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Barber   Listen
noun
Barber  n.  One whose occupation it is to shave or trim the beard, and to cut and dress the hair of his patrons.
Barber's itch. See under Itch. Note: Formerly the barber practiced some offices of surgery, such as letting blood and pulling teeth. Hence such terms as barber surgeon (old form barber chirurgeon), barber surgery, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barber" Quotes from Famous Books



... you," said Jasper. "That Rabbit boy—the one they call Jimmy—has a shoe-store. You know he's always trying something new. He has had a barber's shop; and he's been a tooth-puller. And now he has opened a ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey

... two," was of dressing to "look exactly alike." As Bab had learned once for all that her hair would not curl, she spent half an hour that morning braiding her auntie's ringlets down her back, and tying the cue with a pink ribbon like her own. But for all the little barber could do the flaxen cue would not lie flat. It was an old story, but ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May

... your eyes pretty tight not to see what bosh it all is—it is all this infernal reverence paid by people, who have no independence of judgment, to great reputations. It reminds me of the barber who used to cut the Duke of Wellington's hair and nails, who made quite a lot of money by selling ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... reason for this is the general belief that this highly sophisticated and subtle art is a means for making money in spare time, and so one finds everybody, from the man who solicits insurance to the barber who sells hair-tonics, engaged in writing, or in taking courses in the writing, of short stories. Judging from what appears in the magazines, one imagines that they get their efforts accepted. There is no doubt that the butcher, the baker, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... upon ancient authority in the realm of medical theory. The European and colonial Virginia physician, surgeon, and even barber (when functioning as a medical man) consciously or unconsciously drew upon, or practiced according to, theories originated or developed by Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) and Galen (131-201 A.D.). Hippocrates is remembered not only for his emphasis upon ethical ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... gale, storm, tempest, hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, samiel, cyclone, anticyclone, typhoon; simoon[obs3], simoom; harmattan[obs3], monsoon, trade wind, sirocco, mistral, bise[obs3], tramontane, levanter; capful of wind; fresh breeze, stiff breeze; keen blast; blizzard, barber [Can.], candelia[obs3], chinook, foehn, khamsin[obs3], norther, vendaval[obs3], wuther[obs3]. windiness &c.adj.; ventosity|; rough weather, dirty weather, ugly weather, stress of weather; dirty sky, mare's tail; thick squall, black squall, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Bussy in the Deccan, and obtained a passport from the Maratha general, Holkar. This took some time, and it was not till March, 1758, that he started for Delhi. He reached Farukhabad without difficulty, and on the 21st entered the country of the Jats. On the evening of the 23rd a barber, who came into their camp, warned the French they would be attacked. The next day the Jats, to the number of 20,000, attacked them on the march. The fight lasted the whole day, and the French fired 6000 musket shots and 800 cannon. The cannon-balls ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... companions. He asked for the Duke and was told that he was busy in his study. "Of course," said the King, turning to his followers, "I dare say you expected to be told that he was out shooting, or with the ladies, or at the barber's. But who works like Sully? Tell him," he said, "to come to the balcony in his garden, where he and I are ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... they have met in infancy. Her Majesty the Nerbudda became exceedingly impatient to know what sort of a personage her destinies were to be linked to, while his Majesty the Son advanced at a slow and stately pace. At last the Queen sent Johila, the daughter of the barber, to take a close view of him, and to return and make a faithful and particular report of his person. His Majesty was captivated with the little Johila, the barber's daughter, at first sight; and she, 'nothing loath', yielded to his caresses. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... it is indeed hard work on the ramparts. Infandum dolorem quorum pars magna fui. Take the day duty. What with rising at seven o'clock, and being drilled between a middle-aged and corpulent grocer on one side and a meagre beardless barber's apprentice on the other; what with going to the bastions at eleven, and seeing half one's companions drunk before twelve; what with trying to keep their fists off one's face when one politely asks them not to call one's general a traitor or a poltroon,—the work of the ramparts would ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... o'clock Wilbur sifted in with his records and something else flat and thin, done up in paper that I didn't notice much at the time. My dear heart, how serious he was! As serious as—well, I chanced to be present at the house of mourning when the barber come to shave old Judge Armstead after he'd passed away—you know what I mean—kind of like him Wilbur was, talking subdued and cat-footing round very solemn and professional. I thought he'd never get that machine going. He cleaned it, and he oiled it, and he had great trouble picking out ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... stockade, an hundred feet from their works, our men pushed aside the sappers, and tore down the rude barrier, or tumbled over it. They were used to fences. Here Gimat was hurt, and Kirkpatrick of the pioneers, and a moment later Colonel Barber. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... that at the first shock four or five were killed, most of them the confederates who had leagued to attack the Adelantado. The latter, with his own hand, killed Juan Sanchez, the same powerful mariner who had carried off the cacique Quibian; and Juan Barber also, who had first drawn a sword against the admiral in this rebellion. The Adelantado with his usual vigor and courage was dealing his blows about him in the thickest of the affray, where several lay killed and wounded, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... I lie. Just the same, I'll not do any such errand, even for you, that's certain. I know my man, if you don't. And, now, I'm going to the barber-shop, and you can have all the time there ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... I ever saw. He is a tall fellow, about six feet, his shoulders are narrow, but round as the curve of a pot—his neck is, at least, eighteen inches in length, on the top of which stands a head, somewhat of a three-cornered shape, like a country barber's wig block, only not so intelligent looking. His nose is short, and turned up a little at the top—his squint is awful, but then, it is peculiar to himself; for his eyes, instead of looking around them as such eyes do, appear to keep a jealous and vigilant watch ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... had opened his tin box and set out a great array of grease paints, wigs, twists of tow of various colors, and a number of pots and phials of washes and unguents together with a whole battery of fine paint brushes. In his hand he held a pair of barber's clippers and the tips of a comb and a pair of scissors protruded from his ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... filled his water-bottle. This was a "movement" which took some time to execute; and it was, I must say, very considerate of the station officials to allow us to spend so much time to have a cheap drink. Major W. L. Marriner and Quartermaster Barber Hopkinson (of whom I shall have something further to say afterwards) were with us, both doing their best to pacify their men until they could have their thirst slaked. Quartermaster Hopkinson "had his hands full" ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... Chattesworth, and Colonel Stafford was Lieutenant-Colonel, and under him Major O'Neill; Captains, four—Cluffe, Devereux, Barton, and Burgh: First Lieutenants—Puddock, Delany, Sackville, and Armstrong; Second Lieutenants—Salt; Barber, Lillyman, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... little stick of a boy, who if it weren't for my money might have risen to be a journeyman barber out in the Bronx—Let me see your hands. Ugh! The hands of a barber—you presume to be smart with me, who once had three counts and a bona-fide duke, not to mention half a dozen papal titles pursue ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... or window tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... him. Send him to the barber and have his hair mowed. Have some trousers cut out for him with a circular saw and fix him up ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... invented originally for the purpose of giving the lawn a quick shave, and because it can't talk like a barber it makes a noise like ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... should wrong some honourable men. They grow enthusiasts too—'Tis true! 'tis pity! 75 But 'tis not every lunatic that's witty. Some have run Maro—and some Milton—mad, Ashley once turn'd a solid barber's head: Hear all that's said or printed if you can, Ashley has turn'd more ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... foreign ways than their future opponents of the Raskol, and had condemned shaving as "an heretical practice which disfigures the image of God, and makes men look like dogs and cats." This is the main theological argument of the foes of the barber, and their current interpretation of the verse of Genesis, "God created man in His own image," "The image of God is the beard," writes a Raskolnik about 1830, "and His likeness is the moustache." "Look at the old images of Christ and the saints," urge the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... huts; he swiped this and turned it upside down on his table. When the boys came for a shave, they climbed up on the table and sat in the upturned bench, using the leg of the bench for a head rest. It sure was some "barber's chair"; I'll bet there never was another like it. Well, Slim got lots of customers; the Germans didn't pay him for his work, but the prisoners tried to. Some had nothing at all, but he did their work just the same; others were working on farms, and for this they were given what was equal to ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can do for you.' 'All right!' he said. 'I will go and tell the Commission that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.' And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand (since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant's hut, with its glazed windows and great mirrors ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... photo shows the west side of Government Street, from Fort to Yates Street, as it appeared in 1863. The corner store was A. Rickman's grocery, then Jones' Bazaar (toys and fancy goods), then McNiff's saloon, next Payne's barber shop. Before going on I might, with Mr. Payne's permission, give a little joke on that gentleman at the time. The Mechanics' Institute gave an entertainment for, I think, the benefit of the library, and prizes were offered for the two ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off—as a degradation—when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail tucked up you would ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... you make a sort of Hamlet's Ghost of