"Auctioneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seem to be trying to “go” each other “one story better”; if they can belittle a neighbor in the process it is clear gain, and so much advertisement. Certain blocks on lower Broadway are gems in this way! Any one who has glanced at an auctioneer’s shelves when a “job lot” of books is being sold, will doubtless have noticed their resemblance to the sidewalks of our down town streets. Dainty little duodecimo buildings are squeezed in between ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... I'm offered," said the sheriff, loudly, and repeated it. He had been a licensed auctioneer in his day. "Do I hear seven hundred? Seven hundred ... Six fifty ..." A portentous pause. "Going at ten thousand six hundred, once. Going at ten thousand six hundred, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... that for the good of his soul Reginald played a very minor part in this raid, and my information on the doings that occurred in the Hun lines was obtained from the lips of one Samuel Pipston, sometime auctioneer's assistant, who had joined the battalion with the last draft. He was just a second Reginald—one stage behind him in development, that's all—an apathetic lad, finding ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... as soon as the elderly auctioneer descended from his little car, "I'm going to sell the whole of the Denby Hall estate, and, with the exception of a few odds and ends, family relics and so forth, which I'll pick out, all the contents ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... The auctioneer, offering the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... "likely young negro girl." Remembering that Emma had requested him to purchase a girl as a waiting maid for her, he examined the slave and found her in all respects the kind of house servant he desired. Going up to the auctioneer who had just mounted a bench for the purpose of selling the slave, he enquired where she had come from. The auctioneer responded by handing the doctor a small hand bill setting forth the sale. After reading it he walked up to the slave ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... dusty buggies, the switching tails of the horses, bothered by flies, and the group of real estate men, lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched with the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... pushed me in, closed the door, and as I remained standing before him, horror-struck, he kissed me, put his arm round my waist and made me go back into the drawing-room, which had remained open. Then he began to look at everything, like an auctioneer, and continued: 'By Jove, it is very nice in your rooms, very well. You must be very down on your luck just now, to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... on Isabella, as she was led forward by the auctioneer. The appearance of the handsome quadroon caused a deep sensation among the crowd. There she stood, with a skin as fair as most white women, her features as beautifully regular as any of her sex of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, her long black hair done up in the neatest manner, her form tall and ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... many things to do in those next few days, with no one but himself to do them. There had been, in the voices of his friends, a note that was new. In the manner of the men who had come to talk with him on matters of business, he had felt a something that he had never felt before. And he had seen the auctioneer—a lifelong friend of his father—standing on the front porch of his boyhood home and had heard him cry the low spoken bids and answer the nodding heads of the buyers in a voice that was hoarse with something more than long speaking in the open air. And then—and then—at last had come ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... I had a claim to some money; but I have not thought much about it, except that I should give you Grote and Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with bevelled boards and red edges, like that edition you saw at the auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked about ever since; and a horse, perhaps; and a glass porch ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... hand for an invoice, "Stanzas by Mrs. Hemans," or a garbled extract from Moore's Life of Byron; the lawyer may study his brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some American critic, that "Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott's;" nay, even the auctioneer may find time, as he bustles to his tub, or his tribune, to support his pretensions to polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the columns, and reading that "Miss Mitford's descriptions are indescribable." If you buy a yard ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... was rolling a cigarette between her long, slim fingers, replied in a sharp voice: "Oh, it's fair fighting! We don't hold the same political views, you know. That fellow Manoury, who's making no end of money, would lick the Emperor's boots. For my part, if I were an auctioneer, I wouldn't keep him in my service ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... jewellery store, a steam laundry, a flour and feed store, a shoe-shop, a bakery, and a bookshop. Three barbers had hung out their signs, and so had two doctors, a photographer, a lawyer, a dentist, and an auctioneer. There were ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... eyes, his idea of a "good story," always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog pipe, his riding breeches—he had no horse—and his gaiters, as he used to sit, leaning forward and watching the billiard-table from under the brim of his artfully tilted hat. A half-dozen phrases ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Hilton; "nothing in the world sells so readily as second-hand truck. Just think how the people flock to auctions and the like. And we girls should prove good 'salesladies,' too, for we can do a lot of coaxing and get better prices than an auctioneer. All we need do is appeal to the patriotism of the ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... dry goods merchant, and of Peter Harmony, whose $1,000,000 had been derived from happy trade ventures in Cuba and Spain. Many of the reservoirs of