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More "Auctioneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father's death, he was favoured with quite the usual crowd of would-be buyers. Almost everyone with either money or credit within a radius of twenty miles came into Carrowkeel for the occasion. The presiding auctioneer had done his duty beforehand by advertising old Mr. Conneally's mouldy furniture as 'magnificently upholstered suites,' and his battered editions of the classics as 'a valuable library of handsomely bound books.' It is not likely that anyone was really deceived by these announcements, or expected ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... hundred, and looked as though he was ready to go on. That was the knock-down blow. Shott put his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and dolefully shook his head in response to all the coaxings and blandishments of the auctioneer. The hammer fell. "Name, please," was called; the lawyer's clerk passed up a slip of paper, and a thunderbolt fell on the company when the auctioneer read out, "Mr. Thomas Hankin." Hankin had bought the farms for L4700. "Cheque for deposit," said the auctioneer. A cheque for L470, previously ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Stafford, mildly but firmly, "if you are going to tell the story about your mother and the auctioneer I shall leave the room. It will be the twenty-fifth time I have heard it already, and human patience has a limit. One must draw the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... 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 the trade ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Tom to be a bit of a scholard. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad—I should be sorry for him to be a raskill—but a sort of engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even wi' the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the face as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that only an auctioneer admires all schools of literature. I think it is certain that the way to get most enjoyment from books is to specialise a little. Mr. Pepys, it will be remembered, collected Black Letter Ballads, Penny Merriments, Penny Witticisms, Penny Compliments, and Penny Godlinesses, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... began to speculate immediately upon the identity 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 be one of the curates; but it seemed scarcely probable that Mr. Fairfax would ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... public spectacles; and exacted such biddings, and raised the prices so 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
... gentlemen," cried the 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! ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... brutes, the milkman with his tin aquaria, the land agent with his nice new maps and beautiful descriptions of distant scenery, the newspaper man with his "immense circulation," the publisher with his "Great American Novel," the city auctioneer with his "Pictures by the Old Masters"—all and every one protest each his own innocence, and warn you against the deceits of the rest. My inexperienced friend, take it for granted that they all tell the truth—about each other! and then transact your business to the best of your ability on ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... read the opening paragraph of "The Return," perhaps the most dazzling feat of impressionism in modern English? The Athenaeum says also: "Upon the whole, we do not think the short story represents Mr. Conrad's true metier" It may be that Mr. Conrad's true metier was, after all, that of an auctioneer; but, after "Youth," "To-morrow," "Typhoon," "Karain," "The End of the Tether," and half a dozen other mere masterpieces, he may congratulate himself on having made a fairly successful hobby of the short story. The most extraordinary of all the Athenaeum's remarks is this: "The one ship story here, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with a view, no doubt, to increase the animation and excitement of the scene. Whether the bidders became extravagant in consequence, I do not know, but I think it very likely; at all events I suspect that the auctioneer was trying an experiment on the animal spirits of the company. This custom, although by no means familiar to Englishmen, is very generally practised in the north of England. It is probably a relique of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... see the 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 heady perfume of ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... By the time the pony his father had selected was reached, he was fairly trembling with excitement. He was full of apprehension lest somebody else should take him away from them, and when the bidding began, he watched every movement and word of the auctioneer with breathless anxiety, raising quite a laugh at one time, by answering his oft-repeated question "Will anybody give me five? I have thirty—will anybody give me five?" with an eager "I will!" that was easily heard by everybody in the crowd. It was an immense relief to him, when, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... things had been known in some parishes as tradesmen going about canvassing for custom with cards in their pockets: when people came from nobody knew where, there was no knowing what they might do. It was a thousand pities that Mr. Moffat, the auctioneer and broker, had died without leaving anybody to follow him in the business, and Mrs. Cleve's trustee ought to have known better than to let a shop to a stranger. Even the discovery that ovens were being ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... scourged; they came in their rambles upon a slave auction where a fine mulatto girl was being pinched and prodded and trotted up and down the room like a horse to show how she moved, that "bidders might satisfy themselves," as the auctioneer said, of the soundness of the article to be sold. John Johnston and John Hanks and Abraham Lincoln saw these sights with the unsophisticated eyes of honest country lads from a free State. In their home circle it seems that slavery was always spoken of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... thou hast patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's 'Catalogue of ships' is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you then the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... mixed Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles were offered for sale by auction on the centre landing yesterday. There was only a small attendance. The auctioneer said he couldn't honestly recommend the lot, but they must be got rid of at any cost. He had scrubbed their faces and combed their hair for the occasion, but couldn't guarantee that state of things to last. But they might turn out to be of use as substitutes in case worms should ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 the sharp ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... were now turned 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 ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... procurable, if any one wanted them, at a far lower rate. There is not a lot throughout which would recommend itself to modern taste, save the Cuisinier Francois, and perhaps that was not in the old morocco livery considered by judges as de rigueur. We append the auctioneer's account entire, because it exhibits a fair example of the class of book which not only Frenchmen, but ourselves, sought at that time more than those for which we have long learned to compete, and which were then offered under the hammer by the bundle, if not by the basketful. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Parliament should be passed for their benefit—something similar to that he has been the means of carrying for the canal and brick-field children. In a paper read before the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places used as dwellings should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers, in every town and village. Thus in every district the children would have their names and attendance registered in a book, which ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... An auctioneer must have a compelling manner. He must be gabby and stentorian, witheringly sarcastic and plaintively cajoling. He must be able to detect the faintest symptoms of avarice and desire in the blink of an eyelid, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... collect on the highroad. They stood in groups and did not go down to the Crow's Nest, until the auctioneer and his clerk arrived. Ditte was on the point of screaming when she saw who the two men were; they were the same who had come to fetch her mother. But now they came on quite a different errand, and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and—" Pell began; when Lopez, to their amazement, rapped on the table with his gun, as though he were an auctioneer and this his gavel, "Senors!" he shouted. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... squatting on mats of twisted straw, making notes of the sales and entries of the proceeds on rolls of parchment which they had for the purpose, whilst a swarthy slave, belonging to the treasury, acted as auctioneer under direct orders from the praefect of Rome. He was perched high up aloft, immediately beneath the shadow of the yawning bronze wolf; he stood bare-headed under the glare of the sun, but a linen tunic covered his shoulders, and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gave 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 article to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... habited in silk and gauze dresses, with their hair prettily ornamented to increase their personal attractions, which were far superior to those of the negroes. Close to the group stood a man who acted as auctioneer, ready to hand his goods over to the highest bidder. The purchasers were chiefly Arabs, who walked about surveying the hapless slaves, and ordering those to whom they took a fancy to be paraded out before them, after ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... AN auctioneer having turned publican, was soon after thrown into the King's Bench; on which the following paragraph appeared in the Morning Post: "Mr. A., who lately quitted the pulpit for the bar, has been promoted to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... "Gaspard," cried the auctioneer, addressing the young man of the tumbrel, "Suzanne would no longer hesitate if she saw you in such a hat. And with the trunk, too. Ah, mon Dieu, can you afford to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the auctioneer, "once. Two-pence, twice. Will no one bid higher? It is going for nothing, the key is worth more. Have you ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... accordingly where they devotedly but desperately were—he and she, penniless Nan Drury. Her father, of Drury & Dean, was, like so far too many other of the anxious characters who peered through the dull window-glass of dusty offices at Properley, an Estate and House Agent, Surveyor, Valuer and Auctioneer; she was the prettiest of six, with two brothers, neither of the least use, but, thanks to the manner in which their main natural protector appeared to languish under the accumulation of his attributes, they couldn't be said very particularly or ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... in 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 ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... in the auction-room. He seems to have been the victim of a frenzy for books. He impressed them by crowds, and marshalled them in regiments and myriads. They all fell in 1789 before the hammer of the auctioneer. Dibdin has described the catalogue. It was unostentatious and printed on indifferent material. He hoped, with his curious insistance on the point, that there were 'some few copies on large paper.' It is a mark of the changes in book-collecting ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... she 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... under his cuff. But the Master was too much interested in examining the young hound then being offered for sale to pay any attention to any other animal. In due course, however, the young Wolfhound was sold and led away, and the auctioneer was heard to say— ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... L5000 per annum from the profits of them. It is not difficult to account for these enormous gains. Every thing here is sold by auction, and the advertisements are in consequence more numerous than they would otherwise be. An auctioneer alone, in good business, will pay each of the papers about L1000 per annum for printing and advertising his numerous sales. We have a supreme court with a suitable establishment of officers. John Walpole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... the 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
... Newtimber, near Hurstpierpoint, and managed to serve both to a great age. He lived to be eighty-four and died full of vigour in 1831. In 1817, following upon a quarrel with the squire, the Newtimber living was put up for auction in London. Mr. Whistler decided to be present, but anonymous. The auctioneer mentioned in his introduction the various charms of the benefice, ending with the superlative advantage that it was held by an aged and infirm clergyman with one foot in the grave. At this point the proceedings were interrupted by a large and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... bidding them an affecting farewell? Good gracious! We can hardly believe such insensibility does exist. Hasten then, dear readers, as you would fly to catch the expiring sigh of a fine old boon companion—hasten to take your parting slice of ham, your last bowl of arrack, even now while the great auctioneer says "Going." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... for the musicians to pass. Next to the firing of rockets nothing can be more heart-stirring than the martial sound of the pipes and drums. The big drum was, on this occasion, played most masterly by the auctioneer and clown of the parish church, called Jose Carcunda, or ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... the beauty, and the felicity, and the glory of a dream. The Homeric catalogue of ships is exactly on a level with the muster-roll of a regiment, the register of a tax-gatherer, the catalogue of an auctioneer. Nay, some catalogues are far more interesting, and more alive with meaning. 'But him followed fifty black ships!'—'But him follow seventy black ships!' Faugh! We could make a more readable poem out of an Insolvent's ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... my father, "it will be my duty, by and by, to christen the boy,—a duty not done in a day. At present, I have no doubt that the bishop will do very well without me. Let the day stand, or if you put it off, upon my word and honor I believe that the wicked auctioneer will put off the book-sale also. Of one thing I am quite sure, that the sale and the christening will take place at the same time." There was no getting over this; but I am certain my dear mother had much less heart than before in uncovering the chintz ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 mad, who would be so ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... stronger than the interest for a German fleet, and it seemed to me that the Progressive party at that time preferred to see the newly-acquired rights of Prussia to Kiel, and the prospect of a maritime future founded on its possession, rather in the hands of the auctioneer, Hannibal Fischer, than in those ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... who was auctioneer by common consent; "here you are! number 24! a fine large statuette by one of the old masters. What am ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... 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 might be ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... with rage and disappointment; the hag vented her spite on her brother. ''Tis your fault,' said she; 'fool! you have no tongue; you a Chabo, you can't speak'; whereas, within a few hours, he had perhaps talked more than an auctioneer during a three days' sale: but he reserved his words for fitting occasions, and now sat as usual, sullen ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... comfortable cushion must feel after days and nights of prowling for 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
... later there was a fire sale by one of the merchants, and I got the job of ringing the auction bell. Late in the afternoon the auctioneer held up a brown overcoat. "Here is a fine piece of goods, only slightly damaged," he said. He showed the back of the coat where a hole was burned in it. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... slaves were brought in from Virginia and sold on de block. De auctioneer was Cap'n Dorsey. E. M. Cobb was de slave bringer. They would stand de slaves up on de block and talk about what a fine looking specimen of black manhood or womanhood dey was, tell how healthy dey was, look in their mouth ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... in a slave state, and here I saw the first negro auction. One side of the street had a platform such as we build for a political speaker. The auctioneer mounted this with a black boy about 18 years old, and after he had told all his good qualities and had the boy stand up bold and straight, he called for bids, and they started him at $500. He rattled away as if he were selling a steer, and when Mr. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... very fine road for the South, known as the state-line road. We drove to the cotton-yard, unloaded, and received the receipts for the cotton, and put up for the night at a wagon-yard. I spent this night in prayer and supplication that God would save me from the slave-pen and the auctioneer's block; and my prayers were responded to in my protection. The next morning we started for home by what was known as the pigeon-roost route, in order to save toll and ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That Poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's "Catalogue of ships" is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected on his marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The answer to the enigma, Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger, was not money but an auctioneer's hammer. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 did ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... don't care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way to ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the marchands de meubles in the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... residences as they would be termed by an auctioneer in England—are excellent. Many of them are, in fact, large mansions, and are surrounded with grounds which, as the shrubs grow up, will be very beautiful. Some have large, well-kept lawns, stretching down to the rocks, and these, to my taste, give the charm to Newport. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... 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 an ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... a man who had tried dugong fishing on the Great Barrier Reef; a broken-down advance agent from a stranded theatrical company; a local auctioneer with defective vision, but who had once written a 'poem' for a ladies' journal; a baker's carter who was secretary to the local debating society; and a man named Joss, who had a terrific black eye and who told Denison, sotto voce, that if the editor gave him ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... "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, seventeen ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of the figure of a man crouching, leaning against the staircase, with his hat pressed down over his brow, and the collar of his cloak drawn up high over his face. No one perceived how he shuddered when the auctioneer handled the beautiful articles and called on the public to bid. It was to him a terrible grief to assist at these obsequies of his past life, and yet he could not tear himself away. He felt fascinated, as it were, by some supernatural power, and forced ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... 