yourself, and no man can decide, with the first whiff, whether you bring with you air from Heaven or from hell. Now, rectify this matter as soon as possible; last Sunday you smelled like a secretary to a consolidated drug store and barber shop. And you came and sat in the same pew with me; now ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... increased, until I was admitted into his more private friendship. He was a very free-spoken man (the gentry of those days were much prouder than at present), and used to say to me in his haughty easy way, 'Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no more manners than a barber, and I think my black footman has been better educated than you; but you are a young fellow of originality and pluck, and I like you, sir, because you seem determined to go to the deuce by a way of your own.' I would thank him ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... daylight—which had very seldom happened—they would immediately set about shaving, and cleaning themselves and their rifles. They shaved with the cold water, poured from their water-bottles into the lids of their canteens. There was a vast rubbing of bolts, and "pulling through" of barrels. An erstwhile barber in the Senior Subaltern's Platoon did tremendous business with a pair of scissors and a comb, his patrons being seated on an ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... and aggrieved consciousness of his own existence—of his insomnia, of the reaction upon himself of some client's stupidity, of the necessity of going out again in order to have his chin lacerated by his favourite and hated Albanian barber. But now he ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good man—whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber, and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti—procured for his young protege the instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends. He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit—the order had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... was frequently met with in this situation in the days of the barber-surgeons,—usually as a result of the artery having been accidentally wounded while performing venesection of the median basilic vein,—may be treated, according to the amount of discomfort it causes, by a supporting bandage, or by ligation of the artery above ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... guests had gathered about Arthur and the landlord, and while a barber tried to stanch the still bleeding wound, Montferrand ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... In 1819, Mr. Barber built a log hut on the west side of the harbor, and may be considered the first permanent settler in ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... feet in length, which Hiram swore that he would preserve until his dying breath. On the back of Jo's head appeared a round spot, covered with hairs half an inch in length, and these the brutal man was trying to shave off with the razor. Never had barber ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... move the tongue from one position to another with great rapidity. Such a composition as Figaro's song (cavatina) in Rossini's "Barber of Seville" could not be properly sung by any one not possessing great control over the tongue. Indeed, this composition may be considered a perfect test of the extent to which the singer is a master of mouth gymnastics; and this is only one of many such works. In like manner, many passages ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... he wore a cap set round with leaden images of the saints to which he prayed, but told them falsehoods even in his prayers. His choice of a confidential adviser was perhaps his greatest offence in the eyes of the nobility, for he selected his barber, Olivier le Dain, or Oliver the Devil. This man mocked his master even while he served him. Our engraving, after the painting of Hermann Kaulbach, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... the barber shaved him, and cut his hair in a certain peculiar fashion ordained for the occasion, the squires of honor supervising the operation. This being concluded, the candidate was solemnly conducted to the chamber where the bath of ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... know I was going to write poetry or I should have let my hair grow long like a poet instead of going to the barber for a shave. ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory

... a tradition amongst sailors, which I am inclined to give some credence to, that a certain barber who had a shop in the Highway availed himself of the opportunity, while cutting the hair or shaving his sailor customers—mainly, it was thought, those who were sodden with drink—to sever their wind-pipe, rob them of ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... I own now, I could not help seeing which way the fate of the day was likely to turn. There was something gloomy and disastrous in the general aspect of all things around. Miss Pritchard had the headache: the barber who brought home Hagan's wig had powdered it like a wretch: amongst the gentlemen and ladies in the greenroom, I saw none but doubtful faces: and the manager (a very flippant, not to say impertinent gentleman, in my opinion, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... But after a while they all got out in front of the hotel, to get into their carriages. They had to wait a few minutes, but I couldn't get in front to see him. The hotel hall was empty by that time, and everybody was looking at the Prince; so I hurried through the barber-shop into the side hall; slipped along into the main hall, to the main entrance. I was not more than ten or twelve feet from the Prince, but I was at the back of the crowd; so I jest got down on all-fours, and crawled in between their legs. I got clear up to the Prince, but a big man stood ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... northwards by the stream passing the Cascade Plat-a-Barbe, about 4m. from Bourboule by this roundabout way, but only 2 m. by the direct path. The falls, 60 ft. high, tumble into a cavity bearing some resemblance to a barber's shaving basin. A little way farther down through the woods the Clergue makes the cascade of La Vernire, consisting of a sheet of water 26 ft. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... community's heart. However little a man cares to drink, or to dance, or to play cards, he goes to the saloon as to the one place where he may meet his fellows, do business, and hear the news. The saloon is the Market Place. It is also the Cafe, the Theatre, the Club, the Stock Exchange, the Barber's Shop, the Bank—in short, you might as well be dead as not be a patron of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... mariners' compass. The first clear notice of it appears in a Provencal poet of the end of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century it was used by the Norwegians in their voyages to and from Iceland, who made it the device of an order of knighthood of the highest rank; and from a passage in Barber's Bruce, it must have been known in Scotland, if not used there in 1375, the period when he wrote. It is said to have been used in the Mediterranean voyages at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... to yo'self to show a clean skin in the house of worship. Just suppose one of them nice ladies was to cast her eye back of yo' ears! She'd surely be put out to name it offhand whether you was black or white. I reckon I'll have to barber you some, too, with ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... under cover to Sandro Botticelli,(70) indicates. During the whole of this very important visit he worked in marble. We have, however, one record of a cartoon by him for a Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, to be painted by a certain barber; but that is all. He studied the works of antique art and imitated the finish and softness of the Hellenic style: marbles of debased Greek workmanship abound to this day in the Roman collections. Messer Jacopo Gallo, a Roman gentleman and a banker, commissioned a Bacchus, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... at the housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the barber to reach him the books one by one, that they might see what they treated of, as they might perhaps find some that deserved not to be ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... this room who is mounted onto a foaming steed, his right hand graspin a barber's pole. I didn't ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... obliged to conduct them to prison in the center of a circle of bayonets.—It must be noted that these madmen are "at bottom the kindest people in the world." After the boarding of the ship, one of the most ferocious, by profession a barber, seeing the long beards of these poor priests, instantly cools down, draws forth his tools, and good-naturedly sets to work, spending several hours in shaving them. In ordinary times ecclesiastics received nothing but salutations; three years previously ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... treasonable charges. These the king delivered himself to Cranmer, and believing firmly the fidelity and assertions of innocence of the accused prelate, he caused the matter to be deeply investigated, and Winchester and Dr. Lenden, with Thornton and Barber, of the bishop's household, were found by the papers to be the real conspirators. The mild forgiving Cranmer would have interceded for all remission of punishment, had not Henry, pleased with the subsidy voted by parliament, let them be discharged; these ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... denizens of Borealis came and laid siege to the barber-shop as early as six in the morning. Hardly a man in the place, except Parky, the gambler, had been dressed in extravagance so imposing since the 4th of July as was early apparent in the street. Bright ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... of "hero-worship," as Mr Carlyle would term it, attaching to the most absurd, ridiculous, and even vicious doings of people who might be fashionable; a counter-jumper, barber's clerk, medical student, or tailor's apprentice, adores the memory of that great man whom we are happy to be able to style the late "markis." The pave of the Haymarket he considers classic ground, and the "Waterford ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... interested witnesses of the cure; and the king "drolled with him about it (which he could do with a very good grace)." He said he divulged the secret to the Duke of Mayenne. After the Duke's death his surgeon sold it so that "now there is scarce any country barber but knows it." Why did not Digby try it on his wounded men at Scanderoon? His Discourse to the learned assembly is a curious medley of subtle observation and old wives' tales, set out in sober, orderly, one might almost say scientific, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... was on the little steamer Berthe. Leaving his schooner to follow, Grief had taken passage for the short run across from Raiatea to Papeete. When he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, that somewhat fuddled gentleman was drinking a lonely cocktail at the tiny bar between decks next to the barber shop. And when Grief left the barber's hands half an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was still hanging over the bar still drinking ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... to arrange his belongings for the voyage. I was agreeably surprised at this man's appearance; for whereas when I had shipped him on the previous day, he was ragged, dirty, and unkempt, he was now well-dressed, clean, and palpably fresh from the hands of the barber. Close upon his