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More "Auctioneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 God ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Euesday favour-tarining in Ireland, was more able to deal receive their vates. The candidate, Mr. D. opinion. The ballot for position of places accompanied feastings and jollification, and sentation what elections were like in the the business of auctioneer." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... in 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
... him. 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, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... 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 Lamb ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... being so fine, the auctioneer proposed that they carry out all the things that were to go under the hammer, so as to avoid any overcrowding of the rooms. So maids and farm hands carried out boxes and chests, all painted in tulips and roses, Some of them had been standing in the attic, undisturbed, for centuries. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... thinking the mines were close to this city, many of these joined the club. Charles Clarke was a prominent member, also W. M. Anderson, C. B. Tenniel, together with many of our young business men, viz., Arthur Keast, the brewer; Lumley Franklin, the auctioneer; S. Farwell, the civil engineer; H. C. Courtney, the barrister; H. Rushton and Joseph Barnett, of one of the banks; Ben Griffin, mine host of the Boomerang; Godfrey Brown, of Janion, Green & Rhodes; ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... ways 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 are usually ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... vote." Government therefore had to 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
... 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
... large, dark eyes that continually seem to soften and develop. That is my picture. And what am I in the world? I will tell you. On certain days of the week I employ myself in editing a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery. On another day I act as auctioneer to a firm which imports and sells cheap Italian statuary; modern, very modern copies of the antique, florid marble vases, and so forth. Some of you who read may have passed such marts in different parts of the city, or even have dropped in and ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... 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
... 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! ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... a silence which told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... at the Office of the Auctioneer, 9. Foregate Street, Worcester, one week previous to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... instant did the auctioneer wait, and then his decision, "Gone!" made Hugh the owner of Uncle Sam, who, crouching down before him, blessed him with ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... in making a list of all the furniture in Dick's dwelling, very much like an auctioneer's puff. Everything, according to him, was "first-rate," "of superior quality," or, "fit for the residence of any nobleman in the land." Pride sat with his back to the door, and therefore was not aware of the entrance of Learning, till the stately gentleman in spectacles tapped ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... 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 us ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... 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, ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... verse; tried his powers; 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
... the magistrate are generally divided into judicial and financial. But, as an old Indian official more exhaustively stated it: 'Everything which is done by the executive government is done by the Collector in one or another of his capacities—publican, auctioneer, sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, recruiting sergeant, slayer of wild beasts, bookseller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter of bills, and registrar.' It is difficult to see how one can bring all these departments under two headings; it is still more ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... 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
... 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, or ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... any where this side the grave ought the rich and 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 ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... piled up in a half circle, the auctioneer sitting on a table in the middle, assisted by one or two of the chief town's folk. Outside the circle stood men, women, and children from all surrounding parts of the Island; beyond them again, the patient little ponies waiting for the loads they were to carry off inland. Much of the sale was ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... again, I shall. It is called Leaves of Grass,—was written and printed by a journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter Whitman; and after you have looked into it, if you think, as you may, that it is only an auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can light your pipe ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... adopted, 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 ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... 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 ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... setting represents a public square. In the centre stands a sheriff's officer on an auctioneer's block, around the base of which are the various pieces for the machine. A crowd is gathered on each side of the platform. To the left of the spectator are grouped together Coppolus, Carpano, the landlord of the Golden Sun, ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... the pussy-footed little sleuth," declared Harry. "It would have been impossible to hear you more than forty or fifty miles away. There's nothing the matter with that voice of yours. I know an auctioneer ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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
... 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 ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... volumes of 'Chips from a German Workshop' and a cheap, imperfect example of 'Tom Brown's School-Days.' Hookes's 'Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot of American devotional works, where it kept company with an Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine 'Hypnerotomachia.' The auctioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the whole affair was a "knock-out." His most treasured spoils were parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing to be present at one's own sale. No man would ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... 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, smoking ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... second 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 ask ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... 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 hell ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... churches want to enroll members, and so desperate is the situation that they are willing to get them at the price of self-respect. Hence come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Chapman, and play Svengali to our Trilby. These gentlemen use the methods and the tricks of the auctioneer—the blandishments of the bookmaker—the sleek, smooth ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... 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. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... her long, slim fingers, replied in a sharp voice: "Oh, it's fair fighting! We don't hold the same political views, you know. That fellow Manoury, who's making no end of money, would lick the Emperor's boots. For my part, if I were an auctioneer, I wouldn't keep him in my service for ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... 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. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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, what auctioneer ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... him how, if 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
... 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 ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 two ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... 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 ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... hardly 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
... on the steps 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 only in itself, but as a vivid contrast ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... allowed to say good-bye to his wife, who was left behind without means of support. Their house was searched for papers, but without result, and the man—a member of the Afrikander Bond—was sent back, after eighteen months' deportation, without any charge having been made against him. He was an auctioneer and shipping agent, and during his absence his business was annexed by a rival. One British Colonial, who held office at Stellenbosch, said to one family, without even making an inquiry as to their conduct, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... one thousandth of a second," announced Uncle Teddy, displaying all the fine points of his treasure like an auctioneer. "Won't I get some great pictures of you folks diving, though!" And he stood looking at the thing in his hands as if he did not quite believe it was real. Then he came to himself with a start and tossed the pack of letters to Katherine to distribute, ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... awfu' responsibility, there 's nae doot o' that, John, but gin ye juist jined the fouk for ae field, it wud be an affset tae the day, an' the auctioneer ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... 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 relique of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... 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 in a garret three small hours ago My ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... remarked 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 ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... sixteenth-century houses, with fronts of carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has figured in both Great Expectations and Edwin Drood, for it is the house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman, and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The other—Eastgate House, now converted into a museum—is the "Nun's House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud and Helen ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... 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
... palaces in Italy: "I wish to fit out the Gauls," said he; "it is a mark of friendship I owe to the brave performed the part Roman people." He himself, at these sales, performed the part of salesman and auctioneer, telling the history of each article to enhance the price. "This belonged to my father, Germanicus; that comes to me from Agrippa; this vase is Egyptian, it was Antony's, Augustus took it at the battle of Actium." The imperial sales were succeeded by literary games, at which the losers had ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... The auctioneer that evening was a famous comedian with an international reputation and his chatter, as he urged his hearers to higher bids, was clever and amusing. I was listening to it and smiling at the jokes when a voice at my ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 early part of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... to the two girls and Miss Paterson, who must of course 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 to be ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 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" ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:—Lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for one-and-sixpence, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... shouting and swearing, and slashing away with thick sticks. The poor things were so confused and knocked about that they didn't know what to do, and I went up to the man who seemed to be in charge of the pens that our auctioneer was going to sell from, and asked him if he would be kind to my poor bullock when it came. He only cursed it an laughed a mocking laugh, and said, 'Oh, yes, —— it, I'll be gentle with it. You wait, missis, and see! Do you think I'm here to coddle any —— beasts? ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 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