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, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... The auctioneer, offering the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse of ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... into a tacit conspiracy against the rich, held together by closer bonds than those of a Fenian lodge. Balzac resolves that we shall have the whole scene and all the actors distinctly before us. We have a description of a country-house more poetical, but far more detailed, than one in an auctioneer's circular; then we have a photograph of the neighbouring cabaret; then a minute description of its inhabitants, and a detailed statement of their ways and means. The story here makes a feeble start; but Balzac recollects that we don't quite know the origin ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... surrender. Wait until you see Sue Tomlinson get hold of him down on the street some day. He shuts his eyes and just fires away at her while she purrs at him, and it is a sight for the gods. Sue's father died and left her with her invalid mother and not enough money to invite in the auctioneer, but the General took some old accounts of the Doctor's, collected and invested them and made up plenty of money for Sue's grubstake, though he goes around three blocks to get past her. Sue adores him and approaches him from all sides, but has never made a landing yet. Say, you'll like ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... time the bids rose slowly. Obed showed himself an excellent auctioneer—indeed he had had some experience at home—and by his dry and droll remarks stimulated the bidding when it became dull, and did not declare the claim sold till it was clear no higher bid could ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... 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 day. Having struck a bargain, the farmer ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... right down. It seems it was a policeman who was sent to watch them, that spoke. So I paid the money, but as I went out I heard the auctioneer say that the sale was closed for the day. I afterwards learned that if I had allowed them to put the watch in a box, they would have exchanged it for another ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... be discharged, as we can no longer afford a governess. We must retain only the cook, housemaid, one footman, and a groom to look after the horses until they are sold. Send a letter to Mr Bates, the auctioneer, to give notice of an early sale of the furniture. You must write to Henry; of course, he can no longer remain at college. We have plenty of time to consider what shall be our future plans, which must depend much upon what may prove ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... cheap,—a prayer for a ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship. Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... As the auctioneer—a spruce importation from Newbern—mounted the bench, a splendid carriage, drawn by two magnificent grays, and driven by a darky in livery, made its way through the crowd, and drew up opposite the stand. In it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... down to the year 1832, contained the habitations of a great number of persons in easy circumstances; many of our families of note had their residences there: John Wm. Woolsey, Esq., in 1808, and later on first President of the Quebec Bank; the millionaire auctioneer, Wm. Burns, the god-father to the late George Burns Symes, Esq.; Archbishop Signai—this worthy prelate was born in this street, in a house opposite to La Banque Nationale. Evidences of the luxuriousness of their dwelling rooms are visible to this day, in the panelling of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... time he was seen alive. Close to the place was a horse bazaar, which the artist appears to have entered by way of passing the time. The horse and trap were there, but no trace of poor Lane; and on search being made, his body was found lying lifeless at the foot of the auctioneer's stand. He appears to have wandered into the betting-room, and by some unexplained means or other fallen backwards through an insufficiently protected skylight. The clever head was battered so completely out of recognition that he was only identified by his card-case. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... "Omar, the Tentmaker." And that same ability Belasco possesses to dissect the heart of a romantic piece was carried by him into war drama, and into parlour comedies, and plays of business condition. I doubt whether "The Auctioneer" would read well, or, for the matter of that, "The Music Master;" Charles Klein has written more coherent dialogue than is to be found in these early pieces. But they are vivid in mind because of Belasco's management, and because he saw them fitted to the unique ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... 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, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Danny has a fine home of his own. Yes, with a piano that plays itself, and gilt chairs in the parlor, and a sedan top on the flivver, and beveled glass in the front door. Also he has a stylish wife who has "an evenin' wrap trimmed with vermin and is learnin' to play that auctioneer's bridge game." So why should his sister Stella be cookin' for other folks when she might be livin' swell and independent with them? Ain't there the four nieces and three nephews that hardly knows their aunt by sight? It's Danny's wife ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... 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; ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... 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
... I was walking through a side street in one of our large cities, I heard these words ringing out from a room so crowded with people that I could but just see the auctioneer's face and uplifted hammer above the heads of ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte! So it is! Haven't seen you, sir, for years. Dear me! Times aren't what they were. Why! you and your brother, and that auctioneer—Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry—you used to have six or seven stalls here regular every season. And how are you, sir? We don't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... child thought himself dreaming. And his mother, where was she? He went toward her room, but the crowd surged at that moment in the same direction. The child was too little to see what attracted them, but he heard the hammer of the auctioneer, and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... "She'll be discussing with him the future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn't happen to be Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Latinis, &c., propria manu Doct. Patricii Junii aliorumq. conscriptis: quorum auctio habebitur Londini apud domum auctionariam, adverso Nigri Cygni in vico vulgo dicto Ave Mary Lane, prope Ludgate Street, vicesimo sexto die Maii, 1684. Per Eduardum Millington, Bibliopolam." In the Preface, the auctioneer speaks of Dr. Owen as "a person so generally known as a generous buyer and great collector of the best books;" and after adverting to his copies of Fathers, Councils, Church Histories, and Rabbinical Authors, he adds, "all which considered ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Mildred, on the contrary, the beautiful was as essential as her daily food, and she excelled in all the dainty handicrafts by which women can make a home attractive. Therefore her own little sanctum had developed like an exquisite flower, and had become, as we have said, an expression of herself. An auctioneer, in dismantling her apartment, would not have found much more to sell than if he had pulled a rose to pieces, but left intact it was as full of beauty and fragrance as the flower itself. And yet her own hands must destroy it, and in a brief time she must ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... readiness with which, in these railroad days, a manufacture can be transplanted, was exhibited at Tewkesbury four years ago. The once- fashionable theatre of that decayed town was being sold by auction; it hung on the auctioneer's hammer at so trifling a sum that one of the new made M.P.'s of the borough bought it. Having bought it, for want of some other use he determined to turn it into a silk mill. In a very short space ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... this is a fairly long book for this author. It starts with two young men working as clerks in the offices of a tyrannical auctioneer. Fed up with his unpleasant behaviour they give up their jobs and determine to set out for British Columbia. To get there they must take passage in a ship going round the Horn, and up to San Francisco. Then they have ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... resembling an auctioneer's box, erected on the hearth-rug, presided, with extraordinary gravity, hammer in hand, robed in a bachelor's gown and hood. Beneath him the room seethed with the company, male and female, all in an excellent humor, and quite tolerable prices were obtained. No public ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... was all life and all colour, All confusion and clamour, As dealers showed the paces Of colts, untamed in the traces, To the rap of the auctioneer's hammer. ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... Trinity connected with the church. All these documents have now, however, entirely disappeared,—how, or at what period since the publication of the work, is unknown; but I find by a newspaper-cutting in my possession (unfortunately without date or auctioneer's name), that a very large collection of ancient documents, filling several boxes, and relating to this church and others in the county, was sold by auction in London some years ago, probably between the years 1825 and 1830. I shall feel obliged if any of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... bought the first Jenny Lind ticket at auction for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, because he knew it would be a good advertisement for him. "Who is the bidder?" said the auctioneer, as he knocked down that ticket at Castle Garden. "Genin, the hatter," was the response. Here were thousands of people from the Fifth avenue, and from distant cities in the highest stations in life. "Who is 'Genin,' the hatter?" they exclaimed. They had never heard of him before. ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... 1747, and stood on the site of Grove Hall, built by, and for many years the mansion of, Thomas Kilby Jones, a famous auctioneer of Boston, and now known as the "Consumptives' Home," on the south-east corner of Washington street and Blue Hill avenue. It was originally the home-stead of Samuel Payson, and was owned by John Goddard in the early ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... Conversing one evening about the notable orations to which he had listened, the great lawyer said that the most eloquent words he had ever heard were "spoken on the auction block by a slave mother." It seemed that she pleaded with the auctioneer and the spectators not to separate her from her children and her husband, and she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Mr. Spry, an auctioneer, who had long lived in great respectability at Dock, with his son and god-son, had gone on board to visit a friend, and were ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... may do that afterwards, if he pleases. Stay, Careless, we want you: egad, you shall be auctioneer—so come ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... 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 ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... "Now, ladies, as I should begin if I were a politician, or an auctioneer; now, ladies, the time for confession has arrived; I can no longer conceal from you my burglarious scheme. In the next turn that we shall make to the right, the park of the P—— manoir will disclose itself. But, between us and that Park, there is a gate. That gate is locked. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... prime fellow,' interposed Tom, who always managed to put his foot in it—'he talks just like an auctioneer.' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... set 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
... week her home was to wear its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... dry-goods store, struck with his good looks and manners, had offered him a situation, if he could make himself more presentable to their fair clients. Harry Flint was gazing half abstractedly, half hopelessly, at the portmanteau without noticing the auctioneer's persuasive challenge. In his abstraction he was not aware that the auctioneer's assistant was also looking at him curiously, and that possibly his dejected and half-clad appearance had excited the attention of one of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been in the family of the owner, who sent it for sale, for some 200 years. The pipe was of wood constructed in four pieces of strange shape, rudely carved with dogs' heads and faces of Red Indians. According to legend it had been presented to Raleigh by the Indians. The auctioneer, Mr. Stevens, remarked that unfortunately a parchment document about the pipe was lost some years ago, and declared, "If we could only produce the parchment the pipe would fetch L500." In the end, however, it was knocked down ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... book 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 ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the log platform raised to the height of a man's shoulders at the far end of the clearing. It was Henri Paquette, master of the day's ceremonies, and appointed auctioneer of the great wakao. A man of many tongues was Paquette. To his lips he raised a great megaphone of birchbark, and sonorously his call rang out—in French, in Cree, in Chippewan, and the packed throng about the caribou-fires heaved like a living billow, and to a man and a woman and a child ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... pound,' said the auctioneer, 'Only a pound; and I'm standing here Selling this animal, gain or loss. Only a pound for the drover's horse; One of the sort that was never afraid, One of the boys of the Old Brigade; Thoroughly honest and game, I'll swear, Only a little ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... sticking on edge in the pipeclay bottom. I found some gold also in Sheep's Head, and then we heard of a rush on the Goulburn River. Next day we offered our spare mining plant for sale on the roadside opposite Specimen Hill, placing the tubs, cradles, picks and spades all in a row. Bez was the auctioneer. He called out aloud, and soon gathered a crowd, which he fascinated by his eloquence. The bidding was spirited, and every article was sold, even Bez's own two-man pick, which would break the heart of a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... are other things to be said of buying. The dry-goods jobber frequents the auction-room. If you have never seen a large sale of dry-goods at auction, you have missed one of the remarkable incidents of our day. You are not yet aware of how much an auctioneer and two or three hundred jobbers can do and endure in the short space of three hours. You must know that fifty or a hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods may easily change owners in that time. You are not to dream of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... advertisers may, in time, 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, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... 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
... you all here again," said Grace, after the first greetings had been exchanged, as she beamed on the young men. "You're just in time to go to work, too. We've oodles of things to wrap for the 'Mystery Auction,' and Hippy you must be auctioneer. You can ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... an auctioneer, And made three hundred pounds a year; And HARRIET HALE, most strange to say, Gave pianoforte lessons at ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... paper, flowers, pictures, paste, scissors and watercolors and ask each to make an original valentine. The game of hearts, the auction of hearts and the auction of valentines are old but excellent ways of amusing a company. For the auction of hearts the girls are in a separate room and a clever auctioneer calls off their charms and merits and knocks them down to the highest bidder, who does not know who he has bought until all are sold. A fancy dress party, each girl representing a valentine, is a delightful entertainment for the evening. A small boy may be used ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... ladies, the teeming children,—broomsticks they were in comparison to freedom, but,—that was what she had asked, what she had prayed for. God, she said, had let her drop, just as her mother had done. More than ever she grieved, as she crept down the street, that she had never mounted the auctioneer's block. An ownerless free negro! She knew no one whose duty it was to help her; no one knew her to help her. In the whole world (it was all she had asked) there was no white child to call her mammy, no ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... companions with all the equanimity and philosophy of a man who has been drinking long and slowly, and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters of various depths of shade, according to their company, nicknamed "Bower ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and patent park paling, was not, to Mr. Toad, a very expensive purchase; for he "took it off the hands" of a distressed client who wanted an immediate supply, "merely to convenience him," and, consequently, became the purchaser at about half its real value. "Attorneys," as Bustle the auctioneer says, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... me pie. Pa wouldn't get up at four o'clock in the morning to go to early mass, unless he could take a fish pole along and some angel worms. The hired girl prays when no one sees her but God, but Pa wants to get a church full of sisterin', and pray loud, as though he was an auctioneer selling tin razors. Say, it beats all what a difference liver medicine has on two people, too. Now that hickory nut day, when me and my chum got full of Pa's liver medicine, I felt so good natured I gave my hickory nuts away to the children, and wanted to give my coat ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... I says, reading the address. "'Auctioneer and House Agent, Broadway, Hammersmith.' Is that the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... that 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 ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... tax 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 for the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... in the Curse of Kehama and in the Christian Year there are poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... there was abundance of sound, but generally an equal lack of sense. Too full of himself to be willing to keep patiently plodding on like ordinary people, he had run through a good many trades without being master of any. Once he was a pastry-cook; at another time a painter; and then an auctioneer—which last business he held to the longest of any, as giving him full scope for exhibiting his graces of language. He had abandoned it, however, in consequence of some rather biting remarks which had come to his ears ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... "They sell the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a year, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 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 of ribbon, the shopkeeper lays down his newspaper, perhaps ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... aid their sister. Mr. Montgomery wished them sent to the vicarage, but Helen would not hear of it till the day of, or after the sale. Well has it been said, that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; and so did she find it; for on applying, through Mr. Montgomery, to a neighbouring auctioneer, he, gratuitously, attended, and did all in his power to dispose of the things to advantage. Mr. Willoughby had taken the house on coming into possession of the property and furnished it throughout, so that being in good order, most of the furniture fetched a fair price. The day after ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... praises, Kitely[30] scarce had more. By turns transform'd into all kind of shapes, Constant to none, Foote laughs, cries, struts, and scrapes: Now in the centre, now in van or rear, The Proteus shifts, bawd, parson, auctioneer. His strokes of humour, and his bursts of sport, Are all contain'd in this one word—distort. 400 Doth a man stutter, look a-squint, or halt? Mimics draw humour out of Nature's fault, With personal ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... - Potter and Morris, a little acrobat out of a travelling circus, a METIF or half- breed Indian named Jim, two French Canadians - Nelson and Louis (the latter spoke French only); Jacob, a Pennsylvanian auctioneer whose language was a mixture of Dutch, Yankee, and German; and (after we reached Fort Laramie) another Nelson - 'William' as I shall call him - who offered his services gratis if we would allow him to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... out.) "Five hundred pounds!" rapped out a voice near by; "Six hundred!" "Seven!" "Eight!" And then a shout: "A thousand pounds!" Oh, how I thrilled to hear! Oh, how the bids went up by leaps, by bounds! And then a silence; then the auctioneer: "It's going! Going! Gone! Three thousand pounds!" Three thousand pounds! A frenzy leapt in me. "That picture's mine," I cried; "I'm David Strong. I painted it, this famished wretch you see; I did it, I, and sold it for a song. And ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... which told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of Greenwood, and asked ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... clos't '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