heels came Jacob Simpson, the cook, who had likewise undergone a renovating process that materially improved his appearance, although as I looked at the man there was a something about him that I did not ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... have a barber, all right, Uncle Jim. He landed with his outfit this afternoon. There was no place for him, and the freighter unloaded him on a vacant lot about a block west of the hotel. It's been a long time since most of us have seen a real ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... uneasy position which the citizens hold with respect to the police. It is not alone that the restrictions and impediments of official routine render his social existence a matter of public legislation, but there is an unpleasant consciousness that his landlord, his neighbour on the same flat, his barber, or his fellow workman, may be a "vertrauter," a spy in the pay of the police, and his simplest actions, through their means, perverted into misdemeanours. A worthy cooper, with whom I occasionally dined, on reading a skeleton report of a public ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... get my money, but there was a policeman before my door. They had us finely. It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I should wring his neck. I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no idea where to go. Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used to shave me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help. He belonged to some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his breath, of course. I went to him. He was shaving himself before going to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... thou be hurt with horn of stag, it brings thee to thy bier, But barber's hand shall boar's hurt heal; thereof have ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... along one Esteban Delgado, a barber, an enemy to existing government, a jovial plotter against stagnation in any form. This barber was one of Coralio's saddest dogs, often remaining out of doors as late as eleven, post meridian. He was a partisan Liberal; and he greeted Goodwin with flatulent importance as a brother in the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... a furbisher of armour. The King Tigranes, a mender of thatched houses. Galien Restored, a taker of moldwarps. The four sons of Aymon were all toothdrawers. Pope Calixtus was a barber of a woman's sine qua non. Pope Urban, a bacon-picker. Melusina was a kitchen drudge-wench. Matabrune, a laundress. Cleopatra, a crier of onions. Helen, a broker for chambermaids. Semiramis, the beggars' lice-killer. Dido did sell mushrooms. Penthesilea sold cresses. Lucretia was an alehouse-keeper. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... more honor it did to the simplicity and cordiality of the poet's nature, though not always to the elegance of it. Allan Ramsay knew his friends Gay and Somerville as well in their writings, as he did when he came to be personally acquainted with them; but Allan, who had bustled up from a barber's shop into a bookseller's, was "a cunning shaver;" and nobody would have guessed the author of the Gentle Shepherd to be penurious. Let none suppose that any insinuation to that effect is intended ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and made the purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting to go to the barber shop, she led him into the bedroom, whisked a towel aside, and revealed the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather all ready. Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation. He gazed pityingly at the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... a large gang of hogs. I shot one of them down in his tracks, and the rest broke directly toward the camp. In a few minutes the guns began to roar as bad as if the whole army had been in an Indian battle, and the hogs to squeal as bad as the pig did when the devil turned barber. I shouldered my hog and went on to camp, and when I got there I found they had killed a good many hogs and a fine fat cow into the bargain. The next morning we marched on to a Cherokee town and gave the inhabitants an order on Uncle Sam for the cow and the hogs ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... opinion as irreconcilably as if he had feasted the Common Council. The curate and the apothecary, with a little man, who made no boast of his vocation, but who, from the flourish and snap of his fingers, I believe to have been the barber, strongly espoused the cause of high church and the Stuart line. The excise-man, as in duty bound, and the attorney, who looked to some petty office under the Crown, together with my fellow-traveller, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... of just such a woman; saw her this morning in my hotel barber shop, where I dropped in for a haircut. She was one of these—What ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... which often had supper after the play. This club was the fountain-head of a thousand jests and pranks. On one occasion Charles suggested that for the sake of the novelty of the thing every member of the club have his head shaved. The group went to a barber-shop. Only one chair was vacant, however, and Charles Cushman got that chair. While his dome was being shorn of every vestige of hair Charles nudged the others and they crept away. When Cushman emerged, bald ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... Four books, torn and dirty, made up of separate numbers, value each wawn penny, and entitled Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of London; The ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... slyly flies. And while he circulates the glass, Too rapidly the moments pass; At length in haste the prompter sends. And tears Kynaston from his friends; Tho' he'd much rather there remain, He hurries on to Drury Lane. When