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More "Parson" Quotes from Famous Books



... he was the man who worked the land of Madame Le Maitre. "One does not go and come from Cloud Island in one day at this season," said he. "'Tis three days ago since I came. I've been waiting up at the parson's for the schooner. To-day we're going ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... Parson John, Rector of Glendow, glanced down at the little muffled figure at his side. He reached over, tucked in the robes more closely about their feet, and spoke one word to Midnight. The horse, noble animal that she was, bounded ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... before it is wanted, and the waste of so much time and labour of the teacher can never be repaid. Too much is expected from precocity, and too little performed. Miss —— was an instance of early cultivation, but in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... of Lord Byron and four others, and was, now and then, increased by the presence of a neighbouring parson. As for our way of living, the order of the day was generally this:—for breakfast we had no set hour, but each suited his own convenience,—every thing remaining on the table till the whole party had done; though had one wished to breakfast at the early hour of ten, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... having again lost his temper, which was rare. The red-faced man he left stood still, his lips parted, the large yellow teeth showing. "It's that damned parson," he said. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... features were noble, but they were those of a lion." {329a} Again, in The Romany Rye, he makes the man in black say with reference to the Bible Society:- "There is one fellow amongst them for whom we entertain a particular aversion: a big, burly parson, with the face of a lion, the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like a sledge-hammer." {329b} Who these two worthies were it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... explain the fallacy of accent to be the mistake of laying the stress upon the wrong part of a sentence. Thus when the country parson reads out, 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' with a strong emphasis upon the word 'against,' his ignorant audience leap [sic] to the conclusion that it is not amiss to tell lies provided they be ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... clinging to Plymouth Rock. Isaac Sutherland, her father, had been knowing in horse-flesh, and would have looked askance on the Reverend Orme Leighton as a suitor had he not also been knowing in men. The truth was that in Leighton the man was bigger than the parson, and to the conceded fact that all the world loves a lover he added the prestige of the less-bandied truth that all the world loves a fighter. He, also, knew horse-flesh. He finally won Ann's father over on the day when Ike Sutherland learned to his cost that the Reverend Orme could ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... platform by his Chairman, Sir John Corbett, and by the other members of his projected Committee: by Lady Corbett, by Fanny, by the Rector, by Mr. Thurston of the Elms, Wyck-on-the-Hill; by Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank; Mr. Jackson, of Messrs. Jackson, Cleaver and Co., solicitors; Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Temple of Norton-in-Mark, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott; and by his secretary, Miss Barbara Madden. The body of the hall was packed. Beneath him, in the front row, ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... about it. He'd make one of your snivelling white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work. Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old woman, and you, too, my young cock, I've suspicioned that something of this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him by sending him to college. I'll ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... on terms with them—Parson Geddes on a big seventeen-hand bay which he used to ride in those days, and Squire Foley, who rode as a feather-weight, and made his hunters out of cast thoroughbreds from the Newmarket sales; but ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... parson of Meudon; but his characters are too fond of talking slang:—Voltaire; but he disheartens men by always bantering them:—Moliere; but he hinders one's laughter by making one think:—Lesage; let us stop at him. Being profound rather ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... people joined us by invitation; my sister Rosalind and her husband, any girl Johnny Potter was for the moment in love with, and friends of Peacock's, Juke's, or mine. Juke would sometimes bring a parson in; this was rather widening for us, I think, and I dare say for the parson too. To Juke it was part of the enterprise of un-Potterising the Church, which was on his mind a good deal. He said it needed ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... stir; had it been any Star but a malignant Star, I had waited on your Ladyship: but these malignant Stars are very pernicious Stars. Nephew, take my Lady Knowell, Mr. Fainlove my Daughter; and Bartholomew do you conduct my Lady, the Parson stays for you, and the Coaches are at ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing, And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring; And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church, Would not have bandy children, ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake

... inside-out, that every body may have a view of it. But above all, explain to us, what was at the bottom of that same impeachment: I am sure I never liked it; for at that very time, a dissenting preacher in our neighbourhood, came often to see our parson; it could be for no good, for he would walk about the barns and stables, and desire to look into the church, as who should say, These will shortly be mine; and we all believed he was then contriving some alterations against he got into ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... hear, TOBY, what the weeping widow said to the parson, who asked, 'Was your husband resigned to die?' 'He had ter be,' she said, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various

... according to the common law, has a right to be buried in his own churchyard, or, as it is sometimes put, in the churchyard of the parish where he dies. But the churchyard, as well as the church itself, is the freehold of the parson, who can in many respects deal with it as if it were a private estate. A statute of Edward I. (35, st. 2) speaks of the churchyard as the soil of the church, and the trees growing in the churchyard "as amongst the goods of the church, the which laymen have no authority ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Bar you first taught me to score, And bid me be free of my Lips, and no more; I was kiss'd by the Parson, the Squire, and the Sot, When the Guest was departed, the Kiss was forgot. But his Kiss was so sweet, and so closely he prest, That I languish'd and pin'd till I granted ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... slumbering ocean, I voraciously convey to my lips with my discolored fingers. At seven o'clock I return to tea, at which repast we each tell the story of our day's work. For poor Miss Blunt, it is day after day the same story: a wearisome round of visits to the school, and to the houses of the mayor, the parson, the butcher, the baker, whose young ladies, of course, all receive instruction on the piano. But she doesn't complain, nor, indeed, does she look very weary. When she has put on a fresh calico dress for tea, and arranged her hair anew, and with these improvements ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... her feet to follow them. The lower order of the audience, eager for amusement, put their own humorous construction on the young lady's action. They roared with laughter. "Let the parson and his sweetheart be," they called out; "two's company, miss, and three isn't." Mr. Wyvil interposed his authority and rebuked them. A lady seated behind Francine interfered to good purpose by giving her ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... feel, and nothing can take away the brand, and the pain, and the soreness, except being cleared. If I were to say 'yes' to you to-night, Jim, and let you love me, and kiss me, and by and by take me afore the parson, and make me your lawful wife—I—I wouldn't be the sort of girl you really love. The brand would be there, and the soreness, and the shame, and the dreadful words would keep ringing in my ears, 'You are a ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... me the man as loves the Squire, The Parson, and the Beak; And labours twelve good hours a day For ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... the little clergyman come near him again, and I was watchful for any sign that his mind had been troubled. But he made none. He talked once about "that parson chap." ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... become converted, but the state took the same resolution, and the members of the Parliament, who were minded to distinguish themselves by a little more stubbornness, adopted the same course twenty-four hours afterwards. All this was done gently, without violence or disorder. There is only a parson named Chambrun, patriarch of the district, who persists in refusing to listen to reason; for the president, who did aspire to the honor of martyrdom, would, as well as the rest of the Parliament, have turned Mohammedan, if I had desired it. You would not believe how ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... personages, who are left in the other room, is extremely dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce, and spit again. The ladies look at each other's dresses till they know every pin by heart; talk of Parson Somebody's last sermon on the day of judgment, or Dr. T'otherbody's new pills for dyspepsia, till the 'tea' is announced, when they all console themselves together for whatever they may have suffered in keeping awake, by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and custard, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... do not Thou forget me." We are disposed to have our tight little crystallizations of what prayer should or should not be. Frank Nelson was impatient of such, for he ventured upon a scale more broad than that envisioned by the average parson or layman. There are no theological concepts which ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... an audience for the fiddles this Saturday—there are two lady violinists now, both very good players—but we had only a short spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term for my own business)—"Every man to his own chest-lid and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... brethren and fetch them with speed The Surgeon affrighted said, The Parson and the Undertaker, Let them hasten ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... Oxford, where he spent his more youthful Age, that he was chosen University Orator, a place which required one of able parts to Mannage it; at last, taking upon him Holy Orders, not without special Encouragement from the King, who took notice of his extraordinary Parts, he was made Parson of Bemmerton near Salisbury, where he led a Seraphick life, converting his Studies altogether to serious and Divine Subjects; which in time produced those his so generally known and ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... perhaps; only gettin' married isn't all just goin' to the parson. After the ceremony the rent begins and the grocers' bills and the butchers' and the bakers' and a thousand or so more. Somebody's got to pay 'em, and the money's got to come from somewhere. Your wages here, Al, poetry counted in, ain't so very big yet. Better wait a spell ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... The parson who made this reply was a little old man, of about seventy or seventy-five years of age, of a very lean figure, much bent and slightly twisted. He wore a grey coat with a very narrow collar, an old-fashioned waistcoat of ribbed black silk, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... if Fitz-Warene had never died. And then that great event, which ought to be the foundation of your fortune, would be perfectly thrown away. Lady Maud, at the best, is nothing more than twenty thousand pounds and a fat living. Besides, she is engaged to that parson ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... do; it comes the nearest to looking like a lark of anything that we have had in a long time. I say, Parson, go off about your business and let us alone. We was having a good time getting acquainted till you come and spoiled it. We'll be as sober as nine deacons at a prayer-meetin'. And look out how you insult this young woman; she's a friend ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... a poor country parson and there seemed no way to fill the doctor's prescription. At this juncture grandma, like the charming fairy godmother that she was, appeared on the scene. She knew a quiet spot (one of the few ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater

... soft earth, and yet there was pleasure in the gipsying life, and high cheer in the fire of sticks built in the field by some bold spirit, who hung over it a tin kettle to boil for tea. They never forgot the gentry they had caught sight of riding or driving by on the road, the parson who came to talk, and the occasional groups of ladies from the "great house" who came into the gardens to walk about and look at the bins and ask queer questions in their gentry-sounding voices. They never knew anything, and they always seemed to be entertained. Sometimes ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Skinner, "and say—there's a parson at Albuquerque." Then he groaned loudly, and fell ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... pursued his way north-westward unchallenged, and at last came to a roadside inn, which he thought looked safe. He walked in, and found half a dozen decent-looking men sitting round a fire and smoking. One of them was a parson, and another was one of the parish overseers. It was about half-past ten, and they were not merry, but a trifle boozy and stupid. Zachariah called for a pint of beer and some bread and cheese, and asked if he ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... in the divorce and married another wife, he should not be king a month longer, and in the estimation of Almighty God not one hour longer, but should die a villain's death. The Maid of Kent, with her accomplices—Richard Martin, parson of the parish of Aldington; Dr. Bocking, canon of Christ Church, Canterbury; Deering; Henry Gold, a parson in London; Hugh Rich, a friar, and others—was brought before the Star Chamber, and adjudged to stand in St. Paul's during sermon-time; the majority being afterwards executed. In Cranmer's ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The modern spelling of any particular name Is a pure accident. Before the Elementary Education Act of 1870 a considerable proportion of English people did not spell their names at all. They trusted to the parson and the clerk, who did their best with unfamiliar names. Even now old people in rural districts may find half a dozen orthographic variants of their own names among the sparse documentary records of their lives. Dugdale the antiquary is said to have ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... free contributions they had made for religious purposes was the penny dropped on the plate on Sunday, so the appeal to make a sacrifice to secure stated ordinances, was to them a novelty. An Englishman asked, 'When had the King become unable to pay the parson?' His visits also made him aware that there were many children unbaptised and that not one of those who told him they were church members had received the communion since they had left the Old Country. His resolution was taken—he would ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... sir," cried Mrs. McAravey, satirically, "but I think ma mon and mysel' knows our duties, and can teach the wains, too, wi'out any parson comin' to help us. A pretty thing to tell us we knows nothing o' the Saviour! I can tell you, mon, I've walked more miles o' the Sawbath to my place o' worship than some folks as I ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... our way to pick up a body I went with one of the stretcher-bearers and a priest and a parson to warn them ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... Lincoln, and allowed to retain the deanery of Westminster and the rectory of Walgrave; in fact the number of preferments he held was so large that Dr. Heylyn remarks that 'he was a perfect diocese within himself, as being bishop, dean, prebend, residentiary, and parson, all at once.' Williams held the post of Lord Keeper until 1626, when he was deprived of his office, and various charges, including one of betraying the King's secrets, were brought against him by Archbishop Laud, his great enemy. He was found guilty of subornation of perjury in defending himself ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... after this a country parson received a letter from a hare-brained member of his flock, who for many years had been good enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a volunteer regiment, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... heard the like afore," said Tom Barlow, as he and his messmate, Ned Trunnion, were talking over the affair of the previous day. "The skipper says as how there is no such thing as ghosts; and I suppose, seeing as how he has as much larning as a parson, he knows all about it. It don't come ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... entry in his diary canonising Bridget. As the Archbishop had been his tutor, Coke may have expected him to overlook this little transgression. Instead of this, the pious Primate at once ordered a suit to be instituted in his Court against the bridegroom, the bride, the parson who had married them, and the bride's father, Lord Burghley, who had given her away. Lord Campbell says that "a libel was exhibited against them, concluding for the 'greater excommunication' as the ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... method of forcing lilies of the valley is within the reach of any one who has even a small garden and a warm house, and these two things are becoming more and more common among us every day.—A Gloucestershire Parson, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... suggested anything but durance vile. From not very far away the aromatic smell of a clove warehouse located us, not disagreeably, at the farther end of one of Sindbad's journeys, and the birds in the mango branches cried and were colorful with hues and notes of merry extravagance. Zanzibar is no parson's paradise—nor the center of much high society. It reeks of unsavory history as well as of spices. But it has its charms, and the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... said Miss Vilda to her conscience, doggedly; but she knew better. The parson, the text,—or was it the bird?—had brought the message; but for the moment she did not lend the hearing ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... black mare of his which was in love with a young brown horse over at the Dean's, and which plunged madly if any other horse came near her, but, on the other hand, put her head coaxingly on one side and whinnied "like a dainty girl" whenever the parson's horse came that way—well, at that they had to give in, as well first ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... Sir Philip, "is her avowed Preference for this parson. Surely it is very indelicate in any lady to let all the world know with whom she is in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... it," said Sharpe confidently; "it's cos he WALKED. Nat'rally, you'd think he'd RIDE, being high and mighty, and that's where, ez the parson will tell ye, wot's merely fi-nite and human wisdom errs! Ef that feller had ridden, he'd have had to come by this yer road, and by this yer forge, and stop a spell like any other. But it was foreordained that he should ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... clear, vivid, strong. It opens with a beautiful description of an old-fashioned country church, with its high and square pews, in which the devout worshippers could not be seen by one another, nor even by the parson. This functionary went to church in top-boots, and, after his short sermon of platitudes, dined with the squire, and spent the remaining days of the week in hunting or fishing, and his evenings in playing cards, quietly drinking his ale, and smoking ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... the title. At first it was rather amusing. Now it appears it is registered in Heaven's chancery and hedged about with divine ordinances. Only the other day an unknown parson requested me to open a church bazaar, and I gathered he had received his instructions direct ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... wants you to take supreme command against the beetles," he told Tommy, when he had recovered. "I'm to bring you back. Not that they expect me back. But—God, what a piece of news! Forgive my swearing—I used to be a parson. Still am, for the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... arms it will change to bliss. You will keep your promise and meet me at the 'Conduit Head' to-morrow midnight, will you not? I can scarce contain myself with thinking of it. If you come not what remains for me but death? Without you life is worthless. Come. My coach will be in readiness and the parson waiting for ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... Mr. Trenchard senior, to derision. They did not like the Rev. Paul. They chaffed him, and he was very easily teased, because he was not clever and did not see their jokes. This put Maggie up in arms in his defence at once. But they had all the layman's distrust of a parson. They were all polite to him, of course, and Maggie discovered that in this world politeness was of the very first importance, so that you really never said what you thought nor did what you wanted to. They frankly could not understand why Katherine asked the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... denied; the expulsion of Northern ministers, and the tar-and-feathering of Northern schoolmasters, for only preferring Union to secession, freedom to slavery, would go on as freely as in the palmiest days of the chivalry; Parson Brownlow would be driven from Knoxville, his press and dwelling burned, Casey and Green and Adams exiled forever, and the same old war would have to be fought over again, with all its blood and horror, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... your honour ask that? Does not the Lawyer cheat? and the Doctor cheat? and the Parson cheat, more than any? and that's the reason they all takes so ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of England. We live in the England of Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria—the England of 1880 to the close of the Boer War—as we follow Mark Lidderdale from boyhood to his ordination. The Altar Steps, it is known will be followed by a novel probably to be called The Parson's Progress. Evidently Mr. Mackenzie is bent upon a fictional study of the whole problem of the Church of England in relation to our times, and particularly the position of the Catholic party ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... said to him. "How many times have you and I driven into the parson's yard at Solberga! I know not whether Herr Arne [FOOTNOTE: At the time of this story "Herr" was a title roughly corresponding to "Sir."—Trans.] can tell us how it is with the ice, but I will be bound he'll give us a good supper before we set ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof

... wus somethin' fine, believe me. De niggers dressed lak a white folks weddin' an' de circuit parson married dem in de big house parlour. De marster an' de missus wus dere, an' dey always gived presents ter de bride too. Atter de ceremony wus over dar'd be a feas' an' a dance. Most likely dar'd be a heap of noise. I've heard mammy ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... preacher went right into her room and yelled same as he always did in church? He was very bitter about it, and longed for his father to come home with his rifle and shoot everybody, including his grandfather who had "switched" him severely and unjustly because he threw stones at Parson Hook's saddle horse while the good man was offering up petitions ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... querulous voice, and we looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick intensity which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... young companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of the party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry Richard to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door key as a ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the marriage service. When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage he was so alarmed that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a divorce for his ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... get them quite right. Well, what about the greenhouse? You know I was telling the parson the other day about your plans about ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... If old Ardworth lives (as he says), old Ardworth has set him to work on his own business. But then, that Fielden,—rather a puzzler that! Yet—no. Now I understand,—old Ardworth gave the boy to Mrs. Joplin, and took it away from her again when he went to the parson's. Now, certainly, it may be quite necessary to prove,—first, that the boy he took from Mr. Braddell's he gave to Mrs. Joplin; secondly, that the boy he left with Mr. Fielden was the same that he took again from that woman: therefore, the necessity of finding out Mother Joplin, an essential ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... rationalizing type, a religion of common sense, a belief resting upon logical deductions, a system of ethics in which the supernatural is reduced to the lowest terms, and from which the glooms and fervors of a deep spiritual experience are almost entirely absent. This "parson in a tie-wig" is constantly preaching against zeal, enthusiasm, superstition, mysticism, and recommending a moderate, cheerful, and reason religion.[12] It is instructive to contrast his amused contempt for popular beliefs in ghosts, witches, dreams, prognostications, and the like, with the reawakened ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Gilbert White's contributions to the literature about nature: one must admire the man's untiring enthusiasm, but his book is mainly a storehouse of facts; how rarely does he invest the facts with charm! To pry into nature's secrets and conscientiously report them seems to be the aim of the English parson; but we get so little of the parson himself. What were his feelings about all these things he has been at such pains to record? The things themselves are not enough. It is not alluring to be ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... began to beg Alice would stay to supper, but she said her father would be uneasy. The old news-carrier concluded to go with her, for, he said, "there was a pint he wanted to mention to Parson Humphreys that he had forgotten to bring for'ard when they were talking on that 'ere subject two months ago." So Nancy brought her things from the next room, and helped her on with them, and looked pleased, as well she might, at the smile and kind ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... this tale, but he has written on the margin (MS. vi. 101), "A story which bears a strong resemblance to that I have read (when a boy) of the Parson's maid giving the roasted goose to her Lover and frightening away the guests, lest he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... to console us: No, nor no doctor fetch for me: I can die without my bolus; Two of a trade, lass, never agree! Parson and Doctor!—don't they love rarely, Fighting the devil in other men's fields! Stand up yourself and match him fairly, Then see how ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... though bigoted churchmen and canting hypocrites may declaim on the sin of carnal indulgences unsanctioned by the priest and his empty ceremonies. Fools! NATURE, and her laws, and her promptings, and her desires, spurn the trammels of form and custom, and reign triumphant over the hollow mummery of the parson ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... Our parson at Branches always got so red and nervous when he had to ask for anything, one could see he was quite a gentleman; but women are different, ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... about the middle of the fifteenth century were a priest near Florence, Arlotto (1483), for more refined wit ('facezie'), and the court-fool of Ferrara, Gonnella, for buffoonery. We can hardly compare their stories with those of the Parson of Kalenberg and Till Eulenspiegel, since the latter arose in a different and half-mythical manner, as fruits of the imagination of a whole people, and touch rather on what is general and intelligible ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... fourteen rows Crackside has got going on all at once. He seems to revel in them. His latest move was to refuse to pay tithe, and when the parson levied a distress, he made all his tenants drunk and walked at their head blowing a post-horn. He's as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... ripens the seeds we commit to the earth, that our benefactions shall bear fruit. And now, my Lord, asking your pardon for this discharge of my conscience, and assuring your Grace I have no wish to exchange my worsted gown, or the remote Pisgah exchange of a silk one, for the cloak of a Presbyterian parson, even with the certainty of succeeding to the first of your numerous Kirk-presentations, I take the liberty to add my own opinion. The elder boys must be looked out and punished, and the parents severely reprimanded, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... set sermons, unless the preacher impose it upon us by some magnetism of his personality; it is more often impressed by some literary embodiment which has been made to live and move and have a being—by a Cordelia or a Jeanie Deans, by a Galahad or a Parson Adams. Such embodiments as these are instruments for that which Matthew Arnold holds to be the object of poetry, namely, the powerful and beautiful application of ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... Sluysdael, died, you know—a year after they left Greyport. The widow was left all the money in trust for Johnny, except about twenty-five hundred a year which he was in receipt of as a separate income, even as a boy. Well, a glib-tongued parson, a fellow by the name of Belcher, got round the widow—she was a desperate fool—and, by Jove! made her marry him. He made ducks and drakes of not only her money, but Johnny's too, and had to skip to Spain to avoid the trustees. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... immediate departure, leaving his empty carcass where it lies; but she reminds him of the necessity for decent burial. Much is to be done before they can begin to enjoy together their new and freer existence. There is the body to be buried; the obituary notices to be written for the papers: the parson and undertaker to be summoned: the formalities of the funeral: the selection of a proper tombstone, with care for the name and accurate carving of the date of death thereupon: and finally a bit of verse in the way of final flourish. So these two spirits look on with impatience at ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... swallowed it, Lord knows what I say or what I don't say. I dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave me just my two tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the Black and Red as sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded sample-bottle of Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong? Grady must go out, too, and leave me the kettle a-boiling for tea. It was of no use, I couldn't keep away from it. Washed it all down, sir, by Jingo. And ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Richardson that his fabric is spun silk-worm-wise out of himself; on the contrary you know it to be the fruit of a gentle and observant nature, and a stock of fundamental human sympathy. His gallery of portraits, Joseph Andrews, Parson Adams, Parson Trulliber, Jones, Blifil, Partridge, Sophia and her father and all the rest are each of them minute studies of separate people; they live and move according to their proper natures; they are conceived not from without but from within. Both Richardson ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... favourite, and this not for want of better fruit, for Gerard tells us that in his time "the stocke or kindred of Apples was infinite," but because they were considered pleasant food.[20:3] Another curious use of Crabs is told in the description of Crab-wake, or "Crabbing the Parson," at Halesowen, Salop, on St. Kenelm's Day (July 17), in Brand's "Popular Antiquities" (vol. i. p. 342, Bohn's edition). Nor may we now despise the Crab tree, though we do not eat its fruit. Among our native trees there is none more ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... himself, he now becomes arrogant, and requires the same respect and preference from the world; for pride, though the greatest of flatterers, is by no means a profitable servant to itself; it resembles the parson of the parish more than the squire, and lives rather on the tithes, oblations, and contributions it collects from others than on its own demesne. As pride therefore is seldom without arrogance, so is this never to be found without insolence. The arrogant man must ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... brows twitched humorously. "I seem to be developing a taste for worthy deeds. But there's no reason on earth why you two shouldn't get married and done for as soon as possible. I'll see Larpent to-night and tell him, and you can go and see the parson about it to-morrow. You'll find Nonette won't put any obstacles in the way. She's a good child and does ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... he that beat Flaming Bosville in Mumpers Dingle?" "I never beat Flaming Bosville," said I: "he beat himself. Had he not struck his hand against a tree, I shouldn't be here at the present moment." "Hear! hear!" said the landlord, "now that's just as it should be; I like a modest man, for, as the parson says, nothing sits better upon the young man than modesty. I remember, when I was young, fighting with Tom of Hopton, the best man that ever pulled off coat in England. I remember, too, that I won the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... "A parson! What a game! No wonder Percy draws in his horns a bit when he comes home. Anyhow, we must save him from the paws of the lion if we can. I say, Percy, you must come, old man. We made all the arrangements for four, boat and everything; ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... acting upon my jury was alluded to. Colonel Plickaman read each passage in a pointed way, interjecting,—"Do you hear that, Billy Sangaree?" "How do you like yourself now, Major Licklickin?" "Here's something about your white cravat, Parson Butterfut." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... that they agreed before the governor to keep them as their wives, and to maintain them and own them as their wives; and they thought, as things stood with them, they were as legally married as if they had been married by a parson and with all the formalities ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... the battlefield, where dead Boers still lay unclaimed, but bearing on them cards that left no doubt about their identity. I learn that one of that brave little band, the Imperial Light Horse, wounded early in the fight, was tended gently by a Boer parson, who bound up his wounds and brought him water under a terrific fire. Struck by these acts of humanity and devotion to a high sense of duty, I made inquiries as to the Dutch parson's name. It was Mr. Kestel, pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church at Harrismith, a Boer only by adoption, a Devonshire ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... below the wages given to a butler by the lay rector, who pocketed a very nice income by this respectable transaction. But the Butler was a stately edifice in perfect repair, both outside and in, so far as clothes and food went; and the Parson was an ill-conditioned Ruin left to moulder away in an obscure situation, without even the ivy of luxuriance to make him ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... five miles from Frankfort. Monsieur le Comte was absent, of course, on the field of battle. His unwilling host thought that on such an occasion he also might go out in quality of spectator; and with this purpose he connected another, worthy of a Parson Adams. It is his son who tells the story, whose filial duty was not proof against his sense of the ludicrous. The old gentleman's hatred of the French had by this time brought him over to his son's admiration of the Prussian ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our 'innerds' (inwards, insides), and how many 'boanes' we had, and by-and-by 'he told us that we were the only beasts who had the use of our hands.' Years since ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... school, does not seem the chief flower, after inhaling the home sweetness and heart aroma of many of the minor lyrics in this volume. As for the humor, is it not of HOLMES? 