... should be away the last week her home was to wear its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... course we fell sadly back; and when the house rent became due, we had not wherewith to pay it. The landlord distrained us for it. A second time the few things I had left were put under the hammer o' the auctioneer. 'Oh!' said I, 'surely misery and I were born thegither!' For we had twa dochters, the auldest only gaun six, baith lying ill o' the scarlet fever in the same bed, and I had to suffer the agony o' beholding the bed sold out from under ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... to be the original of the home of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer and estate agent in ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... auction. As the 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... adulterer 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 ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my own,—as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly, to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the price, asked for ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 the trade ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sell the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a year, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... had at the Office of the Auctioneer, 9. Foregate Street, Worcester, one week previous ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... de plume of Frederick Fargus, born in Bristol; bred to the auctioneer business; author of "Called Back," a highly sensational novel, and a success; gave up his business and settled in London, where he devoted himself to literature, and the production of similar works of much promise, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tightening of the grasp of a man like Klutchem and he did not underestimate the gravity of the situation. What Consolidated Smelting represented, or what place it held in the market were unknown quantities to the Colonel. What he really saw was the red flag of the auctioneer floating over the front porch of that friend in Virginia whom the Bank had ruined, and the family silver and old portraits lying in the carts that were to take them away forever. It was part of ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... carriage came near he saw the insignia of nobility, and he asked who that noble lady was. Upon being told, he said, "Stop, my friends, I have got something to sell." The idea of a preacher becoming suddenly an auctioneer made the people wonder, and in the midst of a dead silence he said: "I have more than a title to sell—I have more than a crown of Europe to sell; it is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Is there anyone here who bids for it? Yes, I hear a bid. Satan, Satan, what will you give? 'I will give pleasure, ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... Vernon, as agreed upon between himself and Henry Dunbar—"the very thing," repeated the landlord; "you might say it had been made to order like. There's a sale comes off next Thursday. Mr. Grogson, the Shorncliffe auctioneer, will sell, at eleven o'clock precisely, the furniture and lease of the snuggest little box in these parts—Woodbine Cottage it's called—a sweet pretty little place, as was the property of old Admiral Manders. The admiral died in the house, and having been a bachelor, and his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... store, a drugstore, a 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 two pool-rooms and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and, at the next election, chose another in his place. Thereupon, not discouraged, he turned his hand, with national facility, to something else—following, successively, the business of a small grocer, of a tavern keeper, and of an auctioneer. Somehow or other, however, ill luck still followed him; and, finally, he took to distributing the village newspaper, and sticking up handbills. This gave him a taste for politics, and having acquired, in his employment as auctioneer, a certain fluency of speech, he cultivated it ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... did greet A round faced Caledonian, who Good eating and good drinking knew; And "Four-pence-half-penny" McKenzie Daily vended wolsey linsey, Next door to one of comic cheer Acknowledged the best auctioneer, That ever knock'd a bargain down, Or bidder if he chanced to frown; He set himself up in the end As Carleton's most worthy friend And by vox populi was sent To Parliament to represent The men of Carleton, one and all, In ancient Legislative Hall. ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... amusing account of the sale of two ships at an auction by an inch of candle. The auctioneer put them up when the candle was first lighted, and bidding went on till it was burnt down. He describes "how they do invite one another, and at last how they all do cry, and we have much to do to tell who did cry last. The ships were the Indian, sold for 1300 pounds, and the Half-Moone, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Earl of Fitz Balaam, of Cullender Castle, in the county 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 it ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... sounds, and the villagers stood at their cottage doors waiting for the musicians to pass. Next to the firing of rockets nothing can be more heart-stirring than the martial sound of the pipes and drums. The big drum was, on this occasion, played most masterly by the auctioneer and clown of the parish church, called Jose Carcunda, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... burdened. Scott's kindness continued, as long as John Ballantyne lived, to provide for him a constant succession of similar advantages at the same easy rate; and Constable, from deference to Scott's wishes, and from his own liking for the humorous auctioneer, appears to have submitted with hardly a momentary grudge to this heavy tax on his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... natural to us than this old Westwood, the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Taylor had the satisfaction of shooting two Germans in a mist, who were trying to get back through their own wire; and on returning the patrol picked up an odd assortment of articles, which sound like an extract from some mad auctioneer's catalogue: (1) a glass globe full of liquid with a string net round it; (2) a strong case with powder inside it; (3) six hand grenades; (4) a shoulder strap, silver braid on red cloth, 169 in gilt; ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... growing importance on our irrigation holdings, and that settlers are recognising its great value as an adjunct to dairying is proved by the fact that there are now on the settlements four times as many pigs as there were a year ago. A leading auctioneer estimates that, with improved facilities, the sales in Rochester would in the near future amount to 1000 a month. The methods adopted on the irrigation farm of Messrs. Jacob and Kennedy, at Nannulla, show that pig raising is ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... Serbs, Roumanians, Jews of Hungary, and Italians of Whitechapel mingled in the throng. Near East and Far East rubbed shoulders. Pidgin English contested with Yiddish for the ownership of some tawdry article offered by an auctioneer whose nationality defied conjecture, save that always some branch of his ancestry had drawn nourishment from the soil of ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to pass through her idlest thoughts! But she was not going to marry George! That was well settled! In a year or two he would be quite fat! And he always had his hands in his pockets! There was something about him not like a gentleman! He suggested an auctioneer or a cheap-jack! ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... educated at a great public school. While he pointed out the great alliances which his ancestors had formed, Philip amused himself by wondering whether Athelny was not the son of some tradesman in Winchester, auctioneer or coal-merchant, and whether a similarity of surname was not his only connection with the ancient family whose tree he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... put 'em on the block to sell 'em. The ones 'tween 18 and 30 always bring the most money. The auctioneer he stand off at a distance and cry 'em off as they stand on the block. I can hear his voice ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... a palisade of tables made in the best drawing-room; and on the capital, french-polished, extending, telescopic range of Spanish mahogany dining-tables with turned legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer is erected; and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, the strangers fluffy and snuffy, and the stout men with the napless hats, congregate about it and sit upon everything within reach, mantel-pieces included, and begin to bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... same time she wrote to an auctioneer in the Via due Macelli, requesting him to call upon her. The man came immediately. He had little beady eyes, which ranged round the dining-room and seemed to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... filled with rage and disappointment; the hag vented her spite on her brother. ''Tis your fault,' said she; 'fool! you have no tongue; you a Chabo, you can't speak'; whereas, within a few hours, he had perhaps talked more than an auctioneer during a three days' sale: but he reserved his words for fitting occasions, and now sat as usual, sullen and silent, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... my estate have been described by an English estate agent and auctioneer, with a better foundation of fact than many ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... second-hand dealers who had come to Grinselhof with the hope of getting bargains. Peasants might be seen talking together, in low voices, with surprise at Do Vlierbeck's ruin; and there were even some who laughed openly and joked as the auctioneer read ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... purchaser into their booths. Several customers entered to inspect the "horse-dealer's" stock. Without understanding the words that he spoke, I guessed by the inflections of his voice that he strove to capture them, while the auctioneer all the while called out the bids. From time to time a loud tumult arose in the booth, mingled with the sound of the keepers' lashes, and the curses of the dealer. Evidently they were scourging some of my companions ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... farm was put up, the auctioneer naturally turning towards the squire, who responded pompously, "I bid twenty-two hundred dollars, the amount of the mortgage I hold ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Tame submission to insult would naturally enough be taken, not for moderation, but for insensibility and want of spirit. Who could be expected to put up with his last performance? He brought us to market like a gang of slaves, and handed us over to the auctioneer. Some, I believe, fetched high prices; but others went for four or five pounds, and as for me—confound his impudence, threepence! And fine fun the audience had out of it! We did well to be angry; we have come from Hades; and we ask you to give us satisfaction ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a progressively startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive Battles. I sha'n't ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... of explanation, it must be noted that the hut had an annual ball once a week, "dancing strictly prohibited." To be explicit, the annual ball was a weekly dinner. The auction was a great success, a real auctioneer presiding, well ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 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 his ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... all that I had intended for publication in my book entitled "THE AUCTIONEER'S GUIDE," I was advised by a few of my most intimate friends to add a sketch of my own life to illustrate what had been set forth ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... a staring forgery, but you, h-you won't mind that, and the 'ladies' man'—ah, the 'ladies' man,' once you are his cousin, he'll never let on. Take Irby! he is, as you say, a nincompoop"—she had dropped into English—"and seldom sober, mais take him! 't is the las' call of the auctioneer, yo' fav-oreet auctioneer—with the pointed ears and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... afternoon the country people began to leave town and Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys, stable-boys, gentlemen—all eager ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... laying most emphasis on the name. No one answered; but two persons in the corner, a father and son, exchanged significant glances and looked very acute and wise. The Squire raised his voice, and let it fall like an auctioneer's hammer on ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... services Mr. World conducted his friend from the church, and as they were moving again toward the surging crowds they heard the voice of an auctioneer. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... 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 separates ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... who was silent and strange. A boy put a printed catalogue into Dad's hand, which he was doubtful about keeping until he saw Andy Percil with one. Most of the men seated on the rails jumped down into an empty yard and stood round in a ring. In one corner the auctioneer mounted a box, and read the conditions of sale, and talked hard about the breed ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... the body away, And the watches were sold that Saturday. The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy Such watches, and ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... reader, thou hast patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's 'Catalogue of ships' is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... prompt allusion to passing occurrences, and you have the mischievous member of Congress. A spice of malice, a ruffian touch in his rhetoric, will do him no harm with his audience. These accomplishments are of the same kind, and only a degree higher than the coaxing of the auctioneer, or the vituperative style well described in the street-word "jawing." These kinds of public and private speaking have their use and convenience to the practitioners; but we may say of such collectively, that the habit of oratory is apt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, with which the author, Nodier, was long honourably associated as librarian. I purchased it a few years ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly catalogued Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear of a very ragged regiment on the shelves of the auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's Pensees de Shakespeare. None competed with me for the prize. A very slight effort delivered into my hands the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of the auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegant impropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had again seized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... Bobadil such praises bore, Such worthy praises, Kitely[30] scarce had more. By turns transform'd into all kind of shapes, Constant to none, Foote laughs, cries, struts, and scrapes: Now in the centre, now in van or rear, The Proteus shifts, bawd, parson, auctioneer. His strokes of humour, and his bursts of sport, Are all contain'd in this one word—distort. 400 Doth a man stutter, look a-squint, or halt? Mimics draw humour out of Nature's fault, With personal defects their mirth ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 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 heady perfume ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... San Lorenzo. Beneath the grand stand, where the pools are always sold, the motley throng surged thickest. Jew and gentile, greaser and dude, tin-horn gamblers and tenderfeet, hayseeds and merchants, jostled each other good humouredly. In the pool box were two men. One —the auctioneer—a perfect specimen of the "sport"; a ponderous individual, brazen of face and voice, who presented to the crowd an amazing front of mottled face, diamond stud, bulging shirt sleeves, and a bull-neck encircled by a soiled eighteen-and-a-half inch paper collar. The other gentleman, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Flaccus [Horace], Latin poet and satirist, was born near Venusia, in Southern Italy, on December 8, 65 B.C. His father was a manumitted slave, who as a collector of taxes or an auctioneer had saved enough money to buy a small estate, and thus belonged to the same class of small Italian freeholders as the parents of Virgil. Apparently Horace was an only child, and as such received an education almost beyond his father's means; who, instead of sending ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... He has favoured the world with several literary productions, among which are Memoirs of his own Life, embellished with a view of the author, suspended from (to use the phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a hanging wood; and a very elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to "clear any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting only a certain great ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... pocket. This is his style, 'Come, buy, buy, choice mutton three farthings the carcass. Retail shop next door, ma'am. Jack, serve the lady. Bill, tell him he can send me home those twenty bullocks, at three half-pence each—' and so on. But at night he subsides into an auctioneer, and, with knocking down lots while others are conversing, gets removed occasionally to a padded room. Sometimes we humor him, and he sells us the furniture after a spirited competition, and debits the amounts, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... notable orations to which he had listened, the great lawyer said that the most eloquent words he had ever heard were "spoken on the auction block by a slave mother." It seemed that she pleaded with the auctioneer and the spectators not to separate her from her children and her husband, and she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one of ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... he 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 the Realists, and would scarcely have comprehended either the men ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering, consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with wondrous impudence and pertinacity, dispensing, all the while he is selling, the most ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... exceedingly cheap. History and novels appeared to be the literature in demand; and Walter Scott, Byron, and Bulwer, the names most familiar in the verbal catalogue galloped over by the "learned gentleman," as our auctioneer advertisements have it. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... fool and his nine-hundred-dollar piano are soon parted. The red flag of the auctioneer announces its transfer to a drawing-room frequented by persons capable of enjoying the refined pleasures. Bright and joyous is the scene, about half past nine in the evening, when, by turns, the ladies try over their newest pieces, or else listen with intelligent pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... boldly. The sale was going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a noble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and glass door. Mr. May's heart gave a little jump. Almost everybody has wished for something unattainable, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to her this week,' she replied; and she promised to get any information she could for me within a fortnight, by which time I expected to pass that way again. I did so, and Mrs. Smith proved as good as her word. The niece had got the cup from a friend of hers, an auctioneer, and he, not she, had got it at a sale. But he was away from home—she could hear nothing more at present. She gave his address, however, and assurances that he was very good-natured and would gladly put the gentleman in the way of getting ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... all liberally paid off, and began to disperse, finding work at different mines; and after several consultations, the Colonel and his old brother officer being quite of the same mind, an interview was held with a well-known auctioneer, and the whole of the machinery was announced ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... three days, on a very fine road for the South, known as the state-line road. We drove to the cotton-yard, unloaded, and received the receipts for the cotton, and put up for the night at a wagon-yard. I spent this night in prayer and supplication that God would save me from the slave-pen and the auctioneer's block; and my prayers were responded to in my protection. The next morning we started for home by what was known as the pigeon-roost route, in order to save toll ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... inside, a heap of grain, and 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 that you may see in the ancient illuminated ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as "Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am I bid for ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... be lengthened, I should have felt anxious. What a marvellous creation a woman is, to be sure! Man and philosopher as I am, my impulse would have been to consign the contents of the garret to the auctioneer or the ash-man, and to retain most of the least-used furniture and upholstery to eke out our new splendor. But Josephine's method was distinctly opposite. She was critical of nearly everything respectable-looking in the old ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... they got him to touch a grindstone, his body changed its character from shrinking and doubtful, to erect and energetic, and he applied his test. This boy carried with him, night and day, a little wooden hammer, like an auctioneer's, and with this he now tapped each stone several times, searching for the one he had denounced: and, at each experiment, he begged the others to keep away from him and leave him alone with the subject of his experiment; which they did, and held up ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she could do, but that may be the end of it. He's in an auctioneer's office, and may have a pretty ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... 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
