"Sexton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man, felt the pathos of the early death: and, besides, there was the growing suspicion that all had not been told him by Saul, and that there was something here which was out of his beaten track. When he left the chamber of death, it was to walk across the quadrangle of the residence to the sexton's house. A passing bell, the greatest of the minster bells, must be rung, a grave must be dug in the minster yard, and there was now no need to silence the chiming of the minster clock. As he came slowly back in the dark, he thought ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... old church was a beautiful chime of bells, which for many years had rung out joyous peals at the touch of the sexton's hand ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... glorious sky, And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie At rest within the ground, 'Twere pleasant that in flowery June, When brooks send up a joyous tune, And groves a cheerful sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich green ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... continually used in churches by those small wits who thought that nothing could be good English which was not half Latin, and forgot that in our country the traveler must have stayed already to visit the sexton before he can possibly do so in compliance with the advice of the monument. For the poor there were public burial-grounds, called puticuli, a puteis, from the trenches ready dug to receive bodies. Such was the ground at the Esquiline gate, which Augustus gave Maecenas for his gardens. Public tombs ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... churches but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons: it being a heathenish and profane plant, and therefore assigned to the kitchen. Mr. Brand made many diligent inquiries after the truth of this point. He learnt at Bath that it never came into churches there. An old Sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was by the clergyman immediately ordered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... regularly, and Paul had belonged to a Sunday-school, Jimmy being too young. The church they had formerly attended being in Harlem, they could not of course go so far, but dropped into one not far from Union Square. They were shown seats by the sexton, and listened attentively to the services, though it must be confessed that Jimmy's attention was occasionally diverted to his new clothes, of which he was not a little proud. Mrs. Hoffman felt glad once more to find herself enjoying religious privileges, and ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... an hour, Mrs. Willoughby had quieted all Maud's present troubles, and the whole family left the house to repair to the chapel. Michael, though he had no great reverence for Mr. Wood's ministrations, had constituted himself sexton, an office which had devolved on him in consequence of his skill with the spade. Once initiated into one branch of this duty, he had insisted on performing all the others; and it was sometimes a ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... difficult music to an audience sitting passive. He discourses upon the "pleasures of the world," as being at war with the interests of the soul; and while a severe sentence to this effect is coming from his lips, down the aisle marches the sexton, showing some stranger to a seat, who is a professional master of the revels. He expresses, perchance, a fervent desire that the heathen may be converted to Christianity, and we catch ourselves saying, "Does he mean this ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... "Sexton, was she here to-day Who has met me oft before? Did she come and go away, Tired of waiting any more? For I fancy some mistake Has occurred about the time; Yet, the hour has not yet passed; Hark! the bells ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... The sexton didn't seat me away back by the door; He knew that I was old and deaf, as well as old and poor; He must have been a Christian, for he led me boldly through The long aisle of that crowded church to find a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... us 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, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... wid Marse Jimmie Young and he was de Cap'un. He live out yonder at Sardis Church. Ev'ybody know Marse Jimmie. He ain't quite as aged yet as I bees. Mr. J.T. Sexton, he rid from up around Cross Keys, he got de 'hole in de wall' and I calls on him yit, and us talks over de olden days. Miss Bobo's husband, he rid in Marse Jimmie's company. (Mr. Preston B. Bobo) Our company camped at de ole Brick church ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... door opened with a jangle, there were steps in the hall, and Old Timmie Carthewe the sexton appeared in the dining-room. He had a goat's face and a body like ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... up to the house, and, knocking at the door, a young female appeared. She uttered a scream, and ran back, doubtless from the pale and death-like appearance presented by the face of the visiter. Her place was momentarily supplied by the sexton, who, the moment he saw Mr B——, shrunk back in what I conceived to be conscious fear. I was standing behind, and noticing, what I thought, the guilty expression of the man's face, concluded unfavourably for the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... level of a pulpit moralist, or mere applier of moral laws to human actions. And in a function so exceedingly humble, philosophically considered, how could he pretend to precedency in respect of anybody, unless it were the amen clerk, or the sexton? ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... canal-boats? Would 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 ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... with next day's early dawn, With the east's first flush of scarlet, Simon's faithful soul passed on. Then, with hands outstretched before him, Half remembering what was said When a child he saw the sexton Sprinkle earth upon the dead— "Dust to dust, and then to ashes— I forget the other part— I can't say the words I want to, I ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... my genealogy, my 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 ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... surplice came out of a little cottage. He shivered, and one could see his steaming breath at each de profundis that he uttered. At the final sign of the cross he bolted off, without the least desire to go through the service again. The sexton took his shovel, but on account of the frost, he was only able to detach large lumps of earth, which beat a fine tune down below, a regular bombardment of the coffin, an enfilade of artillery sufficient to make one think the wood was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Diarist's power to cancel our Burial Service. Not alone the cleric's good work is upset by him; but the sexton's as well. He howks the grave, and transforms the quiet worms, busy on a single poor peaceable body, into winged serpents that disorder sky and earth with a deadly flight of zig-zags, like military rockets, among the living. And if these are given to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the two men turn and enter. Still others said they saw the heavy-set man come out alone. But there was only one who discovered the body of Wenceslas, crumpled up in a hideous heap upon the floor of his study, with a poignard driven clean through his heart. That man was the old sexton, who fled screaming from the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... quarter the Royal arms, occur Mr. Joseph Smart, of Hales Owen, butcher, and Mr. George Wilmot, keeper of the turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank, near Dudley; and among the descendants of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III., we may mention Mr. Stephen James Penny, the late sexton ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... 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 of welcome To ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... 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 ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... have been but moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total of 239 listed in manual occupations were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... SEXTON, M.P., who was howled down at a meeting at St. Helens recently, said he refused to bow the knee to a lot of body-snatchers who wanted him to sacrifice his manhood and conscience to satisfy their inclinations. A self-respecting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... Guy Fawkes' Day, "loud enough to call up poor Guy." Church bells played a useful part in guiding the people homewards on dark winter evenings in the days when lands were uninclosed and forests and wild moors abounded, and charitable folk, like Richard Palmer, of Wokingham, left bequests to pay the sexton for his labour in ringing at suitable times when the sound of the bells might be of service to belated travellers. Names of benefactors often find a permanent memorial on the bells which they gave; as at Binstead, Hants, where a ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... world. But the thing is not the less certain—the proofs are lying in the strong chest of our house at London, deposited there by the old Earl, who repented of his roguery to Miss Martigny long before he died, but had not courage enough to do his legitimate son justice till the sexton had ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... MR. SEXTON (of Illinois): "When you consider your place for your next convention tell Chicago what you want, and in response to that Chicago will answer you. 'We will give ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... has tricked poor Solomon into his place, and the squire and the parson are hearing the evidence. Parson Vance is splendid. How good, too, is old Mrs. Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham; Lord Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don't know either; he's such damned fine sport. Do you like Sally Barnes? I'm in love with her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been closely mown, for there were to be foot-races and wrestling bouts for the amusement of the guests. Beneath a spreading tree a dozen fiddlers put their instruments in tune, while behind the open windows of a small, ruinous house, dwelt in by the sexton, a rustic choir was trying over "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." Young men and maidens of the meaner sort, drawn from the surrounding country, from small plantation, store and ordinary, mill and ferry, clad in their holiday best and prone ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... anticipated this objection when he had named the author of Mustapha and Alaham; and out of caprice insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference to the wild hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads; to Deckar, who was but a garrulous proser; to the voluminous Heywood; and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the wrong author ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... it, and, so far as its being a play of peace, it was made up of a series of battles between certain valiant knights and princes, of whom St. George of England was chief and conqueror. The rehearsal being over, Robin went with the boys to the sexton's house, (he was father to the "King of Egypt,") where they showed him the dresses they were to wear. These were made of gay-colored materials, and covered with ribbons, except that of the "Black Prince of Paradine," which was black, as became his title. The boys ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... 