this ante-bellum wealth sound strangely in our modern ears. John Haggerty had made $1,000,000 as an auctioneer; William L. Coggeswell had made half as much as a wine importer; Japhet Bishop had rounded out an honest $600,000 from the profits of a hardware store; while Phineas T. Barnum ranks high in the list by virtue of $800,000 accumulated in a business which it is hardly ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... hiding-place in the heather, saw Mr. Bambridge drive up, noted the crowd follow him about the farm, like black flies, and felt himself a man at his own funeral. The hour was dark enough. In the ear of his mind he listened to the auctioneer's hammer, like a death-bell, beating away all that he possessed. He had worked and slaved through long years for this,—for the sympathy of Chagford, for the privilege of spending a thousand pounds, for barely enough money to carry himself abroad. A few more figures dotted the white road ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... book at Tattersall's, Newmarket, or the Fives-court; whose industry in getting into debt is only exceeded by his indifference about getting out; whose acquired property (during his minority) and personals have long since been knocked down by the hammer of the auctioneer, under direction of the sheriff, to pay off some gambling bond in preference to his honest creditor; yet who still flourishes a fashionable gem of the first water, and condescends to lend the lustre of 33 his name, when he has nothing else to lend, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... two men turning the winches of a winnowing machine. New hats, but old faces. Could his great-great-grandfather have been dug up and set in that barn door, he would have looked just the same, so would the sacks, and the wheat, and the sunshine. At the market town, where the auctioneer's hammer goes tap tap over bullocks and sheep, crowds of men gather together,—farmers, and bailiffs, and shepherds, drovers and labourers—and their clothes are different, but there are the same old weather-beaten faces. Faces ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk. Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of the auctioneer noted a man at the far edge of the platform who had made several attempts as if to bid during the sale. He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin, but wiry. His face was bronzed from exposure to sun and wind. He wore ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... was interrupted by the auctioneer, and the sound of his hammer. The auction went on, and nothing but "Who bids more? going!— going!—who bids more?" was heard for a considerable time. Not being able to get near Mr. Montenero, and having failed in all my objects, I grew excessively tired, and was going away, leaving my mother ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... room to room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sixteenth-century houses, with fronts of carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has figured in both Great Expectations and Edwin Drood, for it is the house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman, and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The other—Eastgate House, now converted into a museum—is the "Nun's House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... of the gallery and heard this wonderful man preach a sermon in which he illustrated an auctioneer selling a negro girl at the block. He sat as one entranced. So did the immense audience, held spellbound by the scene so graphically pictured. It was the first interesting sermon he had ever heard. It made a tremendous impression ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... was like most of his brother artists in all but his art. He hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. His father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. He next went into the employment of some calico-printers of Manchester. The designing of calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design had fallen to Holman Hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did, but he started to be ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of this bachelor friend of Mr. Fairfax's. It was not a garrison town. The young men of the place were for the most part small professional men—half-a-dozen lawyers and doctors, two or three curates, a couple of bankers' sons, an auctioneer or two, ranking vaguely between the trading and professional classes, and the sons of tradesmen. Among them all Mr. Granger could remember no one likely to be a friend of George Fairfax. It might possibly ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... accused of levity and divided interest; it was doubtless important for him to be early in Apia, where he combines with his diplomatic functions the management of a thriving business as commission agent and auctioneer. I do say of all of them that they took a very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... auctioneer stopped talking with the deputy sheriff long enough to go over to the platform, pick up a bell and ring it vigorously. A few more stragglers came up, most of them boys without ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... the orange-trees and plants of your old acquaintance, Admiral Martin. It was one of the warm days of this jubilee summer, which appears only once in fifty years—the plants were disposed in little clumps about the lawn: the company walked to bid from one to the other, and the auctioneer knocked down the lots on the orange tubs. Within three doors was an auction of china. You did not imagine that we were such ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... from one end to the other, and were almost impassable for vehicles, and at times not a little dangerous for foot-passengers. Now the practice of selling by auction has become very general, and the cattle are either put into the auctioneer's private yard, or in an enclosure provided by the town authorities. The corn-dealers are a most energetic class of men, well educated, and often employing large capital in their business. They are perpetually travelling, and often attend two markets a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... hard on ten o'clock, and we turned at once into the place of sale. The Flying Scud, although so important to ourselves, appeared to attract a very humble share of popular attention. The auctioneer was surrounded by perhaps a score of lookers-on, big fellows, for the most part, of the true Western build, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and adorned (to a plain man's taste) with needless finery. A jaunty, ostentatious ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... case lay outward devastation—the red eyes of parents and servants who had not slept all night, and looked at her as their obdurate hostage, and the prying constables lodged upon the premises to see that nothing was smuggled out, the ring of the auctioneer's bell, and the fingering of boors and old gossips over the cherished things of the family, even to her heirlooms, jewelry, and hosiery; the vast old house a hollow barn when these were done, and she and her mother visitors at the jail where her ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the auctioneer, laughing (and the master of the slave re-echoed his laugh and his answer); "let us see whether we cannot light ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... leasehold property, by private contract, without making themselves acquainted with the locality, and employing a solicitor to examine the titles,; but many do walk into an auction-room, and bid for a property upon the representations of the auctioneer. The conditions, whatever they are, will bind him; for by one of the legal fictions of which we have still so many, the auctioneer, who is in reality the agent for the vendor, becomes also the agent for the buyer, and by putting down the names of bidders and the biddings, he binds him to whom the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... library is much as it was, minus the very valuable collection of books, which were sold some time since by the present earl, and fetched a large sum, albeit many of the most valuable were destroyed in a fire which broke out at the auctioneer's where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... which the charter of a corporation may be regarded. In the first place, it may be thought of simply as a license terminable at will by the State, like a liquor-seller's license or an auctioneer's license, but affording the incorporators, so long as it remains in force, the privileges and advantages of doing business in the form of a corporation. Nowadays, indeed, when corporate charters are usually ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Baroness de Watchau, and there found a good-natured concierge, who at once informed him that after the Baroness's death her furniture and personal effects had been taken to the great auction mart in the Rue Drouot; the sale being conducted by M. Petit, the eminent auctioneer. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the student a glance, one of those glances in which a great soul can mingle dignity and gratitude. It was like balm to the law student, who was still smarting under the Duchess' insolent scrutiny; she had looked at him as an auctioneer might look at some ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... auctioneer, and this was the regular fruit auction that is held on this same corner every morning of the year. Many other things besides fruit are sold at these auctions; in fact, almost everything in Key West is bought or sold at auction; certainly all fruit ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... when he was talking politics to the man behind him?" asked the stranger. "I said two bits," he added complacently, as he watched the auctioneer closely. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... hand that assisted the young man to start in life was never felt again in his career, except as to a single circumstance; it led him, poor and friendless, to the house of a Monsieur Leprince, formerly an auctioneer, a widower said to be extremely rich, and father of an only daughter. Xavier Rabourdin fell desperately in love with Mademoiselle Celestine Leprince, then seventeen years of age, who had all the matrimonial claims of a dowry of two hundred thousand francs. Carefully educated ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... to be a connoisseur or conoscenti myself; but I'm told the style is undeniably modern. And was not I lucky, Juliana, not to let that MEDONA be knocked down to me? I was just going to bid, when I heard such smart bidding; but fortunately the auctioneer let out that it was done by a very old master—a hundred years old. Oh! your most obedient, thinks I!—if that's the case, it's not for my money; so I bought this, in lieu of the smoke-dried thing, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... player the sort of nod one gives an auctioneer, and the singers stopped. "I think we can," said the actor, "and that if the senator votes yea so will every one. All in favor of withdrawing the petition raise the right ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... thing she could do, but that may be the end of it. He's in an auctioneer's office, and may have a pretty good income ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... son. We must make sure that the description sounds well to the ear. Imagine that I am the auctioneer, thus: ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... of that time and description any great value. Enderby at Barclay auction in March and made row over some book which he missed because it was put up out of turn in catalogue. Barclay auctioneer thinks it was one of Percival privately bound books 1680-1703. Am anonymous book of Percival library, De Meritis Librorum Britannorum, was sold to Colonel Graeme for $47, a good price. When do I get ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... past middle life. It was the young horse that caught Hartigan's eye. It was rising three, a well-built skeleton, but with a readiness to look alert, a full mane and tail, and a glint of gold on the coat that had a meaning and a message for the horse-wise. The auctioneer was struggling to raise ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of it!' said the auctioneer. A terrible word that fell like a blight on the sacred memories of my childhood, and dispelled my earliest illusions, the dearest of all. My entire fortune was comprised in this 'account rendered,' my future lay in a linen bag with eleven hundred and ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... doesn't want to be thowt a fooil he should niver start o' showin' off befoor fowk till he knows what he's abaat, an' ther's noan on us knows iverything. Aw remember once go in' to th' sale ov a horse, an' th' auctioneer knew varry little abaat cattle, an' he began praisin' it up as he thowt. "Gentlemen," he said, "will you be kind enough to look at this splendid animal! examine him, gentlemen; look at his head; why, gentlemen, it's ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... philanthropist, William W. Corcoran, was born in 1798. He began his business career in Georgetown, but for many years he has been a resident of Washington. At twenty he went into business for himself, beginning as an auctioneer. After several years of successful business he was obliged to suspend, during the depressed ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... lurid red. A great crowd gathered about the table and the two chairs that stood near the edge of the bank. To the fore were many white men and several chiefs. And most prominently to the fore, rifle in hand, stood Akoon. Tommy, at El-Soo's request, served as auctioneer, but she made the opening speech and described the goods about to be sold. She was in native costume, in the dress of a chief's daughter, splendid and barbaric, and she stood on a chair, that she ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... a public square. In the centre stands a sheriff's officer on an auctioneer's block, around the base of which are the various pieces for the machine. A crowd is gathered on each side of the platform. To the left of the spectator are grouped together Coppolus, Carpano, the landlord of the Golden Sun, Esteban, Girone, Mathieu Magis, Don ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... Turkish crowd; and the bids ran high on this sale of humanity, until at last a beautiful creature, with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus, was led forth to the auctioneer's stand. She was young and surpassingly handsome, while her hearing evinced a degree of modesty that challenged ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... stationed in Montreal that our hero met Alexander Henry, ex-fur-trader and adventurer and coureur de bois—then a merchant and King's auctioneer—a notable personage and leader in many a wild exploit in the far West, an old though virile ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... formed by this and the neighboring residences has changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to slacken and sales were few. Some of the people had gone home and others were going, and still there were quantities of goods unsold. An auction was the only alternative and Mr. Bills, who, to his office of school commissioner, added that of auctioneer, was sent for. There was no one like him in Crompton for disposing of whatever was to be disposed of, from a tin can to a stove-pipe hat. He could judge accurately the nature and disposition of his audience,—knew ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... this? Just as he would raise his voice to chant the new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of the auctioneer, "Going! going!"—it is the sobbing of the slave on the auction-block! And this, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight for them. The faith of your heart would perish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... auctioneer, "here we have a beautiful thoroughbred mare, the favorite mount of Her Royal Highness the Princess, and not a bid do I hear. She's a beauty, gentlemen, sired by the famous Potiphar who won the Epsom Handicap and no end of minor stakes. Take a look at her, gentlemen! Did you ever see ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding thought, for the job... "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell.... That damned fellow Asher! What the hell ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Turnpike, Epstein, retired comedian, Tommy Watson, auctioneer," said Whimple softly, and then looking up he found Watson regarding him ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... of the money into his own hands, and had made such diligent use of it that enough was not now left to pay for his prosecution as a thief and forger. In fact, had Balder delayed his return another year, he would have found the enchanted castle in possession of the auctioneer; and as to the fate of its inhabitants, one does not like ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... need hardly say, was a Scotsman—a big, broad-shouldered Sawney—formidable in 'slacks,' as he called his trousers, and terrific in kilts; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an ex-schoolmaster and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he set up his paper, he added ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Esq.,'" I says, reading the address. "'Auctioneer and House Agent, Broadway, Hammersmith.' ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... chamber whose marble columns were ringed in iron, veritable pillars of foundation. And then we saw that our old guide's hands were full of newspapers. She struck a match; they caught fire and blazed. Holding high that torch, she said: "See! Up there's his name, above where he stood. The auctioneer. Oh yes, indeed! Here's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... standing at its door could view a landscape stretching for miles, while listening to the song birds in the neighbouring gardens. It dates from about 1750, and numbers among its successive landlords, Mr. John Roderick, the first auctioneer of that well-known name, Mr. James Clements, and Mr. Coleman, all men of mark. The last-named host, after making many improvements in the premises and renewing the lease, disposed of the hotel to a Limited Liability Company for L15,500. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... assistance from money-lenders; and now even the money-lenders were tired of him. The chair in which he sat, the poker which he swung slowly to and fro as he bent over his hearth, were not his own. One of his Jewish creditors had a bill of sale on his furniture, and he might come home any day to find the auctioneer's bills plastered against the wall of his house, and the auctioneer's clerk busy with the catalogue of his possessions. If the expected victim came now to buy his practice, the sacrifice would be made too late to serve his interest. The men who had lent him ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... again to the clergyman. "This way." And she collected her silken skirt, and swished up two flights of stairs and into a bedroom at the back, where she turned on the light. "A very comfortable room," she went on in the voice of a tired and very superior auctioneer. "Just vacated by a Wall Street broker and his wife; very well-connected people. Bed and couch; easy-chairs; running hot and cold water. And for it I'm making a special summer rate, with board, of only twenty-five dollars a ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... game of playing at living. The sky shone brightly overhead; around the town stood hills which no romantic scene-painter could have bettered; the air of the man with water-cart, of the auctioneer's man with bell, and of the people popping in and out of the shops, was the air of those who did these things for love of play-acting on ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... often submitted to these remonstrances of his better-half, couldn't resist his passion; and so he went on adding from week to week to his heap of miscellanies. One day while sauntering down the street, he heard the full, rich tones of his friend C——, the well-known auctioneer, and as a matter of course stepped in to see what was being sold. On the floor he observed a collection that looked as if it might have been purloined from the garret of some museum, and around which a motley ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... upon our minds about how long we would stay there after we got there, and he used to say in an awful tone of voice—do you know I think that is what gives them the bronchitis—that tone—you never heard of an auctioneer having it—"Suppose that once in a billion of years a bird were to come from some far, distant clime and carry off in its bill a grain of sand, when the time came when the last animal matter of which this mundane sphere is composed ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... up in the middle of the big room where the auction was being held. Furniture and stuff was jammed all around, even at the back of the platform where the auctioneer stood. He was a thick-set, big-mouthed man wearing a blue ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... died and whose furniture was for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk like a ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a house in which all the rooms are on the ground-floor. An auctioneer's advertisement often runs—"large weatherboard cottage, twelve rooms, etc.," or "double-fronted brick cottage." The cheapness of land caused nearly all suburban houses in Australia to be built without upper ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... began to bid, satisfied that their extravagance was in a good cause. After all the pincushions and sofa pillows and embroidered slippers were sold, Emil precipitated a panic by taking out one of his turquoise shirt studs, which every one had been admiring, and handing it to the auctioneer. All the French girls clamored for it, and their sweethearts bid against each other recklessly. Marie wanted it, too, and she kept making signals to Frank, which he took a sour pleasure in disregarding. He didn't see the use of making a fuss over a fellow just because he was dressed ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... in his thirteenth year that young Cowperwood entered into his first business venture. Walking along Front Street one day, a street of importing and wholesale establishments, he saw an auctioneer's flag hanging out before a wholesale grocery and from the interior came the auctioneer's voice: "What am I bid for this exceptional lot of Java coffee, twenty-two bags all told, which is now selling ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... put my chambers into the hands of a house agent and interviewed a firm of auctioneers with reference to the sale. It was all exceedingly unpleasant. The agent was so anxious to let my chambers, the auctioneer so delighted at the chance of selling my effects, that I felt myself forthwith turned neck and crop out of doors. It was a bright morning in early spring, with a satirical touch of hope in the air. London, no ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... translation of Rice, Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Richardson, 'the vainest and luckiest of authors' Riddel, Lady, her masquerade at Bath, at which Lord Byron appeared Ridge, printer Riga, the Greek patriot Roberts, Mr. (editor of the British Review) Robins, George, auctioneer Robinson Crusoe, the first part said to be written by Lord Oxford Rocca, M. de Rochdale estate Rochefoucault, 'always right' Sayings of Rogers, Samuel, esq., his 'Pleasures of Memory' His 'Jacqueline' 'The Tithonus of poetry' 'The father of present poesy' His Tribute to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the auctioneer. But she only compressed her mouth more firmly. After trying in vain to coax her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of Cumberland, and Simon Rochdale, Baronet, of Hollyhock House, in the county of Cornwall."——By the by, my lord, considering what an expense attends that castle, which is at your own disposal, and that, if the auctioneer don't soon knock it down, the weather will, I wonder what has prevented your lordship's bringing ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... temple of Jupiter Stator, and the property of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus—(miserable that I am, for even now that my tears have ceased to flow, my grief remains deeply implanted in my heart,)—the property, I say, of Cnaeus Pompeius the Great was submitted to the pitiless, voice of the auctioneer. On that one occasion the state forgot its slavery, and groaned aloud, and though men's minds were enslaved, as everything was kept under by fear, still the groans of the Roman people were free. While all men were waiting to see who would be so impious, who would be so ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... here interrupted by a busy hum in the audience; and the auctioneer, a short, bustling, important fellow, elbowed his way into the crowd. The old