... House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' Of Thomas Campbell, the poet, it is written that 'his talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow; his face has a smirk which would befit a shopman or an auctioneer.' Wordsworth, 'an old, very loquacious, indeed, quite prosing man.' Southey 'the shallowest chin, prominent snubbed Roman nose, small carelined brow, the most vehement pair of faint hazel eyes I have ever seen.' There is a savage ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... dinners in pails, and stayed all day, for auctions do not occur very often in the country, and are great events when they do. Eyebright, who did not know exactly how to dispose of herself, sat on the stairs, high up, where no one could see her, and listened to the auctioneer's loud voice calling off the numbers and bids. "No. 17, one clock,—who bids two dollars for the clock? No. 18, lounge covered with calliker. I am offered seven-fifty for the lounge covered with ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... and went to work with the minuteness of an auctioneer taking an inventory, or a sheriff levying an execution. Accordingly he came back full of notes; he had studied Carolus chiefly in respect ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... me a great favour,—get the secret from the old woman, what we ants can do to live a little longer; for it seems to me a folly in worldly affairs to be heaping up such a large store of food for so short a life, which, like an auctioneer's candle, goes out just at the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... French wine, left for me, as a taste of 216 hogshead, which are to be put on sale at 20L a hogshead, at Garraway's Coffee-house, in Exchange alley" etc. The sale by candle is not, however, by candlelight, but during the day. At the commencement of the sale, when the auctioneer has read a description of the property, and the conditions on which it is to be disposed of, a piece of candle, usually an inch long, is lighted, and he who is the last bidder at the time the light goes out is ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... privileges as this. Why, there are twice as many harbours and water-powers here, as we have all the way from Eastport to New OrLEENS. They have all they can ax, and more than they desarve. They have iron, coal, slate, grindstone, lime, firestone, gypsum, free-stone, and a list as long as an auctioneer's catalogue. But they are either asleep, or stone blind to them. Their shores are crowded with fish, and their lands covered with wood. A government that lays as light on 'em as a down counterp'in, and no taxes. Then look at their ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the familiar auction pool, with its close, stifling, dingy room; its crowd of solemn, stupid, wide-awake gentlemen seated in chairs before a platform, backed with a blackboard, on which are inscribed the names of the horses expected to start; and its alert, chattering auctioneer, gay as a sparrow, and equally active, fishing for bids, with strident voice and reassuring manner. A few words, however, may be spared to touch lightly on what is designated the "Mutuel" system, which was invented by M. Joseph Oller, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,—if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could advise it, once, for a little! Flaying of Saint Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... as ever—no, it was not the last time; the last time was at Douglas Kinnaird's. I have met him in all places and parties—at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock's, at Robins's the auctioneer's, at Sir Humphry Davy's, at Sam Rogers's,—in short, in most kinds of company, and always found ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and a good one. Money was needed for the laddies who were going—needed for all sorts of things. To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and such things as the government might not be supplying them. And so they asked me to be their auctioneer. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... is about to 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 ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... me two," intoned the auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd became a jam. Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden. In all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying small ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... venture to purchase a freehold, or even a 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 Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... was Messrs. Sharke's agent, was bustling about, and I found him engaged with a fat, pompous little fellow, the auctioneer, from a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... disfavour. A large bullock-team hauling a waggon load of bales blundered slowly along the road, the weary cattle swinging from side to side under the lash of the bullocky, who yelled hoarse profanity with the volubility of an auctioneer and the vocabulary of a Yankee skipper unchecked by authority. A little further on another team, drawn up before a hotel, lay sprawling, half buried, the patient bullocks twisted into painful angles by reason of their yokes, quietly chewing ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... an auction in a general way, is good. If you hear the auctioneer crying his sales, it means bright prospects and fair treatment ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.' In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the crisp and nervous ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... the witness box; but then, as his father was a lawyer, possibly Gusty often experimented on himself, since he meant to either take up the same pursuit in life, or give his magnificent voice a chance to earn him a living in the role of an auctioneer. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Timothy Babyhouse, The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:—"Nothing is so diverting as this kind of sale—the number of those assembled, the diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what he openly depreciates; or—to spread a dangerous snare—pretending to secure with avidity a picture which already belongs ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and could hear the hum of voices in the hall, but no words, when Coleman came back, accompanied by a committee, of which I think the two brothers Arrington, Thomas Smiley the auctioneer, Seymour, Truett, and others, were members. The whole conversation was gone over again, and the Governor's proposition was positively agreed to, with this further condition, that the Vigilance Committee should send into the jail a small force of their own men, to make certain that Casey should ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... half a dollar for it. When I told Lizzie about it she laughed good and said the city folks must be dumb if they want pewter dishes when you can buy such nice ones for ten cents. Yes, Eph, that's the fellow's going to auctioneer. He's a good one, you bet; he keeps things lively all the time. All his folks is good talkers. Lizzie says his mom can talk the legs off an iron pot. But then he needs a good tongue in this business; it ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... 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
... the year 1832, contained the habitations of a great number of persons in easy circumstances; many of our families of note had their residences there: John Wm. Woolsey, Esq., in 1808, and later on first President of the Quebec Bank; the millionaire auctioneer, Wm. Burns, the god-father to the late George Burns Symes, Esq.; Archbishop Signai—this worthy prelate was born in this street, in a house opposite to La Banque Nationale. Evidences of the luxuriousness of their dwelling rooms are visible to this day, in the panelling of some doors ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the poor to meet on a level, before Him who regards not the outward estate of his creatures. But modern Christians have contrived to evade the rebuke of the apostle by the cunning device of introducing the noisy auctioneer, and under a show of fairness and equality, 'the man in goodly apparel and having a gold ring' is assigned the highest seat; and albeit a skeptic, by the weight of his purse crowds the humble worshippers to the wall and into the corners of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... built in 1747, and stood on the site of Grove Hall, built by, and for many years the mansion of, Thomas Kilby Jones, a famous auctioneer of Boston, and now known as the "Consumptives' Home," on the south-east corner of Washington street and Blue Hill avenue. It was originally the home-stead of Samuel Payson, and was owned by John Goddard in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... drinking long and slowly, and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters of various depths of shade, according to their company, nicknamed "Bower o' Bliss" ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... that time 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 comradeship prevailed. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut open Lydon's shoulder.—A ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... gigantic withered pear. Each had its fireplace, with a mantelpiece of funereal marble to match the pillars. Mrs. Maitland had refurnished this parlor when she came to the old house as a bride; she banished to the lumber- room, or even to the auctioneer's stand, the heavy, stately mahogany of the early part of the century, and purchased according to the fashion of the day, glittering rosewood, carved and gilded and as costly as could be found. Between the windows at each end of the long room were ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... prize, which was advertised in the Sydney Gazette for sale by auction, Mr. Lord, the auctioneer, setting forth ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the remuneration is excessive, the Board may review the same and fix the remuneration. A trustee may not receive any remuneration for services rendered in any other capacity, e.g. as solicitor, auctioneer, &c., beyond that voted to him as trustee; nor may he share his remuneration with the bankrupt, the solicitor or other person employed about the bankruptcy; or receive from any person any gift, or other pecuniary or personal benefit ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... even he is perhaps only to be 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
... impressively these men advance in a line almost to the centre of the slave market, within two or three yards of the arcade, where the wealthy buyers sit expectant. Then the head auctioneer lifts up his voice, and prays, with downcast eyes and outspread hands. He recites the glory of Allah, the One, who made the heaven above and the earth beneath, the sea and all that is therein; his brethren and the buyers say Amen. He thanks Allah for his mercy to men in ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... 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 on him, not ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... and be there for the auction on Friday. By that time we shall have picked out what is worth saving, and everything will be ready for him to take matters in hand. I think he has already written to the auctioneer, so tell father to give himself no uneasiness ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... little surrounded with houses that anyone 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. It is at present one of the best-frequented ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and hired out one hundred slaves; took them himself to the public mart, and acted as auctioneer in disposing of their services. The time at which this was done, was in the Christmas holidays, or rather the last day of the year, when the slaves' annual ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... As first advertised the sale was for three days, but the auctioneer found that he could not get through in the time. The accumulations of such an ancient house as Outram Hall are necessarily vast," and he waved his hand with ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... would be impossible to sell this "lot" alone, the Spaniard with the whip ordered George to be released and placed upon the block also, stepping forward at the same time and whispering eagerly in the ear of the auctioneer. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... course could equal the torment of the galley-slaves, but the wretchedness of the shore-slaves was bad enough. When they were landed they were driven to the Besist[a]n or slave-market, where they were put up to auction like the cattle which were also sold there; walked up and down by the auctioneer to show off their paces; and beaten if they were lazy or weary or seemed to "sham." The purchasers were often speculators who intended to sell again,—"bought for the rise," in fact; and "Christians are cheap to day" was a business quotation, just as though they had been ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... claret was put up by the auctioneer, and, thinking this a good opportunity for laying in a stock for the mess, as we would be in commission probably in warm latitudes, for the next two or three years, when the wine would come in rather handy, Larkyns listened eagerly ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... will be Abraham Lincoln at the Slave auction. (Auctioneer and slaves. Sells several slaves. Class bid and ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... contained an open letter the writing of which was strangely familiar to 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 ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... noblemen. Many years ago Arent Schuyler de Peyster, to whom I am indebted for many traditions of early New York society, told me that upon one occasion a conversation occurred between Philip Hone and his brother John, a successful auctioneer, in which the latter advocated their adoption of a coat of arms. Philip's response was characteristic of the man: "I will have no arms except those Almighty ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the auction in the public square, along towards the end of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing for sympathy all he knowed how, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his glory. With triumphant glee he mounted a chair on the terrace, and began a short speech, with the words, "We're a great people, gentlemen; we're a great people." He then went on to say that he was "going to turn auctioneer," and a huge clothes basket full of grapes—the entire contents of one of his own forcing houses—being brought to him, he proceeded in the most facetious manner to offer them, bunch by bunch, for sale, and he realised in this way a very large ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... a 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 ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... "Hold hard," said the auctioneer, hastily counting the watches on the tray and comparing the number with a list he held in his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... friends accompanied me on my auction-room expeditions and restrained my ardor; but this time I got away alone and found myself bidding at the sale of a solid bog-wood bedroom set which had been exhibited as a show-piece at the World's Fair, and was now, in the words of the auctioneer, "going for a song." I sang the song. I offered twenty dollars, thirty dollars, forty dollars, and other excited voices drowned mine with higher bids. It was very thrilling. I offered fifty dollars, and there was a horrible silence, broken at last by the auctioneer's final, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... resolved on giving up his farm, an arrangement was come to with the Laird of Dalswinton by which Burns was allowed to throw up his lease and sell off his crops. The sale took place in the last week in August (1791). Even at this day the auctioneer and the bottle always appear side by side, as Chambers observes; but then far more than now-a-days. After the roup, that is the sale, of his crop was over, Burns, in one of his letters, describes the scene that took place within and without his house. It was one which exceeded ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship. Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... smattering of the law for home use. There's bread in that! As for literature, he's got enough of that in him already; if he begins to kick, I've concluded that I'll make him learn some trade; the barber's, say, or the auctioneer's, or even the lawyer's. That's one thing no one but the devil can do him out of! 'Believe what your daddy says, Primigenius,' I din into his ears every day, 'whenever you learn a thing, it's yours. Look ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... 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 constituted his ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice. And when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... 