in the green-room he appear'd, He scar'd them with his bushy beard, The barber quick his razor strops, And lather'd well her royal chops: While he the stubble mow'd away, The audience curs'd such long delay: They scream'd—they roar'd—they loudly bawl'd. And with their cat-calls sweetly squall'd: Th' impatient ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... who invented the idea of opening up barber shops near the Indian reservations, so that Lo could get his hair clipped by a reaping machine once every year, whether ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... Street; The obstinate Cobbler; The Barber; Narrowness of Dale-street; The Carriers; Highwaymen; Volunteer Officers Robbed; Mr. Campbell's Regiment; The Alarm; The Capture; Improvement in Lord Street; Objections to Improvement; Castle Ditch; Dining Rooms; Castle-street; Roscoe's Bank; Brunswick-street; Theatre ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... willing to see how this enterprise would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodgings. He said if I didn't mind we would walk. So we tramped some four miles through the mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments"; they consisted of a single room over a barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called a century ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the flats, property values are somersaulting, everybody is out of his head, and Gordon is a god. All he does is organize new companies. He has bought a sawmill, a wharf, a machine shop, acres of real estate. He has started a bank and a new hotel; he has consolidated the barber shops; and he talks about roofing in the streets with glass and making the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... of paying you a short call presently, Captain, if I may," he said. "I just want to fetch my wraps. And by-the-by, did I tell you that I have been fortunate enough to find a pair of rubbers that just fit me, at the barber's? One of the greatest blessings on board ship, Captain, believe me, is the barber's shop. It's like a bijou Harrod's or Whiteley's—anything you want, from an elephant to a needle, you know. In about ten minutes, Captain, if ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is, to me, that it was never too handsome; there is no fatigue of sublimity about it. Shacabac and the little Barber play as great a part in it as the heroes; there are no uncomfortable sensations of terror; you may be familiar with the great Afreet, who was going to execute the travellers for killing his son with a date-stone. Morgiana, when she kills the forty robbers with boiling oil, does not seem ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... he with calm, deliberate evenness of tone, "I have held forth in this tabernacle for many more years than I have got fingers and toes, and during that time I have known not guile, nor anger, nor any uncharitableness. As to Henry Barber, who put up this job on me, I judge him not lest I be judged. Let him take that and sin no more!"—and he flung the earthern bowl with so true an aim that it was shattered against my skull. The rebuke was not undeserved, I confess, and I trust ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... old clothes, in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops, where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... side of the room, where Mabane, attired in a disreputable smock, with a short black pipe in the corner of his mouth, was industriously defacing a small canvas. Mabane was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness which would otherwise have been its lot. He also was in ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... people live there," said the elder one, trying, with the ready tact of her nation, to accommodate her words to the understanding of the stranger. "It all depends who you want to know about. On the ground floor is Josef the barber and his wife, with three little ones. It cannot be them, I am sure, and it cannot be Monsieur Ducrot, who is their lodger, for he is seventy years old and a sacristan in the Church of the Sacred Heart. Then on the first floor there are three men, not a woman amongst ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... was deserted. You could hear your own footstep on its flags. In St. Charles street the drinking-saloons and gamblers' drawing-rooms, and the barber-shops, and the show-cases full of shirt-bosoms and walking-canes, were lighted up. The smell of lemons and mint grew finer than ever. Wide Canal street, out under the darkling crimson sky, was resplendent with countless ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... court was one of the first and most necessary acts of the government of Julian. Soon after his entrance into the palace of Constantinople, he had occasion for the service of a barber. An officer, magnificently dressed, immediately presented himself. "It is a barber," exclaimed the prince, with affected surprise, "that I want, and not a receiver-general of the finances." He questioned the man concerning the profits of his employment and was informed, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... he has been studying on the same bench with them,—he is as clean, as well-dressed, as well-behaved, as they. Now, five years hence, to what occupation can that colored boy turn? He can be a bootblack, a servant, a barber, perhaps a teamster. He may be a locomotive fireman, but when he is fit to be an engineer, he is turned back. Carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, the hundred mechanical trades,—these, for the most part, are shut to him; so are clerkships; so are nineteen-twentieths of the ways by ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... dignified, radiating business importance, freshened by a barber's ministrations, walked into the Franklin law-offices the next ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... you