overcrowding and the official ill-treatment of the poor, he says truly: "These are the sort of evils which, where there are no resident gentry, grow to a height almost incredible, and on which the remedial influence of the mere presence of a gentleman known to be on the alert is inestimable." But nothing, as I often had occasion to remark, could be more judicious than his interference on behalf of the poor, or more unlike the fussy ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... The last two were somewhat looked down upon by the others. It is, accordingly, hardly to be wondered at that the condition of industry and commerce was the least satisfactory feature in the initial stages of national development. Despised alike by the gentry and the peasantry, the traders were in a somewhat sorry plight when Japan was thrown open. The low social status of the trading class in Japan was due to the feudal ideas which prevailed for so many centuries. The people were impressed with the productive power ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... suddenly found herself in the most dangerous pangs of labour. All the skill of the physicians who had been summoned proved futile; the lady was at the point of death; at last, in sheer despair, they summoned a midwife of great repute among the peasantry, but whose practice did not include the gentry. From the first treatment of this woman, who appeared modest and diffident to a degree, the pains ceased as if by enchantment; the patient fell into an indefinable calm languor, and after some hours was delivered of a beautiful infant; but after this was attacked ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done. Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a man in the early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a province and was an amateur political economist of great ability. He did his best. Unfortunately, he could not perform miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze more taxes out of the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary funds from the nobility ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Mississippi, what's he willing to do for the party. Far as I can see without a telescope or microscope, he doesn't raise a finger—won't even take out papers so he can vote! I ask Parson Williams here what he is willing to do for the party; and he objects to his copper-gentry taking a free-for-all forty cents on the dollar. Then, you both come asking me to pass fifteen-thousand sheep across my ranch to the Rim Rocks, though they ruin the pasture and there isn't room enough for all ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Palmer (the great West-Indian Palmer), who, we understand, is the intimate friend and relative of the Beaumont family. Then followed, as our correspondent counted, above a hundred carriages of distinction, with a prodigious cavalcade of gentry. The whole was closed by a long line of attendants and domestics. The moment the park gates were opened, groups of young girls of the Beaumont tenantry, habited in white, with knots of ribands, and emblematical devices suited to the occasion, and with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... house stands on a fine lawn commanding a most enchanting view. On this verdant carpet, after a promenade and general salute to their worthy pastor and his numerous guests, dancing took place; for the time all distinctions were laid aside, and the greatest gentry in the neighbourhood, taking the hand of their more humble neighbours, led them through the mazy dance with a feeling of kindness, friendship, and good humour such as I have seldom witnessed. Two or three hours ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... outcome of a complex mixture of Portuguese, former black slaves, and Indians. When you realized that the people who had drifted into the interior were the worst Portuguese, the worst blacks, and the Indians who intermarried with these gentry the worst Indians, you can well imagine what fine results could be expected ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Otherwise there was danger of its being shelved. The difficulty was the old problem of how to get at the men of the scattered villages, the lonely cottages. The only papers that they ever saw were those, chiefly of the Carleton group, that the farmers and the gentry took care should come within their reach; that were handed to them at the end of their day's work as a kindly gift; given to the school children to take home with them; supplied in ample numbers to all the little inns ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... result he had had to stand aside and see all sorts of gentry taken on for the numerous expeditions that were constantly being arranged: runaway seamen, cooks, stewards, and stokers from the ships, gangers and navvies from the railways, ne'er-do-wells of all descriptions, with but here and there an old "river ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... and archaeological description of the City of Goa, states that the Viceroy rarely stirred out of his palace, except to make a royal progress through the city. 'A day previous to his appearance in public, drums were beaten and trumpets sounded, as a signal to the noblesse and gentry to accompany him on the following day. Accordingly, early in the morning about three or four hundred hidalgos and courtiers appeared in the Terriero do Paco, clad in rich attire, mounted on noble ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of so great a political change. As the excitement subsided, the kindly feeling, which never had been extinguished, began more palpably to revive. Before the epoch of agitation approached, we were a peaceful and a happy people. The peerage, the gentry, the yeomen, and the peasantry—all classes were bound together with the links of respect and of affection. The old hereditary attachment between the orders had not been broken. The poor man was proud of the noble, because the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... might have made a good match of it! there was Ildefonso and Andrea, and many other brave fellows besides, who supported our whole house, herself among the rest; but she set up the paltry pretense that the gentry were robbers and murderers, and that she could not let them into her heart. The gallants were such generous spirits, they meant to have the baggage actually tied to them in church; but silly youth has neither sense nor truth. Now they are lying in their graves, those worthy men, and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... they did so, for their father seldom came outside his library door, and their mother was busy with her domestic duties and in dispensing simples to the poor people, who, now that the monasteries were closed, had no medical aid save that which they got from the wives of the gentry or ministers, or from the wise women, of whom there was generally one ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... not mean to insinuate for a moment that the utmost energy and culture are not occasionally to be met with in the female portion of that interesting mass of our fellow-creatures who swell the large volumes of the "Landed Gentry." Among their ranks are those who come boldly forward into the full glare of public life; and, conscious of a genius for enterprise, to which an unmarried condition perhaps affords ampler scope, and which a local ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of his own country. Living not long after the Wars of the Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities caused by war. To the eye of More the whole world was in dissolution and decay; and side by side with the misery and oppression which he has described in the First Book of the Utopia, he places in the Second Book the ideal state which by the help ...