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 ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... question cannot be the last. There is always the third reading of a bill. The auctioneer usually cries, 'Third and last time,' not 'Second and last time,' and the banns of approaching marriage are called out three times. So, you see, I have the right to ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... privately, but decided at last that the best thing to do was to get the four men together in the back room of a certain saloon and have an open auction. When he had his men lined up, he got on a chair, told about the value of the goods for sale, and asked for bids in regular auctioneer style. The highest bidder got the nomination for $5000. Now, that wasn't right at all. These things ought to be always fixed up ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... on edge in the pipeclay bottom. I found some gold also in Sheep's Head, and then we heard of a rush on the Goulburn River. Next day we offered our spare mining plant for sale on the roadside opposite Specimen Hill, placing the tubs, cradles, picks and spades all in a row. Bez was the auctioneer. He called out aloud, and soon gathered a crowd, which he fascinated by his eloquence. The bidding was spirited, and every article was sold, even Bez's own two-man pick, which would break the heart of a Samson to ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... ingenious 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 ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... considered the latter the height of meanness. This friend quietly and persistently moved through the crowd, telling them why our goods were there, and advising to give them a "terrible letting alone." The auctioneer stated on what account they were there, to be sold, asked for bidders, winked his eye and said "no bidders." Our goods were sent back to our store. This law, in the words of a distinguished Statesman, was then allowed to relapse ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... it is in a first-rate situation, and a fashionable neighbourhood. (Auctioneer called it 'a gentlemanly residence.') A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a dark street—but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house just large enough to hold a vile smell. The air breathed in it, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... that he, the said Raymond, had too much salary. Whitbread wants us to assess the pit another sixpence,—a d——d insidious proposition,—which will end in an O.P. combustion. To crown all, R * *, the auctioneer, has the impudence to be displeased, because he has no dividend. The villain is a proprietor of shares, and a long lunged orator in the meetings. I hear he has prophesied our incapacity,—'a foregone conclusion,' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Maybud, and I would fain not die "pop." MAR. You are Rose Maybud? ROSE. Yes, sweet Rose Maybud! MAR. Strange! They told me she was beautiful! And he loves you! No, no! If I thought that, I would treat you as the auctioneer and land-agent treated the lady-bird—I would rend you asunder! ROSE. Nay, be pacified, for behold I am pledged to another, and Lo, we are to be wedded this very day! MAR. Swear me that! Come to a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... mocked Sam. "She'll be discussing with him the future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn't happen to be Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with amused students. I mounted the table, like an auctioneer, while they sat on my cot and on the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... furniture of her sitting-room and bedroom; the former of which she was to occupy till Martha could meet with a lodger who might wish to take it; and into this sitting-room and bedroom she had to cram all sorts of things, which were (the auctioneer assured her) bought in for her at the sale by an unknown friend. I always suspected Mrs Fitz-Adam of this; but she must have had an accessory, who knew what articles were particularly regarded by Miss Matty on account of their associations with ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for a while; but at length she went boldly to Schuber's house, became one of his household, and with his advice and aid asserted her intention to establish her freedom by an appeal to law. Belmonti replied with threats of public imprisonment, the chain-gang, and the auctioneer's block. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... picturesque circumstance, no touch of human pathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels and thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation and distinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance than any ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... the galley-slaves, but the wretchedness of the shore-slaves was bad enough. When they were landed they were driven to the Besist[a]n or slave-market, where they were put up to auction like the cattle which were also sold there; walked up and down by the auctioneer to show off their paces; and beaten if they were lazy or weary or seemed to "sham." The purchasers were often speculators who intended to sell again,—"bought for the rise," in fact; and "Christians are cheap to day" was a business quotation, just as though they had been stocks and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... at length, as though in continuation of something he had been saying, 'I began to earn my bread when I was fourteen. My father was an auctioneer at Brighton. A few years after his marriage he had a bad illness, which left him completely deaf. His partnership with another man was dissolved, and as things went worse and worse with him, my mother started a lodging-house, which somehow ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Mrs. Baxter approved, saying that this was what the second Mrs. Greening had done when her husband's sister's daughter, a very emancipated young woman as it seemed, had incomprehensibly flirted with the auctioneer's apprentice and had scouted Mrs. Greening's control; Mrs. Greening had told the girl's mother and sent the girl home, second class, under the care of the guard. Similarly then Lady Richard, without embarking on any ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... "We use any method to get them. Our business is to land them and we don't care how we do it. If they look easy we tell them of the fine clothes, the diamonds and all the money that they can have. If they are hard to get we use knock-out drops." His words express the whole idea of the girl auctioneer, "any way to get ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Vidler, when he can get away from his medical labours (and his hand shakes, it must be owned, very much now, and his nose is very red); Parrot, the auctioneer; and that amusing dog, Tom Potts, the talented reporter of the Independent—were pretty constant attendants at the King's Arms; and Colonel Newcome's dinner was not over before some of these gentlemen knew what dishes he had had; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... punctual and went to work with the minuteness of an auctioneer taking an inventory, or a sheriff levying an execution. Accordingly he came back full of notes; he had studied Carolus chiefly in respect of movables ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... 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 ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... enough. But alas! the outward wreck was a symbol, a result, of inner dissolution. Through the door of the hoarding the two pillars of the front door told a sorry tale. Pasted on either of them was a dingy bill, bearing the sinister imprimatur of an auctioneer, and offering (in capitals of various sizes) Bedroom Suites (Walnut and Mahogany), Turkey, Indian and Wilton Pile Carpets, Two Full-sized Billiard-Tables, a Remington Type-writer, a Double Door (Fire-Proof), and other objects not less useful and delightful. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... from the auction-room, and people "bid jealous" as they sometimes "ride jealous" in the hunting-field. Yet, the neophyte, if he strolls by chance into a sale-room, will be surprised at the spectacle. The chamber has the look of a rather seedy "hell." The crowd round the auctioneer's box contains many persons so dingy and Semitic, that at Monte Carlo they would be refused admittance; while, in Germany, they would be persecuted by Herr von Treitschke with Christian ardour. Bidding ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... round, and a gentleman present offers, in an audible whisper, to send in a dozen of that next week at a fraction of the price. So pleasant chat goes on, until, at the stroke of half-past twelve, the auctioneer mounts his rostrum. First to come before him are a hundred lots of Odontoglossum crispum Alexandrae, described as of "the very best type, and in splendid condition." For the latter point everyone present is able to judge, and for the former all are willing to accept the statements ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... 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
... to enter upon forty days of Desert, without a human habitation, (the route from this to Aheer.) Saw Hateetah in my walk. He took a shumlah, or girdle, by force from Haj Ibrahim. The Consul found the auctioneer going round with it for sale, and inquiring to whom it belonged, and hearing it was Haj Ibrahim's, he took the sash from the auctioneer and told him to go and acquaint the merchant with what he had done, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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 just what to say and when to say it, and had ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... a pound,' said the auctioneer, 'Only a pound; and I'm standing here Selling this animal, gain or loss. Only a pound for the drover's horse; One of the sort that was never afraid, One of the boys of the Old Brigade; Thoroughly honest and ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... changes hands at the races. Bets are freely offered and taken on the various horses. The pools sell rapidly, and the genial auctioneer finds his post no sinecure. The struggles of the noble animals are watched with the deepest interest. The greatest excitement prevails amongst the elite in the private stands, as well as throughout the common herd below. Every eye is strained to watch the swift coursers as ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... this cheerful club. Graves, the apothecary (than whom a better fellow never put a pipe in his mouth and smoked it), Smart, the talented and humorous portrait-painter of High Street, Croker, an excellent auctioneer, and the uncompromising Hicks, the able Editor for twenty-three years of the County Chronicle and Chatteris Champion, were amongst the crew of the Buccaneers, whom also Bingley, the manager, liked to join of a Saturday evening, whenever he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wishes at the horse-races; and most of all he imposed upon the ones especially selected by lot for this purpose, for he had ordered that two praetors, just as it might happen, should be allotted to take charge of the gladiatorial games. He himself sat on the auctioneer's platform and kept outbidding them. Many also came from outside to bid against them, particularly because he allowed such as wished to employ a greater number of gladiators than the law permitted and because he often had recourse to them himself. So people bought them for large ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... giving up his farm, an arrangement was come to with the Laird of Dalswinton by which Burns was allowed to throw up his lease and sell off his crops. The sale took place in the last week in August (1791). Even at this day the auctioneer and the bottle always appear side by side, as Chambers observes; but then far more than now-a-days. After the roup, that is the sale, of his crop was over, Burns, in one of his letters, describes the scene that ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 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 an artist nevertheless, there ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... rich ladies never looked at the poor little king squatting upon his stool. They gathered at once about the chief counselor, who acted as auctioneer. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... be had at the Office of the Auctioneer, 9. Foregate Street, Worcester, one week previous ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... hast patient been of late, While I, without remorse of rhyme, or fear, Have built and laid out ground at such a rate, Dan Phoebus takes me for an auctioneer. That poets were so from their earliest date, By Homer's 'Catalogue of ships' is clear; But a mere modern must be moderate— I spare you then the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... element that explains the statement of John Randolph of Virginia. Conversing one evening about the notable orations to which he had listened, the great lawyer said that the most eloquent words he had ever heard were "spoken on the auction block by a slave mother." It seemed that she pleaded with the auctioneer and the spectators not to separate her from her children and her husband, and she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one of My little ones; ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Christo was; adding, that he had never heard of such a person; that, from my recommendation of him, he had no doubt that he was a very clever man; but that they should like to know something more about him before giving the commission to him. That he had heard of Christie the great auctioneer, who was considered to be an excellent judge of pictures; but he supposed that I scarcely—Whereupon, interrupting the watchmaker, I told him that I alluded neither to Christo nor to Christie; but to the painter of Lazarus rising from the grave, a painter under whom I had myself studied ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... feet, upon his hogshead. "No one wants him," he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great delight of all; "no one wants him? once, twice, three times!" and, turning towards the gibbet with a ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... her brother's music when he drummed the tambourine And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin, While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance "Over the hills and far away." This and his glance Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer, Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses to be. Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany. That night he peopled for me the ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... below the horizon, and the sky was 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
... market a few years ago, the "priests' holes" duly figured in the advertisements with the rest of the apartments and offices. It read a little odd, this juxtaposition of modern conveniences with what is essentially romantic, and we simply mention the fact to show that the auctioneer is well aware of the monetary value ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... replied; and she promised to get any information she could for me within a fortnight, by which time I expected to pass that way again. I did so, and Mrs. Smith proved as good as her word. The niece had got the cup from a friend of hers, an auctioneer, and he, not she, had got it at a sale. But he was away from home—she could hear nothing more at present. She gave his address, however, and assurances that he was very good-natured and would gladly put the gentleman in the way of ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... 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 heady perfume ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... four men together in the back room of a certain saloon and have an open auction. When he had his men lined up, he got on a chair, told about the value of the goods for sale, and asked for bids in regular auctioneer style. The highest bidder got the nomination for $5000. Now, that wasn't right at all. These things ought to be always fixed ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... would be a violation of the company's charter, and the law of the land. "If," said he, "we suffer this bill to pass we shall become the East India Company; the treasury bench will be the buyers, and on this side we shall be the sellers. The senate will become an auction-room, and the speaker an auctioneer." The recommendation of the secret committee was, notwithstanding, adopted, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the diplomacy of Bingley. These dismal rites performed, I 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 longer to be my London, maintained its ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the warrant; and Hall, accompanied by Mr. Cornell, proceeded to the residence of the father of the children, who is an auctioneer and appraiser, at 12, Lyon ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... by that time 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 comradeship prevailed. Bets were flying, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Balaam, of Cullender Castle, in the county 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 ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... silence which told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of Greenwood, and asked ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... are so worthless that if put up and sold to the highest bidder, the auctioneer would have to ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... nut-brown fisher-boats put out.) "Five hundred pounds!" rapped out a voice near by; "Six hundred!" "Seven!" "Eight!" And then a shout: "A thousand pounds!" Oh, how I thrilled to hear! Oh, how the bids went up by leaps, by bounds! And then a silence; then the auctioneer: "It's going! Going! Gone! Three thousand pounds!" Three thousand pounds! A frenzy leapt in me. "That picture's mine," I cried; "I'm David Strong. I painted it, this famished wretch you see; I did it, I, and sold it for a song. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... was necessary to submit; and Mr. Springer, the master of the ceremonies, was called, and requested to point out some eligible partners for the young ladies. One went off with a Whig auctioneer; another figured in a quadrille with a very Liberal apothecary; and the third, Miss ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... 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 as well as ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... control 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 ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... one part of the square were five or six female slaves for sale, their ages ranging from twelve to sixteen, gorgeously dressed in coloured garments. One of the gentlemen Arabs approached to make a purchase. The slave-dealer vaunted the qualifications of his merchandise, much as an auctioneer does the goods of which he has to dispose. The purchaser felt the poor girls' limbs, looked into their mouths, and trotted them out to see their paces; then, after haggling for some time, walked off with two which he had selected. The ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the original of this character In Mr. DICKENS' romance, is an auctioneer. The present Adapter can think of no nearer American equivalent, in the way of a person at once resident in a suburb and who sells to the highest bidder, than a supposable member of the New ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... staring forgery, but you, h-you won't mind that, and the 'ladies' man'—ah, the 'ladies' man,' once you are his cousin, he'll never let on. Take Irby! he is, as you say, a nincompoop"—she had dropped into English—"and seldom sober, mais take him! 't is the las' call of the auctioneer, yo' fav-oreet auctioneer—with the pointed ears and the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... stacked the chairs, piled up the forgotten rugs and novels, tidying the deck for the night, but still the embittered musician tramped to and fro under the silent stars. Only from the smoking-room where the amateur auctioneer was still hilariously selling the numbers for a sweepstake, came sounds in discord with the solemnity of sky and sea, and the artist was newly jarred at this vulgar gaiety flung in the face of the spacious and starry ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... against the partition, 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 ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... a collector, too. He collects neither porcelain, nor bronzes, nor pictures, nor medals, nor stamps, nor anything that could be profitably dispersed under an auctioneer's hammer. He would reject, with genuine surprise, the name of a collector. Nevertheless, that's what he is by temperament. He collects acquaintances. It is delicate work. He brings to it the patience, the passion, the determination of a true collector of curiosities. His collection does not ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and china were first to be disposed of. The long drawing-room was full of camp chairs, and the audience had begun to assemble when Rosalind entered and sat down in a corner to wait for her uncle, who was interviewing the auctioneer. Two rows in front of her she saw Miss Betty, with Mrs. ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... distinct part or parcel": as, "The auctioneer sold the goods in ten lots." The word does not mean "a great number"; therefore it is improperly used in the sentences: "He has lots of money," and "I know a lot of people in ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... 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 as big as a churn! an' talk ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... the crowd Jim Searles, by acclamation the auctioneer of the Port of San Francisco, rapped smartly with his little gavel, and a tense silence ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... he did not know the place, he would know it when he saw it. Here he suddenly ceased to be hazy, and became alarmingly minute. He gave a description of the house detailed enough for an auctioneer. I have forgotten nearly all the details except the last two, which were that the lamp-post was painted green, and that there was a red pillar-box ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... was sold 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