quit the house again without my knowledge, I shall turn barber, and shave off one of those ebony ears ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... see how impossible his fallacies were; but he could perceive that Jeff thought him either wilfully ignorant or helplessly innocent, and of far less authority than a barber who had the entree of all these swell families as hair-dresser, and who corroborated the witness of a hotel night-clerk (Jeff would not give their names) to the depravity of the upper classes. He had to content himself with saying: "I hope you will be ashamed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... off, the stiff queue being brought forward and laid, pointing forwards, along the back part of the top of the head. This top-knot is shaped much like a short clay pipe. The shaving and dressing the hair thus require the skill of a professional barber. Formerly the hair was worn in this way by the samurai, in order that the helmet might fit comfortably, but it is now the style of the lower classes mostly and by no ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... and months and years passed, and nothing happened to disturb the peace of the household. But one day the man was at the barber's as usual, being shaved. The shop was full of people, and his chin had just been covered with a lather of soap, when, suddenly starting up from the chair, he called out in a ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... who the poor man was that was frozen here?" was the last thing Jack said before he went to sleep. "Book agent going out to Shaw's, perhaps, to sell him a copy of 'Every Man his Own Barber; or, How to Cut your Own Hair with ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... manager of Astley's Circus, in London. Gratefully and eagerly did the wanderers accept this offer; and while, in company with their benefactor, who paid for their places on the coach, they journeyed toward town, the man related his history. Born at Padua, the son of a poor barber, and one of fourteen children, Giovanni Battista Belzoni felt from his earliest youth a longing desire to visit foreign lands. This "truant disposition" was fostered, if not caused, by the stories ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... Lanternier, barber and varlet of the chamber, for delivering to a certain person for certain causes and for secret matters of which Monseigneur does not wish further declaration to be ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... has often reached his highest mental and spiritual development. When he leaves school, shades of the prison-house begin to close upon him. He jumps at any odd job that will bring in a few shillings to the family fund. He becomes beer-boy, barber's boy, van-boy, paper-boy, and in a year or two he is cut out by the younger generation knocking at the door. He has learnt nothing; he falls out of work; he wanders from place to place. By the time he is twenty-two, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... this Christian state of resignation, I determined at once to hit the nail on the head, and put an end to the whole business as I intended. "Now, Nanse," quo' I, "to come to close quarters with ye, tell me candidly and seriously what ye think of a barber? Every one must allow it's a canny and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... ceremony. At 1.15 P.M. Neptune in the person of Seaman Evans hailed and stopped the ship. He came on board with his motley company, who solemnly paced aft to the break of the poop, where he was met by Lieutenant Evans. His wife (Browning), a doctor (Paton), barber (Cheetham), two policemen and four bears, of whom Atkinson and Oates were two, grouped themselves round him while the barrister (Abbott) read an address to the captain, and then the procession moved round to the bath, a sail full of water ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... and the Spider—the well-known Nursery Rhyme Old Mother Hubbard Little Jack Horner Mary and her Little Lamb Red Ridinghood—walk through the woods, meeting the wolf, etc. Robinson Crusoe—finding the track of a man in the sand A Barber Shop—shaving a customer (two actors) The Man's First Speech at a Dinner The Politician who was rotten-egged after vainly trying to control a meeting Joyride in a Ford Car—ending in a bad upset (two actors) The Operation—a scene in a hospital ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... early as ten in the morning; and he invariably wound up by calling upon Ann Hughes in the kitchen, where he met the soap-fat man, who was above his profession, and likewise the sexton of Ann Hughes's church, who generally came with Billy, the barber on the corner of Franklin Street. There were certain calls The Boy always made with his father, during which he did not partake of pickled oysters; but he had pickled oysters everywhere else; and they never seemed to do ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... face was new. A sudden and irresistible impulse had led him to the barber-shop in his hotel at the outset; he could not wait till after breakfast to have his beard removed. The result, when he beheld it in the mirror, had not been altogether reassuring. The over-long, thin, tawny moustasche ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... shook his head. "Mebby, the veterinarian, or the barber, or mebby the colonel himself." The sentry laughed loudly at his own wit. But he wiltered as the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... was still in high repute,—it appears, from the testimony of M. Sarti, that medicine was in the highest esteem in Bologna, and that it was in such perfection as to require a division of its professors into physicians, surgeons, physicians for wounds, barber-surgeons, oculists and even some others. Notwithstanding these indications of refinement, however, anatomy was manifestly cultivated