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 ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... of lives, but of deaths, renewable for ever. So that my uncle, who was a man of an anxious temperament, had little trouble in satisfying himself of the meerings and identity of this narrow tenement, to which Lemuel Mattocks, the sexton, led him as straight and confidently as he could ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... their heavy sledge, With measured beats and slow; Like the sexton ringing the village bell, When the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... being summoned to a vestry, in order to reprimand the sexton for drunkenness, dwelt so long on the sexton's misconduct as to draw from him this expression: "Sir, I thought you would have been the last man alive to appear against me, as I have covered so ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... waiting at the gate; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he preceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could have done it quite as effectually for myself; but, it seems, the old people of the neighborhood haunt about the church-yard, in spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-eleemosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 'tis known) He heard the advice, and took his own. The boy wants wit; he's sent to school, Where learning but improves the fool: The college next must give him parts, And cram him with the liberal arts. Whether he blunders at the bar, Or owes his infamy to war; 40 Or if by licence or degree The sexton shares the doctor's fee: Or from the pulpit by the hour He weekly floods of nonsense pour; We find (the intent of nature foiled) A tailor or a butcher spoiled. Thus ministers have royal boons Conferred on blockheads and buffoons: In spite of nature, merit, wit, Their friends ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... register, which ought to record the exact day of July 1624 on which little George was baptized here in the old church, no longer mentions him, since, more than a hundred years after his time, the wife of the Sexton of Fenny Drayton, running short of paper to cover her jam-pots, must needs lay hands on the valuable Church records and tear out a few priceless pages just here. So, although several other brothers and sisters followed ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... these shall 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... bodie with meat, drinke and sleepe, and the other eight he bestowed in dispatching of businesse concerning the gouernement of the realme. He had in his chapell a candle of 24 parts, whereof euerie one lasted an houre: so that the sexton, to whome that charge was committed, by burning of this candle warned the king euar how the time [Sidenote: His last will and testament.] passed away. A little before his death, he ordeined his last will and testament, bequeathing halfe the portion of all his goods iustlie gotten, ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... 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 ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... dainty sight, He limps infect by park and quai, Voicing (for those that hear aright) His hunger-world, the dark Marais. Sexton of all we waste and fray, He bags at last pour tout de bon Our trappings rare, our braveries ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... 'twould be the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more about 'em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property. So he wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to be shut. There's a high stone wall, you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... which to read the burial service. All had in their hands a bayonet, from which burned a tallow candle, in place of tapers. The procession marched up the steps in single file, all bearing themselves with the greatest solemnity and sombre dignity, followed by the sexton, with a frying-pan as a shovel, and took their places around the supposed corpse. Maffett began the duties by alluding to that part of the service where "it is allotted that all men shall die," etc., waving his hand in due form to the sexton as he repeated the words, "Earth to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 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 his plans ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... than the youngest of us slowly followed after him and seated herself close beside him. As he came back, holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation! The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white man's pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge's children there. "Oh," he said, "they will not stay there without me." But, as he could not enter, we instinctively followed him to the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... officers existed, but their duties were either identical with those already described, or insignificant, or so exceptional as not to reward inquiry and description here. Such were the beadle, sexton, haywards, ale-conners, waymen, way-wardens, sidesmen, synodsmen, swornmen, questmen, and perhaps some others. [Footnote: Discussed in Charming, Town and County Government in the English Colonies (Johns Hopkins University Studies, II.), ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... he spent any time in watching the British; Revere, knowing the route, may have signalled in order to make sure that the news crossed the river, even though he himself might fail. The person who displayed the signals seems to have been one Newman, the sexton of the church, rather than Captain Pulling, a friend of Revere's. At any rate, the signals were hung while Revere was crossing the river to Charlestown. He passed unobserved not far from the Somerset man-of-war, and remarks that "it ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... "The Sexton with the cardinal's hat shall be the precentor!" cried one of the youths from the provinces, pointing ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... snakes and wimmen. In that partiklar your education's been shamefully neglected. Never kill a rattlesnake arter he's shut in his fangs and turns on his back for mercy—its sneakin' business. Never think a woman is dead till the sexton sends in his bill. Snakes and feminine wimmen is hard to kill. Now any landshark, as has his eyes out of his heart, could see that Miss Lina's only took a faintin' turn, that comes after a skeer like hers, axactly as sleep stills a tired baby. Just give her here now, I'll take ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... street, "Barbara, it's time." The pall-bearers appeared and I withdrew to make room for them. The coffin was lifted and carried down, and the procession began to move. First came the school children with cross and banner, then the priest and the sexton. Directly behind the coffin marched the two children of the butcher, and behind them came the parents. The man moved his lips incessantly, as if in devout prayer, yet looked constantly about him in both directions. The woman was eagerly reading in her prayer-book, but the two children caused ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... at the head of the coffin and began the service; behind him the sexton had taken up his position with folded hands. On either side sat the officers and men, holding their helmets on their knees and looking on with serious countenances. The old woman knelt crouching on a prie-dieu, and hid her face in her hands. When the pastor had pronounced ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. 'Twas thus he understood Mr. Arabin's allusion to his severity and hastened to put matters right by observing that "Sexton Clodheve looked to the younguns, and perhaps sometimes there may be a thought too much stick going on during sermon." Mr. Arabin's bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon, and he smiled to himself as he observed how ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... rolling down his bronzed cheeks? And so Harry sat in the window-seat, quite unable to understand the meaning of all the sorrow, and looked out of the window at the farmer's wife nursing her last baby in the orchard, and then at the old sexton in the churchyard throwing up the red earth, and wondered why he always whistled such a jovial tune, while ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... hurled the prayer book at the sexton's head, and felled him! Still the bells went on of their ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... was old Jevons with one eye gone, and his clothes the colour of mud, his bag over his back, and his brains laid feet down in earth among the violet roots and the nettle roots; Mary Sanders with her box of wood; and Tom sent for beer, the half-witted son of the sexton— all this within thirty miles ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... in his grave among the dead, W[alpo]le among the living, and even Vol[pon]e shall feel some remorse." How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of blushing or remorse in either, though some very good opportunities have offered, if they had thought fit to accept them; so that with your permission, I had rather engage to continue this work till ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... be very sure that we inquired for the room in which Chatterton said he found old Monk Rowley's poems. It is an hexagonal room over the north porch, in which the archives were kept Chatterton's uncle was sexton of the church; and the boy had access to the building, and carried off parchments at his pleasure. The idea of making a literary forgery filled his mind; and if you read Southey and Cottle's edition of the works of Chatterton, or, what is far better, an admirable Life of the young poet by ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... letter to his friend, Forster, when he wrote: "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 glorious scenery; such an out-of-the-way rural place; such a sexton! I say again, name your day." After such a recommendation, one will surely desire to visit the place, and it is pleasant to know that the "delicious old inn" is still standing and that the village is as rural and pretty as when Dickens wrote ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... miseries be his to bear." 'T is many years since he the proud spake thus, And men and things have greatly changed since then. No more in wealth he rolls,—men's fortunes change. I met a lonely hearse, slowly it passed Toward the church-yard. 'T was unattended Save by one old man, and he the sexton. With spade beneath his arm he trudged along, Whistling a homely tune, and stopping not. He seemed to be in haste, for now and then He'd urge to quicker pace his walking beast, With the rough handle of his rusty spade. Him I approached, and eagerly inquired Whose body thus was borne so rudely to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the slope, as if by enormous flutings in the more antique Doric style; and the ridges by which these are separated,—each from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in length, and from five-and-twenty to thirty feet in average height,—resemble those burial mounds with which the sexton frets the churchyard turf; with this difference, however, that they seem the burial mounds of giants, tall and bulky as those that of old warred against the gods. They are striking enough to have caught the eye of the children of the place, and are known among them as ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... does not see it in the same light, and it seems he made some ill-advised speech,—said he would rather turn sexton and bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that, which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,—but that was no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was sick of his capitalist airs, and he for one should not ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... out this determination the next Sunday. The sexton gave him a seat, and he took it, remarking ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... Sunday, and after the priest had said Amen from the pulpit, the sexton rung the kale-bell. This bell was a sign throughout all Pomerania land, to the women-folk who were left at home in the houses, to prepare dinner; for then, in all the churches, the closing hymn began—"Give us, Lord, our daily bread." So the maid, at the first stroke ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... the meadows of the Grand Pre, where lived Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Benedict Bellefontaine, and the rest of the 'simple Acadian farmers.' I arrived too early at one of the village churches; and, while I was waiting for a sexton, a door opened, and out poured the Sunday school, whose services had just ended. On they came, dividing in the centre, and falling to the right and left about me, thirty or forty boys and girls, between the ages of seven and fifteen. They all had fair skins, red ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... well advisd to offer good counsell, and be laught at for his labour: we shall shortly have no counsellors, but Physitians; I spend my breath to thee, and thou answerest me some half an houre after in a sem[i]breve, or like to a Sexton, with ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... this week Ill sign when we are once to come to study how to excuse King is offended with the Duke of Richmond's marrying Mrs. Stewart's sending the King his jewels again Much difficulty to get pews, I offering the sexton money My people do observe my minding my pleasure more than usual My wife this night troubled at my leaving her alone so much Never was known to keep two mistresses in his life (Charles II.) Officers are four years behind-hand unpaid Sparrowgrass ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... of Buchberg consisted of several scattered farms, and of groups of houses and cottages that peeped out from among thriving fruit trees. Only a few houses stood near the church; the school-house, the sexton's house, the substantial old-fashioned dwelling of the mayor of the little community, and two or three peasants' cottages. Dr. Stein's house stood quite by itself at a little distance from the others, on a slight elevation, quite surrounded by trees. The biggest buildings in all Buchberg stood on ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... Will Maskery lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Starkwolt, the cowherd, and his dog Speed. It was four in the morning when they entered Rambin, and they halted in the middle of the village, about twenty paces from the house where John was born. The whole village poured out to gaze on these Asiatic princes; for such the old sexton, who had in his youth been at Moscow and Constantinople, said they were. There John saw his father and mother, and his brother Andrew, and his sister Trine. The old minister, Krabbe, stood there too, in his black slippers and white nightcap, gaping ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... its fetidity, This wreck of me, And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound, They see Life's beauty in her draining wound! Lay thou the blind thing down With saurian tusk and bone, With dust of sworded maw And peril's fossil claw, Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover Of after-law untomb for Love ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... 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
... to the 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, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Paul. He had other friends, to be sure. All the boys in the place liked him, and were very angry with the way the farmer treated him, and greatly to their credit, they admired his superior learning instead of being jealous of it. Mrs. Hayward, the sexton's wife, the same who had bound up his hand when he cut it at harvest, even asked him to come in and help her boys in the evenings with what they had to prepare for Mr. Cope. He was not sorry to do so sometimes. The cottage was a slatternly sort of place, where he did not ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bells of the church, old as the conquest of Michoacan, hang in the trees before it. Inside, an old woman left her sweeping to pull aside the curtains of the reputed Titian, a "Descent from the Cross," while I photographed it from the pulpit, for which privilege the young peon sexton appeared in time to ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Report stage of the Ministry of Health Bill. The debate was remarkable for the brevity of some of the speeches. Sir ROWLAND BLADES set a good example to new Members by making a "maiden" effort in a minute and a half. But his record was easily beaten by Mr. SEXTON, who found ten seconds sufficient for expressing his opinion that the fact that the House was trying to legislate in the small hours was sufficient proof of the necessity of extending the laws of lunacy. "Si argumentum requiris circumspice," he might have said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... She 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 mice, had gained upon his heart, and he made them welcome there. It gave the mother a feeling ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had all gone away, and the sexton had come out and locked the gate behind him, Sophy crept back. Her roses were faded now, and from some of them the petals had fallen. She stood there irresolute, loath to leave with her heart's desire unsatisfied, when, as her eyes ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... 