... corner 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed auctioneer; also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a gown- and surplice-maker's assistant; two ladies who sported moral characters of various ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... know, on my faith I think Burnett'd have done it, only she pipes up, sweet and pert as you please: 'Mr. Auctioneer, will you kindly proceed with the sale in the customary manner? I've other business to attend to, and I can't afford to wait all night on men who don't know their own minds.' And then she smiles at Burnett, as well—you know, one of those fetching smiles, and damme if ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... than because his sensitive nature recoils from the vulgarism of the first. Tell me a more trying test to the delicate sensibilities of a gentleman, or his equanimity, than to see his gate piers pasted over with the black and white show bills of the auctioneer; a strip of stair carpet dangling down from one of his bedroom windows, and a crowd of hungry harpies clustered around his door-stoop; some entering with eyes that express keen concupiscence; others coming ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the sermoni propiora, and there overshadowed all competitors. In the following lines he describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of a lady who was letting her house, and, after instructing the auctioneer as to the value of her chairs, furniture and china, had left him in the dining room where the side-board had several bottles of wine and whiskey on it. She waited for a long time hoping he would return to show her the inventory, but as he did not ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... with bread and cheese, and abundance of wine and spirits, with a view, no doubt, to increase the animation and excitement of the scene. Whether the bidders became extravagant in consequence, I do not know, but I think it very likely; at all events I suspect that the auctioneer was trying an experiment on the animal spirits of the company. This custom, although by no means familiar to Englishmen, is very generally practised in the north of England. It is probably ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... There Philip Hone was born on the 25th of October, 1780, and there he passed his boyhood in a wooden house at the corner of John and Dutch Streets which his father bought in 1784. After a common school education, he became, at seventeen years of age, a clerk for an older brother whose business as an auctioneer consisted mainly in selling the cargoes brought to New York by American merchantmen. Two years as a clerk, and then Philip was made a partner. The firm prospered, and by 1820, the future diarist, though only forty years old, had become a rich man. With the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... doctor made us all strip—men and women together naked, in the presence of each other while the examination went on. When it was concluded, thirty-eight of us were pronounced sound, and three unsound; certificates were made out and given to the auctioneer to that effect. After dressing ourselves we were all driven into the slave sty directly under the auction block, when the jail warder came and gave to every slave a number, my number was twenty. Here, let me explain, for the ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... cheats and chatter, Wave thy smooth caduceus here— Now that, pulpit-propp'd, I flatter; Hermes, god of cheats and chatter, Smile, oh smile on Mr. Smatter, Aid an humble Auctioneer! Wave thy smooth caduceus here, O'er an humble Auctioneer! With its virtues tip my hammer, Model my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... his argument.' In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... a few bids, was knocked down for three hundred and fifty dollars. "We will give tip-top titles to everything we sell here to-day; and, gentlemen, we shall now offer you the prettiest wench in town. She is too well-known for me to say more," said the notorious auctioneer. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... heads when they 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 ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... death of Gracchus, and replying that the act was a righteous one, the people raised a shout of defiance,—Taceant, inquit, quibus Italia noverca non mater est, quos ego sub corona vendidi—"Be silent, you to whom Italy is a stepdame not a mother, whom I myself have sold at the hammer of the auctioneer." ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... who held the auction were poor folk who probably had no tempting wares to offer the bargain seekers, for the bidding had been slow, and the sales poor. They had a right to expect better results, with Joens of Kisterud as auctioneer. Joens was such a capital funmaker that people used to attend all auctions at which he officiated just for the pleasure of listening to him. Although he got off all his usual quips and jokes, he could not seem to infuse any life into the bidders on this occasion. At last, not ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... groschen a measure. Timar got tired of this groschen business, and suddenly cried, "I will give ten thousand gulden for the whole cargo." When the bidders heard this they ran away, and it would have been in vain to run after them. The official auctioneer accepted Timar's offer, and gave over the whole cargo to him as his property. Every one thought him mad. What could he do with such a mass of soaked grain? ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... upon her throne; Our aristocracy still keep alive, And, on the whole, may still be said to thrive,— Tho' now and then with ducal acres groan The honored tables of the auctioneer. Nathless, our aristocracy is dear, Tho' their estates go cheap; and all must own That they still give ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... 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 ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... [Horace], Latin poet and satirist, was born near Venusia, in Southern Italy, on December 8, 65 B.C. His father was a manumitted slave, who as a collector of taxes or an auctioneer had saved enough money to buy a small estate, and thus belonged to the same class of small Italian freeholders as the parents of Virgil. Apparently Horace was an only child, and as such received an ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... 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 towering in-folios, and richly bound and tooled ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... farm. As for Ellen, I don't see what difference she makes, except that I must see to things for her sake as well as mine. It wouldn't help her much if I handed over this place to a man who'd muddle it all up and maybe bring us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he saw ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... F. Tasistro—Random Shots and Southern Breezes— is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!" It was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for sale, in which they were described as pious or as members of the church. In one advertisement a slave was noted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... swarthy auctioneer with his amiable countenance and ironical smile acquired through years of dispassionate observation of the follies of human emotion, the mutability of human affairs, the brevity of human endeavour, that brought everything at last under his hammer—there by the chestnut tree the auctioneer ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... was of 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
... would conduct it. My partners had a lawyer in the room to represent them, though I had not considered having a legal representative; I thought I could take care of so simple a transaction. The lawyer acted as the auctioneer, and it was suggested that we should go on with the sale then and there. All agreed, and so the ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... Immediately after Reading Horace Smith's "Bachelor's Fare!" Stanzas on the Fearful Struggle in Europe, 1854 Lines Written on the Morning, of the Dreadful Fire, March 9, 1854 To the Rev. J. W. and his Bride Stanzas on hearing an Auctioneer quote Scripture Winter's Ravages; An Appeal A Canadian National Song A Call to the Soiree An Address by the Members of the Institute at the Soiree Alcohol's Arraignment and Doom To Mr. James Woodyatt On hearing of Dr. O'Carr's ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... report was, I believe," pursued the lawyer, "that the old man himself did not know of the place being for sale until he heard the auctioneer's hammer on the lawn, and that his mind left him from the moment—this was, of course, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... his were, it seemed, "ruined"—as many people here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the wall of the Tamworths' ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few days perhaps, to his father's possessions of the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... "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 announce ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... mourn over seven deserters.[569] Nevertheless, this division was decisive. Castlereagh rounded up his flock, and by the display of fat pasture called in some of the wanderers. Is it possible that the Opposition purse was merely the device of a skilful auctioneer, who sends in a friend to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... guild of The Trinity connected with the church. All these documents have now, however, entirely disappeared,—how, or at what period since the publication of the work, is unknown; but I find by a newspaper-cutting in my possession (unfortunately without date or auctioneer's name), that a very large collection of ancient documents, filling several boxes, and relating to this church and others in the county, was sold by auction in London some years ago, probably between the years ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... introduction of such a measure as follows—"In turning from the great interests of this country, and of Europe, to discuss with equal solemnity such measures as that which is now before us, the House appears to me to resemble Mr Smirk, the auctioneer, in the play, who could hold forth just as eloquently upon a ribbon as upon a Raphael." He speaks of bull-baiting as being, "it must be confessed, at the expense of an animal which is not by any means a party to the amusement; but then," he adds, "it serves to cultivate the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... present of French wine, left for me, as a taste of 216 hogshead, which are to be put on sale at 20L a hogshead, at Garraway's Coffee-house, in Exchange alley" etc. The sale by candle is not, however, by candlelight, but during the day. At the commencement of the sale, when the auctioneer has read a description of the property, and the conditions on which it is to be disposed of, a piece of candle, usually an inch long, is lighted, and he who is the last bidder at the time the light goes ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... fabulous prices. But one special tome, ponderous, silver-clasped and locked, entitled: "Macrobiotic, The True and Complete Secret of Long, Healthy Life," was the cynosure of every avaricious eye. The auctioneer shrewdly reserved it until the last. Amidst a scene of unparalleled excitement and competition the Great Book was at length knocked down to a famous London physician for no less a sum than seven thousand Gulden. When opened with eager anticipation ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... remained filled with rage and disappointment; the hag vented her spite on her brother. ''Tis your fault,' said she; 'fool! you have no tongue; you a Chabo, you can't speak'; whereas, within a few hours, he had perhaps talked more than an auctioneer during a three days' sale: but he reserved his words for fitting occasions, and now sat as usual, sullen ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... great relief, she 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... said the auctioneer. But she only compressed her mouth more firmly. After trying in vain to coax ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... are!" cried King, who was auctioneer by common consent; "here you are! number 24! a fine large statuette by one of the old masters. What am I bid ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Proudie, "what difficulty? The place has been promised to Mr. Quiverful, and of course he must have it. He has made all his arrangements. He has written for a curate for Puddingdale, he has spoken to the auctioneer about selling his farm, horses, and cows, and in all respects considers the place as his own. Of course ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... and subside into the rooms of the Humpback. Their chairs, and tables, and beds also retreat; all except the ancient bookcase, full of his "ragged veterans." This I saw, years after Charles Lamb's death, in the possession of his sister, Mary. "All our furniture has faded," he writes, "under the auctioneer's hammer; going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal." Four years afterwards (in 1833) Lamb moves to his last home, in Church Street, Edmonton, where he is somewhat ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... personality of Colonel Cowles, who, though doubtless laughable as a political economist, was yet considered to have his good points. But the Hercules-labor grew too heavy even for him, and the paper was headed straight for the auctioneer's block when new interests suddenly stepped in and bought it. These interests, consisting largely of progressive men of the younger generation, thoroughly overhauled and reorganized the property, laid in the needed purple ink, and were now ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... trade, and sells all the remarkable things. On this occasion the Pigot diamond had come into his hands. It is a very fine brilliant, but objected to by the connoisseurs as not having sufficient depth. It was valued at L40,000. But at this sale the auctioneer could not raise its price above L9500, or guineas. He then appealed to his audience, a crowd of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 in the market for seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... widely-circulated journal that lies on my table, both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary periodicals, The National Intelligencer, of February 11, and The N.O. Picayune, of February 17. The first gives an auctioneer's advertisement of the sale of "a negro boy of eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows," &c. Then follows an account of the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... stood at their cottage doors waiting for the musicians to pass. Next to the firing of rockets nothing can be more heart-stirring than the martial sound of the pipes and drums. The big drum was, on this occasion, played most masterly by the auctioneer and clown of the parish church, called Jose Carcunda, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... it is, it is in a first-rate situation, and a fashionable neighbourhood. (Auctioneer called it 'a gentlemanly residence.') A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a dark street—but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house just large enough to hold a vile smell. The air ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wisest thing she could do, but that may be the end of it. He's in an auctioneer's office, and may have a pretty ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... store, situated at the corners, where the Main Road and the Depot Road—which is also the direct road to South Denboro—join, was the mercantile and social center of Denboro. Simeon Eldredge kept the store, and Simeon was also postmaster, as well as the town constable, undertaker, and auctioneer. If you wanted a spool of thread, a coffin, or the latest bit of gossip, you applied at Eldredge's. The gossip you could be morally certain of getting at once; the thread or the coffin you might have to ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... two ordinary mule-drivers - Potter and Morris, a little acrobat out of a travelling circus, a METIF or half- breed Indian named Jim, two French Canadians - Nelson and Louis (the latter spoke French only); Jacob, a Pennsylvanian auctioneer whose language was a mixture of Dutch, Yankee, and German; and (after we reached Fort Laramie) another Nelson - 'William' as I shall call him - who offered his services gratis if we would allow him to go with ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... quite a number of spectators, though the ladies, with Maverick and Darcy, were in a private office. Hamilton Minor had come up, resolved that it should not go for less than the mortgage, but desirous of ending his responsibility. There were but two bids. The auctioneer lingered a long while on Mr. Hildreth's bid, commenting on the enormous sacrifice, but he could move no one's interest. It was reluctantly knocked down, the purchase-money paid, and the deed made ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... paint shop, 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... waste," she said to herself after they had gone, bustling about as she spoke. "There's all the furniture to be sold now. The auctioneer round the corner said he would look in arter the chil'en were well out o' the way. Oh, I dare say I shall have heaps of time to fret by and by, but I ain't agoin' to fret now; not I. There'll be a nice little nest-egg out of the furniture, which Mr. Williams can keep for Alison; and ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... now, Misto Richmond." And, to Flitter Bill's wonder, the captain stalked out to the stoop, announced his purpose with the voice of an auctioneer, and called for volunteers then and there. There was dead silence for a moment. Then there was a smile here, a chuckle there, an incredulous laugh, and Hence Sturgill, "bully of the Pocket," rose from the wagon-tongue, closed his ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... war, made a bid for a penknife at one of these places, and was astonished at being told he must take the whole gross of the article. The old hero was not to be caught in this way, however, and he quietly called in a policeman, and gave the auctioneer in charge for attempting to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... weeks subsequent to 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
... maiden name of your Grandmother on my side, my dears," explained Mrs. Stimpson to her family. "She must have been good-looking as a girl, judging by a daguerrotype I had of her. Her father was a highly distinguished Auctioneer and Estate Agent in East Croydon, as I daresay was also revealed ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... parish clerk and sexton here, My name is Caleb Quotem, I'm painter, glazier, auctioneer, In short, I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... auction block before the gaping multitude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his thoughtful eyes, and the shining ringlets of his hair. Bids were bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the rare ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... brought in from Virginia and sold on de block. De auctioneer was Cap'n Dorsey. E. M. Cobb was de slave bringer. They would stand de slaves up on de block and talk about what a fine looking specimen of black manhood or womanhood dey was, tell how healthy dey was, look in their mouth and examine their teeth just like they was ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... her daily food, and she excelled in all the dainty handicrafts by which women can make a home attractive. Therefore her own little sanctum had developed like an exquisite flower, and had become, as we have said, an expression of herself. An auctioneer, in dismantling her apartment, would not have found much more to sell than if he had pulled a rose to pieces, but left intact it was as full of beauty and fragrance as the flower itself. And yet ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... speedometer?" asked an old gentleman to the auctioneer, at one of the Disposal Board sales. The auctioneer was equal to the occasion and replied: "At thirty miles an hour it exhibits a white flag, at forty miles a red flag, and at fifty miles a gramophone begins to play, 'I'm going to be an angel, and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... d'affaires[Fr], attache. vicegerent &c. (deputy) 759; plenipotentiary. functionary, placeman[obs3], curator; treasurer &c. 801; factor, bailiff, clerk, secretary, attorney, advocate, solicitor, proctor, broker, underwriter, commission agent, auctioneer, one's man of business; factotum &c. (director) 694; caretaker; dalal[obs3], dubash[obs3], garnishee, gomashta[obs3]. negotiator, go-between; middleman; under agent, employe; servant &c. 746; referee, arbitrator &c.. (judge) 967. traveler, bagman, commis-voyageur[Fr], touter[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... he 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