woman drew in her breath, and caught instinctively ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... silence which told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of Greenwood, and ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... wiser than the law," he said: "what are we now but three footpads?" This, and the insult his sister had received made the place poison to him; and hastened their departure by a day or two. The very next day (Thursday) an affiche on the walls of Albion Villa announced that Mr. Chippenham, auctioneer, would sell, next Wednesday, on the premises, the greater part of the furniture, plate, china, glass, Oriental inlaid boxes and screens, with several superb India shawls, scarfs, and dresses; also a twenty-one years' lease of the villa, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... voice, who was roaring out his opinions to Cockburn, Fred continued, was "Fog-horn" Cranch, the auctioneer. His room was next to Waller's. His weaknesses were gay-colored waistcoats and astounding cravats. He varied these portions of his dress according to wind, weather, and sales of the day—selecting blue for sunshiny mornings, black for rainy ones, green for ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... James, my son, call in the auctioneer, stick up a bill 'TO LET.' Let us return at once to the land of our birth. No such attractions exist in this turkey-trodden, maccaroni-eating, picture-peddling, stone-cutting, mass-singing land of donkeys. Let us ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... business of the day went on, a dozen of silver spoons had to be disposed of; and before they were put up for competition, they were, according to the usual custom, handed round for inspection to the company. When returned into the hands of the auctioneer, he found only eleven. In great wrath, he ordered the door to be shut, that no one might escape, and insisted on every one present being searched to discover the delinquent. One of the sisters, in consternation, whispered to the other, "Esther, ye hae ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Image's lecture was its absolute fairness, but this was, to a certain portion of the audience, its chief defect. 'Sweet reasonableness,' said one, 'is always admirable in a spectator, but from a leader we want something more.' 'It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art,' said another; while a third sighed over what he called 'the fatal sterility of the judicial mind,' and expressed a perfectly groundless fear that the Century Guild was becoming rational. For, with a courtesy and a generosity that we strongly ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the auctioneer. Narcisse approached her briskly. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... "Gentlemen," the red-faced auctioneer had shouted, "here's a buster; one of the kind you read about, wide as a wagon, with a leg on each corner. There's a ton of him, a whole ton. Who'll start him at three hundred? Why, he's as good as money in ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... auctioneer laughed cheerily. "Once lost, twice get there," he exclaimed, with a quizzical toss of the head, thinking he had said a good thing. "It's a year ago to the very day that I was lost out back"—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—"and you picked me up and brought me in; and what was I to do but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and they are well aware also that their continual indulgences engender disease, which make them very liable to sudden death; or their master may be killed in a duel, or at a horse-race, or in a drunken brawl; then his creditors are active in looking after the estate; and next, the blow of the auctioneer's hammer ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... in the year 1806, the little crowd that had been attending a sale of furniture at the chief auctioneer's in Wolverhampton was slowly melting away, for the few lots still left to be sold mostly consisted of worn-out saucepans, broken towel-rails, and some shabby chairs, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... The auctioneer then holds up the second pack and announces that he will call the cards off one at a time, and as he does so, the player who has the duplicate of that card must give it up to ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... just now, to learn if I would see you, I was on the point of sending for you, to ask if you didn't mean to go on. I wanted to judge what I'm letting you have. This sala is very grand," she pursued, like an auctioneer, moving a little, as I guessed, her invisible eyes. "I don't believe you often have lived in such a ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... are charming women at his parties. But the twelve-line board and the dice-box pay for all. The Gods confound me if I did not lose two millions of sesterces last night. My villa at Tibur, and all the statues that my father the praetor brought from Ephesus, must go to the auctioneer. That is a high price, you will acknowledge, even for Phoenicopters, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... consciences are so worthless that if put up and sold to the highest bidder, the auctioneer would have to call ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... high, that some of the purchasers were ruined, and bled themselves to death. There is a well-known story told of Aponius Saturninus, who happening to fall asleep as he sat on a bench at the sale, Caius called out to the auctioneer, not to overlook the praetorian personage who nodded to him so often; and accordingly the salesman went on, pretending to take the nods for tokens of assent, until thirteen gladiators were knocked down to him at the sum of nine millions of sesterces ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... her—it did not need the signature "Ralph Corbet," to tell her whom the letter came from. For some moments she could not read the words. They expressed a simple enough request, and were addressed to the auctioneer who was to dispose of the rather valuable library of the late Mr. Ness, and whose name had been advertised in connection with the sale, in the Athenaeum, and other similar papers. To him Mr. Corbet wrote, saying that he should be unable to be present when the books ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... speed of one thousandth of a second," announced Uncle Teddy, displaying all the fine points of his treasure like an auctioneer. "Won't I get some great pictures of you folks diving, though!" And he stood looking at the thing in his hands as if he did not quite believe it was real. Then he came to himself with a start and tossed the pack of letters to Katherine to distribute, remarking ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... this, Mr. Johnson stood beside Mr. Watson in an auction room. To the latter a sample of new goods, just introduced, was knocked down, and when asked by the auctioneer how many cases he would take, he ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... 