... been put aside for want of a bidder, a fine cow was put up, and all the usual cajoling and seductive provocations to competition and purchase were held out, but in vain. Every nourish of the bailiff, who acted as auctioneer, was lost, as it were, on empty space, and might as well have been uttered in a desert. Butter-casks, kitchen' vessels, and everything on which the impress could be affixed, was marked with the hated brand of "tithe." No one, however, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... who knew as much about books as a Hottentot knows about icebergs. John Bunyan was tied tightly to Nat Gould, and Thomas Carlyle was firmly fastened to Charles Garvice. I looked round; took a note of the numbers of those lots that contained books that I wanted, and waited for the auctioneer to get to business. In due time I became the purchaser of half a dozen lots. I had bought six books that I wanted, and thirty that I didn't. Now the question arose: What shall I do with these thirty waifs and strays? I glanced over them and took pity on them. Many of them dealt with matters in ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... 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 respecting the choice and suitableness ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... auctioneer, and this was the regular fruit auction that is held on this same corner every morning of the year. Many other things besides fruit are sold at these auctions; in fact, almost everything in Key West is bought or sold at auction; certainly all fruit is. For an hour before the time set for ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... in the Agora once when she went with the slaves to buy a mackerel. The auctioneer had astonished everybody by knocking down to her a noble fish an obol under price, then under pretext of showing her a rare Boeotian eel got her aside into his booth and whispered a few words that made ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... recipe, also those baked from recipe for "honey cakes," were sold in large sheets marked off in oblong sections, seventy years ago, and at that time no "vendue," or public sale, in certain localities throughout Bucks County, was thought complete unless in sound of the auctioneer's voice, on a temporary stand, these cakes were displayed on the day of "the sale," and were eagerly bought by the crowd which ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... William W. Corcoran, was born in 1798. He began his business career in Georgetown, but for many years he has been a resident of Washington. At twenty he went into business for himself, beginning as an auctioneer. After several years of successful business he was obliged to suspend, during the depressed ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Grace Church, swirled him across old "dead man's curve," 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 ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... lay intruders upon the mystery of his craft; 'why, yes—ha,—ha!—just maybe a little. It's only poison, Sir, deadly, barefaced poison!' he began sardonically, with a grin, and ended with a black glare and a knock on the table, like an auctioneer's 'gone!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... 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 them before him he faces ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the auctioneer. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... for sale," shouted the auctioneer. "A genuine article, pretty near as good as brand-new. A real live baby, warranted to walk and talk a little. Who bids? A dollar? Did I hear anyone mean enough to bid a dollar? No, sir, babies don't come as cheap as that, especially the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... natural body shall be raised a spiritual body, when this corruptible must put on incorruption, when this mortal must put on immortality, when death is swallowed up in victory." There you have Glasgow! An auctioneer's advertisement blent with an edifying sermon, a happy combination of commerce and Christianity, making the best of this ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Braymore, 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 ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... Parker of yours, Brewster. His method seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer, and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid against ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 to him. There, some are tempted ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... 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, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna Mantegazza or ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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
... institution employing all these agencies, every one of them fully equipped and manned, and with streams of money flowing in to their support; no barren appeals from the pulpit for funds to pay expenses, and no auctioneer's hammer profaning ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... worry," 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
... periods as 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 ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... 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 ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 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
... both 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
... Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, not quite to be called a lake, unless in an auctioneer's advertisement." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many complications in its train, commenced with a very small incident. A certain Bezeidenhout, having refused to pay his taxes, had, by order, some of his goods seized and put up to auction. This was the signal for the malcontents to attack the auctioneer and rescue the goods. So great became the uproar and confusion, the women aiding and abetting the men in their disobedience of the law, that military assistance was summoned. Major Thornhill, with a few companies of the 21st Regiment, was sent to support ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... 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
... 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
... 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
... early hour. On one of the gradients some ten or a dozen scribes were 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 his black hair was held close ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the seashore or the lakes would only brown the summer girl it would not matter so much. But instead of making the skin a beautiful, poetical olive tint, it usually turns it to a hue which is best compared to the flaunting colors of the auctioneer's emblem. If the girl is reckless, if she runs here and there without a hat, and gives never a moment to the care of her skin, her own mother is not likely to recognize her unless the summer girl soon repents and mends ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... enthusiastically, "black as midnight, fat as butterballs and ready for work." To be sure, the little salesman could not see up to the level of the cage floor, but his sales talk never ceased. "How much am I offered, men," he called out in a voice simulating an auctioneer. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... 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 ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... quite usual nowadays," a well-known auctioneer states, "for mill hands to keep a few orchids." We understand that by way of a counter-stroke a number of noblemen are threatening to go in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... but it was mostly in the hands of agents, in Danbury, Norwalk, Stamford and Middletown, and Barnum began to look around for some field for his individual energies. He tried travelling as a book auctioneer, but found it uncongenial and quit the business. In July, 1831, with his uncle Alanson Taylor, he opened a grocery and general store, but the venture was not particularly successful, and in the fall the partnership was dissolved, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of 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 stocks and shares. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... master's name. In the middle of the 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 spectators or bidders. Chad edged his way ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... 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
... the 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and had seen him at work—a burly, bustling, vulgar man who took possession of the pulpit as if it were an auctioneer's block, and pursued the task of exciting liberality in the bosoms of the congregation by alternating prayer, anecdote, song, and cheap buffoonery in a manner truly sickening. Would it not be preferable, he feebly suggested, to raise the money by a festival, or fair, or some other form of entertainment ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... other items he adds rollers for paste, moulds for cooks, fine cutting knives, fine wine glasses, soap, fine salt, and candles. The list is the next best thing to an auctioneer's inventory of an Elizabethan kitchen, to the fittings of Shakespeare's, or rather of his father's. A good idea of the character and resources of a nobleman's or wealthy gentleman's kitchen at the end of the sixteenth and commencement of the seventeenth century may be formed from ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... 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
... which paused at the end of a dingy street lighted by only occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses of ill-clad people clamoring around two hucksters' carts. They were bidding their farthings and ha'pennies for a vegetable held up by the auctioneer, which he at last scornfully flung, with a gibe for its cheapness, to the successful bidder. In the momentary pause only one man detached himself from the groups. He had bidden in a cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instantly ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... they call it. He has got on wonderfully as upholsterer, decorator, and auctioneer. It is a very handsome one, with a garden that gets the prizes at the horticultural shows. They are thoroughly good people, but I was afraid afterwards that there had been a good deal of noisiness among the young folks at Christmas. Hubert Delrio was ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never sober, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... Corydon found it diverting to get the scarecrow nag and the one-horse shay, and drive to some farm-house, where one might see the history of a family for the last fifty years spread out upon the lawn. They would stand round in the cold and snow while the auctioneer disposed of the horses and cows and hay and machinery, waiting until he came to the household objects upon which they had set their eye. So they would invest in some stove-pipe, and a couple of ghastly chromos (for the sake of the frames), and some ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Paris is 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. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... scribes were 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 his ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 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
... will not decline to state my conviction—tchah! what fine words the fellow puts! He's as fine as an auctioneer—that your son Frederic has not obtained any advance of money on bequests promised by Mr. Featherstone—promised? who said I had ever promised? I promise nothing—I shall make codicils as long as I like—and that considering the nature of such ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... addition to these, he had an old file of Sydney papers, and I soon became intimately acquainted with the localities of all the advertising tradesmen there. In particular, the rhetorical flourishes of Stubbs, the real-estate auctioneer, diverted me exceedingly, and I set him down as no other than a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... by flies, and the group of real estate men, lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched with the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 mirrors ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... of a man 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 ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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 and ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... 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; (5) a pair of gloves. Scarcely a night passed without fresh ground being ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... chuckle—indeed, he was specially vindictive against lay intruders upon the mystery of his craft; 'why, yes—ha,—ha!—just maybe a little. It's only poison, Sir, deadly, barefaced poison!' he began sardonically, with a grin, and ended with a black glare and a knock on the table, like an auctioneer's 'gone!