'The Deacon's Masterpiece,' and 'Parson Turrell's Legacy,' are of the very best, of the triple est brand; it is only to be wished there were a hundred of them. Of that strange blending of pathos with humor, and the 'sentiment of society,' in which HOLMES equals, or, if you will, surpasses PRAED, there are several exquisite examples. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... billy-goat in the church, a grocer named Deacon Wiggleford, who didn't really like the Elder's way of preaching. Wanted him to soak the Amalekites in his sermons, and to leave the grocery business alone. Would holler Amen! when the parson got after the money-changers in the Temple, but would shut up and look sour when he took a crack at the short-weight prune-sellers of the nineteenth century. Said he "went to church to hear the simple ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... their salvation; they that have tender consciences, that follow sermons, frequent lectures, that have indeed least cause, they are most apt to mistake, and fall into these miseries. I have heard some complain of Parson's Resolution, and other books of like nature (good otherwise), they are too tragical, too much dejecting men, aggravating offences: great care and choice, much discretion ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Florentines consider crickets very lucky, that is, the first you find in May. You put him in a little wire cage and feed him lettuce, and if he sings, why, there's no doubt about the good luck. Funny little codger! Looks like a parson in a frockcoat ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... should say,' says the other brother, Bill. 'Hullo! are we to go on the platform with the parson and the rest ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... a parson of some sort," said Joseph Kempson. "I, for one, should like to hear him, and so would the boys in there. There was a time when never a Sunday passed but what we went to the house of prayer. Now, from one end of the year to the other we are not seen inside ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... recollection of his beloved parent. The relation of the story usually terminated with an affectionate sigh, and the observation, "Yes, my friend, he was indeed an Israelite without guile, and might be compared to Parson Adams." The same appellation which Coleridge applied to his father will also, with equal justice, be descriptive of himself. In many respects he "differed in kind" from his brothers and the rest of his family, but his resemblance to his father was so strong, that ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... justice of the claim and tossing a great gold brooch to the landlord by way of satisfying the debt; the deplorable fact that all the decent village ghosts learned to riot with Captain Bartholomew Roberts; the visit of the parson and his godly admonitions to the Captain on the evil work he was doing; mere craziness, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just before the Boreal set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was familiar to me as ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... if she is," said I heartily. "She's not been through that gate in the last half-hour, for it takes me that to drink yon jug dry, and I started with it full. But I'll ask the maids. Mother and our Kate are at the parson's yonder, gaping at you chaps. I dare say ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... by whom you have so many children, and yet are not lawfully married? They all said that they took them before the governor as such, having nobody else to marry them, which they thought as legal, as if they had had a parson. No doubt, said I, but in the eye of God it is so: but unless I am assured of your honest intent, never to desert these poor creatures, I can do nothing more for you, neither can you expect God's blessing while you live in ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... the Adelphi Hotel, at Liverpool, was a very respectable middle-aged man, with a white neck-cloth; he looked like a Methodist parson. He waited upon us for five days with great gravity, and then another waiter told us that we could give our waiter what we pleased. We were charged L1 for 'attendance' in the bill, but I very innocently gave half as much more, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... hartist? I doaent believe he's iver a 'eart under his waistcoat. And I tells ye what, Miss Dora: he's no respect for the Queen, or the parson, or the justice o' peace, or owt. I ha' heaerd 'im a-gawin' on 'ud make your 'air—God bless it!—stan' on end. And wuss nor that. When theer wur a meeting o' farmers at Littlechester t'other daaey, and they was all ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... about Candlemas than at any other time of the year, and men must be more on their guard against them then than at other times. It is a proverb, 'He who seeks a wolf at Candlemas, a peasant on Shrove Tuesday, and a parson in Lent, is a man of pluck.' . . . Thirdly, their savageness depends on their having young. When the wolves have young, they are more savage than when they have not. You see it so in all beasts. A wild duck, when it has ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... very curious young man, of great personal beauty, extreme simplicity, and a certain magnetic attractiveness. He believed himself, further, to be in direct and constant communication with supernatural things, and would be set down now as a religious fanatic, deeply tinged with superstition. His parson, too, in these days, would be thought little better, but at the time in which they lived both would probably be regarded with considerable veneration. We hear, in fact, that a chapel was finally erected over Master Raynal's body, and that pilgrimages were ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... aching to get at them again. We looked up our kinsmen Hector and Donald and struck up a great friendship with the men of the Black Watch. Hector and Donald were both God-fearing men, and went with us several times to hear Parson Cleveland of Bagley's regiment preach. He gave us sermons full of meat, and ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... at the stars, and my thoughts are of women—I look at the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven—I frequent the opera, and moralize upon the world and its vanities—I sit in my pew at church, and my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of the parson to boot—I live in town all the year, because it's the fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. In the season, I am allowed to walk into every body's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... magnetism could only take place when his body was in a boreal position! In the midst of his popularity, an attack was made upon him and his favourite remedy, the salve; which, however, did little or nothing to diminish the belief in its efficacy. One "Parson Foster" wrote a pamphlet, entitled "Hyplocrisma Spongus; or, a Spunge to wipe away the Weapon-Salve ;" in which he declared, that it was as bad as witchcraft to use or recommend such an unguent; that it was invented by ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... the parson was drowned in the pleasant laugh of the others, as Kearney sat down and filled his glass. In a very few words he related the reason of his visit to the town, and asked Mr. Flood to tell him what he knew ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... pleased to hear it. Now look here. The Manhattan is a full ship, and I'm not going to Port Jackson to sell my oil this time. I'm just going right straight home to Salem. And you and she are coming with me; and old Parson Barrow is going to marry you in my house; and in my house you and your wife are going to stay until you settle down and become a citizen of the ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... the whole town; and in particular, my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, my Lord Fair-speech (from whose ancestors that town first took its name), also Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Any-thing; and the parson of our parish, Mr. Two-tongues, was my mother's own brother, by father's side; and to tell you the truth, I am become a gentleman of good quality, yet my great-grandfather was but a waterman, looking one way and rowing another, and I got most of my estate ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... ship," answered Jem. "But for that matter, as the parson says, there's a time to stay at anchor, and a time to make sail, and go along as if the devil was a driver—only I do wish that that ere beggar astern was right ahead now, and that we was a chasin' her, and every now and then a slappin' at ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... be, young sirs," John Lirriper said slowly, after long cogitation. "I dussay my nephew would have no objection, but what would parson ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault: The village all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And even the story ran that he could gauge; In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For, even though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... commoners as Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, and Mr. Two-tongues were all sprung with Captain Anything from the same ancient and long-established ancestry. As to his religion, from a child young Anything had sat under the parson of the parish, the same Reverend Two- tongues as has been mentioned above. And our budding soldier followed the example of his minister in that he never strove too long against wind or tide, or was ever to be seen on the same side of the street with Religion ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards, "reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d—e, sir, we quite frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company." After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... intended to have it did, ef possible. So, says I, turnin' 'round an' facin' him square, says I: "Rector," says I, "why not baptize him where he is? I mean it. The waters o' Heaven are descendin' upon him where he sets, an' seems to me ef he's favo'bly situated for anything it is for baptism." Well, parson, he thess looked at me up an' down for a minute, like ez ef he s'picioned I was wanderin' in my mind, but he didn't faze me. I thess kep' up my argiment. Says I: "Parson," says I, speakin' thess ez ca'm ez I am this minute—"Parson," ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... the Times that I should like to know the author of;—A Parson's Account of his Journey to the Cambridge Election." I laid claim to that also. "That is curious," said Moore. "I begged Barnes to tell me who wrote it. He said that he had received it from Cambridge, and touched ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... and by the date you can see he must have received it a few days before he joined the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home. He had treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied his sailor son. I've looked in at a sentence here and there. There is nothing in it except just affection. He tells his "dear James" that the last long letter from him was very "honest and entertaining." He would not have him "judge men harshly or ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... talking about. These are its heroes and its villains. All you hear from London is what the last man spent when he was up, and where he dined; and from all I can gather, the Tichborne trial made less impression down here than that of a Delverton parson who got into trouble about the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... good name than in many another. Mrs. Churton was anxious to point this out to him, but unfortunately could not see him; he was always out of the way when she called, no matter when the call was timed. "I wish you could get hold of Cawood," had been said to her many times by the parson and his wife; but there was no getting hold of him. The curate had also tried and failed. Once he had gone to him when he was engaged on some work, but the carpenter had reminded him very pleasantly that there is a time ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... morning to convey me to Sir Alfred Jonson's residence, about twelve miles distant. There I was to be met by a lady at the gate-lodge, who was subsequently to accompany me to a small village on the Nore, where an old college friend of Curzon's happened to reside, as parson, and by whom the treaty ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the set custom of "witty paragraphs," first in the "World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... of illicit cargoes is well known, and the sympathies of the local clergy were nearly always on the side of the smugglers in the days when a keg of old brandy would be a very acceptable present in a retired country parsonage. Occasionally, perhaps, the parson took more than a passive interest in the proceedings. A story still circulates around the neighbourhood of Poole to the effect that a new-comer to the district was positively shocked at the amount of smuggling that went on. One night he came across a band of smugglers ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... cheerful, gentle, sanguine man, full of courtesy and consideration. In the village he was more beloved than ever, because there was scarcely a man or woman who was not familiar with the nature and extent of his troubles. In a country parish the affairs of the parson, especially when they do not prosper, are apt to become the affairs of the congregation as well. Who should know better than a man's butcher and baker when the supply of ready money runs short, when one month would be more convenient than another for ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... been discovered by the Little Forest Folk, and at Parson Owl's suggestion, had been pushed and shoved in and out among the trees until it stood right-side up ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory

... parish, and so afforded them another ground of triumph over their rivals. "Besides," they would say, "wasn't their own church parson—old parson Green that everybody swore by—wasn't he distinctly heard to say to the young man's father, 'that he might ha' been expected to do wus'? They didn't see, for their parts, that aught but good had come of it neither; but as for poor old Madam, anybody ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... he had been bitter in repinings and complaint. For a day or two, in particular, he had murmured loudly. It was hard, very hard, that an honest, industrious man, as he was, should so scantily pick a living out of this rich earth: after all said, let the parson preach as he will, it's a fine thing to have money, and that his reverence knows right well, or he wouldn't look so closely for his dues. [N.B. Poor Mr. Evans was struggling as well as he could to bring up six ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... church, and I was the parson, and Godfather Gilpin was the old gentleman who sits in the big pew with the knocker, and goes to sleep (because he wanted to go to sleep), and the books were the congregation. They were all big, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... related that Parson Holman and other pious people of the village often sought to induce the colonel to reform his course of life and seek those things which concerned his eternal peace; but the wily landlord, while receiving them with a most gracious suavity, usually managed to evade the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... with ruddy cheeks, And welcome look, determined to be pleased. He comes to ask—or go with friend to dine; His labour but to dress—to eat, to sleep: He knows no suffering equal to bad wine. There—the prig-Parson, with indented hat, And formal step—demanding your respect— Yonder, the lovely insect-chasing Child. His is, indeed, a life of envious joy; Hope and anticipation, on the wing, To him no sad realities ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... to be. There were only two cousins, Miss McQuinch and a young woman named Marian, blonde and rather good looking. There was a brother of hers there, but he is only a parson, and a tall fellow named Douglas, who made rather a fool of himself. I could ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... not the day on which I was born. That adventure had befallen me eighteen years before, at the parson's little house in Felton Regis. Most people who write their histories have a pride in dragging their readers back to the moment when they first hallooed defiance to this wicked world; but I, since I ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... An express had gone through the hamlet half an hour before, and drunk a pot of ale in the saddle, not daring to dismount for the hurry of his errand; but he had been ignorant himself of what was forward, and only bore sealed letters from Sir Daniel Brackley to Sir Oliver Oates, the parson, who kept the Moat House in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... After supper old Mother Shenty scraped the potato skins off the table into her apron —she always boiled the potatoes in their jackets—and then Shenty lay down on it and smoked his pipe till bedtime, thinking of the best way to keep down expenses. A parson came along one day lifting a subscription for a church, or school, or something. He didn't get anything out of old Shenty, only a pannikin of tea and some damper and mutton. The old cove said: 'Church nor school ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... to know his own mind if he were to get on in the world, and he jolly well knew that he was right as often as not Masters were awful muffs. On the other hand, he hated gush like poison, and was invariably a hundred times better than his word, whereas Dreda could hold forth as eloquently as a parson, with the tears pouring down her cheeks, and her figure trembling with emotion, and the next day forget the very cause of her emotion! The girl was like a fire of shavings, quickly lighted, quickly extinguished, and probably the greatest punishment which she could have sustained would have ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... practically fell in love with one another at sight. Poor old Eustace!" Scott paused, faintly smiling. "He meant her to marry well if she married at all, and Basil was no more than the son of a country parson without a penny to his name. However, the thing was past remedy. I saw that when they came home, and Isabel told me about it. I was at Oxford then. She came down alone for a night, and begged me to try and talk Eustace ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... as inferior in every respect. The opinion of the laity who saw both sides may be gathered from Chaucer's picture of a "poore Persoun of a toun." He knew well enough how the revenue, which should have gone to the parish, its parson and its poor, went to fill the coffers of rich abbeys, to build enormous churches and furnish them sumptuously, to provide retinues of lazy knights for the train of abbot or bishop, and to prosecute lawsuits in the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... state of our parish magazines, And is moved to indicate the means Of making their pages bright and snappy And bored subscribers cheerful and happy. Now the most original of his hints For galvanizing these dreary prints Is this: That every parson, before He aspires to be parish editor, Should join the staff of a leading daily And learn to write genially and gaily. It may be a counsel of sheer perfection, And yet, perhaps, on further reflection, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... lacked the brazen voice, the personal force that imposes upon men. But surely his good intentions, his way of life, his gentle kindness should carry sway. Instead of which the parish seemed to have quite left the Church, and the parson was outside the real modern life of the village. No matter what he did, even if popular, it soon seemed to ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... doubt, affairs at the playhouse were at a standstill. Evans again sought to surrender his lease to Burbage, but without success.[346] Marston, having escaped the wrath of the King by flight, decided to end his career as a playwright and turn country parson. It was shortly after this, in all probability, that he sold his share in the Blackfriars organization to one Robert Keysar, a goldsmith of London, for ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... all one; only the parson takes his text from the Bible to hold forth upon, and these agents, employed by the Canada Company, say what they can out of their own heads. The object in both is to make money. I thought the Leaftenant had been too long in a colony to be ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... has done," nodded Roland. "He is a disgrace to the name of Yorke. I enjoyed the pleasure of telling him so, the other night, more than I have enjoyed anything a long while. He was so mad! If he had not been a parson, I shouldn't wonder but ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... he spoke plainly, but there was not much of the gospel in it. Mr. Arnold opined that people should not go to church to hear sermons, but to make the responses; whoever read prayers, it made no difference, for the prayers were the Church's, not the parson's; and for the sermon, as long as it showed the uneducated how to be saved, and taught them to do their duty in the station of life to which God had called them, and so long as the parson preached neither Puseyism nor Radicalism — (he frowned solemnly and disgustedly ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... is enough to ruin the best children in the world. That little Cilly is the most arrant little flirt I ever came across; it is like a comedy to see the absurd little puss going on with the curate, ay, and with every parson that comes to Wrapworth; and she sees nothing else. Impressions! All she wants is to be safe shut up with a good governess, and other children. It would do her a dozen times more good than all his stories of good children and their rocky paths, and boats that never sailed ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a man who wanted me to take the chairmanship of a company, and one who wanted me to guarantee an overdraft at his bank, and two who wanted to borrow money on stock, and one parson-fellow who tried to stick me for a subscription to some Home or other he said he had for children in the country. He was the worst bounder ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... am a Sword of God myself appointed to the sword. And so to the end I kill, and kill and kill till the hour when I am killed. Go, look in the church yonder, and see who hangs to the high arm of the Rood—the fat Abbe Dominic. Well, I sent him there to-night; to-morrow you will hear how I turned parson and preached a sermon—aye, and Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl, and Simon the spy, should have joined him there, only I could not find them because their hour has not come. But the idols are down and the paintings burnt, and the gold and silver and jewels are cast upon ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... A parson had had a call from a little country parish to a large and wealthy one in a big city. He asked time for prayer and consideration. He did not feel sure of his light. A month passed. Some one met hie youngest son. "How is it, Josiah; is your ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... them. At the time I commenced to attend the prison chapel, I learned that a score or so of convicts took the sacrament. Some of them were truly pious, as far as one could judge in such matters, others were unfit or unworthy partakers, the whole of them were called by the other prisoners "Parson's men," or "Sacrament blokes," and it used to pain me to hear them scoffed and mocked at. It was a great victory if they could be got to swear on the evening of the communion day: I never could make up my mind to become a ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... brother had taken me home, 'Well, my little parson,' said he, 'you have acted your part to admiration, and your parti-coloured dress of the ecclesiastic and soldier has greatly diverted the court; but this is not all: you must now choose, my little knight. Consider then, whether, by sticking to the church, you will possess great revenues, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... forcing lilies of the valley is within the reach of any one who has even a small garden and a warm house, and these two things are becoming more and more common among us every day.