'Fore you knowed "what he wuz givin' You; and yet, without no boast, Joney he wuz jest the most Entertainin' talker livin'! Take the Scriptur's and run through 'em, Might say, like a' auctioneer, And 'ud argy and review 'em ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... had the angry helplessness of a witness in the hands of a clever lawyer. "A pretty socialist you are!" he broke out, as his arm swept with an auctioneer's gesture over the luxurious villa in the Bellevuestrasse. "Why don't you call in the first sweep from the street and pour him out ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mr. Speaker Colfax presided in rather a slap-dash-knock-'em-down-auctioneer style, greatly at variance with the decorous dignity of his predecessors, and he was ever having an eye to the nomination for Vice-President in 1869. The most popular man in the House was unquestionably James G. Blaine, who exercised a fascination over all, and whose occasional ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... food and shelter. The other two men, occupied with their own thoughts, closed their eyes; but not so Smith. Nothing, to the smallest detail, escaped him. He appraised everything with as perfect an appreciation of its value as an auctioneer. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... smiles on the part of those people who considered it their painful duty to remain awake. At the close of the services the good deacons would probably feel called upon to take the young man out behind the church and give him a little fatherly advice, the burthen of which would be to become an auctioneer or seek a situation as "spouter" for a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... rogue, this Parker of yours, Brewster. His method seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer, and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid against each other. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... not to say how much—but the work of old masters and new, besides ancestors looking at them from every wall; they had drawing-rooms swarming with every unnecessary of life; they had the spacious and lofty hall with armor and swords and spears and shields, "all useful," as an auctioneer would say—"all useful, gentlemen, for decorative purposes"—with trophies of the chase in its milder home forms and as carried on in African or Bengal jungles; they had a library filled from floor to ceiling with books containing, it is to be presumed, the life-blood of master spirits, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... emulate the fame of Christie, the prince of auctioneers, whose fine descriptive powers can make more of an estate on paper than ever was made of it in any other shape, except in the form of an ejectment. The fictions of law, indeed, surpass even the auctioneer's imagination; and a man may be said never to know the extent of his own possessions until he is served with a process of ejectment. He then finds himself required to give up the possession of a multitude of barns, orchards, fish-ponds, horse-ponds, dwelling-houses, pigeon-houses, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... first: she was knocked down to a planter who resided at some distance in the country. Then I was called upon the stand. While the auctioneer was crying the bids, I saw the man that had purchased my sister getting her into a cart, to take her to his home. I at once asked a slave friend who was standing near the platform, to run and ask the gentleman if he would please to wait till I ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... Rookery properly: suffice it, however, to say it is a very handsome country place; with handsome lawns sloping down to the river, handsome shrubberies and conservatories, fine stables, outhouses, kitchen-gardens, and everything belonging to a first-rate rus in urbe, as the great auctioneer called it when he hammered ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Enjoying his usual poor health." He turned again to Margaret. "No one could mistake my father for an auctioneer. He has so few admirations. But he knew your father and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... son. Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer and auctioneer. You have distant cousins, Vaughans and Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named Price. I have written to none of them about your return because they never evinced any interest in me or my concerns. Your mother's people, her Vavasour relations at Cardiff—did ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... for many years, turned up in the hands of a Kentish auctioneer, selling it on behalf of a farm-serving man, who had it from Lord Levellier's cook and housemaid, among the things she brought him as her wifely portion after her master's death, and this she had not found saleable in her husband's village at her price, but she had got the habit of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF SOULS! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... herself must see how foolish her enthusiasms appeared in the eyes of the poet's granddaughter. Katharine never made any attempt to spare people's feelings, he reflected; and, being himself very sensitive to all shades of comfort and discomfort, he cut short the auctioneer's catalog, which Katharine was reeling off more and more absent-mindedly, and took Mrs. Vermont Bankes, with a queer sense of fellowship in suffering, under ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... oil?-There is a note sent up to Lerwick to publish the sale. An auctioneer comes down and it is generally sold on the spot, and the third part ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... collector, was there, and two of the selectmen of the town, besides Cole, the auctioneer. At four o'clock Hilburn stood on the house steps, read the published notice of the sale and the court warrant for it. The town, he said, would deduct $114—the amount of unpaid taxes—from the sum received ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... The auctioneer that evening was a famous comedian with an international reputation and his chatter, as he urged his hearers to higher bids, was clever and amusing. I was listening to it and smiling at the jokes when a voice at my ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was right. But his criticism takes no account whatever of one form of appeal to the emotions which has been brought by later art to a high pitch of perfection, but with which the personal feeling of the artist has not much more to do than the "passions" of an auctioneer's clerk have to do with the compilation of his inventory. A poet himself, Horace wrote for poets; to him the pathetic implied the ideal, the imaginative, the rhetorical; he lived before the age of Realism and ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of awaiting in London the sale of her house. After selecting from among its furniture the objects she wished to transport to her other abode, she left the rest of its contents to be disposed of by the auctioneer and took her departure for the Continent. She was of course accompanied on this journey by her niece, who now had plenty of leisure to measure and weigh and otherwise handle the windfall on which Madame Merle had covertly congratulated her. Isabel thought very often of the fact of her accession ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... my surprise and inward satisfaction, when on the 12 January, 1855, at Sotheby's, at one of the sales of Pickering's stock, after untying parcel after parcel to see what I might chance to see, and keeping ahead of the auctioneer, Mr. Wilkinson, on resolving to prospect in one parcel more before he overtook me, my eye rested an instant only on the long-lost Benjamin, clean and unspotted. I instantly closed the parcel (which was described in the Catalogue as Lot '531 Psalmes, other editions, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... sale," he cried, "same as if shoo were a cauf; and shoo goes to t' highest bidder." A roar of laughter greeted these words, but nobody had the courage to make a bid. Seeing that purchasers held back, Learoyd after the manner of an auctioneer, proceeded to ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... of a London alderman ever insured her life with so sure return or perdurable interest as Madame Holden. Even the bodiless society, pro propaganda fide, is reincorporated forever in the perpetuity of our gratitude. It is the genteelest of immortalities, as the auctioneer would call it, the immortality ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... it is "unite or die!" The mallet of the auctioneer threatens the steeple-house, the young folks are off "golfing" or "hiking," and the gray-beards, lonely and terror-stricken as they see church extinction approaching, favor "a union of forces with ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... County Jail at the time was Rod. Backus, a young man of good family, cousin of Phil. Backus, an auctioneer of considerable prominence in mercantile and social circles. Rod. Backus had shot dead a man whose face he had never seen until the moment before he shot him, a dozen paces distant. It was in Stout's alley. It was a murder, a wanton murder, without provocation, ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... Nodin manner was supposed to help even the non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company had just paid 20 per cent dividend—the first ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... as elsewhere, circumstances alter cases. I have as a rule thought very little of parties as parties, professional politicians and party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow older. The politician and the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic, the lover and the poet, as "of imagination all compact." One sees more mares' nests than would fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeck wares; and both ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... relish for the new poem, I give you a little anecdote which is told in London. Some time ago Lord Byron's books were sold at auction, where a gentleman purchased a splendid edition of Shakespeare. When it was sent home a volume was missing. After several fruitless inquiries of the auctioneer the purchaser went to Byron. 'What play was in the volume?' asked he. 'I think Othello,' 'Ah! I remember. I was reading that when Lady Byron did something to vex me. I threw the book at her head and she carried it out of the room. Inquire ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... when you go to London. All girls are. The mothers are the auctioneers, and the young fellows come round and bid. Good gracious, what a thunder-cloud! What flashing eyes! You'll see what a famous auctioneer mother will make! What is the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... 'Who was the auctioneer? Mr. Halway. His place is the third turning from the end of that street you see there. Anybody will tell you the shop—his ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... lighted by only occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses of ill-clad people clamoring around two hucksters' carts. They were bidding their farthings and ha'pennies for a vegetable held up by the auctioneer, which he at last scornfully flung, with a gibe for its cheapness, to the successful bidder. In the momentary pause only one man detached himself from the groups. He had bidden in a cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instantly ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was specially vindictive against lay intruders upon the mystery of his craft; 'why, yes—ha,—ha!—just maybe a little. It's only poison, Sir, deadly, barefaced poison!' he began sardonically, with a grin, and ended with a black glare and a knock on the table, like an auctioneer's 'gone!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