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... really much more). At nine a bell rings and the various auctioneers commence operations. A crowd is formed, and in a very few minutes a lot is sold off to traders who are well known, and who pay at the end of the week. The auctioneer then proceeds to the next group, which is disposed of in a similar way. Other auctioneers in various parts of the enormous shed erected for their accommodation do the same, and then, as more boats arrive, other cargoes are sold, the sailors bringing a hundred as ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... told of the interest of the crowd, the auctioneer read out a description of the bounds and acreage of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... those people who considered it their painful duty to remain awake. At the close of the services the good deacons would probably feel called upon to take the young man out behind the church and give him a little fatherly advice, the burthen of which would be to become an auctioneer or seek a situation as ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 the damnable ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... shall bring Marie, and you won't have to lift your finger. John will come Thursday night, 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 ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... are two sixteenth-century houses, with fronts of carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has figured in both Great Expectations and Edwin Drood, for it is the house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman, and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The other—Eastgate House, now converted into a museum—is the "Nun's House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud and Helen Landless ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... boring society with the charms of their delightful suite, the most comfortable in the Institute, 'with three rooms more than it had in Villemain's time.' She must have told us this ten times, in the pompous voice of an auctioneer, and in the hearing of a friend living uncomfortably in rooms lately ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... it. He has got on wonderfully as upholsterer, decorator, and auctioneer. It is a very handsome one, with a garden that gets the prizes at the horticultural shows. They are thoroughly good people, but I was afraid afterwards that there had been a good deal of noisiness among the young folks at Christmas. Hubert Delrio was there, and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... the hotel a man named Montgomery. He had at different times been an auctioneer, a book-agent, a schoolmaster, and a traveling salesman. He was just now selling curiosities and Joe felt that he would be only too glad to do Felix Gussing a good turn if he were ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... by boats full of custom-house officials, boats full of diving boys, of vegetables, of wicker chairs and tables, of parrots, fruit, and "other articles too numerous to mention," as they say in the auctioneer's catalogues, and they knew that it was time ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... attache. vicegerent &c (deputy) 759; plenipotentiary. functionary, placeman^, 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^, dubash^, garnishee, gomashta^. negotiator, go-between; middleman; under agent, employe; servant &c 746; referee, arbitrator &c (judge) 967. traveler, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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
... Turkish crowd; and the bids ran high on this sale of humanity, until at last a beautiful creature, with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus, was led forth to the auctioneer's stand. She was young and surpassingly handsome, while her hearing evinced a degree of modesty that ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... 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 ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 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 ask ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... too?" asked De la Riviere. "I'll go with you to the camp," answered the auctioneer. "Fair play is all I care for. Pontiac will come out of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... 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 ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... 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
... fulfilment of every fantasy of an imagination revelling in various methods of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pictures, marbles, vases,—in brief, more shapes of luxury than there could be any object in enumerating, except for an auctioneer's advertisement,—and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Enjoying his usual poor health." He turned again to Margaret. "No one could mistake my father for an auctioneer. He has so few admirations. But he knew your father and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the faces of nearly all present; and even the auctioneer paused as he was opening his mouth, and with hammer uplifted in the air, prepared to listen. At the beginning of the story, many glanced involuntarily towards the portrait; but later on, all bent their attention solely on the narrator, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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
... 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 ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... "displenished" in 1826, Scott sent him the full-length portrait of himself by Raeburn, now at Abbotsford, saying that he did not hesitate to claim his protection for the picture, which was threatened to be paraded under the hammer of the auctioneer, and he felt that his interposition to turn aside that buffet might admit of being justified. "As a piece of successful art, many might fancy the acquisition, but for the sake of the original he knew no refuge where it was likely to find a truer welcome. The picture accordingly ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... worthless that if put up and sold to the highest bidder, the auctioneer would have to ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the rags of the auctioneer's bill, which he had before torn down with his umbrella, he stopped a moment to consider how he would act at once. In the first place he would tell his son that his threats were withdrawn, and would ask him to remain at Cosby Lodge. He would write the letter as he ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... is an impudent trader in sham antiquities and objects of virtu; Carmine, an artist constrained by poverty to aid and abet him in his nefarious proceedings; Brush is another confederate. In the second act a sale by auction is represented. Carmine appears as Canto the auctioneer; Puff figures as the Baron de Groningen, who is travelling to purchase pictures for the Elector of Bavaria. Lord Dupe, Bubble, Squander, and Novice, are fashionable patrons and collectors of art. The pictures to be submitted ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... was a sale of the household effects, the horses and general possessions of Medallion the auctioneer, who, though a Protestant and an Englishman, had, by his wits and goodness of heart, endeared himself to the parish. Therefore the notables among the habitants had gathered in his empty house for a last drink of good-fellowship—Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... years, had been trying his hand at many trades. And had not come out particularly well at any. A rolling stone gathers no moss. First, he had been clerk to Mr. Carlyle; next, he had been seduced into joining the corps of the Theatre Royal at Lynneborough; then he turned auctioneer; then travelling in the oil and color line; then a parson, the urgent pastor of some new sect; then omnibus driver; then collector of the water rate; and now he was clerk again, not in Mr. Carlyle's ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as 'Ephraim, Yahudi'—Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... presides at the desk at 160 New Bond Street. The individual differs, but the type remains unaltered. The waistcoat, the desk, the pens and the silver inkstand, such paraphernalia are as inseparable from him as the hammer is from the auctioneer. All this I have on the authority of Messrs. Dowdeswell themselves. When engaging their canvasser, they offered him a small table at the end of the room. Their ignorance of his art caused him to smile. "A table," he said, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... 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
... 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, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... manner was supposed to help even the non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company had just paid 20 per cent dividend—the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... meetin'-house folks would feel worse if any money got away from 'em at a fair. So Mr. Dishup he says, 'We'll auction of it off,' he says, 'and our honored and beloved friend, Mr. Phillips, will maybe so be kind enough to act as auctioneer.' So Eg, he got up and apologized for bein' chose, and went on to say what a all-'round no-good auctioneer he'd be but how he couldn't say no to the folks of the church where his dear diseased wife had worshiped so long, and then he started in to sell that comforter. Did he sell it? ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and develop. That is my picture. And what am I in the world? I will tell you. On certain days of the week I employ myself in editing a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery. On another day I act as auctioneer to a firm which imports and sells cheap Italian statuary; modern, very modern copies of the antique, florid marble vases, and so forth. Some of you who read may have passed such marts in different parts of the city, or even ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Mr. Speaker Colfax presided in rather a slap-dash-knock-'em-down-auctioneer style, greatly at variance with the decorous dignity of his predecessors, and he was ever having an eye to the nomination for Vice-President in 1869. The most popular man in the House was unquestionably James G. Blaine, who exercised ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... comedian, Tommy Watson, auctioneer," said Whimple softly, and then looking up he found Watson regarding ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... 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 ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... 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
... 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... 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 hell did ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... "Gentlemen," the red-faced auctioneer had shouted, "here's a buster; one of the kind you read about, wide as a wagon, with a leg on each corner. There's a ton of him, a whole ton. Who'll start him at three hundred? Why, he's as good as money ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... 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 ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... 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 ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a blind woman was led forward, and a withered-looking woman who was dumb, as the auctioneer, who generally praised up the merits of the prisoners, informed the buyers. The blind woman had strong hands, and was bought by a tavern-keeper, for whom she turns the handmill to this day; the dumb woman held ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... 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 takes a lot of wind to be ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... 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 ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... was advertised in the Sydney Gazette for sale by auction, Mr. Lord, the auctioneer, setting ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... 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. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... against one gentleman, and 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 nonchalant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... success, he extended it to the old furniture of his own palaces in Italy: "I wish to fit out the Gauls," said he; "it is a mark of friendship I owe to the brave performed the part Roman people." He himself, at these sales, performed the part of salesman and auctioneer, telling the history of each article to enhance the price. "This belonged to my father, Germanicus; that comes to me from Agrippa; this vase is Egyptian, it was Antony's, Augustus took it at the battle of Actium." The imperial sales ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... other applicants was 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 any sauce he would 'go ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... 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 a leading factor in their success. Mr. Jacob ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... he noticed at the farther end of the square a crowd of people, and walked towards them. On a platform stood a red-faced, burly auctioneer, with a straw hat and a loud voice, who was arguing with some one in the crowd of expectant buyers the impossibility of proceeding with the sale without a clerk to aid him. He was in the heat of the discussion, when his eye fell upon the intelligent face and fragile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... much as the applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in St. Lukes', and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... placed Waroona Downs in the hands of Gale, the local auctioneer, for sale. The one condition he had imposed was that the purchaser should be a resident of the district, a condition he had considered ample to prevent the property passing into the possession of one of the opposite—and ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... establishments. In 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
... serve as "town house" for one of Troy's great local families, Cai found a sparse company waiting for the sale to open, and noted with momentary dismay that Mrs Bosenna had not yet arrived. But after all, he reflected, there was no need for extreme punctuality, it would take the auctioneer some time ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of 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
... 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
... two opening numbers in the Century, and consider them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had forgotten the auctioneer. You have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Glyphic's death he had got 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
... indulgences engender disease, which make them very liable to sudden death; or their master may be killed in a duel, or at a horse-race, or in a drunken brawl; then his creditors are active in looking after the estate; and next, the blow of the auctioneer's hammer separates ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature can have such fancies! Now to me this room is exactly like any other room." And he added aloud, glancing away from the glass, where he was unfastening his necktie: "It's not a bad room at all." This, with the judicial air of an auctioneer. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... consisting of three brothers and two sisters. They were not people of wealth or show, but something much better. Henry lived in retirement in the country, not having an aptitude for business, but a sensible person in other respects. George was an auctioneer, but left business and became a very ardent missionary preacher; and Walter was a respectable physician. William was placed in easy circumstances by his marriage. Their sister Lucy, Mrs. Russel of New York, told me that she was very much amused one day by something that her brother William ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... 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 ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... was 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 ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... SAPBEA, 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Mr. ——, an inhabitant of Lewisham, in Kent, where he possessed a farm of considerable extent, and followed the business of an auctioneer, and was greatly respected in his neighbourhood. That night he dropped down in the house alluded to, when the people, supposing him dead, immediately gave the alarm, and the body was conveyed to the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... 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
... Victoria sits 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
... relating to the religious 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
... entertaining;—particularly the street orators and mountebanks in Piazza St. Marco;—the shops and stalls where chickens, ducks, &c. are sold by auction, comically enough, to the highest bidder;—a flourishing fellow, with a hammer in his hand, shining away in character of auctioneer;—the crowds which fill the courts of judicature, when any cause of consequence is to be tried;—the clamorous voices, keen observations, poignant sarcasms, and acute contentions carried on by the advocates, who seem more awake, or in their own phrase svelti than all the rest:—all ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... where the ashes of all shall repose until the rising of the just, when that which is born a natural body shall be raised a spiritual body, when this corruptible must put on incorruption, when this mortal must put on immortality, when death is swallowed up in victory." There you have Glasgow! An auctioneer's advertisement blent with an edifying sermon, a happy combination of commerce and Christianity, making the best of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... e vero," said a very great Lord Mayor, "e ben traviata." His lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in The Mill on the Floss, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready." But to quote from ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... is 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 ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 breathed ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk. Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Moniteur of to-day, and another 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 feuilletons here, of a famous scene in the Case de l'Oncle ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... sprinkling of those idlers who, without intending to purchase, frequent auctions to kill a morning. The sale was in full activity, and there was eager competition for the lot then up. The biddings succeeded each other so rapidly, that the auctioneer was scarcely able to repeat them. The object so many were eager to possess, was a portrait, which could hardly fail to attract the attention even of persons who know nothing of pictures. This painting, which possessed a very considerable amount of artistical merit, and had apparently been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... auction, and when I had bought a pen of 100, generally from Lord Ashburton's flock, paid the auctioneer's clerk as soon as possible and received a ticket permitting the release of the sheep, as the roads in all directions are soon crowded, I induced the shepherd to help in driving them to the railway-station. He was always a dear old fellow, and full of interesting information. On reaching the station ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... was 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 early part of the last century. It ceased ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... repeater. 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 House ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them; and weighs Homer and Maro in the balance. Teachers of literature give way, professors are vanquished, the whole mob is hushed, and no lawyer or auctioneer will speak, nor any other woman." The prospect of a learned wife filled the orthodox Roman with peculiar horror.[189] No Roman woman ever became a public professor as did Hypatia or, ages later, Bitisia Gozzadina, who, in the thirteenth century, became ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... is a good one—that an Act of 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 ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... 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 ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... of money 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 they whirl down ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... States, when he received a present of lions and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat. Being forbidden by his sovereign lords and masters, the imperial people, to accept of any gifts from foreign powers, the President sent them to an auctioneer, and the proceeds were deposited in the Treasury. In the same manner, when Captain Claret received his snuff-box and cane, he might have accepted them very kindly, and then sold them off to the highest bidder, perhaps to the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... 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
... it 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, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... prospered, but it was mostly in the hands of agents, in Danbury, Norwalk, Stamford and Middletown, and Barnum began to look around for some field for his individual energies. He tried travelling as a book auctioneer, but found it uncongenial and quit the business. In July, 1831, with his uncle Alanson Taylor, he opened a grocery and general store, but the venture was not particularly successful, and in the fall the partnership was dissolved, Barnum ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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, in the tilt of a head. Behind his sing-song of patter as he knocks down a piece ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... 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 two hundred thousand francs. Carefully educated by an artistic mother, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... not been able to pay his debts. The mortgage on the farm had been foreclosed. Day of sale had come. The sheriff stood on a box reading the terms of vendue. All payments to be made in six months. The auctioneer took his place. The old man and his wife and the children all cried as the piano, and the chairs, and the pictures, and the carpets, and the bedsteads went at half their worth. When the piano went, it seemed ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... there were 80 lots, which did not fetch particularly high prices, the highest being "The Colonel," who was bought, after winning the St. Leger, by George IV. for 4,000 guineas; but the horse broke down after running a dead heat at Ascot in 1831. He only realised 1,150 guineas, and was bought by the auctioneer, Mr. Tattersall. The next highest price given was for "Actaeon," which fetched 920 guineas. The total proceeds of the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... 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 congratulated her. Isabel thought very often of the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... construction the Reformation intervened and put a stop to the work. The monastery was dissolved, and the Crown offered the church to the townspeople for 500 marks. The citizens, however, declined the bargain, and the building passed from the hammer of the auctioneer to that of the house-breaker. Stripped of all that was saleable, the shell passed into the possession of one Edmund Colthurst, who made a present of it to the town. For forty years it remained practically ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... with our show in the old Mechanics' Hall (now the Yorkshire Penny Bank) at Keighley. A travelling auctioneer who was staying there a week engaged us to give our performances during the intervals at his sales. He paid us very well. But Mr Howard was in the habit of taking more drink than was good for him, and he dispensed with the "mummers" one by one, until there was scarce one of our celebrated actors ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... attended a sale by 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, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... thanks him profusely, and edges away with an inward vow to avoid his and the Auctioneer's eyes, as he would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... specially Jack Gallagher, the auctioneer, and we passed a few jokes. There was a whole bunch of wimen folks there, but I didn't meet none of them and they don't seem to visit round much, at least they don't come much to our house. I sometimes think the old woman is most as lonesome as ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... book relating to the religious 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 1825 and 1830. I shall feel obliged if any of your correspondents ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... annual ball. By way 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 over L10 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 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 respecting ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... deal of money 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 ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... translation of Rice, Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Richardson, 'the vainest and luckiest of authors' Riddel, Lady, her masquerade at Bath, at which Lord Byron appeared Ridge, printer Riga, the Greek patriot Roberts, Mr. (editor of the British Review) Robins, George, auctioneer Robinson Crusoe, the first part said to be written by Lord Oxford Rocca, M. de Rochdale estate Rochefoucault, 'always right' Sayings of Rogers, Samuel, esq., his 'Pleasures of Memory' His 'Jacqueline' 'The Tithonus of poetry' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 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 all events, had a due horror ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... when they 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 as ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... 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 appear she ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... 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
... from the first invention of Printing to the present time, all of which are in the most perfect condition, &c.: sold by auction by Mr. Jeffery, May, 1810, 8vo.—4809 articles. Another Catalogue of the same collection, elegantly printed in royal octavo, but omitting the auctioneer's notices of the relative value of certain editions, was published by Mr. Constable of Edinburgh, bookseller: with the prices and purchasers' names subjoined: and of which it is said only 250 copies are printed. The REV. MR. HEATH is reported ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the knowledge that if he should cease or falter four women might be on the street the next night, keeps him happy, and not even when he was county attorney or in the real estate business nor writing insurance, nor disporting himself as an auctioneer was Mr. Fenn ever in his own mind a person of so much use and consequence. So his Heaven needs no east wind to belly it out. Mr. Fenn's Heaven is full and fat and prosperous—even on two meals a day and in a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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