—A Gloucestershire Parson, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... Says Poet to Parson—To save men from drinking, Not many religions are good to my thinking; To be sure a good Baptist a man of true grace is, But a Hard Shell, my brother's the hardest of cases. Your Shouter's too noisy for temperance talking, Your Come-outer too harsh for right temperate walking. A Quaker's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... tell that to the marines; she don't look no more like the rest on 'em than the devil looks like a parson." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... gatherings which included the aristocracy and the democracy of the place. Miss Clara Hopgood amazed everybody by 'beginning talk,' by asking Mrs Greatorex, her hostess, who had been far away to Sidmouth for a holiday, whether she had been to the place where Coleridge was born, and when the parson's wife said she had not, and that she could not be expected to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of an infidel, Miss Hopgood expressed her surprise, and declared she would walk twenty miles any day to see Ottery St ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... not being enough to dance, Miss Sally Flutter, Miss Parson, Mr. Ford and I sat down to loo, ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray

... generally got up. They are sent from town to town, and the people flock to see what is to be sent to the king. 'One man signs because he hates the Papists; another because he has vowed destruction to the turnpikes; one because it will vex the parson; another because he owes his landlord nothing; one because he is rich; another because he is poor; one to show that he is not afraid, and another to show that he can write.' The people, he thinks, are as well off as they are likely to be under any form of government; and grievances ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... majority of his band. We did that. The skrimmage tuk place on the crik, whar we foun' them camped. It didn't last long; an' arter 'twere eended, lookin' about among thar bodies, we foun' thar beauty o' a chief wi' this gun upon his parson, tight clutched in the death-grup. Soon's seeing it I know'd 'twar yourn; an' in coorse surspected ye'd had some mischance. Still, the gun kedn't gie us any informashun o' how you'd parted wi' it. By good luck, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried over it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa, where there are no Sunday schools, and clothes are as scarce as churches. Failing to move Parson Peck and Elder Knapp in the matter, and despairing of an early answer to her personal prayers, she resolved on a bold move, "An' it was only after many a sleepless, prayerful night," namely, to carry the Bible ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... adjoining the Church, in which the dead are buried. It is the freehold of the parson, but inasmuch as it was the common burial place, it was fenced and cared for at the charge of the parishioners, who could be rated for it. Recent Burial Acts (which see) have lately given power to laymen to conduct funeral services ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... than doubtful that the whimsical parson really INTENDED a moral to be read into the adventures of his "Sentimental Journey" that follow in these pages. He used to declare that he never intended anything—he never knew whither his pen was leading—the rash implement, once in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... of middle-aged love-making. The mistake of the "Northern Farmer" was that he applied the same middle-aged caution to youth. "Doaent thou marry for munny; but goae wheer munny is," he said to his son Sammy, who wanted to marry the poor parson's daughter. And he held up his own love-making as an ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... detained in the Prisons of Suffolk and Essex. Among other things which many of these Acknowledged, one was, That they were to undergo certain Punishments, if they did not such and such Hurts, as were appointed them. And, among the rest that were then Executed, there was an Old Parson, called Lowis, who confessed, That he had a couple of Imps, whereof one was always putting him upon the doing of Mischief; Once particularly, that Imp calling for his Consent so to do, went immediately and Sunk a Ship, then under Sail. I pray, let not New-England ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... rot! I ain't a parson, I ain't; I never had no college education. Business is business. That's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not to offend the ears of Christians. The Jews were forbidden to have Christian nurses for their children. The other clauses were similar to those enacted in other countries: that the Jew should pay all dues to the parson; no Jew should eat or buy meat during Lent; all disputes on religion were forbidden; sexual intercourse between Jews and Christians interdicted; no Jew might settle in any town where Jews were not accustomed to reside, without special ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... clergy from Albertstown came over there; I used to ride with him when I could, and if I were there, I could keep a good deal going till the place is more peopled, and we can get a cleric. It is a great opportunity, not to be thrown away. I can catch those cockatoos better than a parson. And there ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... (1748-1808) "A Cure for the Spleen; or, Amusement for a Winter's Evening" (1775) was another Tory protest, which carried the following pretentious subtitle: "Being the substance of a conversation on the Times, over a friendly tankard and pipe, between Sharp, a country Parson; Bumper, a country Justice; Fillpot, an inn-keeper; Graveairs, a Deacon; Trim, a Barber; Brim, a Quaker; Puff, a late Representative. Taken in short-hand by ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren

... in France are more honest than in England, or they want taste, or objects of this kind do not find a ready market. We know too well how many an English church, albeit well guarded by the churchwardens and the parson, has seen its windows despoiled of every shield, and saint, and motto; and we also know full well, by whom, and for whom, such ravages are committed. In France, on the contrary, where painted glass still fills the windows of sacred ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... were not Speculative Voluntaries, waiting for the abolition of the National Church, and paying tithes meanwhile. They were Separatists who would at once and in every way assert their Separatism. They would pay no tithes; they called every church "a steeple-house"; and they regarded every parson as the hired performer in one of the steeple-houses. Then, in their own meetings for mutual edification and worship, all their customs were in accordance with their main principle. They had no fixed articles of congregational creed, no prescribed forms of prayer, no ordinance ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... to the easy, half-insolent tone she hated. And he tapped his Paris snuff-box and spoke with tantalising slowness. 'Well, if that be the case, I should advise you to see that Mr. Dunborough's surplice—covers a parson.' ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... men in whom an unbridled appetite for virtue becomes a vice. He loved God with such virulence that he killed his wife, drove his daughter into a fatuous marriage, and quarrelled irrevocably with his son. The too sensitive wife died for lack of joy; Alice escaped to Australia with a parson who never accomplished anything but a large family; and Arthur, at the age of seventeen, precociously cursed his father and sought in America a land where there were fewer commandments. Then old Twemlow told his junior partner, John Stanway, that ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... were communicated to me by a friend some years ago, as having been written by a blacksmith of the village of Tideswell in Derbyshire; who, having often been reproved by the parson, or ridiculed by his neighbours, for drunkenness, placed them on the church door the day after the event ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... her characteristic candour and good sense came to the conclusion that Mrs. Smith was altogether right. Her son was both too young and too brilliant, she declared, to make a fitting husband for the obscure parson's daughter. In "Villette," where the story of her own heart is told, Mrs. Smith and her son are to be found portrayed in the characters of ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... thing to happen in a quiet household! The poor man did not know what to do. So he sent for all his relations, and they advised him to try what the parson ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... or brother, of fifty, and they love Christ and His cause, and do not fail to associate their love for Him and the work with the gathering in His name. If it be possible, they will be in attendance when "the parson" comes round. The girls love to go; some because they, too, are learning to love the service of the Master, some because they have no other so good opportunity to see and be seen, and others because everybody else goes. Where the girls and young ladies are sure to be, there the boys and young ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various

... after a strange fashion, when, at fifteen, he and some young companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of the party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry Richard to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door key as a ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the marriage service. When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage he was so alarmed that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a divorce for his son in ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... ain't a man in their whole church here, from Lord Canter Berry that preaches afore the Queen, to Parson Homily that preached afore us, nor never was, nor never will be equal to Old Minister hisself for 'stealin' the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... wilder and more harum-scarum every day," observed Lady Harriet, who was passing The Grand Stand in her carriage at the moment. "She will certainly go the same way as her mother if that very easy-going parson has the managing ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... keen a fellow in all business transactions (for both we and the government have found him too sharp for us before now), should be in these little delicate domestic relations such an egregious gull. You all know I do not view these little matters from the parson's point of view; but still, there is a propriety to be observed. To think," continued Bradshawe, with a countenance of comic horror, "of his proposing to make our friend Shortridge lie in a ditch, for his accommodation! Our punctilious comrade is getting to be ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... its erect pointed spike enclosed within the curled hood of an upright arrow-shaped leaf. This is purple or cream hued, according to the accredited sex of the plant. It bears further the titles of Cuckoo Pint, Wake Robin, Parson in the Pulpit, Rampe, Starchwort, Arrowroot, Gethsemane, Bloody Fingers, Snake's Meat, Adam and Eve, Calfsfoot, Aaron, and Priest's Pintle. The red spots on its glossy emerald arrow-head leaves, are attributed to the dropping of our Saviour's blood on [34] the plant whilst growing ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... that zeal as well as indiscretion, for Mr. Bronte had his good points as fathers go. Think what the fathers of the Victorian era could be, and what its evangelical parsons often were; and remember that Mr. Bronte was an evangelical parson, and the father of Emily and Charlotte, not of a brood of gentle, immaculate Jane Austens, and that he was confronted suddenly and without a moment's warning with Charlotte's fame. Why, the average evangelical parson would have been shocked into apoplexy at the idea of any child of ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... avoiding those alternate bending strains at the top and bottom of the stroke every revolution. Another improvement that has been successfully introduced, adding to the duration of life of crank shafts, is the use of white bearing metal, such as Parson's white brass, on which the shafts run smoothly with less friction and tendency to heat, so that, along with well proportioned surfaces, a number of crank shafts in the Peninsular and Oriental Co.'s service have not required lining up for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... said Coffin gravely, "how the devil looks; but they say he can put on the appearance of an angel of light, and I don't see why 'taint jist as easy for him to put on a black coat, and come the parson over us poor sinners." ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... clergyman in New Hampshire, noted for his long sermons and indolent habits. "How is it," said a man to his neighbour, "Parson ——, the laziest man living, writes these interminable sermons?" "Why," said the other, "he probably gets to writing and he is too ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... himself, or Dona Elvira possessed more discretion or more virtue than Spanish wives are usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend his declining years beneath his own roof, with no more scandal under it than if he had been an ancient country parson. Occasionally he would take wife and son to task for negligence in the duties of religion, peremptorily insisting that they should carry out to the letter the obligations imposed upon the flock by the Court of Rome. Indeed, he ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac

... with, "'twere well it were done quickly." It is notorious that many of the leases of new dwelling-houses contain a clause against dancing, lest the premises should suffer from a mazurka, tremble at a gallopade, or fall prostrate under the inflictions of "the parson's farewell," or "the wind that shakes the barley." The system of building, or rather "running up" a house first, and afterwards providing it with a false exterior, meant to deceive the eye with the semblance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... my wail to theirs, loud and bitter; but Joseph asked what we could be thinking of to roar in that way over a saint in heaven. He told me to put on my cloak and run to Gimmerton for the doctor and the parson. I could not guess the use that either would be of, then. However, I went, through wind and rain, and brought one, the doctor, back with me; the other said he would come in the morning. Leaving Joseph to ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... of fact, I can't say that I'm particularly fond of shining lights or people who are too good, and from what papa tells me, this Mr. Ernshaw has been making or trying to make Vane a great deal too good for me. I even hear that he has been trying to make Vane become a parson. Fancy Vane, with all his talents and prospects, a curate! The idea is absurd, even more absurd than ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... above fact one day by calling at Barryville at dinner-time, and unluckily tasting the liquor. You should have seen how he sputtered and made faces! But the honest gentleman was not particular about his wine, or the company in which he drank it. He would get drunk, indeed, with the parson or the priest indifferently; with the latter, much to my mother's indignation, for, as a true blue Nassauite, she heartily despised all those of the old faith, and would scarcely sit down in the room with a benighted Papist. But the squire had no such scruples; he was, indeed, one of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... book is, that though not exhaustive of the subject, it is suggestive. It affords the best, indeed the only general, sketch of the subject which we have in England, and gives therein boundless food for future thought and reading; and the country parson, or the thoughtful professional man, who has no time to follow out the question for himself, much less to hunt out and examine original documents, may learn from these pages a thousand curious and interesting hints about men of like passions with himself, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Dryden's time was occupied with the translations or imitations of Chaucer and Boccacio. Among these, the "Character of the Good Parson" is introduced, probably to confute Milbourne, Blackmore, and Collier, who had severally charged our author with the wilful and premeditated contumely thrown upon the clergy in many passages of his satirical writings. This too seems to have inflamed the hatred ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... papa is—himself," answered the parson, in a tone that implied that he did not say very much for Mr. Lovel in admitting that fact. "Your papa is well enough in health, or as well as he will ever acknowledge himself to be. Of course, a man who neither hunts nor shoots, and seldom gets out of bed before ten o'clock in the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... in a yet more deplorable condition; another was nodding over a hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, and oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon enquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is. The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them, about which of the seven loved a pipe and flagon best. The ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... electrically with the dry, chaffing humour of the out of doors. When we finally climbed the fence into the old cornfield we were almost a dozen. There were the Captain, Uncle Jim, and myself from the ranch; and T and his three sons and two guests from Stockdale ranch; the sporting parson of the entire neighbourhood, and Dodge and ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... Here we all assembled at the appointed time. Our leader took his stand at one end of the stone, with the head boys who were in the secret on each side of him. 'My boys (he laconically observed), to-morrow morning we are to bar-out the flogging parson, and to make him promise that he will not flog us hereafter without a cause, nor set us long tasks or deprive us of our holidays. The boys of the Greek form will be your Captains, and I am to be your Captain-General. Those that are cowards had better retire and be satisfied with future floggings; ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... was," was the reply. "Why, we working people are somebody up there. We have our representatives on the town council and on the board of guardians. Down here it is the parson and squire that do everything; up there we are alive, and there's a chance for a chap who's got brains. Why, a fellow like you up in Brunford, with your education and gifts, could be a big man in a ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... I am going to bid the wedding guests." And soon they were all collected. Would you like to know who they were? Well, I can only tell you what was told to me; all the hares came, and the crow who was to be the parson to marry them, and the fox for the clerk, and the altar was under the rainbow. But the maiden was sad, because ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... meeting of the people called Quakers, then holden at the house of William Russell, called Jourdan's, in the parish of Giles Chalfont, in the county of Bucks; that which was wanting to their accommodation was a place of harbour, for assistance wherein recourse was had to Parson Philips, none being so ready, none so willing, none so able to help them ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... cried the church owl, pushing his head out of the ivy-bush. "And shall she be Kyrkegrim when thou art turned preacher, and the preacher sits on the judgment seat? Not so, little Niss! Dust thou the pulpit, and leave the parson to preach, and let the Maker ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... told you, my father has given a living which he owns to Mr. Eversley, a pretty little place where there isn't much for a parson to do. I think it rather bores my respected parents-in-law. At any rate, 'Dogeetah' spends a lot of his time wandering about the New Forest, which is near by, with a butterfly-net and trying to imagine that he is back in Africa. The 'Mother of the Flower' (who, after a long course of boot-kissing ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... is passing in your minds as well as if you had got glass skulls. And this is what I see that not a few of you are thinking. "Ha! there is the Parson at it again! always hammering away at Communion. Can he not leave us alone? Let him talk to us of other matters; let him preach to us some real stinging gospel truth, and make us wince. Anything but this eternal preaching about coming to Communion." ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... you for telling me. But then I should have to ask the parson to dinner, and we might not get on. And I should have to go to church. I like going to church when I'm not obliged to—that is if they'll preach me a good sermon. I insist upon a good sermon. But if I had to go to set ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... it is almost certain that the walls were covered with paintings representing scenes from the Bible, and possibly some stories from the lives of the saints, which everybody in those days was familiar with. There was no pulpit and no reading desk. When the parson preached, he preached from the steps of the altar. The altar itself was much more ornamented than now it is. Upon the altar there were always some large wax tapers which were lit on great occasions, and over the altar there hung a small lamp which was kept alight night and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... land and slaves in Montserrat: but the clergyman told him it was against the law of the place to marry a white and a black in the church. The man then asked to be married on the water, to which the parson consented, and the two lovers went in one boat, and the parson and clerk in another, and thus the ceremony was performed. After this the loving pair came on board our vessel, and my captain treated them extremely well, and brought them ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... the latter to become either Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare my firm persuasion, that whatever reason of discontent the farmers may assign, the true cause is this; that they may cheat the parson, but cannot cheat the steward; and that they are disappointed, if they should have been able to withhold only two pounds less than the legal claim, having expected to withhold five. At all events, considered relatively to the encouragement of learning ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... which had once led up to Parson's barn, but now ended quite abruptly in a little precipice with a broad railing on its edge and a summer-house a little back, one could sit and look out over the stretch of bright green lawns, between two clumps of hemlocks, and over a hedge which concealed the ground beyond, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... was named the "Four Alls": its sign, a crude painting of a table and four seated figures, a king, a parson, a soldier, and a farmer. Beneath the group, in a ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... woman; and the extraordinary marrying epidemic having left but one eligible male in all that county, she had set her heart upon that one eligible male; then she went and carted him to her home. He turned out to be a long Methodist parson, named Huggins. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... to be here by the coach," says Magdalen. "Let us ask a little party to meet him." And so we did, and so they came: my father and mother, old Crutty in his best wig, and the parson who was to marry us the next day. The coach was to come in at six. And there was the tea-table, and there was the punch-bowl, and everybody ready and smiling to receive ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... did you get Wingfield to do it? I had plague enough with the old parson at Wrangerton, and I should have thought Wingfield harder ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... obediently entered, in the wake of Captain Alec Naylor, who duly presented him to Mrs. Naylor, adding that Beaumaroy had been kind enough to make the fourth in a game with the General, the Rector of Sprotsfield, and himself. "And he and the parson were too tough a nut for us, weren't they, sir?" he added to ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... this mistake of words, this I am sure, that, by constant and familiar use, they charm men into notions far remote from the truth of things. It would be a hard matter to persuade any one that the words which his father, or schoolmaster, the parson of the parish, or such a reverend doctor used, signified nothing that really existed in nature: which perhaps is none of the least causes that men are so hardly drawn to quit their mistakes, even in opinions purely philosophical, and where they have no other interest but truth. For the words they ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... tourists and one hundred attendants started off through the village, donkey boys chattering, donkeys braying, and riders gaily chaffing one another on their appearance in the saddle; the long-legged professor holding up his feet to prevent them from scraping the ground and the jolly stout parson mounted on the smallest donkey. Each donkey was followed by a donkey boy who whipped the patient beast, jabbed him with a sharp pointed stick, twisted the animal's tail, or talked to him in Arabic, when it was necessary to urge him ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... "That daughter of Parson Hinton finds fun enough in something. I wish her father could preach her into better behavior. She is the most troublesome sprite I have in school. Young ladies," he said, assuming all the dignity of his position, "less whispering, and more attention to your studies would ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... and more in myself, to be careless of keys I fear that it must be as it can, and not as I would Lying a great while talking and sporting in bed with my wife My Jane's cutting off a carpenter's long mustacho No good by taking notice of it, for the present she forbears Parson is a cunning fellow he is as any of his coat Pleasures are not sweet to me now in the very enjoying of them She so cruel a hypocrite that she can cry when she pleases Strange things he has been found guilty of, not fit to name Then to church to a tedious sermon When ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... did a very foolish thing, which cannot now be remedied. He supposed at the time that he would make a good parson, and now that he has long got over his fit, he finds himself wholly unfit for it—he is still the officer in heart, and is always struggling with his natural bent, which is very contrary to what a parson ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... (I am obliged to lay down to recover the fatigue of the morning's exertions), awaking with nothing but the prospect of the trouble of getting into bed, where very seldom I get above two hours' sleep. It is enough to make a parson swear! To this I must add, I found full employment for the few moments, when I could rouse myself from a melancholy lethargy, to spend in looking over my store of astronomical and other memorandums of upwards of fifty ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous

... to go indoors and speaking over her shoulder.] 'Tis in the parson's gown as you should be clothed, Master John. Ah, 'tis a wonderful wordy preacher as you would make, to be sure. And 'tis a rare crop as one might raise with the seed as do fall ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... England. Every man, according to the common law, has a right to be buried in his own churchyard, or, as it is sometimes put, in the churchyard of the parish where he dies. But the churchyard, as well as the church itself, is the freehold of the parson, who can in many respects deal with it as if it were a private estate. A statute of Edward I. (35, st. 2) speaks of the churchyard as the soil of the church, and the trees growing in the churchyard "as amongst the goods of the church, the which laymen have no authority ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... proudly. "Do you know, Peleg," young Boone said, "there are times when Parson John Lythe preaches to us that he speaks of the Great Father of us all, and somehow I always think of Him as if He looked somewhat ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... ROGER and his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, because the very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that arise between the parson and the 'squire, who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson is always preaching at the 'squire, and the 'squire to be revenged on the parson never comes to church. The 'squire has made all his tenants atheists ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... you see it, my lad, 'tis the answer to that wonderful prayer. Let's go over it once more, by way o' givin' thanks. He who has sent meat can also gie us drink, even here, in the middle o' the briny ocean. Come, boy! as the parson used to say in ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... his finishing touches this morning I thought of my mother. She was like that when they brought my brother Archie home. You remember Archie—and the day he was drowned? We were all in swimming that Sunday, you know, and Parson Moore said it was a judgment, but my poor mother could not bring herself ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... to London in the season, was a trifle behind the times. More charming an old lady could not be, but, in common with all who vegetate in the depths of rural England, she was just a trifle narrow-minded. In religion, she found fault constantly with the village parson, who, she declared, was guilty of ritualistic practices, and on the subject of her daughters she bemoaned the latter-day emancipation of women, which allowed them to go hither and thither at their own free will. Like all such mothers, she considered wealth a necessary adjunct to happiness, and ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... of Fame, sat. i. Cumberland (Memoirs, ii. 226) says that Mr. Dilly, speaking of 'the profusion of quotations which some writers affectedly make use of, observed that he knew a Presbyterian parson who, for eighteenpence, would furnish any pamphleteer with as many scraps of Greek and Latin as would pass him off for an ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... innkeeper, who loved to bouse; J was a joiner, and built up a house; K was King William, once governed this land; L was a lady, who had a white hand; M was a miser, and hoarded up gold: N was a nobleman, gallant and bold; O was an oyster girl, and went about town; P was a parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a queen, who wore a silk slip; R was a robber, and wanted a whip; S was a sailor, and spent all he got; T was a tinker, and mended a pot; U was an usurer, a miserable elf; V was a vintner, who drank ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... report to England in 1576 "on the lamentable state of the Church" in Ireland. "There are," he wrote, "within this diocese [Meath] two hundred and twenty-four parish churches, of which number one hundred and five are impropriated to sundry possessions; no parson or vicar resident upon any of them, and a very simple or sorry curate for the most part appointed to serve them; among which number of curates only eighteen were found able to speak English, the rest being Irish ministers, or rather Irish rogues, having very little Latin, and less learning and civility. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... with my discolored fingers. At seven o'clock I return to tea, at which repast we each tell the story of our day's work. For poor Miss Blunt, it is day after day the same story: a wearisome round of visits to the school, and to the houses of the mayor, the parson, the butcher, the baker, whose young ladies, of course, all receive instruction on the piano. But she doesn't complain, nor, indeed, does she look very weary. When she has put on a fresh calico dress for tea, and arranged her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... much more, respecting the character of his fellow-guests, Yorke was indebted to a very singular personage, who had introduced himself to him as "Parson Whymper," and whom he now knew to be the Squire's chaplain. The reverend divine was as proud of that office (and infinitely more comfortable in it) as though he had been chaplain to an archbishop. He was the only man present who wore a black coat, and he had ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... myself as a humorist, the impression I made on my comrades was that of a serious and religious fellow. I quoted the Bible to them so often that they nicknamed me "the Welsh Parson." I was the general errand boy of the town. Everybody knew me. And when there was a job of passing hand-bills for the operahouse, or ringing bells for auction sales, I always got the job. Every nickel that rolled loose in the town landed in my pocket and I took it home ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... of him, mamma," said Judy. "He is one of Matilda's crazy kind. He is going to get rid of his money as fast as he can; and then he will turn chaplain of some jail, I should think; or else he will get a place as a Methodist parson and go poking into all the poor places of the earth; and then we shall see his name up in bills—'Preaching at the cross corners to-night—Rev. David Bartholomew will speak to the people from ...
— Trading • Susan Warner

... ode, which was two stanzas longer than the longest Horace ever wrote. Peter vowed that no infant had ever been given the world's greeting in so magnificent a manner; certainly he had never himself surpassed that first essay. As he told the parson, to write twelve odes on paternity, twelve greetings to the new-born soul, is a severe tax even on ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... the grand catastrophe to which, through so many circumstances of doubt and difficulty, he had at length happily conducted his hero and heroine. Not a circumstance was then omitted, from the manly ardour of the bridegroom, and the modest blushes of the bride, to the parson's new surplice, and the silk tabinet mantua of the bridesmaid. But such descriptions are now discarded, for the same reason, I suppose, that public marriages are no longer fashionable, and that, instead of calling together their friends to a feast and a dance, the happy couple ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... received no answer to my writings to the Emperor, to the parson of his court, to a number of bishops and other influential men of the Empire, and A.D. 1840, my third volume appeared, in which was shown, that the unexpected events which have been explained in the first and second volumes, ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... him. Still she is in great danger; perhaps in danger of her life. We all know that crimes have been committed by this person— crimes so horrible as to be almost past belief. You remember the parson's daughter who jumped from a high wall and killed herself ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major









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