rather as an appendage of surgery than a branch of medical science; and according ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... after Terrier arrived he went to the engineering company's office and the manager looked at him curiously. Then he gave Lister some wine and, after studying his drawings and patterns, said he could make the things required. Lister drove to the town, and going to a Spanish barber's, started when he saw his reflection in a glass. He had not shaved for long, and fresh water was scarce on board the tug. His face was haggard, the engine grime had got into his skin, and his eyes were red. He was forced to wait, and while the barber ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... lashes. His mouth was firm and its lines were good. But for his close-cropped hair and for a bearing at once frank, assured, and modest, he would have been much handsomer than a man has any need to be. But his expression saved him: No one had ever called him a barber's block or a ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... was more pleased than Mowgli; and that night, because he had been appointed a servant of the village, as it were, he went off to a circle that met every evening on a masonry platform under a great fig-tree. It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... paper is very curious, and ought to be published (726/2. Mrs. Barber's paper on the pupa of Papilio Nireus assuming different tints corresponding to the objects to which it was attached, was communicated by Mr. Darwin to the "Trans. Entomolog. Soc." 1874.); but when you come here (and REMEMBER ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall—a hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History ever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we see something of France and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw Queen Anne at the latter place tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... pill the doctor gives you if you are suffering with corns or barber's itch or any disease at all. If none are in stock, he gives you a No. 6 and No. 3, or a No. 5 and No. 4, anything to ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... presently that perhaps Chassada differed in more ways than one from the towns to which he was accustomed. In the first place, though every one seemed to have plenty of money—there was a neat and attractive jewelry store conspicuous between a barber shop and a grain store—no one seemed to have to work. The streets were unpaved, the sidewalks of rough boards in many places, in others no walks at all were attempted. Many of the buildings were mere shacks incongruously painted in brilliant colors, and ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... mines, and particularly the "Blazing Star" tunnel, there was some flutter of masculine anxiety. There was a considerable inquiry for "store-clothes," a hopeless overhauling of old and disused raiment, and a general demand fox "boiled shirts" and the barber. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... only case in Sharon, Mrs. Jeffries," said Mrs. Mattern. "I'll remind you of them three coops when you kept poultry, and they got away across the railroad, along with the barber's shop." ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... at Preston, Lancashire; bred to the trade of a barber; took interest in the machinery of cotton-spinning; with the help of a clockmaker, invented the spinning frame; was mobbed for threatening thereby to shorten labour and curtail wages, and had to flee; fell in with Mr. Strutt ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... to you, mind you—but some slob in a uniform that's got a yacht, not because he loves the sea, but because he wants to butt in somewhere—who lives aboard his yacht just the same as he does in his house ashore—electric bells, baths, servants, barber and all—and hugs the shore so close that he gets the morning paper as regularly as when he's at home. When that kind go yachting all they miss are the tables on the lawn and the automobiles going by the door. They even have canary-birds—some ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... farther to the eastwards. At certain times of the year, the Portuguese get gold and elephants teeth in exchange for rice, salt, beads, bells, garlick, French bottles, copper kettles, low-priced knives, hats, linen like barber's aprons, latten basins, edge-tools, bars of iron, and sundry kinds of specious trinkets; but they will not give gold for toys, only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... strengthening his reason with the ardour of his love. He is ready to listen with exemplary respect. Let the preacher appear, and let nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comical cast of countenance, or let his barber have given him a bad shave, or let by chance his dress be more dirtied than usual, then however great the truths he announces. I wager our senator ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... women have theirs done up in various styles; each province in China having its own fashion. Neither women nor men can dress their own hair. The poorest beggars in the street have their hair done up by a barber. ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... of late the privilege of planting tobacco in Ireland, and tobacconists want paper. Let Mr. Wesley then come with me, as the curate and barber went to shave and bless the library of Don Quixote. All the old books, old canons, sermons, and so forth, tending to kindle feuds, or promote rancor, let us fling out at the windows. Society will lose nothing: the tobacconists will benefit by the spoils ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous



Words linked to "Barber" :   composer, barber's itch, Samuel Barber, barber chair, hairstylist, neaten, hairdresser, styler, groom



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