"Shopman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sir—now-a-days. I had a heavy loss by 'Manuel,'— Too lucky if it prove not annual,— And S * *, with his 'Orestes,' (Which, by the by, the author's best is,) Has lain so very long on hand That I despair of all demand. I've advertised, but see my books, Or only watch my shopman's looks;— Still Ivan, Ina, and such lumber, My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. "There's Byron too, who once did better, Has sent me, folded in a letter, A sort of—it's no more a drama Than ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Pleydell, a few hundred yards away, obeyed the shopman's invitation to step upstairs with ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the snuff and Pi-pos's books please. "Goody Two Shoes" is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to the child in the shape ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... replied the shopman, raising his black eyebrows ever so slightly; "a mistake possibly due to a reflection in the window. Will you take a look around ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... outside while Crass went in. Mr Budd, the shopman, was down at the far end near the glazed partition which separated Mr Rushton's office from the front shop. As Crass entered, Budd—who was a pale-faced, unhealthy-looking, undersized youth about twenty years of age—looked round and, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while we were laughing at these the shopman, as ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... sorry to give you the trouble of taking down so many things when I only want such a short length of each,' said Mrs. Vane civilly to the shopman—or shopwoman, I think it was. 'But the fact is I am buying all these odds and ends for my little girl's'—and here she glanced round to make sure that Bridget was out of hearing—'for my little girl's doll-house, which needs doing up;' by ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be really hungry. As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its Father Christmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise. They used to flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drove them away; but they came back and back. At last the iron shutters would come down—slowly. Then he and his sister would stoop—and stoop—to get a last look. Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; then they both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has permitted me to select situations for you. I have arranged that you, father, shall be my assistant in the secretary's office, and that you, Mariano, shall be shopman to ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... there were newsboys on the pavements, but by a curious anomaly they were selling evening and not morning newspapers. Daringly he asked one of these infants for the financial daily; the infant sniggered and did no more. Another directed him to a shop up an alley off the Edgware Road. The shopman doubted the existence of any such financial daily as Mr. Prohack indicated, apparently attaching no importance to the fact that it was advertised on every motor-bus travelling along the Edgware Road, but he suggested ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... shopman, and he produced a host of saucers of every description—saucers in tin, saucers in ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... wrote to an apothecary in the neighbourhood a prescription of a purge so forcible, that the apothecary thought it his duty to delay it, till he had given notice of its danger. Smith, not pleased with the contradiction of a shopman, and boastful of his own knowledge, treated the notice with rude contempt, and swallowed his own medicine, which, in July, 1710, brought him to the grave. He ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... person, termed Mistress of the Novices, were not permitted to pollute their eyes by looking on waving plumes and rustling mantles. A few sisters, indeed, of the Abbess's own standing, were left at liberty, being such goods as it was thought could not, in shopman's phrase, take harm from the air, and which are therefore left lying on the counter. These antiquated dames went mumping about with much affected indifference, and a great deal of real curiosity, endeavouring indirectly to get information concerning names, and dresses, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I am in the enjoyment of good health," replied the shopman, flushing with pleasure and ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But the grapnel had not held. It emerged at once bearing on one fluke, with a ridiculous air of fastidious selection, a small child's chair, and pursued by a maddened shopman. It lifted its catch, swung about with an appearance of painful indecision amidst a roar of wrath, and dropped it at last neatly, and as if by inspiration, over the head of a peasant woman in charge of an assortment of cabbages ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... paralyzes my brain: I cannot calculate in it; and were I left to myself an unscrupulous shopman could empty me of pounds without my becoming conscious of it till I beheld vacuum. But the T——s have been wonderful caretakers to me: and to-morrow Arthur rejoins us, so that I shall be able to resume my full ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... counsel, years ago, Was moving home at two, sedate and slow, Old, and fatigued with pleading at the bar, And grumbling that he lived away so far, When suddenly he chanced his eye to drop On a spruce personage in a barber's shop, Who in the shopman's absence lounged at ease, Paring his nails as calmly as you please. "Demetrius"—so was called the slave he kept To do his errands, a well-trained adept— "Find out about that man for me; enquire His name and rank, his patron or his sire." He soon brings word that Mena is the name, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... I have beheld a shopman and a customer waste half an hour chaffering an article up and down five kopeks (two and a half cents or less), I am convinced that they enjoy the excitement of it, and that time is cheap enough with them to allow them to indulge in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... store in America, in a smallish town. I glanced at his reddish, smooth, rather knuckly hands, and thin wrists in the frayed cuff. They were real shopman's hands. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... precious Mechlin lace, worth a guinea or two a-yard, falling gracefully on his breast, or placed for convenience into a fold of his coat. How much more sensible, how much more ornamental, how much more noble, such a scarf or cravat as this, which no shopman's boy could emulate, than the cheap and ugly thing in which many a man still seems to delight! How admirably did these bands of rich lace contrast with the silken coats or the polished cuirasses of their wearers! how truly aristocratic was their appearance! how entirely without effort, without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... enormous perukes of powdered hair, and their wonderful flowered vests and gold-laced coats—all these things provoked the keenest wonder and amazement in Tom's breast; albeit he walked on without pausing to examine one more than another, or to exchange a word with any save some honest-looking shopman, of whom he would ask the way to Master ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... swain took her by the elbows and propelled her into the shop, and approaching the counter gazed disagreeably at the shopman. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... class proved, at the bar of justice, the consequence of their resort to these complicated scenes of vice, idleness, extravagance, misfortune, and crime. Among innumerable instances are the following:—In 1796, a shopman to a grocer in the city was seduced into a gaming party, where he first lost all his own money, and ultimately what his master had intrusted him with. He hanged himself in his bed-room a few ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... wife is so faithful to her husband and so subtly comprehends "with her heart" the mysteries of God and life, that in the end one feels mawkish and uncomfortable as after a slobbering kiss. Sienkiewicz has evidently not read Tolstoy, and does not know Nietzsche, he talks about hypnotism like a shopman; on the other hand every page is positively sprinkled with Rubens, Borghesi, Correggio, Botticelli—and that is done to show off his culture to the bourgeois reader and make a long nose on the sly at materialism. The object of the novel is to lull the bourgeoisie to sleep ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the door which, like a shrill, disparaging leit motif, announced me, and made me suddenly self-conscious. It hadn't occurred to me before that there was anything to be ashamed of or frightened about in my errand. I'd vaguely pictured the shopman as a dear old Dickensy thing who would take a fussy interest in me and my scarf, and who would, with a fatherly manner, press upon me a handful of sovereigns or a banknote. But as the bell jangled, one of the most repulsive men I ever saw looked toward the door. There was another ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at the spectacle of a man in evening dress but without a dustcoat, he jumped off again, oblivious of the fact that the conductor jerked a thumb towards him and winked at the passengers as who should say, 'There goes a lunatic.' He went into a tobacconist's shop and asked for a cigar. The shopman mildly inquired ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... human kind, With sharpen'd sight some remedies may find; The apothecary-train is wholly blind, From files a random recipe they take, And many deaths of one prescription make. Garth,[29] generous as his Muse, prescribes and gives; The shopman sells; and by destruction lives: Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood, From medicine issuing, suck their mother's blood! 110 Let these obey; and let the learn'd prescribe; That men may ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... favored ear In golden days to come shall hear The ploughman, as he tills the ground, The tarter, as he drives his round, The shopman, as his task he plies, With psalms or sacred melodies Whiling the hours of toil away! O, happy he who hears the lay Of shepherd and of shepherdess, As in the woods they sing and bless, And make the rocks and pools proclaim With them their great Creator's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rank of major-general), who was then an ensign in the Guards, entering Hoby's shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill made that he should never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby, putting on a pathetic cast of countenance, called to his shopman: ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... sipping my coffee. He was there nearly twenty minutes; then he came out and walked leisurely away. I paid my score and strolled over to the shop. I wondered what he had been buying. Dueling pistols for the duke, perhaps! I entered and asked to be shown some penknives. The shopman served me with alacrity. I chose a cheap knife, and then I permitted my gaze to rest on a neat little pistol that lay on the counter. My simple ruse was most effective. In a moment I was being acquainted with ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... strap for hanging it over his shoulder, and he put it on so as to be an invalid with the others at once; he came near forgetting the small napkin of Turkish towelling which they stuffed into their cups, but happily the shopman called him back in time ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... when at last he went in and, just to help himself on his way, asked the impossible price, the sum mentioned by the voluble vendor mocked at him even more than he had feared. It was far too expensive, as he hinted, and he was on the point of completing his comedy by a pensive retreat when the shopman bespoke his attention for another article of the same general character, which he described as remarkably cheap for what it was. It was an old piece, from a sale in the country, and it had been in stock some time; but it had got pushed out of sight in one of the upper rooms—they contained such ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... those lovely windows of Chartres—where the dyer dips in the vat and the potter sits at the wheel, and the weaver stands at the loom: real manufacturers these, workers with the hand, and entirely delightful to look at, not like the smug and vapid shopman of our time, who knows nothing of the web or vase he sells, except that he is charging you double its value and thinking you a fool for buying it. Nor can I but just note, in passing, the immense influence the decorative work of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Newfoundland snatched her parasol from her hand, and carried it off. The lady followed the dog, who kept ahead, constantly looking back to see if she followed. The dog at length stopped at a confectioner's, and went in, followed by the lady, who, as the dog would not resign it, applied to the shopman for assistance. He then told her that it was an old trick of the dog's to get a bun, and that if she would give him one he would return the property. She cheerfully did so, and the dog as willingly made ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... national strength, and the tradesman whose cart comes to your area in the morning gambles with all the reckless abandonment that used to be shown by the Hon. A. Deuceace or Lady Betty when George the Third was King. Your clerk, shopman, butcher, baker, barber—especially the barber—ask their companions, "What have you done on the Lincoln?" or "How do you stand for the Two Thousand?" just as ordinary folks ask after each other's health. Tradesmen step out of their shops in the morning and telegraph ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman—what company for her! As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back her chair, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... a-begging. It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper's shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket), "that she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... was never at home, and it was impossible to say at what hour they might dine. The tables also were strewed with the cards of great and fashionable people, obtained by Doctor Plausible from a celebrated engraver's shop, by a douceur to the shopman, when the master was absent. At last Doctor Plausible's instruments were used in good earnest; and, although not known or even heard of in the fashionable world, he was sent for by the would-be fashionables, because they imagined that he was employed by ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... A small shopman is in such a melancholy position, if his wife turns out a disloyal partner. His capital is all tied up in his business, and to leave her means to join the unemployed in some strange part of the earth. The luxuries of divorce ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... seeking, but it had also involved the idea of finding; which latter necessity would have been obtrusive only if they had found too soon. The question at present was if they were finding, and they put it to each other, in the Bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the undiverted attention of the shopman. He was clearly the master, and devoted to his business—the essence of which, in his conception, might precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for worrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations a sort of solemnity. He had not ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Then Kate's ready pencil portrayed the family, as jagged in their drapery as the flames and presently Lady Ethelinda appeared before a counter (such a counter! sloping like a desk in the attempt at perspective, but it conveniently concealed the shopman's legs,) buying very peculiar garments for the sufferers. Another scene in which she was presenting them followed, Sylvia looking on, and making suggestions; for in fact there was no quiet pastime more relished by the two cousins than drawing stories, as they called it, and most of their pence ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Audrey knew that she had committed an indiscretion. It was impossible that cars should be handed out thus unceremoniously to anybody who had the fancy to enter the shop! Cars were naturally the subject of negotiations and references.... And then the shopman, espying the gold bag, and being by it and by the English frigidity humbled to his proper station, fawned and replied that he had cars for hire, and the best cars. Did the lady want a large car or a small car? She wanted a large car. Did she want a town or a touring car? She ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... uncomfortable. So I go out, yesterday morning, and see a shop with shirts, neckties, collars, and socks in the window. I go in; I take hold of my collar, I pull down my cuffs, I tap my shirt front. The shopman smiles; he understands me. He measures my neck; he gives me a shirt and some collars. But then we come to the socks, and I pull up my trousers and point to those I am wearing. He understands immediately. He is very intelligent. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... troopers, mounting at the stables, had spurred away under Captain Gregg, and were splashing through the ford. Other denizens of Fort Frayne, hearing of the excitement, came hurrying to the bluff, hangers-on from the trader's store and corral, the shopman himself, even the bar-keeper in his white jacket and apron; two or three panting, low-muttering halfbreeds, their eyes aflame, their teeth gleaming in their excitement; then Hay himself, and with him,—her dark face almost livid, her ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... discovered one in the square opposite the church, who sold crosses and chains in a shop under the sign of The Good Faith. What was my astonishment to find in this very shop, before the counter, my good master, showing to the jeweller five or six little diamonds, and asking the shopman what price he would offer for those stones. I recognised them immediately as those which ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... dirty shopman would dare lay hands upon me? I'd run him through the body as soon as look at him. He'd better keep out of reach of my sword arm. You can tell him so, fair sister, if you have a tendresse for the young ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... circles, a number of other instances were cited as having occurred amongst the lower classes, where the loans of the mysterious usurer had brought misfortune in their train. One man, previously a sober and honest artisan, had become a confirmed drunkard, and died in the hospital; a shopman had robbed his master; an izvoztchik, for years noted for his honesty, had cut the throat of a customer in order to rob him of an insignificant sum. All these persons, and many others, who sank into misery and crime, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... going to get fond of! The things that her poor, round foolish eyes gloated upon the moment that she saw them! Joan tried to enlist the shopman on her side, descending even to flirtation. Unfortunately he was a young man with a high sense of duty, convinced that his employer's interests lay in his support of Mrs. Phillips. The sight of the furniture that, between them, they selected for the dining- ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... A lock of steel made quite red hot. The other cried upon the spot: "Such wares as these, who'd ever buy? the steel is tarnish'd shamefully,"— Then pull'd it, like a fool about, But soon set up a piteous shout. "Pray what's the matter?" the shopman spoke; The other scream'd: "Faith, a very ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... strong affections. But he went straight to the first fruit-shop in Milton, and chose out the bunch of purple grapes with the most delicate bloom upon them,—the richest-coloured peaches,—the freshest vine-leaves. They were packed into a basket, and the shopman awaited the answer to his inquiry, 'Where shall ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a deep mortification. She had been playing at this fancy one afternoon, and having rather confused herself by changing her mind about the toys, she went through her final list in an undertone, to get it clearly into her head. The shopman was serving a lady, and Madam Liberality thought he could not hear her as she murmured, "The china tea-set, the box of beasts, the doll's furniture for Darling," etc., etc. But the shopman's hearing was very acute, and he darted forward, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... M. Baudu conducted it on such old-fashioned lines that in competition with Mouret's great establishment it was rapidly disappearing. He had acquired it from his father-in-law, and in turn he proposed to hand it to Colomban, his shopman, who was engaged to be married to Genevieve, his only daughter. Baudu postponed the marriage, however, from time to time, as he did not wish to hand over the business in a worse state than that in which ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... the same law on smaller spheres that it follows on the larger. Brother infects sister, and sister brother; parent child, and child parent; shopman shopmate. We often lament the contagious influence of evil, and it is right that we should; but it is an unthankful, unhopeful spirit, that thinks and speaks of the dark side only. Oh, thou of little faith, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... when they go shopping, to be met half way with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, and waved into a seat, while almost at the same instant an eager shopman flings himself half across the counter in a semi-circle to learn their commands, can best appreciate this mediaeval Teuton, who kept a shop as a dog keeps a kennel, and sat at the exclusion of custom snoring like ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... connexion with Sheffield, and he had now reverted to his former condition of abject dependence unless for a fortunate occurrence. This was no less than his being appointed joint-proprietor and editor of the newspaper by a wealthy individual, who, noticing the abilities of the young shopman, purchased the copyright with the view of placing the management ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dime, which is, short by a fifth. That, then, is called a SHORT bit. If you have one, you lay it triumphantly down, and save two and a half cents. But if you have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of change; and thus you have paid what is called a LONG BIT, and lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. In country places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and above this, whenever I have come in contact with this clerk and shopman class, they have impressed me with considerable respect, not merely as to what they may be hereafter, but what ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... what happened to us yesterday. We found a dresser which appealed to us considerably, and we stood in front of it, looking at it. We decided that except for a little curley-wiggle at the top it was the jolliest dresser we had seen, "That's a fine old dresser," said the shopman, coming up at that moment, and he smacked it encouragingly. "A really fine old dresser, that." We agreed. "Except for those curley-wiggles," I added, pointing to them with my umbrella. "If we could take those off." He looked ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... question of the moment, and giving some occupation to the idlers in the throng; and to the right of the Rostra is the Comitium or assembling-place of the people, with the Curia, the ancient meeting-hall of the senate. In Cicero's day the mere shopman had been got rid of from the Forum, and his place is taken by the banker and money-lender, who do their business in tabernae stretching in rows along both sides of the open space. Much public business, judicial and other, is done in the Basilicae,—roofed halls with colonnades, of which ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... a kind of shyness of the moment when I should have to face the shopman, and I was particularly anxious to have a story ready if he should see fit to ask questions why I bought such a thing. I determined to say I was going to Texas, and I thought it might prove useful there. Texas in those days had the reputation of a wild lawless land. As I knew nothing of caliber ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... The Shopman made haste to do all this; he wreathed the Goat with flowers, and put all his wife's jewels upon the horns and paws, and all the jewels he could borrow ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... and so proceeded to save her sixpence on the gloves. As she was tempted, however ('such a civil obliging shopman, Frank!'), to buy four yards of so-called Astrakhan trimming, a frill of torchon lace, six dear little festooned handkerchiefs, and four pairs of open-work stockings—none of which were contemplated when she entered the shop—her sixpenny saving was not as brilliant a piece ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... lingered and doated on these bundles of delight; there was a physical pleasure in the sight and touch of them which he would jealously prolong; and when at length the deed was done, the play selected, and the impatient shopman had brushed the rest into the grey portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late for dinner, the lamps springing into light in the blue winter's even, and The Miller, or The Rover, or some kindred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... domesticated in France; it is but a few hours' trip from London to Paris; newspapers and the telegraph in both capitals make almost simultaneous announcements of news; the soldiers of the two nations fight side by side; the French shopman declares on his sign that English is spoken within; the "Times," porter, and tea are obtainable commodities in Paris; and fraternite is the watchword at Dover and Calais. Yet the normal idea which obtains in the conservative brain of a genuine Anglais, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I could judge it was very good tea, but it would never do to accept the first sample offered; I must let the shopman see that he was up against one of the mandarins of the trade. So I said with severity, "Please don't show me any more common stuff; I want the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... off, with Lancelot after him; entered a mathematical instrument maker's shop in the neighbouring street, and pointed out a heavy corded case to Lancelot, who, with the assistance of the shopman, got it on his shoulders; and trudging forth through the streets after his employer, who walked before him silent and unregarding, felt himself for the first time in his life in the same situation as nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the attention of Private Gosling-Green, as Private Gosling-Green was sound asleep. Nor did they awaken the weary four who made up the sentry group—Edward Jones, educationist; Henry Grigg, barber; Walter Smith, shopman; Reginald Ladon Gurr, Head of a Department—and whose right it was to sleep so long as two ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Th' shopman didn't loise his patience, but tried one after another wol th' caanter wor piled up wi hats, but ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... small shops. They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most ambitious. The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk: he had no hope of becoming anything else. The shopman remained a shopman, his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he could save enough money. The craftsman remained a craftsman. And for partnerships there were always plenty—younger sons and others—eager to buy themselves ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... and lawyers, and engaged in a correspondence about his publications, in the course of which he deprecates any identification of himself and his hero, though he had at first called him Childe Byron. "Instruct Mr. Murray," he entreats, "not to allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage,' as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might." At the end of the month we find him in London, again indulging in a voyage ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... his office, short, fat, highly choleric and headstrong, but at bottom not in the least degree an unkind sort of man—such was my uncle Cornubert, my only living male relative, who, as soon as I left school, had elevated me to the dignity of chief and only clerk and shopman of the ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... very hairy Russian met me at a turning of the road, and eyeing me with lacklustre eyes asked me gruffly as a rude shopman might, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... the pages here and there and read a few lines, admired the covers, and enjoyed the delightful smell new books so often have, and at last, half reluctantly, she wrapped her treasure up in its paper again, trying to make it look as neat as when the shopman had handed it to her. That done she got up to explore further. It was a weird, neglected spot she had got into. Numbers of tombstones lay about as they had fallen, others were leaning over looking as though another gale would lay them flat too. The ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... we have applied Our shopman's test of age and worth, Was elemental when he died, As he was ancient at his birth: The saddest among kings of earth, Bowed with a galling crown, this man Met rancor with a cryptic ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... de Rubempre on the son of a daughter of the house. If she made a mesalliance, the favor would be enormous, only to be granted to vast wealth, or conspicuous services, or very powerful influence. The young man looks like a shopman in his Sunday suit; evidently he is neither wealthy nor noble; he has a fine head, but he seems to me to be very silly; he has no idea what to do, and has nothing to say for himself; in fact, he has no breeding. How came ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Jim standing sentinel in the doorway and Wally wandering about the shop sampling all he could find, from biscuits to brooms. On one occasion, when making a special effort to preserve her dignity, she came to the item "flaked oatmeal," and asked the shopman in rather frigid tones for "floked atemeal," which had a paralysing effect on the unoffending storekeeper, while Wally retired to the shelter of a pile of saucepans, and shrieked. Thus the business of necessary purchases passed off cheerfully; and then ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... his journey before the maid turns out, opens the front door, and takes a look up and down street, to see who is a stirrin'. Early risin' must be cheerfulsome, for she is very chipper, and throws some orange-peel at the shopman of their next neighbour, as a hint if he was to chase her, he would catch her behind the hall-door, as he did yesterday, after which she would show him into the supper-room, where the liquors and cakes are still standing as they were ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... engagement rings I think I ever saw. One of them had visible on its inner curvature the four letters MIZP—. He looked at them, saw the posy, and then, glancing at me, laughed affably. "I meant to tell you yesterday, George—I will take these," to the shopman. And we emerged with a superficial amiability; the case of rings in my uncle's pocket. The thing was rather a shock to me, coming so suddenly and unexpectedly. I had anticipated some innocent purchase of the jewellery ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... told Benjamin in what manner the sword had been procured from the shopman, by the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... a wholesale grocer's place. Out came Moncrieff's great note-book, and he soon gave evidence that he possessed a wondrous memory, and was a thorough man of business. He kept the shopman hard at it for half an hour, by which time one of the pyramids of Egypt, on a small scale, was ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... those individuals who cannot say "no" to a shopman. Though nothing was further from his mind than putting his sadly reduced pocket-money into an ormolu inkpot, his tender heart could not bear to dash the stationer's hopes too rudely. He said he couldn't quite make up his mind, and would just look ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... well," Mrs. Barton replied. "But I am not very fond of Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long." A shopman came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins. "I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her," she said as with a bow and cordial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... do not understand the ringing of the bells in succession. The gentleman is one of the Tory councilors recently appointed by Governor Gage. He has accepted the appointment and the citizens are worrying the life out of him. Each shopman has a bell which he jingles the moment he spies a councilor, giving notice to the other shopmen." Mr. Knox looked up at the clock. "It is about time for the council to assemble in the Town House; quite ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves. I had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I watched him rather attentively while Miss Matty listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the shop-boy's question, "What can ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of course, but where do the shopmen get their stuff from? Where does all the meat come from, and the fruit and the flowers and vegetables, and all the things that must be kept fresh? Where does the shopman buy them? The shopman gets them from the markets, and the markets get them from the country. There are many great markets, and to-day we will visit three of them—that where we can see the meat, and that where the flowers and vegetables are, and that where ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of her old ill-cut skirt, more especially of the invisible dirt on it, and she did so yearn for something new and sweet and clean. Her mother had a bill at that shop—should she—should she just go in and ask about prices? No, she could not in that horrid old frock; the shopman would not respect her. She had intended to go down to the sands and sit by the sea, and wait for things to come to her, by which she meant ideas; but the discomfort of mind set up by that glimpse of her uncouth clothes, and the horrible sense ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... tobacco-shop at the corner of the street, where Montgomery got his bird's-eye and also his local information, for the shopman was a garrulous soul, who knew everything about the affairs of the district. The assistant strolled down there after tea and asked, in a casual way, whether the tobacconist had ever heard ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shamefaced youth of eighteen, took him with her in the hackney-coach which she had kept in waiting. She gave the coachman her orders, and away he drove to a famous apothecary's, in the Rue St. Honore. "This," said she to the shopman, "is the residence of my homme d'affaires: follow me, and you shall have your money." She accordingly alighted, and, after saying a few words in the ear of the doctor, on whose credulity she had already exercised her genius, desired him to take the young man to his private room, and settle the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... see you try, Mr. HOOKER Walker," replies the undaunted shopman; on which the Captain, looking several tremendous canings at him, walked into the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... than they should, as is to be expected from the young to whom the future promises all things. The fine Brussels carpet! A little too bright, had thought the shaking curls. "The colours will tone down, miss—ma'am." The shopman knew. Only by the help of the round island underneath the massive Empire table, by excursions into untrodden corners, could Peter recollect the rainbow floor his feet had pressed when he was twenty-one. The noble bookcase, surmounted by Minerva's bust. Really it was too expensive. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... once told me that when she was a young girl she was stopped in some Dublin street by a great crowd and turned into a shop to escape from it. She stayed there some time and the crowd still passed. She asked the shopman what it was, and he said, 'the funeral of Thomas Davis, a poet.' She had never heard of Davis; but because she thought a country that so honoured a poet must be worth something, she became interested in Ireland and was soon a famous patriotic poet ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... VICTOR, a noted French physicist, born at Aix-la-Chapelle; from being a Paris shopman he rose to a professorship in Lyons; important discoveries in organic chemistry won him election to the Academy of Sciences in 1840; lectured in the "College de France and the Ecole Polytechnique;" became director of the imperial porcelain manufactory ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that I really and truly wanted old clothes. But after fruitless attempts to press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring to light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... intimate, the talk went on. Groups everywhere and groups irrespective of all class distinction—a well-to-do woman in rich furs, a peasant woman with a shawl over her head, a wild, bearded soldier, a stout, important officer, a maid-servant, a cab-driver, a shopman—talking, talking, talking, talking.... The eagerness, the ignorance, the odd fairy-tale world spun about those groups, so that the coloured domes of the churches, the silver network of the stars, the wooden booths, the mist of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... his fancy that he entered and began a sentence in excellent English. The shopman replied by shaking his head and uttering a few ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shopping. One is to set out without a very definite idea of what you wish to buy, and to buy what you do not want, if the shopman persuades you to do so, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... a room above the store There is a woman — and a child Pattered just now across the floor; The shopman looked ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... for so many yards of material, you would not be satisfied by his guessing the quantity—you would want it measured by the yard-stick, the proper standard of measurement. So with weights. If you ask for so many pounds of sugar or potatoes, it would not be for the shopman to say to you, 'Will that do for you? Put another in? All right! Will that do?' You would say, 'Please weigh them properly ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... turning towards him mysteriously, and indicating the shopman and his assistants, "I really believe ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake of the hand, and a pleasant hail-fellow-well-met style of manner. Not but what all the tricks of trade are fully understood at the Antipodes, and the Aucklander can chaffer and haggle, and drive as hard a bargain as his ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... top,—"the very head and front of the offending." A gentleman goes into a fashionable hatter's, and the shopman, holding up for admiration a hat with a crown a foot high, of the genuine stove-pipe form, and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... and came out of the little booth, and the shopman, who had heard his harsh, loud voice, looked at him suspiciously; but Sam Stay was indifferent to the suspicions of men. He half ran, half walked back to where his cab was standing, leaped into the seat, and again ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... equal to the evils of dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former. Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes home with respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who reels past ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... conversation of the smart lady and the gallant cavalier is cut short, the donkey-driver with uplifted arm ceases to belabour his beast, the oath dies on the lips of the rough seaman or uncouth black, the workman drops his tool, the shopman lays down his measure, children refrain from their play, men quarrelling suspend their dispute, lazy monks engaged in their constant game of draughts neglect to make the intended move, vendors of fruit no longer utter their cries, and one and all engage ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... faint with an extraordinary revulsion of feeling, he leant against the door of the masonic shop, which promptly opened in the most hospitable manner, depositing him upon his back on the floor of the establishment. In a second he was up, and had bounded out of the shop with such energy that the shopman was on the point of holloaing "Stop thief!" It was exactly five o'clock, and he was not more than a quarter of a mile or so from Waterloo Station. A hansom was sauntering along in front of him, he sprang ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... was to it," Bradford went on imperturbably. "Williams asked the shopman politely what in hell he was doing under there, and the fellow crawled out and said he was just lookin' her over to see if she was all right for the night run. Now, you wouldn't think there was any tumble-weed in that to ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... reach-me-downs, new hat, boots, gloves, and paletot; and last, away to the Continental train for a first look at Paris. And all the while it was richly comic to himself to feel how he exulted, and to say within doors demurely to the shopman, to the waiter, the ticket clerk, the porter: 'I am an author, sir, an accepted author, with the first fruits of my first book in my pocket I am on the way to Paris and distinction.' The four years of lost prospect and horizon looked nothing, less than nothing. But the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... say By night and by day, In the boudoir, the street, at the concert, and play, In a sort of coxcombical roundelay;— You may roam through the City, transversely or straight From Whitechapel turnpike to Cumberland gate, And every young Lady who thrums a guitar, Ev'ry mustached Shopman who smokes a cigar, With affected devotion Promulgates his notion Of being a "Rover" and "Child of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... time I had made up my mind. Articles or no Articles, I was determined to spend no more of my life on board that hateful ship. Accordingly, one day having obtained shore leave, I purchased a new rig-out, and leaving my sea-going togs with the Jewish shopman, I made tracks, as the saying goes, into the Bush with all speed. Happen what might, I was resolved that Captain Fairweather should not set eyes on ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... of the few favourite officers of Bonaparte who have distinguished themselves under his rivals, Pichegru and Moreau, without ever serving under him. Edward Adolph Casimer Mortier is the son of a shopkeeper, and was born at Cambray in 1768. He was a shopman with his father until 1791, when he obtained a commission, first as a lieutenant of carabiniers, and afterwards as captain of the first battalion of volunteers of the Department of the North. His first sight of an enemy was on the 30th of April, 1792, near Quievrain, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... towards the heap of clothes lying huddled together on the backless chair by the bedside, where he had hastily flung them about an hour after midnight; at which time he had returned from a great draper's shop in Oxford Street, where he served as a shopman, and where he had nearly dropped asleep, after a long day's work, in the act of putting up the shutters. He could hardly keep his eyes open while he undressed, short as was the time required to do so; and on dropping exhausted into bed, there ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... walk through Shoreditch some time since, I saw a number of persons collected together round a little boy, who, it appeared, had stolen a brass weight from the shop of a grocer. The shopman stated that three boys came into the shop for half-an-ounce of candied horehound, and that while he was getting down the glass which contained it, one of them contrived to purloin the weight in question. Having some suspicion of the boys, from the circumstance of having recently lost ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... a shopman at all?" propounded Mr Stratton to his astounded fellow-directors. "Why not take turns behind the counter ourselves; say one of the Wheatfields and Cash one week, and Cottle and Ashby the next, and so on? The hours proposed were not school hours; ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... a shop where a woman is behind the counter, or even to a stall in the open market, he raises his hat in speaking to her as he would to the Duquesa de Tal y Fulano, and uses precisely the same form of address. The shopman lays himself at the feet of his lady customers—metaphorically only, fortunately, A los pies de V., Senora!—with a bow worthy of royalty. She hopes that "God may remain with his worship" as she bids him the ordinary Adios ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... once borrowed a pair of silk stockings from one of his lords, so that he might wear them in giving an audience to the French ambassador. Even Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased and astonished to receive a pair as a New Year's present; to-day every shopman has them. Fifty years ago ladies wore the kind of calico gowns which servants wear now. If mechanical science continues to progress at the same rate for any length of time, it may end by saving human labour almost entirely, just as horses are even now being largely superseded by machines. For ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... know,' replied Lucy, drearily. 'I know I shall have a horrid life—I must. Nobody can help it. Do you know we've got another shopman, Dora?' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you folks!" said Vermichel, "you've brought him in for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he'll punch you in the ribs; he's after you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the valley his fortune would ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... MICHAEL CREAN.—Shopman at a shoe-shop; thirty-five years of age; five feet eight inches; fair or sandy hair; grey eyes; full face; light whiskers; high fore-head; well-set person; dress, dark shooting frock or grey tweed, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... drew out several pieces of stuff wrapped up in brown linen. Removing the covering, he spread the goods upon the rug before the ladies, holding up each separate piece to the light and expatiating upon its merits in the approved fashion of the shopman. The two women gave a little gasp of astonishment; never had they seen such wondrous beauty of color and finish; their little market-town of Croye held ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... it ever been made subservient, both the one and the other being totally unknown in the country. Their arithmetic is mechanical. To find the aggregate of numbers, a machine is in universal use, from the man of letters, to the meanest shopman behind his counter. By this machine, which is called a Swan-pan, arithmetical operations are rendered palpable. It consists of a frame of wood, divided into two compartments by a bar running down the middle: through this bar, at right ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... amount of presence of mind, and did not at all object to be spokeswoman. She rapidly explained that they had had an accident, and were anxious to replace some broken articles at their own expense. The shopman opened the box, and pulling out the shavings in which the china was packed, laid the various pieces upon the counter. The girls were aghast at the extent of the damage. Several cups were smashed to atoms, the teapot had lost its lid, and the cream ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... liberally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes and barrels outside the counter. He would seize a handful of grapes and sawdust or three or four American apples and thrust them generously into his grandnephew's hand while the shopman smiled uneasily; and, on Stephen's feigning reluctance to take them, he would frown ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... fat woman pushed before him; and he stood quietly beside the counter, waiting till somebody should be at leisure to attend to him. At length, when all the other people who were in the shop had got what they wanted, the shopman turned to Maurice—"And what do you want, my patient little ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Mascarin, "and yet the story is all true. Last January, on a bitterly cold night, you dug a hole, and in it deposited the body of a new-born infant wrapped in a shawl. And what shawl? Why the very one that you purchased at the Bon Marche, when you were making yourself agreeable to Clarisse. The shopman who sold it to you has identified it, and is ready to give evidence when called upon. You may look for that shawl, Catenac, but you will ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... that, in the latter part of Chopin's life, he did not leave the carriage when he had any business at Schlesinger's music-shop; a shopman came out to the composer, who kept himself closely wrapped in his blue mantle. The following reminiscence is, like some of the preceding ones, somewhat vague with regard to time. Stephen Heller met Chopin shortly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... he walked out that the shopman was missing the locket. His theft could not remain undiscovered. Another instant and he would be arrested and the locket found on his person. He had scarcely time for the most rapid thought—certainly no time ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... sail for London, where he arrived, after a safe and prosperous voyage, without a hair of his head injured. The only thing I am ashamed to let out about him is, that he is now, and has been for some time past, principal shopman in a Wallflower Hair-powder and Genuine Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir |