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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an entertainment by a gentleman bearing the delightfully sepulchral name of Dr. Sexton, whose mission in life it is to "expose" the tricks of Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke. How those gentlemen are to be "exposed," seeing they only claim to deceive you by legerdemain, I cannot comprehend; but they made the Spiritualists very angry by taking their names in vain ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to rest, within That deep grave newly made; Wol th' sexton let a tear drop fall, On ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... would be. I might as well have on a wrapper, For there isn't a soul here to see. There! Sue Delaplaine's pew is empty,— I declare if it isn't too bad! I know my suit cost more than hers did, And I wanted to see her look mad. I do think that sexton's too stupid— He's put some one else in our pew— And the girl's dress just kills mine completely; Now what am I going to do? The psalter, and Sue isn't here yet! I don't care, I think it's a sin For people to get late to service, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... which Jones answered, "That it was one of the most famous burial-places about town." "No wonder, then," cries Partridge, "that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse grave-digger. I had a sexton, when I was clerk, that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had ever had one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than work, I believe."—Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull he cried out, "Well! it is ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad after all. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests. We have known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily at small provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great majority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight to perdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Goldie, too, came into the freight shed. She was not afraid of Sexton Blackie. Not she! She went right up to him and began to chat. She told him in the very first breath that she was returning to her own home and was taking her mother back ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... course, are an hour late, which gives the bridegroom (Bap.) an opportunity to meet the minister (Epis.) and have a nice, long chat about religion, while the best man (Atheist) talks to the eighty-three year old sexton who buried the bride's grandpa and grandma and has knowed little Miss Dorothy come twenty years next Michaelmas. The best man's offer of twenty-five dollars, if the sexton will at once bury the maid of honor, is generally refused as ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... tired. The fresh air did not brighten and enliven her as it usually did. The warm, moist wind that came in gusts from the south was not invigorating, and she went slowly up the church-steps, glad that her walk was over. There was no one in the church. Even the sexton was not visible; and Christie placed herself in her accustomed seat under the gallery, near the door, glad to rest in the pleasant stillness of the place. How quiet and peaceful it seemed! The sound of the moaning wind seemed to come from far-away, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... I stared more and more, and suspended my duty as a sexton. But presently some one cried out—"There she ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... player, who was also the sexton, demurred, and advised the young soldier to sound the rector about it first. 'Mid be he would object, and yet 'a mid'nt. The pa'son o' Sidlinch is a hard man, I own ye, and 'a said if folk will kill theirselves in hot blood they must take the consequences. But ours don't think like that at ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... gone. The last relic of him was lost in the burning Grammar School, but to this day the sexton of St. Boniface Church avers that the tolling bell on Christmas Eve never fails to provoke that weird and melancholy Wolf-cry from the wooded graveyard a hundred steps away, where they laid his Little Jim, the only being on earth that ever ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... into water it "plymms"; so do beans, and so do boats. When a boat is not "plymmed," it leaks in all its seams, and is therefore looked upon as unsafe for these sub-Arctic waters by the more conservative amongst us. To stop a boat leaking you "chinch" the seams with oakum. Our fisherman sexton has just told me that "the church was right chinched ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... came to a corner in the organ stairs; saw people go out little by little; remained unobserved, and finally heard the sexton and the church-keeper go away. When the last door was closed, Azouras stepped out of her hiding-place. Shut out from the entire world, severed from all human beings, she found herself the only occupant of the large, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... road toward the graveyard; he had always hurried past that spot when coming home from the crossroads at night. Once he had seen a ghostly figure on the stone wall, which, on more careful inspection the next morning, proved to be the sexton's shovel with his hat on top of it. The little church was around the bend of the road, within the ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... drowsy, and soon dropped into a sweet sleep. His nap might have proved a very unfortunate event for him, but for the kindness of a wide-awake Quaker. For he did not wake up when the meeting closed, and the congregation might have dispersed, and the sexton locked him in, without disturbing his slumbers. But the kind-hearted Quaker moved his spirit by giving him a gentle rap on the shoulder. He started up, somewhat surprised that the service was over, and passed out with the crowd. Soon after, meeting a fine-looking young ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... sells charms, consisting of verses of the Koran written on paper, to be tied round the arm or hung on the neck. These have the effect of curing disease and keeping off evil spirits or the evil eye. Sometimes there is a mosque servant who also acts as sexton of the local cemetery. The funds of the mosque and any endowment attached to it are in charge of some respectable resident, who is known as Mutawalli or churchwarden. The principal religious officer is the Maulvi, who corresponds to the Hindu Guru or preceptor. These men are frequently ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... entire night and from which he went forth strengthened, as he hoped, to do what he believed to be his duty. This was on Saturday, and on the Sunday following there was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the sexton said; "hard sick, too, he had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper how Mr. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... any monument say "Here rest these bones till the last day," When Time, swift both of foot and feather, May bear them the sexton kens not whither? What care I, then, though my last sleep Be in the desert or the deep, No lamp nor taper, day and night, To give my charnel chargeable light? I have there like quantity of ground, And at the last day ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... churchwardens of St. Sepulchre's Church, London, fifty pounds, on the understanding that through all futurity they should cause to be tolled the big bell the night before the execution of the condemned criminals in the prison of Newgate. After tolling the bell, the sexton came at midnight, and after ringing a hand-bell, repeated ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to live, and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a little distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before I reached it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She was dressed in a white cap and a dark-coloured ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... 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 reason to remember, as it was the real origin of their quarrel ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... of St. Martin's in the Fields; receiving on the 14th of November, 1744, honourable interment in the chancel vault, to the tolling of the great tenor bell, and with the fullest ceremonial of the time. Indeed it is evident, from the charges still preserved in the sexton's book, that Fielding rendered to his wife such stately honours as were occasionally accorded to the members of the few great families interred in ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... 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 ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... was killed in action, 25 pounds; and four children of Admiral Moriarty, 25 pounds each. Thus thirteen daughters of admirals and captains, several of whose fathers fell in the service of their country, receive from the gratitude of the nation a sum in the aggregate less than Dame Mary Sexton, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... once a poor man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years and a half, no matter how stormy the weather, the faithful ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... Decalogue over the altar, written in the ancient letters, and done in England in 1714. Mrs. Tracy wished that the old high pulpit and sounding-board had never been replaced by the desk which she now saw there. The sexton showed them the old English Bible, which he said had been in use there about one hundred and twenty-five years. They noticed the little organ, which was very old, and also sent over from England. As they came out of the church, they saw, by ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... inhabitants of the parish, that it is only within a few years that burials began to be made irrespectively on the north side. Whilst speaking of things in connection with this church, I may mention for the {75} interest of antiquaries, that only a short time ago, the sexton discovered a very curious fresco of the Virgin on one of the pillars in the north aisle. There is an inscription beneath the figure, but so very indistinct, as not to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... Evening came. The sexton rang the bell of the church,—not soberly and steadily, but he tugged with all his might at the rope, throwing the bell over and over,—ringing as if the whole town was in a blaze. The farmers out on the hills heard it, and came driving ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... of April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade to secure standing and cordial ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... lead to a few words of commendation in a scientific journal; possibly a degree of F.R.G.S.; or very probably a grave under the ice, with a grizzly bear for sexton." ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in 1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband whilst their short ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... has contributed various poems to the literature of the country, which have stamped him as being possessed of a more than ordinary share of the divine afflatus. Among them is "The Sexton's Spade," which has gained a world-wide celebrity. The writer has been connected with Mr. Burnett in the publication of two or three papers, which, somehow or other, never won their way into popular favor: either the public had very bad taste, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... and was well and lovingly treated. The aged and infirm, who but for the Gospel would have been dealt with as Moo-koo-woo-soo dealt with his mother, had the warmest place in the little home and the daintiest morsel on the table. I have seen the sexton of the church throw wide open the door of the sanctuary, that two stalwart young men might easily enter, carrying in their arms their invalid mother, who had expressed a desire to come to the house ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young |