— The Republic • Plato
... presently making the blackest Teeth most excellently White, certainly fastening them when Loose, effectually preserving them from Rotting or Decaying, and assuredly Curing the Scurvy in the Gums, it has not its Equal in the Universe, as Abundance of the Nobility and Gentry throughout the kingdom have Experienced. Is sold at Mr. Payn's, a Toyshop at the Angel and Crown in St. Paul's Churchyard, near Cheapside, at 2s. 6d. a Bottle ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... when the estates of the prime nobility and gentry were sequestered, and there was no court for them to resort to, the then powers encouraging only the maddest enthusiast, or the basest of the people, whom they looked upon as the fittest instruments to support their tyranny; some ingenious gentlemen, who had applied themselves chiefly to their studies, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... few Christians forthcoming. A duumvir of the place had a daughter whom he had turned out of his house for receiving baptism, and who had taken refuge at Vacca. Several of the decurions, the tabularius of the district, the scriba, one of the exactors, who lived in Sicca, various of the retired gentry, whom we spoke of in a former chapter, and various attaches of the praetorium, were in not dissimilar circumstances. Nay, the priest of Esculapius had a wife, whom he was very fond of, who, though she promised to keep quiet, if things continued as they were, nevertheless had the madness ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Wife, if he pleases. But to tell you the truth I consider this Epistle, after the License I have already given you, as indirectly addressd to the Friend I have mentiond. I would gladly know his opinion, Whether there is not more Parade among our Gentry than is consistent with sober republican Principles. Is it to imitate the Vanity of former times that every order of Men have been so fond of addressing the Governor? Are we to pay the same Ceremonies to the next & the next? Will not such high Strains ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... knocking away some of her wings, and thus secure her, rather than trust to such slippery gentry," I thought, as I elevated one of the ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... indeed," Berrington muttered to himself, as he sat as if tired on one of the seats under the trees. "The gentry who cultivate the doctrine that has for its cult a piece of salt in the shape of a bullet, don't as a rule favour desirable family mansions like these. Still, fortune might have favoured one of them. No. 100, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the most miserable vehicle calling itself a carriage that I had ever seen (the dirtiest and shabbiest London hackney-coach were a chariot of splendour and ease to it), we drove some distance into the sandy wilderness that surrounds the little town, to pay a visit to some of the resident gentry who had called upon us. The road was a deep wearisome sandy track, stretching wearisomely into the wearisome pine forest—a species of wilderness more oppressive a thousand times to the senses and imagination than any extent of monotonous prairie, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... so stirred that we cannot turn away our purblind eyes from the dear child, who can find fault with the young folks if they stop and stand like blocks of wood, or as if spell-bound, when they meet your daughter in the street, or see her at church, though we have a word of blame for our clerical gentry, because on the Allerwiese,[16] or wherever else a festival is held, they all crowd round your daughter, with their sighs, and loving glances, and honied words, to the vexation of all other girls? Well, well, Master Martin, you can choose you ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... ago the King's drawing-room was open almost every day to his nobility and gentry; and loyalty—especially since the war had begun—could gratify itself a score of times in a month with the august sight of the sovereign. A wise avoidance of the enemy's ships of war, a gracious acknowledgment ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... carried my point." Character creates confidence in men in high station as well as in humble life. It was said of the first Emperor Alexander of Russia, that his personal character was equivalent to a constitution. During the wars of the Fronde, Montaigne was the only man amongst the French gentry who kept his castle gates unbarred; and it was said of him, that his personal character was a better protection for him than a regiment ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Europe who wish to abolish all the rights of the nobility. They do not see that they want to do what the English parliament did in the seventeenth century. Abolish in a monarchy the prerogatives of the lords, of the clergy, of the gentry, and of the towns, and you will soon have either a purely popular government ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... was copied in all the newspapers of the Continent; reprinted in Britain on a broad side, to be stuck up in houses; two translations were made