... as John Ballantyne lived, to provide for him a constant succession of similar advantages at the same easy rate; and Constable, from deference to Scott's wishes, and from his own liking for the humorous auctioneer, appears to have submitted with hardly a momentary grudge to this heavy tax ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... heard of a rush on the Goulburn River. Next day we offered our spare mining plant for sale on the roadside opposite Specimen Hill, placing the tubs, cradles, picks and spades all in a row. Bez was the auctioneer. He called out aloud, and soon gathered a crowd, which he fascinated by his eloquence. The bidding was spirited, and every article was sold, even Bez's own two-man pick, which would break the heart of a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... drunkard; a little shoe-black and a blind fiddler ply their trades in the shadow of Emmet's obelisk, and a toy-merchant has Montgomery's mural tablet for a background; on the fence is a string of favorite ballads and popular songs; a mock auctioneer shouts from one door, and a silent wax effigy gazes from another. Pisani, who accompanied Prince Napoleon in his yacht-voyage to America, calls Broadway a bazaar made up of savagery and civilization, a mile and a half long; and M. Fisch, a French pasteur, was surprised at the sight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... but it was ample for the requirements of any ordinarily wealthy family. The dining-room, library, drawing-rooms, and breakfast-room, were all large and well-arranged. The hall was handsome and spacious, and the bed-rooms were sufficiently numerous to make an auctioneer's mouth water. But the great charm of Ongar Park lay in the grounds immediately round the house, which sloped down from the terrace before the windows to a fast-running stream which was almost hidden—but was not hidden—by the shrubs on its bank. Though the domain ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the market for his picture. It was a long way yet to the house of the picture dealer, and he made up his mind at once. He worked his way through the crowd, dragged himself up the steps, and, after many inquiries, found the auctioneer. That personage was a busy man, with a handful of papers; he was inclined to notice somewhat roughly the interruption of the lean, sallow hunchback, imploring as were his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... chapel could be considered vacant, and that the subscription would be discontinued. Within a week Mr. Broad invited Brother Bushel, Brother Wainwright the cart-builder and blacksmith, and Brother Scotton the auctioneer, to a private meeting at his own house. In a short speech Mr. Broad said that he had sought a preliminary conference with them to lay before them the relationship in which the Allens stood to the church in Tanner's Lane. They had formally ceased to attend his ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... performed, I 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 longer to be my London, maintained ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... off," exclaimed Daae. "I will be the auctioneer, and this key to the graveyard will serve ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... slab-sided "Sprawleybridge Babe" or the shambling "Baldnob the Titan" have been in front of the small but active and accomplished "Duodecimo Dumps"? Why, where the vaunted "Benicia Boy" would have been after fifty rounds with TOM SAYERS—with his "Auctioneer" in full play. In fact, when a good little 'un meets a bad big 'un, it is very soon a case—with the latter—of "bellows to mend," or "there he goes; with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... pause the little man slowly shook his head. "I never saw you before," he said simply; "you never sent me out from anywhere. I only saw your four turrets in the distance, and strayed in here by accident. I was born in an island in the Greek Archipelago; I am by profession an auctioneer, and my name is Punk." The king sat on his throne for seven long instants like a statue; and then there awoke in his mild and ancient eyes an awful thing; the complete conviction of untruth. Every one has felt it who has found a child obstinately false. He rose to his height and took ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 heady perfume ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... stores, two butcher shops, four real estate offices, a furniture store, a drugstore, a 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
... in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte! So it is! Haven't seen you, sir, for years. Dear me! Times aren't what they were. Why! you and your brother, and that auctioneer—Mr. Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry—you used to have six or seven stalls here regular every season. And how are you, sir? We don't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... looked all the auctioneer declared them to be as they stood head to head—young, strong, perfectly matched—and he defied all Wyoming to find ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... the Capital of the Republic slave-marts existed where men and women were sold from the auction block, and families were torn asunder and carried to different parts of the country to be continued in bondage. In the shadow of the Capitol the voice of the auctioneer proclaiming in the accustomed way the merits of the slave commingled with that of the statesmen in the Halls of Congress proclaiming the boasted liberty of the great American Republic! Daniel Drayton (1848) was tried in the District ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... made a bid for a penknife at one of these places, and was astonished at being told he must take the whole gross of the article. The old hero was not to be caught in this way, however, and he quietly called in a policeman, and gave the auctioneer in charge for attempting ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... herself that she had done it; Mrs. Baxter approved, saying that this was what the second Mrs. Greening had done when her husband's sister's daughter, a very emancipated young woman as it seemed, had incomprehensibly flirted with the auctioneer's apprentice and had scouted Mrs. Greening's control; Mrs. Greening had told the girl's mother and sent the girl home, second class, under the care of the guard. Similarly then Lady Richard, without embarking on any consideration of ultimate problems, wrote to May, suggesting that Mr. Quisante ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... he, 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 of the house—furniture, pictures, sheets, towels and kitchen clutter. I've only got six ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with the air of an auctioneer who is about to sell it to the highest bidder, "very fine example from the eighteenth dynasty. Here is the cartouche of Thotmes the Third," he pointed up with his donkey-whip at the rude, but deep, hieroglyphics upon the wall above him. "He live sixteen hundred ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship. Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... we well-to-do people, as we think ourselves. Once my wife and I revolted by a common impulse against the ridiculous waste and slavery of the thing. We went to the storage warehouse and sent three or four vanloads of the rubbish to the auctioneer. Some of the pieces we had not seen for years, and as each was hauled out for us to inspect and decide upon, we condemned it to the auction-block with shouts of rejoicing. Tender and sacred associations! We hadn't had such light hearts since we had put ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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, ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... said I, 'what sort o' a bill, sir? Is it an auctioneer's, for a roup o' furniture or a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... like a wet blanket on the high spirits of the crowd. They had imagined from the cut of his clothes that he was a storekeeper from some village around, or an auctioneer from a distance, these two occupations being the highest social position to which a man might attain. They were prepared to hear that he was from Welland, or perhaps St. Catherines; but New York! that was a crusher. Macdonald, however, was not ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... purpose 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 ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... thus we see from the time of leaving the water till finally it reaches the unfortunate public the fish has passed through no less than six levies, that by the fisherman, the agent, the trader, the OCTROI (I.E. the city toll or town due), the auctioneer, and, finally, that by ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not want her, nor did that, nor alas! the other! Each and every one were eager for the boy. The auctioneer's instructions had been to sell the two together, if possible, if not, at all events to sell the boy, as he would command a good price, and money must ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a noble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and glass door. Mr. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... originally less than mediocre; but it is not the natural observer's method of seeing things, and it is not the natural artist's method of presenting them. If the critics in this case were in the right we should have to acknowledge an auctioneer's ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... "a distinct part or parcel": as, "The auctioneer sold the goods in ten lots." The word does not mean "a great number"; therefore it is improperly used in the sentences: "He has lots of money," and "I know a lot of people ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... after the marriage of Miss Almonastre to young Pontalba, there stepped into the office of an old auctioneer on St. Louis street, no less an individual than the rich and elegant American merchant, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... and down the Fourteenth Street side of Union Square. Here the shops were smaller, not so overwhelming, and here he was stopped by seeing a red auction flag. Looking in over the heads of the assembled crowd, he saw that the auctioneer was holding up a feather-crowned hat and addressing his audience after the manner of ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... years old, the sister of my grandmother's deceased mistress. She had lived forty years under the same roof with my grandmother; she knew how faithfully she had served her owners, and how cruelly she had been defrauded of her rights; and she resolved to protect her. The auctioneer waited for a higher bid; but her wishes were respected; no one bid above her. She could neither read nor write; and when the bill of sale was made out, she signed it with a cross. But what consequence was that, when she had a big heart overflowing with human kindness? ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... as regards the poet, he 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 the Realists, and would scarcely have comprehended either the men or the method if he ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... unmarried, in the seventy-first year of his age, Aloysius William Saffron, formerly of Exeter, Surveyor and Auctioneer. He had run, on the whole, a creditable course; starting from small beginnings, and belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for any solid merit, he had built up a good practice; ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... worthless that if put up and sold to the highest bidder, the auctioneer would have to ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... ordinary mule-drivers - Potter and Morris, a little acrobat out of a travelling circus, a METIF or half- breed Indian named Jim, two French Canadians - Nelson and Louis (the latter spoke French only); Jacob, a Pennsylvanian auctioneer whose language was a mixture of Dutch, Yankee, and German; and (after we reached Fort Laramie) another Nelson - 'William' as I shall call him - who offered his services gratis if we would allow him to go ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... lot and shipped 72 dozen pair of knee pants to New York, and wrote the auctioneer to send a check for whatever ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... morning the proprietors of a dry-goods store, struck with his good looks and manners, had offered him a situation, if he could make himself more presentable to their fair clients. Harry Flint was gazing half abstractedly, half hopelessly, at the portmanteau without noticing the auctioneer's persuasive challenge. In his abstraction he was not aware that the auctioneer's assistant was also looking at him curiously, and that possibly his dejected and half-clad appearance had excited the attention of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Horace Smith's "Bachelor's Fare!" Stanzas on the Fearful Struggle in Europe, 1854 Lines Written on the Morning, of the Dreadful Fire, March 9, 1854 To the Rev. J. W. and his Bride Stanzas on hearing an Auctioneer quote Scripture Winter's Ravages; An Appeal A Canadian National Song A Call to the Soiree An Address by the Members of the Institute at the Soiree Alcohol's Arraignment and Doom To Mr. James Woodyatt ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... together by closer bonds than those of a Fenian lodge. Balzac resolves that we shall have the whole scene and all the actors distinctly before us. We have a description of a country-house more poetical, but far more detailed, than one in an auctioneer's circular; then we have a photograph of the neighbouring cabaret; then a minute description of its inhabitants, and a detailed statement of their ways and means. The story here makes a feeble start; but Balzac ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the auctioneer's hammer, ends all discussion; for captains, on these occasions, never gainsay each other; I was told that my passing certificate would be signed. I made my best bow and my exit, reflecting, as I returned to the "sheep pen," that I had nearly lost my promotion by wounding their vanity, and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Cullingworth's pound would come in. Those pounds, however, would be needed for the rent, so I could hardly reckon upon them at all, as far as my immediate wants went. I found in the columns of the Birchespool Post that there was to be a sale of furniture that evening, and I went down to the auctioneer's rooms, accompanied, much against my will, by Captain Whitehall, who ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... known as the state-line road. We drove to the cotton-yard, unloaded, and received the receipts for the cotton, and put up for the night at a wagon-yard. I spent this night in prayer and supplication that God would save me from the slave-pen and the auctioneer's block; and my prayers were responded to in my protection. The next morning we started for home by what was known as the pigeon-roost route, in order to save toll ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... changes horses at Renner's Springs for the "Downs' trip"; and as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like an auctioneer's hammer. "He's fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That colt's A1. The chestnut's done. So is the brown. I'll risk that mare. That black's too fat." No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or approved, until the team is complete; and then driving ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... you will." Billy took the money, thanking the Lord. and impatiently waited for the sale. No sooner was the cupboard put up, than he called out, "Here, maister, here's six shillin's for un," and he put the money down on the table. "Six shillings bid," said the auctioneer—"six shillings—thank you; seven shillings; any more for that good old cupboard? Seven shillings. Going—going—gone!" And it was knocked down to ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... seem to have committed a grave blunder—which will undoubtedly cause much complaint—in waiting until almost the last moment to announce the sale. But few bidders were present, and these had things pretty much their own way, apparently owing to the gross ignorance of the auctioneer. The gem of the gallery, the famous Rembrandt found and purchased in Paris some years ago by Mr. Von Whele, was knocked down for the ridiculous sum of L2,400. The lucky purchaser was Mr. Charles Drummond, of the firm of ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... classification show gross ignorance, as in the instance quoted in the Athenum lately. Here we have a crop of blunders: "Title, Commentarii De Bello Gallico in usum Scholarum Liber Tirbius. Author, Mr. C. J. Caesoris. Subject, Religion.'' Still better is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's The Opera. Authors, however, are usually so fond of fanciful ear-catching titles, that every excuse must be made for the cataloguer, who mistakes their meaning, and takes them in their literal signification. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... boy put a printed catalogue into Dad's hand, which he was doubtful about keeping until he saw Andy Percil with one. Most of the men seated on the rails jumped down into an empty yard and stood round in a ring. In one corner the auctioneer mounted a box, and read the conditions of sale, and talked hard about the breed of the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... 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 ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother—a true, loving mother to me." Three years ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... villagers stood at their cottage doors waiting for the musicians to pass. Next to the firing of rockets nothing can be more heart-stirring than the martial sound of the pipes and drums. The big drum was, on this occasion, played most masterly by the auctioneer and clown of the parish church, called Jose Carcunda, or ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... minute to waste," she said to herself after they had gone, bustling about as she spoke. "There's all the furniture to be sold now. The auctioneer round the corner said he would look in arter the chil'en were well out o' the way. Oh, I dare say I shall have heaps of time to fret by and by, but I ain't agoin' to fret now; not I. There'll be a nice little nest-egg out of the furniture, which ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... the outward wreck was a symbol, a result, of inner dissolution. Through the door of the hoarding the two pillars of the front door told a sorry tale. Pasted on either of them was a dingy bill, bearing the sinister imprimatur of an auctioneer, and offering (in capitals of various sizes) Bedroom Suites (Walnut and Mahogany), Turkey, Indian and Wilton Pile Carpets, Two Full-sized Billiard-Tables, a Remington Type-writer, a Double Door (Fire-Proof), ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... game. I got judgment, but no instalments were paid. I remonstrated over and over again, and was from time to time met with solemn promises, the debtor gaining time by every delay. At last I lost patience, and determined to distrain. Everybody laughed at me. 'Where will you get an auctioneer, and who will bid? they asked. I determined to carry through this one case, if it cost a hundred pounds. I got a good revolver, and succeeded in bringing an auctioneer from a distance. The debtor said he would brain me with a bill-hook if I put my foot on his ground, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... man—"softly," said he, giving the buckskin pocket a slap—"two words to that, my lady. I know its value as well as yourself, and must make my market. The highest offer has me, your ladyship; he's but a poor auctioneer that knocks down his ware when only one bidder is present. Luke Bradley, or, as I find he now is, Sir Luke Rookwood, may come ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sonorous as any with which he had thrilled the House of Lords. I frankly confess that I was astounded, and not a little shocked. I could see that the Great Man was disappointed at my somewhat stolid reception of a florid eloquence of which George Robins, the auctioneer, might have been proud. I do not think, however, he was half so much disappointed as my colleagues were when I returned to them and dictated a dozen lines of severe catalogue as the only "description" I was capable of giving of the furniture of two commonplace bedrooms. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... partly, too, to the confidence the people have in the superintendents here, who have mostly been with them steadily now for nearly a year. It seems to us on the spot as if things could not go on another year as they are now, and we long for February eleventh and things to be settled. The auctioneer is at Washington trying, not to have the sale postponed, but to have lands set apart and given the blacks beforehand, and we dread lest any day we should hear that it has been delayed. Some of the blacks mean to buy—we don't wish them ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... impressionism in modern English? The Athenaeum says also: "Upon the whole, we do not think the short story represents Mr. Conrad's true metier" It may be that Mr. Conrad's true metier was, after all, that of an auctioneer; but, after "Youth," "To-morrow," "Typhoon," "Karain," "The End of the Tether," and half a dozen other mere masterpieces, he may congratulate himself on having made a fairly successful hobby of the short story. The most extraordinary of all the Athenaeum's ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 that you ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... which must be fatal in the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a scheme for taxing the colonies in the antechamber of the noble lord and his successors? To settle the quotas and proportions in this House is clearly impossible. You, Sir, may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer, with your hammer in your hand, and knock down to each colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid down by the noble lord) the true proportional payment for four or five and twenty governments, according to the absolute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the British ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... or, as it was termed, head of the bureau. From that day the 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 ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a 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 ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... the control 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
... young man of the progressive new order, who sustained the same relation as pastor to the church that an ambitious foreman sustains to a business that must be renovated and improved. He was taking up his foreign missionary collection very much after the manner of an auctioneer: ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... would not hear of it till the day of, or after the sale. Well has it been said, that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; and so did she find it; for on applying, through Mr. Montgomery, to a neighbouring auctioneer, he, gratuitously, attended, and did all in his power to dispose of the things to advantage. Mr. Willoughby had taken the house on coming into possession of the property and furnished it throughout, so that being ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... right," said the auctioneer, laughing (and the master of the slave re-echoed his laugh and his answer); "let us see whether we cannot ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Susy, who had an auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... death his unique collection came under the auctioneer's hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot of Anchor Lane, where, summer after ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... GEORGE ROBINS was an auctioneer in Covent Garden, and celebrated for the extravagant imagery of his advertisements. His successors have offices ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... The harsh auctioneer to sympathy cold, Tears the babe from its mother and sells it for gold; While the infant and mother, loud shriek for each other, In sorrow ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... came about 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
... sort of petty homage, and I more than suspect that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my own,—as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly, to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the price, asked for the lot ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Foote giving Tea to his Friends,' himself still the sole actor, and changing with Proteus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 'Auction of Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his enemies, the justices, was introduced. Orator Henley and Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year after year the town was enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a polite audience, the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One stern voice was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... 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
... and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice. And when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... with dust, in that auctioneer's window in Chico. We had just arrived from Sheridan, Sutter County, where we had conducted a ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... 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
... every time she dressed. It had been considered a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the Poyser family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of genteel household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... him, told me he us'd to come to a House where He Liv'd, and he has also Met him in the Street, Led by Millington, the same who was so Famous an Auctioneer of Books about the time of the Revolution, and Since. This Man was then a Seller of Old Books in Little Britain, and Milton lodg'd at his house. This was 3 or 4 Years before he Dy'd. he then wore no Sword that My Informer remembers, though ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... 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 as well as the last in that way. In the jolly ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... which the author, Nodier, was long honourably associated as librarian. I purchased it a few years ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly catalogued Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear of a very ragged regiment on the shelves of the auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's Pensees de Shakespeare. None competed with me for the prize. A very slight effort delivered into my hands the little chaplet of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... 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. It is at present one of the best-frequented ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... though he was ready to go on. That was the knock-down blow. Shott put his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and dolefully shook his head in response to all the coaxings and blandishments of the auctioneer. The hammer fell. "Name, please," was called; the lawyer's clerk passed up a slip of paper, and a thunderbolt fell on the company when the auctioneer read out, "Mr. Thomas Hankin." Hankin had bought the farms for L4700. "Cheque for deposit," ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... specimen in England. But a quiet smile goes round, and a gentleman present offers, in an audible whisper, to send in a dozen of that next week at a fraction of the price. So pleasant chat goes on, until, at the stroke of half-past twelve, the auctioneer mounts his rostrum. First to come before him are a hundred lots of Odontoglossum crispum Alexandrae, described as of "the very best type, and in splendid condition." For the latter point everyone present is able to judge, and for the former ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... entered the salesroom when he descried B. Rashkin standing on the outskirts of a little throng that surrounded the rostrum of a popular auctioneer. ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... 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
... or good fellowship in return. Was it the weariness of the struggle to live, or was it sex, or was it the evil domination of men? This girl whose sunny hair she was caressing was to go under the merciless hammer of the matrimonial auctioneer. What was to be her fate? Susan Hornby saw that love had touched the highest in Elizabeth Farnshaw's nature and that the girl yearned toward a high ideal of family life. She had shown it in her girlish chatter as they ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... ruther clos't '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
... see it every time I went any higher. The rascal of an auctioneer kept saying, 'Pass it to the lady.' At last I got it for five pounds eight. Oh, I wouldn't have paid one ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Master was too much interested in examining the young hound then being offered for sale to pay any attention to any other animal. In due course, however, the young Wolfhound was sold and led away, and the auctioneer was heard to say— ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... ranchman and 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides. Ha, ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke: he has cut ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and he began to speculate immediately upon the identity 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 be one of the curates; but it seemed scarcely probable ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Manua Sera at Kigue, and forced him to take flight again. Afterwards the Arabs, returning to Kaze, found Musa preparing to leave. Angry at this attempt to desert them, they persuaded him to give up his journey north for the present; so that at the time Bombay left, Musa was engaged as public auctioneer in selling the effects of Snay, Jafu, and others, but privately said he would follow me on to Karague as soon as his rice was cut. Adding a little advice of his own, Sheikh Said pressed me to go on with the journey as fast as possible, because all the Arabs had accused me of conspiring ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... he was moving about the sitting-room, which was charmingly furnished in the antique style, and making as many remarks as though he were an auctioneer's clerk with an inventory to prepare and a day to do it in, instead of a cracksman who might be surprised in his crib at ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... 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." ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... collar every last bottle of it, no matter what the cost. I have to lay down like a pup on the next bond drive, but this is my only hope. For the Lord's sake, don't you go there and start bidding things up, no matter who she gets for auctioneer! Don't you bid—even if ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... place of sale, Mr. Wildman produced his watch, and insisted that the auction had commenced before the hour announced in the advertisements, and that the lots sold should be put up again. In order, however, to prevent a dispute, it was agreed by the auctioneer and company that Mr. Wildman should have his choice of any particular lot; by which he secured Eclipse at the moderate price of 70 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... get the tone, you know. And do you know that is how the preachers get the bronchitis. You never heard of an auctioneer getting the bronchitis, nor the second mate on a steamboat—never. What gives it to the minister is talking solemnly when they don't feel that way, and it has the same influence upon the organs of speech that it would have upon the cords of the calves of your legs to walk on your tip-toes, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Crown Prince) the most distinguished society women in Philadelphia stepped forth smilingly as manikins and displayed on their fair persons the hats, gowns, furs, laces or jewels that they had contributed to the sale. E. T. Stotesbury proved a very efficient auctioneer ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... subsequent to 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
... recognized me and endeavored to escape, but I seized him by the shoulder, saying: "I guess, my friend, that you'll have to go with me. If you make any resistance, I'll shoot you on the spot." He was armed with a pair of pistols, which I took away from him. Then informing the auctioneer that I was a United States detective, and showing him—as well as an inquisitive officer—my commission as such, I told him to stop the sale, as the mule was stolen property, and that I had arrested the ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... was a mistaken one. The few who braved the rain and stood their ground watching the soldiers, had their reward later on. At ten o'clock, Mr. Davoren, the auctioneer, drove into the village in his motor-car. Mr. Davoren lives in Ballymurry, a town of some size, six miles from Dunedin. His business requires him to move about the country a good deal, and he is quite wealthy enough to keep a Ford car. His appearance roused the soldiers ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... hour, and could hear the hum of voices in the hall, but no words, when Coleman came back, accompanied by a committee, of which I think the two brothers Arrington, Thomas Smiley the auctioneer, Seymour, Truett, and others, were members. The whole conversation was gone over again, and the Governor's proposition was positively agreed to, with this further condition, that the Vigilance Committee should send into the jail a small ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Sally. "They sell the inmates of the poor-house, every year, to the highest bidder,—sell their labor by the year. They have 'em get up on a auction block, and hire a auctioneer, and sell 'em at so much a head, to the crowd. Why, some of 'em bring as high as twenty dollars a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller's clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck him up—he ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... silverware and china were first to be disposed of. The long drawing-room was full of camp chairs, and the audience had begun to assemble when Rosalind entered and sat down in a corner to wait for her uncle, who was interviewing the auctioneer. Two rows in front of her she saw Miss Betty, with Mrs. Parton and ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... be passed for their benefit—something similar to that he has been the means of carrying for the canal and brick-field children. In a paper read before the Social Science Congress at Manchester, Mr. Smith argued that all tents, shows, caravans, auctioneer vans, and like places used as dwellings should be registered and numbered, and under proper sanitary arrangements, with sanitary inspectors and School Board officers, in every town and village. Thus in every district the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Messrs. Sharke's agent, was bustling about, and I found him engaged with a fat, pompous little fellow, the auctioneer, from a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... entrance, the porter's box being contrived behind one of the useless leaves of the gate, and lighted by a peephole through which that personage watched the comings and goings of seventeen families, for this hive was a "good-paying property," in auctioneer's phrase. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... did the auctioneer wait, and then his decision, "Gone!" made Hugh the owner of Uncle Sam, who, crouching down before him, blessed him with tears ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... liberally paid off, and began to disperse, finding work at different mines; and after several consultations, the Colonel and his old brother officer being quite of the same mind, an interview was held with a well-known auctioneer, and the whole of the machinery ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... prophetically felt, and this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howells's voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able to go on; in the end he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he attained to within a single step of the coveted summit. But there misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and down, until now at last, weary and disheartened, he had for the present given up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me that 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 to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... It was a long way yet to the house of the picture dealer, and he made up his mind at once. He worked his way through the crowd, dragged himself up the steps, and, after many inquiries, found the auctioneer. That personage was a busy man, with a handful of papers; he was inclined to notice somewhat roughly the interruption of the lean, sallow hunchback, imploring as were his gesture ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valuable to the auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... whither the weary toiler may betake himself periodically (or, more correctly, in relays) for purposes of refreshment and repose. The firing-trench, like most business premises, is severe in design and destitute of ornament. But the suburban trench lends itself to more imaginative treatment. An auctioneer's catalogue would describe it as A commodious bijou residence, on (or of) chalky soil; three feet wide and six feet deep; in the style of the best troglodyte period. Thirty seconds brisk crawl (or per stretcher) from the firing line. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and abundance of wine and spirits, with a view, no doubt, to increase the animation and excitement of the scene. Whether the bidders became extravagant in consequence, I do not know, but I think it very likely; at all events I suspect that the auctioneer was trying an experiment on the animal spirits of the company. This custom, although by no means familiar to Englishmen, is very generally practised in the north of England. It is probably a ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... occupied by the 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
... there is no wit in what our friend added; there is only abuse. You may as well say of any man that he will pick a pocket. Besides, the man who is stationed at the door does not pick people's pockets; that is done within, by the auctioneer.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... recently 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 ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... advertised the sale was for three days, but the auctioneer found that he could not get through in the time. The accumulations of such an ancient house as Outram Hall are necessarily vast," and he waved his ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... were so coarse and vile that it is impossible to defile these pages with an accurate and faithful description. Lincoln saw it all. He saw a beautiful mulatto girl exhibited like a race-horse, her "points" dwelt on, one by one, in order, as the auctioneer said, that "bidders might satisfy themselves whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not." One of his companions justly said slavery ran the iron into him then and there. His soul was stirred with a righteous indignation. Turning to the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... I shall begin now, Misto Richmond." And, to Flitter Bill's wonder, the captain stalked out to the stoop, announced his purpose with the voice of an auctioneer, and called for volunteers then and there. There was dead silence for a moment. Then there was a smile here, a chuckle there, an incredulous laugh, and Hence Sturgill, "bully of the Pocket," rose from the wagon-tongue, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... 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 the trade ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... was a peculiar man in many respects and one must thoroughly understand his composition to appreciate him. His educational advantages were limited. From a street car conductor to an auctioneer, showman and capitalist, were the gradations of his career. He was conservative and sagacious, a faithful friend, and, like Uncle Henry, and most men who have tasted of the bitter and prospered by their own exertions, a candid hater. The after years of his life were made unpleasant by a heartless ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... wave, and, abandoning the prospect of becoming another Nelson, had joined the police force as a humble constable. But he did not remain one long; and became in turn a Fleet Street publican, the proprietor of a Haymarket night-house, an auctioneer, a picture dealer, a bill discounter (with a side line in usury), and the editor of a Sunday organ. Next, the theatre attracted his energies; and in 1852 he secured a lease of Drury Lane at the moderate rental of L70 a week. On Boxing-night he offered his first programme there. This consisted of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Mr. Christie, the auctioneer, while selling a collection of pictures, having arrived at a chef-d'oeuvre of Wilson's, was expatiating with his usual eloquence on its merits, quite unaware that Wilson himself had just before entered the room. "This gentlemen, is one of Mr. Wilson's Italian pictures; he cannot paint anything ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... been willed to." In case of a division, Richard did not see how he could be divided without being converted into money. Now, as he could have no fore-knowledge as to the place or person into whose hands he might be consigned by the auctioneer, he concluded that he could not venture to risk himself in the hands of the young heirs. Richard began to consider what Slavery was, and his eyes beheld chains, whips, hand-cuffs, auction-blocks, separations and countless sufferings that had partially been overlooked before; he felt the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
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