... initials and 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
... and a half. In the meantime I had been able to pay for all the furniture, through my roomers and singing and sewing, but the large house was too much for me, with sewing until twelve at night, and I concluded to take a smaller house and called on Mr. George Lamson, the auctioneer. He was Nance O'Neil's father and she was then a little girl. I selected what furniture I needed for the house on Washington street and he sold the rest. Four of the best roomers went with me to the new house, so I was sure I'd not fail ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... occurred. This evening I will make it known to the two girls and Miss Paterson, who must of course 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 to be ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... clerk of Windermere in the sixties, was a rare specimen. By trade an auctioneer and purveyor of Westmorland hams, he was known all round the countryside. He was very patronising to the assistant curates, and a favourite expression of his was "me and my curate." When one of his curates first took a wedding he was commanded by the clerk, "When you ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 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
... prices are absurdly 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
... Country to get rich in a short time; and, thinking the mines were close to this city, many of these joined the club. Charles Clarke was a prominent member, also W. M. Anderson, C. B. Tenniel, together with many of our young business men, viz., Arthur Keast, the brewer; Lumley Franklin, the auctioneer; S. Farwell, the civil engineer; H. C. Courtney, the barrister; H. Rushton and Joseph Barnett, of one of the banks; Ben Griffin, mine host of the Boomerang; Godfrey Brown, of Janion, Green & Rhodes; W. J. Callingham, of McCutcheon & Callingham, drapers (the latter, by ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... considered it their painful duty to remain awake. At the close of the services the good deacons would probably feel called upon to take the young man out behind the church and give him a little fatherly advice, the burthen of which would be to become an auctioneer or seek a situation as "spouter" for a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 the fair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... an overmantel, my dear," she had said to dubious Anastasia, when it was brought home. "I did not really mean to buy it, but I had not bought anything the whole morning, and the auctioneer looked so fiercely at me that I felt I must make a bid. Then no one else said anything, so here it is; but I dare say it will serve to smarten the room a ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... was Messrs. Sharke's agent, was bustling about, and I found him engaged with a fat, pompous little fellow, the auctioneer, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... that he 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
... 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
... presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... rich and 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
... House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker Colfax presided in rather a slap-dash-knock-'em-down-auctioneer style, greatly at variance with the decorous dignity of his predecessors, and he was ever having an eye to the nomination for Vice-President in 1869. The most popular man in the House was unquestionably James G. Blaine, who exercised a fascination over all, and whose ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... 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
... passed through the gates of the chateau, the rasping voice of the lean-jawed auctioneer reached my ears as he harangued in the drizzling rain before the steps of the chateau the group of peasants gathered before him—widows in rusty crepe veils, shrewd old Norman farmers in blue blouses looking for bargains, their carts wheeled up ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... owned 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 week of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... 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 ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... these, he had an old file of Sydney papers, and I soon became intimately acquainted with the localities of all the advertising tradesmen there. In particular, the rhetorical flourishes of Stubbs, the real-estate auctioneer, diverted me exceedingly, and I set him down as no other than a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... been in infirmary several times with them. His uncle and grandfather were clergymen; both dead now. He was once in a good position in a money office, and afterwards in the London and County Bank for nine years. Then he went with an auctioneer who broke, and he was left ill, old, and without any trade. "A clerk's place," says he, "is never worth having, because there are so many of them, and once out you can only get another place with difficulty. I have a brother-in-law on the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... 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 better information of the reader, that in the inventory ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... street, 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 ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... "likely young negro girl." Remembering that Emma had requested him to purchase a girl as a waiting maid for her, he examined the slave and found her in all respects the kind of house servant he desired. Going up to the auctioneer who had just mounted a bench for the purpose of selling the slave, he enquired where she had come from. The auctioneer responded by handing the doctor a small hand bill setting forth the sale. After reading it he walked up to the slave and commenced ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... a house in which all the rooms are on the ground-floor. An auctioneer's advertisement often runs—"large weatherboard cottage, twelve rooms, etc.," or "double-fronted brick cottage." The cheapness of land caused nearly all suburban houses in Australia to be built without ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... like an auctioneer's advertisement," Norah protested. "Tell us what it is like—the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... 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
... 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 ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... 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 was ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Gallas, mostly women, 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 which they examined the mouths ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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. They extend about ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... offering their superfluous furniture at public sale; and to the satisfaction of both Wilmer and his wife, the auctioneer returned them, after deducting his commissions, the net sum ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... and 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... was repeated, and the auctioneer waited for a higher one, but Nick retired ignominiously from ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... with fronts of carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has figured in both Great Expectations and Edwin Drood, for it is the house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman, and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The other—Eastgate House, now converted into a museum—is the "Nun's House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud and ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... "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 ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... as he left me no money, and only a little land, I put my estate into an auctioneer's hands, and determined to amuse my solitude with a trip to some of our fashionable watering-places. My house was now a desert to me. I need not say how the departure of my dear parent, and her children, left me ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sale," he cried, "same as if shoo were a cauf; and shoo goes to t' highest bidder." A roar of laughter greeted these words, but nobody had the courage to make a bid. Seeing that purchasers held back, Learoyd after the manner of an auctioneer, proceeded ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... an only son. Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer and auctioneer. You have distant cousins, Vaughans and Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named Price. I have written to none of them about your return because they never evinced any interest in me ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... cash, to the highest bidder!" said Dean Felporg, the auctioneer, standing behind his rostrum in the room where the conditions of the singular sale were ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... sells the oil?-There is a note sent up to Lerwick to publish the sale. An auctioneer comes down and it is generally sold on the spot, and the third part of ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... you can, an institution employing all these agencies, every one of them fully equipped and manned, and with streams of money flowing in to their support; no barren appeals from the pulpit for funds to pay expenses, and no auctioneer's ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... their heads together, and resolved to devote their ready cash (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:—Lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... much better employed in looking after her invalid than in boring society with the charms of their delightful suite, the most comfortable in the Institute, 'with three rooms more than it had in Villemain's time.' She must have told us this ten times, in the pompous voice of an auctioneer, and in the hearing of a friend living uncomfortably in rooms lately used for a ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... our streets so hideous. Far from seeking harmony, builders seem to be trying to “go” each other “one story better”; if they can belittle a neighbor in the process it is clear gain, and so much advertisement. Certain blocks on lower Broadway are gems in this way! Any one who has glanced at an auctioneer’s shelves when a “job lot” of books is being sold, will doubtless have noticed their resemblance to the sidewalks of our down town streets. Dainty little duodecimo buildings are squeezed in between towering in-folios, and richly ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the King, impatiently. "Is it an auctioneer's list of goods to be sold that you are hurrying over? Send your companion to me." Another page who stood at the door now entered, and to him the King gave the petition. The second page began by hemming and ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his 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
... Some of my men were placed with backs against the wall, whilst others were distributed amongst the chairs, all in plain clothes. During the sale the diamonds themselves were not displayed, but the box containing them rested in front of the auctioneer and three policemen in uniform ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... 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 ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... as though he were in 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
... satisfies the Board of Trade that 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 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 ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... again. I made them bring me out here. When your man came, just now, to learn if I would see you, I was on the point of sending for you, to ask if you didn't mean to go on. I wanted to judge what I'm letting you have. This sala is very grand," she pursued, like an auctioneer, moving a little, as I guessed, her invisible eyes. "I don't believe you often have lived in such ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... shops well-filled with goods bought on credit, carried on a flourishing trade till within a few days of their bills falling due, and then decamped, leaving their unfortunate and silly creditors to get paid from the wreck of the stock left in the shop. I knew an auctioneer who played this nefarious trick, leaving his creditors minus the enormous sum of 70,000l. He did not, however, long retain his ill-gotten wealth: how he got rid of it, I do not know; but I found him two years ago in Singapore, where ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... the 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, ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... if 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
... 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 ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... 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
... 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 ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... attended an auction in picturesque old Brunswick which continued three days; and coffee, beer, sandwiches and other refreshments were freely enjoyed at frequent intervals by nearly all present. Every one had a long breathing spell when the auctioneer, or any one of his numerous secretaries, sipped his ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... room to room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... There was the auctioneer, with his beautiful and inviting lithographic maps—all the lots as smooth and square and enticingly laid out as possible—and there were the speculators—and there, in the midst of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 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 out with countenances more beatified, bearing away his Penates—jeering and swearing over ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... 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 others he exclaimed ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... criticism takes no account whatever of one form of appeal to the emotions which has been brought by later art to a high pitch of perfection, but with which the personal feeling of the artist has not much more to do than the "passions" of an auctioneer's clerk have to do with the compilation of his inventory. A poet himself, Horace wrote for poets; to him the pathetic implied the ideal, the imaginative, the rhetorical; he lived before the age of Realism and ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... all the vocal part of his jaw shot off, and several useful portions of his epiglottis carried away. Totally unfitted for his business as auctioneer, he died some years after of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... come Thursday night, 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 on ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... 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 one ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... arbitrary a fashion. Surely the victim herself must see how foolish her enthusiasms appeared in the eyes of the poet's granddaughter. Katharine never made any attempt to spare people's feelings, he reflected; and, being himself very sensitive to all shades of comfort and discomfort, he cut short the auctioneer's catalog, which Katharine was reeling off more and more absent-mindedly, and took Mrs. Vermont Bankes, with a queer sense of fellowship in suffering, under ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... 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 ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... 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 ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... implements, and almost every kind of merchandise are sold at auction in the public market place. If a farmer wants to dispose of a horse or to buy a mowing machine, he avails himself of this auction and the services of a professional auctioneer. Such an individual was busily plying his vocation in front of the King's Head Hotel, and the roars of laughter from the farmers which greeted his sallies as he cried his wares certainly seemed to indicate that the charge that Englishmen can not appreciate humor—at least of a certain kind—is ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... of Rembrandt's dwellings in Amsterdam, we must finally follow him on his retirement, when, owing to his bankruptcy, his wonderful collection had been dispersed to the winds under the auctioneer's hammer, and when he had to leave his large house, the court allowing him to take only two stoves and some partitions in the attic. We have therefore to cross the entire town in its width and repair to its western extension, where he lived about ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat. Being forbidden by his sovereign lords and masters, the imperial people, to accept of any gifts from foreign powers, the President sent them to an auctioneer, and the proceeds were deposited in the Treasury. In the same manner, when Captain Claret received his snuff-box and cane, he might have accepted them very kindly, and then sold them off to the highest bidder, perhaps to the donor himself, who in that case would never have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the District, and in 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... 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 all ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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
... ran high on this sale of humanity, until at last a beautiful creature, with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus, was led forth to the auctioneer's stand. She was young and surpassingly handsome, while her hearing evinced a degree of modesty that challenged their ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... a very great Lord Mayor, "e ben traviata." His lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in The Mill on the Floss, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready." ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was, minus the very valuable collection of books, which were sold some time since by the present earl, and fetched a large sum, albeit many of the most valuable were destroyed in a fire which broke out at the auctioneer's where they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... stopped before the house of an old sea captain who had 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 ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Boswell, p. 430. The original letter to Macpherson was sold in Mr. Pocock's collection in 1875. It fetched 50, almost five times as much as Johnson was paid for his London. It differs from the copy, if we can trust the auctioneer's catalogue, where the following passage is quoted:—'Mr. James Macpherson, I received your foolish and impudent note. Whatever insult is offered me, I will do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself the law shall do ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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
... all its horrors came to him when he was about twenty-one years old. He had made a trip to New Orleans, and there in the old slave market he saw an auction. His face paled, and his spirits rose in revolt at the coarse jest of the auctioneer, and there he registered a vow within himself, "If ever I have a chance to strike against slavery, I will strike and strike hard." To this end he worked and for this he paid "the last full ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... Just as he would raise his voice to chant the new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of the auctioneer, "Going! going!"—it is the sobbing of the slave on the auction-block! And this, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight for them. The faith of your heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... much more). At nine a bell rings and the various auctioneers commence operations. A crowd is formed, and in a very few minutes a lot is sold off to traders who are well known, and who pay at the end of the week. The auctioneer then proceeds to the next group, which is disposed of in a similar way. Other auctioneers in various parts of the enormous shed erected for their accommodation do the same, and then, as more boats arrive, other cargoes are sold, the sailors bringing a hundred as ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... perished. As a matter of 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 them. It was more ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... 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 ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... 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
... 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
... 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 with horror. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... covered 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
... in Rome. There are charming women at his parties. But the twelve-line board and the dice-box pay for all. The Gods confound me if I did not lose two millions of sesterces last night. My villa at Tibur, and all the statues that my father the praetor brought from Ephesus, must go to the auctioneer. That is a high price, you will acknowledge, even ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sailor, he had soon tired of a life on the ocean 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 ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... finally to be scattered to the four winds. From here we sent back most of our horses and mules, with others from the Brigade, to an Auction sale at Prisches, where they were sold in a most entertaining manner by a French Auctioneer at good prices to the local inhabitants. Our Transport vehicles were sent to the Divisional ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... 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
... very busy with the hay harvest—until one day, at dinner-time, Henry Sisson asked if he'd started his courting; Jacob Sowerby cried that Tony'd been too slow in getting to work, for that the girl had been seen spooning in Crosby Shaws with Curbison the auctioneer, and the others (there were half-a-dozen of them lounging round the hay-waggon) burst into a boisterous guffaw. Anthony flushed dully, looking hesitatingly from the one to the other; then slowly put down his beer-can, and of a sudden, seizing Jacob by the neck, swung ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... slave mart at the foot of the fine statue erected in honor of Henry Clay, lived long in Paul's memory. Numbers of slaves were to be sold. The Captain and Paul pushed their way well to the front, so that they stood near the auctioneer. With feelings hard to describe, Paul saw slaves disposed of, singly and in parties. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters were bid for and sold, and the critical purchasers examined them as if they were prize cattle. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... 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
... 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 ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to tell 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 appear she went into the dining room where she ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... 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 which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... an Irish auctioneer at Kingston, some years ago, called Paddy Moran, whom all the world, priest and parson, minister and methodist, soldier and sailor, tinker and tailor, went to hear ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... remember what he "fetched at de sale", but he does distinctly remember that as he stepped up on the block to be sold, the auctioneer ran his hand "over my head and said: Genilmens, dis boy is as fine as split silk". Then when Mr. George Allen had bought all the Allen slaves, it dawned upon them, and they appreciated, why he had insisted on their being sold in Alabama, rather ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... one of the gradients some ten or a dozen scribes were 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 his black hair was held close to his head by ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 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 ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... of things attempted but not achieved, of misfortune and failure, of things used and abandoned for more coveted things. John had imagined himself performing great feats to win the love and favour of some beautiful woman ... but now he saw his adventure in love ending in a loud-voiced auctioneer mouthing jokes over a ruined home. Behind these piles of books and pictures and clothes and furniture, one might see young couples bravely setting out on their little ships of love to seek their fortunes, light-heartedly ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... last 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
... positively no 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
... all places and parties,—at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock's, at Robins's the auctioneer's, at Sir Humphrey Davy's, at Sam Rogers's,—in short, in most kinds of company, and always found him very convivial ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and so desperate is the situation that they are willing to get them at the price of self-respect. Hence come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Chapman, and play Svengali to our Trilby. These gentlemen use the methods and the tricks of the auctioneer—the blandishments of the bookmaker—the sleek, smooth ways of ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... prize, which was advertised in the Sydney Gazette for sale by auction, Mr. Lord, the auctioneer, setting ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... continually seem to soften and develop. That is my picture. And what am I in the world? I will tell you. On certain days of the week I employ myself in editing a trade journal that has to do with haberdashery. On another day I act as auctioneer to a firm which imports and sells cheap Italian statuary; modern, very modern copies of the antique, florid marble vases, and so forth. Some of you who read may have passed such marts in different parts of the city, or even have dropped in ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the blow 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 ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hogshead of 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 for the price ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "making a bit." African Jungle? A shooting gallery with model lions and bears. Fine Art Exhibition? A picture of the hanging of recent murderers. Boxing Ring? Yes, for women—they strip to the waist and fight like fiends. Then look at the lady auctioneer selling brass ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... 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 white ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... 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
... poor health." He turned again to Margaret. "No one could mistake my father for an auctioneer. He has so few admirations. But he knew your father and admired ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... having been put aside for want of a bidder, a fine cow was put up, and all the usual cajoling and seductive provocations to competition and purchase were held out, but in vain. Every nourish of the bailiff, who acted as auctioneer, was lost, as it were, on empty space, and might as well have been uttered in a desert. Butter-casks, kitchen' vessels, and everything on which the impress could be affixed, was marked with the hated brand of "tithe." ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 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
... earth, what I most yearned for in those days were the works of Jacob Behmen. And the auctioneer put up a copy containing "The Aurora or Morning Rednesse," English version (circa 1636), and I bid. One dollar—one dollar ten cents—twenty—twenty-five; my heart palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be outbid, when ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... continual indulgences engender disease, which make them very liable to sudden death; or their master may be killed in a duel, or at a horse-race, or in a drunken brawl; then his creditors are active in looking after the estate; and next, the blow of the auctioneer's hammer separates ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... between her long, slim fingers, replied in a sharp voice: "Oh, it's fair fighting! We don't hold the same political views, you know. That fellow Manoury, who's making no end of money, would lick the Emperor's boots. For my part, if I were an auctioneer, I wouldn't keep him in my service ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... distantly a tower to view, and a murky web, not without colour: the ever-flying banner of the metropolis, the smoke of the city's chimneys, if you prefer plain language. At a first inspection of the house, Lady Dunstane did not like it, and it was advertized to be let, and the auctioneer proclaimed it in his dialect. Her taste was delicate; she had the sensitiveness of an invalid: twice she read the stalking advertizement of the attractions of Copsley, and hearing Diana call it 'the plush of speech,' she shuddered; she decided that a place where her husband's family had lived ought ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Montreal that our hero met Alexander Henry, ex-fur-trader and adventurer and coureur de bois—then a merchant and King's auctioneer—a notable personage and leader in many a wild exploit in the far West, an old though virile man after Isaac's ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... was a Scotsman—a big, broad-shouldered Sawney—formidable in 'slacks,' as he called his trousers, and terrific in kilts; while Grimes was a native of Swillingford, an ex-schoolmaster and parish clerk, and now an auctioneer, a hatter, a dyer and bleacher, a paper-hanger, to which the wits said when he set up his paper, he added ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... gentleman who presided at the desk in the Dore Gallery now presides at the desk at 160 New Bond Street. The individual differs, but the type remains unaltered. The waistcoat, the desk, the pens and the silver inkstand, such paraphernalia are as inseparable from him as the hammer is from the auctioneer. All this I have on the authority of Messrs. Dowdeswell themselves. When engaging their canvasser, they offered him a small table at the end of the room. Their ignorance of his art caused him to smile. "A table," he said, "would necessitate sitting down to write, and the great point in ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... place again. I made them bring me out here. When your man came, just now, to learn if I would see you, I was on the point of sending for you, to ask if you didn't mean to go on. I wanted to judge what I'm letting you have. This sala is very grand," she pursued, like an auctioneer, moving a little, as I guessed, her invisible eyes. "I don't believe you often have lived in such a ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... 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
... next act will be Abraham Lincoln at the Slave auction. (Auctioneer and slaves. Sells several slaves. Class bid and carry on ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... 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 forked ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... encumbent upon him, as the heir to a marquisate, to obtain what he wanted, let who would have a hankering after the same article. It is in this way that pictures are so well sold at auctions; and Lord Dumbello regarded Miss Grantly as being now subject to the auctioneer's hammer, and conceived that Lord Lufton was bidding against him. There was, therefore, an air of triumph about him as he put his arm round Griselda's waist and whirled her up and down the room in obedience to the music. Lady Lufton and her son were ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... can, an institution employing all these agencies, every one of them fully equipped and manned, and with streams of money flowing in to their support; no barren appeals from the pulpit for funds to pay expenses, and no auctioneer's hammer profaning the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... 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
... an auctioneer's advertisement," Norah protested. "Tell us what it is like—the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... exquisite flowers known, and the only 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 ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... time within a short radius of the Cross. To the son, however, the lines have fallen in more pleasant places, for his mansion at Kilmardinny, near Milngavie, is one of the most "highly desirable residences" (as an auctioneer would phrase it) in the West of Scotland. The grounds or policies attached to the house extend to 140 acres, and within recent years Mr. Dalglish has expended a great deal of both money and taste on his ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Corcoran, was born in 1798. He began his business career in Georgetown, but for many years he has been a resident of Washington. At twenty he went into business for himself, beginning as an auctioneer. After several years of successful business he was obliged to suspend, during the depressed ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... 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 Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... 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 is languid, and ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... against the wall, whilst others were distributed amongst the chairs, all in plain clothes. During the sale the diamonds themselves were not displayed, but the box containing them rested in front of the auctioneer and three policemen in uniform stood guard on ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... him to adopt the plan pursued by the President of the United States, when he received a present of lions and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat. Being forbidden by his sovereign lords and masters, the imperial people, to accept of any gifts from foreign powers, the President sent them to an auctioneer, and the proceeds were deposited in the Treasury. In the same manner, when Captain Claret received his snuff-box and cane, he might have accepted them very kindly, and then sold them off to the highest bidder, perhaps ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the course of two or three years. Of all the family, Charlie was the one that caused his friends the most anxiety. He was a fine, spirited, intelligent boy; and Uncle Josie had promised to procure a situation for him, with his son-in-law, a commission-merchant and auctioneer, in New York. This plan was very pleasing to Mrs. Hubbard and Miss Patsey; but, unfortunately, Charlie seemed to have no taste for making money, and a fondness for pictures and pencils, that amounted almost to a passion. Here was an unexpected obstacle; Charlie was the pet and spoiled child of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... 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 articles of furniture—a clock, a water pitcher, a towel rack. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... merchandise are sold at auction in the public market place. If a farmer wants to dispose of a horse or to buy a mowing machine, he avails himself of this auction and the services of a professional auctioneer. Such an individual was busily plying his vocation in front of the King's Head Hotel, and the roars of laughter from the farmers which greeted his sallies as he cried his wares certainly seemed to indicate that the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... quitted them all (the 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 ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... confidence)—look at my own case. Being obliged to leave the country, and give up my carriage, I put my horse into this sale, at a very low reserve of twenty pounds. (Entre nous, it's worth at least double that.) Between the Auctioneer, and a couple of rascally horse-dealers—who I found out, by pure accident, wanted my animal particularly for a match pair—the sale of my horse is what they call "bunnicked up." Then they come to me, and offer me money. I spot their ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... 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. Who can reprove too severely the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... two steps, pushed at a door, and instantly found yourself in the principal reception-room, which no earthly blanket could possibly have covered. Behind this chamber could be seen obscurely an apartment so tiny that an auctioneer would have been justified in terming it "bijou," Furnished simply but practically with a slopstone; also the beginnings of a stairway. The furniture of the reception-room comprised two chairs and a table, one or two saucepans, and some antique crockery. What lay at ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a principle in human nature not so artificial as it appears: Man may be well defined a mimetic animal. The African boy, who amused the whole kafle he journeyed with, by mimicking the gestures and the voice of the auctioneer who had sold him at the slave-market a few days before, could have had no sense of scorn, of superiority, or of malignity; the boy experienced merely the pleasure of repeating attitudes and intonations which had so forcibly excited his interest. The numerous parodies ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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
... It was one of the rules of the school that no tradesmen's daughters should be admitted, but it was very difficult to draw the line, and when drawn, the Misses Pratt were obliged to admit it was rather ridiculous. There was much debate over an application by an auctioneer. He was clearly not a tradesman, but he sold chairs, tables and pigs, and, as Miss Hannah said, used vulgar language in recommending them. However, his wife had money; they lived in a pleasant house in Lewes, and the line went outside ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... and shipped 72 dozen pair of knee pants to New York, and wrote the auctioneer to send a check ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... hands a catalogue of household goods to be sold the very next day, a few miles off, at Oakfield Lodge. The one-horse car was again put in requisition, and our hostess—the kindest of women—accompanied us to the sale, and by nodding at intervals to the auctioneer, procured all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... 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
... 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 positively to live. Their continued ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... he refers to the 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 qualities of a certain ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... 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 others were purchased much in the same manner; the remainder ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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 wrote, saying that he should be unable to be present when the books were sold, but that he wished ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "debt-raiser," and had seen him at work—a burly, bustling, vulgar man who took possession of the pulpit as if it were an auctioneer's block, and pursued the task of exciting liberality in the bosoms of the congregation by alternating prayer, anecdote, song, and cheap buffoonery in a manner truly sickening. Would it not be preferable, he feebly suggested, to raise the money by a festival, or fair, or some other form of entertainment ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 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, John ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 in ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... 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 ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... just startin' when we get there. The auctioneer is in the judge's stand at the track 'n' the hosses is ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... 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, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the room he had loved, the Dead Man looked about him at the dear old bits of furniture and ornaments that had meant so much to him and whose fate he had just heard weighed between auctioneer's ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... the ditch. I know just how sustaining you can be. Never mind. I'll forgive your slighting remarks about me, and give you the vacant place on the front seat. Now, good people," she put on the business-like expression of an auctioneer, "who bids for the back seat of the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 of time the needful machinery was obtained from Macclesfield, with an ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Pyecroft," she called again to the clergyman. "This way." And she collected her silken skirt, and swished up two flights of stairs and into a bedroom at the back, where she turned on the light. "A very comfortable room," she went on in the voice of a tired and very superior auctioneer. "Just vacated by a Wall Street broker and his wife; very well-connected people. Bed and couch; easy-chairs; running hot and cold water. And for it I'm making a special summer rate, with board, of only twenty-five dollars a ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... attracted a great crowd of connoisseurs and others; when, in the moment of a very interesting piece being put up, Mr. Pope entered the room. All was in an instant, from a scene of confusion and bustle, a dead calm. The auctioneer, as if by instinct, suspended his hammer. The audience, to an individual, as if by the same impulse, rose up to receive the poet; and did not resume their seats till he had reached the ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... only one who would work; "Mais quelle litterature que 'Les Memoires d'un Colonel de Hussards!'" he exclaimed in horror.[*] Another plan for becoming colossally rich of which he talked seriously, was to gain a monopoly of all the arts, and to act as auctioneer to Europe: to buy the Apollo Belvedere, for instance, let all the nations compete for it against each other, and then to sell to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... 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 mystery of the night. And these jocose, heavy-jowled, smoke-soused ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... middle life. It was the young horse that caught Hartigan's eye. It was rising three, a well-built skeleton, but with a readiness to look alert, a full mane and tail, and a glint of gold on the coat that had a meaning and a message for the horse-wise. The auctioneer was struggling ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of his half- boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village church. The humble homes of England, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... making us happy, not forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred little lavender bags, with pretty little bows on them, all sewn by herself, to keep our linen sweetly perfumed. It's nice to think that they all mean well, and I always follow the advice of the auctioneer what was trying to pass off a plated teapot as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... of Mr. Roscoe's library, which had consisted of scarce and foreign books, from many of which he had drawn the materials for his Italian histories. It had passed under the hammer of the auctioneer, and was dispersed about the country. The good people of the vicinity thronged liked wreckers to get some part of the noble vessel that had been driven on shore. Did such a scene admit of ludicrous associations, we might imagine something whimsical in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... speed of one thousandth of a second," announced Uncle Teddy, displaying all the fine points of his treasure like an auctioneer. "Won't I get some great pictures of you folks diving, though!" And he stood looking at the thing in his hands as if he did not quite believe it was real. Then he came to himself with a start and tossed the pack of letters to Katherine to distribute, remarking that his good fortune ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... was no longer hers, neither 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 I ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... equal success, would have convinced Raymond, 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,' whereof I hope to give him signal proofs ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... all the furniture, through my roomers and singing and sewing, but the large house was too much for me, with sewing until twelve at night, and I concluded to take a smaller house and called on Mr. George Lamson, the auctioneer. He was Nance O'Neil's father and she was then a little girl. I selected what furniture I needed for the house on Washington street and he sold the rest. Four of the best roomers went with me to the new house, so I was sure I'd not fail for awhile ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... at a better time, and our trip promised to be one of interest. His highness's postmaster, a gigantic warrior,[7] waited on us to furnish mules and guides. Cesarea Petrarca, gentleman, of Cattaro, hairdresser, auctioneer, and appraiser, ex-courier, formerly chef de cuisine to the Vladika—an "homme capable," as he not unaptly styled himself, attended us to cook and interpret; and we started for Cettigna on the 17th of November, about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... 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
... 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, for cash is not abundant here. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... removing her gloves, would lightly strike a chord or two. The 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
... his wife, who was left behind without means of support. Their house was searched for papers, but without result, and the man—a member of the Afrikander Bond—was sent back, after eighteen months' deportation, without any charge having been made against him. He was an auctioneer and shipping agent, and during his absence his business was annexed by a rival. One British Colonial, who held office at Stellenbosch, said to one family, without even making an inquiry as to their conduct, "You are rebels and I will take your mules"—which was done. The mules were afterwards ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... 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 together, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that 'bidders might satisfy themselves' whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of 'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... dear, is valued precisely at cost price," retorted Mr. Pennycoop, who, as an auctioneer of twenty years' experience, had enjoyed much opportunity of testing the attitude ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... here was the fulfilment of every fantasy of an imagination revelling in various methods of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pictures, marbles, vases,—in brief, more shapes of luxury than there could be any object in enumerating, except for an auctioneer's advertisement,—and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear up against the effect which Zenobia sought ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... "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
... 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 ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 a lawyer, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 out ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... English novelist, whose real name was Frederick John Fargus, was born December 26, 1847, the son of a Bristol auctioneer. His early ambition was to lead a seafaring life, and with this object he entered the school frigate Conway—from which he took his pseudonym—then stationed on the Mersey. His father was against the project, with the result that Conway ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Allen passed a warehouse where slaves were being sold at auction. A crowd had gathered inside. Several Negroes were standing on a platform called an auction block. One by one they stepped forward. A man called an auctioneer asked in a loud voice, "What am I offered? Who ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... a change was presaged by an abrupt muting of that murmured conversation between the beautiful Russian and the almost equally beautiful Englishwoman. An inquisitive look discovered the princess sitting slightly forward and intently watching the auctioneer. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the 13th, after having sold all our goods that were saleable, making our way to the Iron Bark Gully. William enacted the part of auctioneer, which he did in a manner most satisfactory to himself, and amusing to his audience; but the things sold very badly, so many were doing the same. The tents fetched only a few shillings each, and the tools, cradles, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... that here would be 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 gesture ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the odd old Houses: the Quay: the really grand Inn (Duke's Head, in the Market place) and the civil, Norfolk-talking, People. I went to Hunstanton, which is rather dreary: one could see the Country at Sandringham was good. I enquired fruitlessly about those Sandringham Pictures, etc.: even the Auctioneer, whom I found in the Bar of the Inn, could tell nothing of where they ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... It is a stout octavo volume of 400 pages, containing a good selection of specimens from the earliest era, concluding with Sam. Daniel, in the reign of James I. Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper was the wife of an auctioneer, who had been a chum of Oldys's in the Fleet Prison, where he died a debtor; and it was to aid his widow that Oldys edited ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the ship, one of them given for the benefit of the Seamen's Orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters—"Charley" he called her—played a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his autographs were sold at auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one autographed postal card brought twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the record price for a single Mark Twain signature. He wore his white suit on this occasion, and in the course of his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... actual guilt, but likewise from [every] foul imputation, nor was he afraid lest any should turn it to his reproach, if I should come to follow a business attended with small profits, in capacity of an auctioneer, or (what he was himself) a tax-gatherer. Nor [had that been the case] should I have complained. On this account the more praise is due to him, and from me a greater degree of gratitude. As long as I am ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Arabella, for scarcely was Mildred gone to her southern home when the red flag of the auctioneer waved from the windows of Mr. Greenleaf's luxurious house, which, with its costly furniture, was sold to the highest bidder, and the family were left dependent upon their own exertions for support. When the first shock was over, Mr. Greenleaf proposed that his daughter ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 better information of the reader, that in the inventory ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... preacher owned 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 week of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... 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 and red ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... up of a good library, 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... America. She had kept her head in spite 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
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