of it in French, and great numbers bought by the clergy and gentry, to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in producing that growing ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... hear it," thought Herbert. "I don't care to receive any attention from such gentry. But who would have thought the colonel was in league with stage robbers? I thought him ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... will be seen in the sequel, that we executed more of it than we had any reason to anticipate. A traveller in France cannot reckon upon either his road, or his arrival, with as much certainty as in England. Some of the cross roads are absolutely impassable; and the French gentry of late have become so fond of jaunts of pleasure, that if a travelling family should visit them in passing, they will have great difficulty to get away without some addition to their party, and some consequent variation from ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... One of these gentry framed a plan by which one of the many sons of Lobengula was to return to Matabeleland, claim his royal rights, and create trouble generally. The whole idea was to start an uprising and derange the machinery of the British South Africa ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? I speak now specially in regard to parishes such as I am most familiar with, in agricultural districts, small, not largely endowed, sometimes without resident gentry, and with the land occupied by rack-renting farmers, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... fortune; besides the snug probability of succeeding to his father's office. All these advantages moved Squire Stubbs, as much as the ruddy brow and manly form of the suitor influenced his daughter, to abate somewhat in the article of their gentry; and so the match was concluded. None seemed more gratified than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Davis, you sees a good bit of the gentry, too, in your way, when you goes in to houses, as it might be the Squire's for to put up a shelf, or mend a window, and I ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... stricter regulation of reduction of fish to flour or meal than of canning. Bayside Fish Flour Co. v. Gentry, 297 ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... and on a petty scale, with causes obscurer than ever. The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age. Here the households of gentry take the place of courts, and the poetry in vogue there is perhaps instantly taken up by the taverns; or perhaps this is a case in which the heroes are so little removed from common folk that celebration of individual prowess begins ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine inspiration. This, I say, a severe man would think, though I dare not determine so far against so customary a part now of good breeding. And yet, who is there among our gentry that does not entertain a dancing master for his children as soon as they are able to walk? But did ever any father provide a tutor for his son to instruct him betimes in the nature and improvements of that ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... that some of the gentry who swear at large about the evils of missionaries would have been loud in their disgust at the entire absence of drink and debauchery, and the prevalence of what they would doubtless characterize as adjective hypocrisy on the part of the natives; but no decent man could help rejoicing at the peace, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... umbrella; he could turn it into a mask or illuminate it with a smile; he had long thin legs, a perfect figure and wonderful charm. He kept a secretary, a revolver and two valets and was a god among the gentry and the jockeys. After giving a slight wink at the under-sized man, he turned away from him to me and, on hearing what I had to say, whispered a magic name ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... calculation they frame contemplate nothing but the wealth and plenty they see in rich cities and great towns, and from thence make a judgment of the kingdom's remaining part, and from this view conclude that taxes and payments to the public do mostly arise from the gentry and better sort, by which measures they neither contrive their imposition aright, nor are they able to give a true estimate what it shall produce; but when we have divided the inhabitants of England into their proper classes, it will appear that the nobility and gentry are but a small ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... a principle—which determined my conduct in public life. And you will remember that it seemed to be far more possible to give expression to it when first I entered politics than it is now. Even after the first Reform Act—which, in my opinion was conceived upon the wrong lines—the landed gentry still governed England; and if I could have had my way they would have continued to do so. It wasn't really parliamentary reform that was wanted; it was better and more intelligent government. And such government the then ruling class was capable of supplying, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson |
