Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pawnbroker   Listen
noun
Pawnbroker  n.  One who makes a business of lending money on the security of personal property pledged or deposited in his keeping.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Pawnbroker" Quotes from Famous Books



... connection between them and its bounties. Next summer I must let the weeds grow up in my garden, so that they may have a better chance for seeds above the stingy level of the universal white. Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... the same, I will not touch a penny of your money; but I know you are long-headed and may think of some scheme for me. I've got nothing to sell of any value; I parted with my father's watch—and it's still at the pawnbroker's; worse luck!" (His pitilessly selfish mother had borrowed ten pounds and forgotten the debt, and he had been compelled to apply to his "Uncle.") Shafto found his salary a very tight fight; eleven pounds a ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... consequences; he was convicted of revolutionary practices, and sent to prison. On his release from confinement he was received into the Barrowfield Works, as an inspector of cloths used for printing and dyeing. He held this office during eleven years; he subsequently acted as a pawnbroker, and a reporter of local intelligence to two different newspapers. In 1836 he became assistant in the publishing office of the Reformers' Gazette, a situation which he held till his death. This event took place on the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... beads, and all the trash usually found in the pigeon-holes of the bureaus of old-fashioned ladies, may be now brought into play, by throwing them, carelessly grouped with other unconsidered trifles, such as are to be seen in the windows of a pawnbroker's shop, upon a marble encognure, or a mosaic work-table, thereby turning to advantage the trash and trinketry, which all the old maids or magpies, who have inhabited the mansion for a century, have contrived to accumulate. With what admiration of the ingenuity of the fair ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... terribly singed myself; and I felt, before I quitted her, that if I had ten thousand a-year, and she was as poor as my dear Judith was, that she should have taken her place—that's the truth. I thought that I never could love again, and that my heart was as flinty as a pawnbroker's; but I found out my mistake when it was ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... Puritan, we should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker's duplicates in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth without a dozen oaths: then we should consider the Puritan (even though he did quote Scripture somewhat through his nose) ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... humpbacked are works of nature. The camel is gibbous. The bison's back is humped. The badger's left legs are shorter than the right, That fact is decided by Aristotle, in his treatise on the walking of animals. There are those amongst you who have but two shirts—one on his back, and the other at the pawnbroker's. I know that to be true. Albuquerque pawned his moustache, and St. Denis his glory. The Jews advanced money on the glory. Great examples. To have debts is to have something. I revere ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... deal of talk; people spoke about the unscrupulousness of collectors, and repeated old anecdotes on that subject. Then the business was forgotten. Next, in a year's time or so, the book—the confounded Longepierre's Theocritus—was found in a pawnbroker's shop. The history of its adventures was traced beyond a shadow of doubt. It had been very adroitly stolen, and disposed of, by a notorious book-thief, a gentleman by birth—now dead, but well remembered. Ask ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... "Three pawnbroker's duplicates, one for the child's shoes, 1s. 6d., one for the wedding ring, 5s., and one for the wife's necklace, 7l., lie at the feet of the father, with the Sporting Magazine; for drunkards generally part with the ornaments or even necessaries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... mezzotint, after Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Richard Burke. Oh, such a lovely face! Looking lovelier in powder and lace frill. But a charming thing, with an old-fashioned stanza in English deploring his early death, and a motto in Latin. It was a great find, and I carried it home from the Pawnbroker's in triumph!— ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... if it had not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short. He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... all know! A most clutching, strong-fisted, dreadfully hungry, tough and unbeautiful man. Whom his own Nephew, at last, had to assassinate, at the Ford of the Reus (near Windisch Village, meeting of the Reus and Aar; 1st May, 1308): "Scandalous Jew pawnbroker of an Uncle, wilt thou flatly keep from me my Father's heritage, then, intrusted to thee in his hour of death? Regardless of God and man, and of the last look of a dying Brother? Uncle worse than pawnbroker; for it is a heritage with NO pawn on it, with much ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... gift of Mrs. Kukor's daughter, Mrs. Reisenberger, who was married to a pawnbroker, very rich, and who occupied an apartment (not a flat)—very fine, very expensive—in a great Lexington Avenue building that had an elevator, and a uniformed black elevator man, very stylish. The directory meant more to Johnnie than ever had Cis's books. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... hearing men offer the pledge of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the most trivial occasions, that we are apt to allow a great latitude in such matters, and only smile to think how small an advance any intelligent pawnbroker would be likely to make on securities of this description. The sporadic eloquence that breaks out over the country on the eve of election, and becomes a chronic disease in the two houses of Congress, has so accustomed us to dissociate words ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... the very purpose of bringing them into contempt,—the Papisher! he had a lief Miss Jemima had married the devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the occasion—having grown two inches taller since he left—for the one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... knew not where to go, but spent the sleepless night under an arch. Early the next morning he went to a pawnbroker's, and raised 2 pounds 10 shillings on his watch, with which money he walked straight to the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... I advise you to be very careful with the lock on the door. The ship lands to-morrow evening, and some villain may break into your stateroom, rob you of the Duke's word of honor and sell it to some enterprising Liverpool pawnbroker. Pleasant dreams! I hope to welcome you to Seguro, your Excellency. Don't spend the five thousand until you get there—remember, the home ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... would an alarum, to awaken them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by latitudes and longitudes—slow here and fast there. They have, too, their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... many-coloured glass butterfly (a present from James Green), and her neck, arms, waist (at least what ought to have been her waist) were hung round and studded with mosaic-gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, etc., looking for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop, or the lump of beef that Sinbad the sailor threw into the Valley of Diamonds. In the right of a gold band round her middle, was an immense gold watch, with a bunch of mosaic seals appended to a massive chain of the same material; ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than face a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it, the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before him—Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's face, a little creased by ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... it would be interesting to study are: the shopgirl, the policeman, the peddler, the cabman, the night watchman, the clairvoyant, the vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss, the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each with its special experience, insight, and point of view determines for each vocational group and for the city ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... eastern side of the way, there are fewer lights to be seen now than there were an hour ago. The tradespeople over there, generally, have put up their shutters, and the time for closing the drinking-saloons is at hand; but lights are yet lingering in the pawnbroker's establishments, for the Mont de Piete is an institution of an extremely wakeful, not to say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... The pawnbroker took the box, and drawing out the ring held it up in the best light. He examined it through a magnifying glass, and a gleam of ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger

... Lord Falkland requested the resignations of the four irresponsible councillors, their loyalty to the Crown did not restrain their attacks upon himself. His sending his servants to a concert was spoken of as a deliberate insult to the society of Halifax; and his secretary was accused of robbing a pawnbroker's shop to replenish ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... cracked looking-glass to get the general effect. "And it is decently original. The professional cracksman would probably have shaved, whereupon the first amateur detective he met would reconstruct the beard on the sunburned lines. Now for a pawnbroker; and the more avaricious he happens to be, the better he will serve ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... spirits dancing through his veins. His condition of absolute poverty had not yet lost the flavour of novelty. He even laughed as he realised that again he was hungry and must rely upon chance for a meal. This time there was no fat confectioner to play the good Samaritan. But by chance he passed a pawnbroker's shop, and with a little cry of triumph he dragged a fat, yellow-faced silver watch from his pocket and stepped blithely inside. He found it valued at much less than he had expected, but he attempted no bargaining. He walked ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... him that he could raise a considerable sum on the opera glass at Simpson's, a well-known pawnbroker on the Bowery, and he could, without much loss of time, stop there on his ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... a year is a record scarcely conducive to literary excellence; any more than is the empty cupboard, and the frequent recourse to 'your honour's own pawnbroker,' so often and so honourably familiar to struggling genius. "The farces written by Mr Fielding," says Murphy"... were generally the production of two or three mornings, so great was his facility in writing"; and we have seen Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's assertion that much of his work ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean stage, Malone ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... his whole expenses, and that his salary came to him each week intact. He began to save money and to develop at the same time an inexpensive dandyism. He took to brown velveteen and to patent leather boots. He bought a secondhand watch at a pawnbroker's, but disdained a chain. His father had inspired him with a horror of jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he meant by sticking that brass-headed nail in his ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... hours together, before I knew his history from beginning to end. He had already been married eight years, and his only trouble was a debt of twenty-four dollars, which the illness of his wife had caused him. This money was owing to the pawnbroker, who kept his best clothes in pledge until he could pay it. "Senor," said he, "if I had ten million dollars, I would rather give them all away than have a sick wife." He had a brother in Puerto Principe, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... Then slowly, and with a half smile, he turned away, and strode through the streets till he arrived at one of the narrow lanes that intersect the more equivocal quarters of the huge city. He stopped at the private entrance of a small pawnbroker's shop; the door was opened by a slipshod boy; he ascended the dingy stairs till he came to the second floor; and there, in a small back room, he found Captain de Burgh Smith, seated before a table ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... at the idea of her mother's lace being taken to a pawnbroker's, partly to hear that her brother and sister had ever been reduced to such straits. She made an excuse to take Erica away to her room, and there questioned her more than she had ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... seems to have been married a second time) to dispose of some property of hers abroad; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in which were various charges for wine; and, among other evidences of low funds, a pawnbroker's receipt for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds. There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by the screw steamer Andes, which sailed on Wednesday last. The clerk found him to the last degree incommunicative; and nothing could be discovered from ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... no good. Dickie was tired, and the flowers were beginning to droop. He turned to go home, when a sudden thought brought the blood to his face. He turned again quickly and went straight to the pawnbroker's. You may be quite sure he had learned the address on ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... doubtfully; they might be able to go! they were not sure! and seemed to regard consent as a favor, if not a condescension. Of these, however, two or three were hampered by the uncertainty as to the redemption of their best clothes from the pawnbroker. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... MacBean might as well have saved her breath to cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker's shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean's teapot with its curious device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde who had formerly been a mistress ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Ferret, a pawnbroker or tradesman, that sells goods to young spendthrifts upon trust, at excessive rates, and then hunts them without mercy, and often throws them into jail, where ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... had determined, he proceeded to a pawnbroker's shop which he had often passed. It was on Chatham street, and was kept by an old man, an Englishman by birth, who, though he lived meanly in a room behind his shop, was popularly supposed to ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... created the wealth of the pawnbrokers. In the States at the present time the government is very much in this condition. The prospective wealth of the country is almost unbounded, but there is great difficulty in persuading any pawnbroker to advance money on the pledge. In February last Mr. Chase was driven to obtain the sanction of the legislature for paying the national creditors by bills drawn at twelve months' date, and bearing 6 per cent. interest. It is the old story of the tailor who calls ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... spit in his face, or what would be a greater punishment should fairly accept him. Old maids he would not treat with such severity, because he supposes they are not so by their own fault; but he hears that many have received offers, and refused them. Miss Squeeze, the pawnbroker's daughter, had heard so much about money, that she resolved never to marry a man whose fortune was not equal to her own, without ever considering that some abatement should be made as her face was pale and marked with the small-pox. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... view than Mannering had yet seen it. Upon the same occasion he drew forth a strange quantity of miscellaneous and abstruse, though, generally speaking, useless learning. The lawyer afterwards compared his mind to the magazine of a pawnbroker, stowed with goods of every description, but so cumbrously piled together, and in such total disorganisation, that the owner can never lay his hands upon any one article at the moment he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... are a saint, a love, an archbishop of innocence, a man that ought to be stuffed, as the old actor said. What! you have lived in Paris for twenty-nine years; you saw the Revolution of July, you did, and you have never so much as heard tell of a pawnbroker—a man that lends you money on your things?—I have been pawning our silver spoons and forks, eight of them, thread pattern. Pooh, Cibot can eat his victuals with German silver; it is quite the fashion now, they say. It is not worth while to say anything to our angel there; it would ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... He went into a pawnbroker's shop at the corner of the street. A few moments later, with money in his pockets, he dived into ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... great deal of business with Miss Tennant's father; otherwise he must have shunned the proposition upon which she came to him. Indeed, wrinkling his bushy brows, he as much as told her that he was a banker and not a pawnbroker. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... them together, and don't she think she ought to send in somethin' also? When she asks what he thinks would be about right, Marc Anthony is gonna say that he guesses she ought to keep the pen she wrote the check with as a souvenir, but that everything else she had, includin' anything a pawnbroker would give ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... to whom she addressed this statement was a pawnbroker; and a thoroughly brave man he must have been; for it was a perilous undertaking, merely as a trial of physical strength, singly to face a mysterious assassin, who had apparently signalized his prowess by a triumph so comprehensive. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... precious stones," said Ashton-Kirk, to Bat. "He buys and sells; and his buying is not always aboveboard. He is also a pawnbroker in ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... "There is so. A pawnbroker I should take him to be, who wears the jewellery left in his care on his person for safety. As a matter of fact, I believe he is a South African millionaire. He brought her home one day, and Blakde - that's the housekeeper's husband down below - recognised him. He was out in South Africa ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... be much obliged to you, Monsieur! But hear me. With respect to Russia, you know how matters stand. From the King of Poland I have nothing to fear. As for the King of England,—he is my relation [dear Uncle, in the Pawnbroker sense], he is my all: if he don't attack me, I won't him. And if he do, the Prince of Anhalt [Old Dessauer out at Gottin yonder] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... cleared fifteen hundred guineas by the adventure, and became more than ever convinced of the occult powers of Cagliostro, and strengthened in their determination never to quit him until they had made their fortunes. Out of the proceeds Miss Fry bought a handsome necklace at a pawnbroker's for ninety guineas. She then ordered a richly-chased gold box, having two compartments, to be made at a jeweller's, and putting the necklace in the one, filled the other with a fine aromatic snuff. She then sought another interview ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... Hogarthian humour can be detected. A man is staggering under the weight of a woman, who is on his back. She is holding a glass of gin in her hand; a chain and padlock are round the man's neck, labelled "Wedlock." On the right-hand side is the shop of "S. Gripe, Pawnbroker," and a carpenter is just going ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... the saving of the money. Mrs. Morris had defended her apparent lavish expenditure by saying that there was no possibility of saving money. She bought useful things, and when her husband was out of work she could always get a large percentage of their cost from the pawnbroker. The pawnshop, she had tearfully explained to Miss Johnson, was the only bank of the poor. The idea of the pawnshop as a bank, and not as a place of disgrace, was new to Miss Johnson, but before anything further could be said the husband ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... painted; but had suffered a good deal from time and travel, combined with a dip in the Mississippi. The remainder of the collection was composed of worse pictures than are offered to connoisseurs at a pawnbroker's sale in London. The proprietor informed me that they were to be brought to the hammer and sold without reserve in a few days, when he anticipated a lively sale for the large pictures, the quantity of raw material used up in the work ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... twenty shillings; and, on non-payment, be committed for fourteen days to hard labour; afterwards, if the money could not be then paid, to be whipped publicly in the house of correction, or such other place as the justice of the peace should appoint, on publication of the prosecutor; that every pawnbroker should make entry of the person's name and place of abode who pledges any goods with him; and the pledger, if he require it, should have a duplicate of that entry; that a pawnbroker receiving linen or apparel intrusted to others to be washed or mended, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... "Now a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evenings, which is just before pay day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I knew ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... a strictly Protestant taste for such Catholic spoils, might like to have these missal-clasps turned into a bracelet: then his eyes traveled over the other contents of the window, and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawnbroker's where the lead is given to jewelry, lace and all equivocal objects introduced as bric-a-brac. A placard in one corner announced—Watches and Jewelry exchanged and repaired. But his survey had been noticed ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... said good-bye to Sir Harry Parkes, and returned across the town by another route to our hotel to lunch, after which we made another expedition to one or two more temples, and then to a pawnbroker's shop, in the heart of the city, which had been strongly recommended to us. The exterior did not look promising; the shop itself was small and dirty; and they had to take some very filthy garments out of the way before we could enter. Once ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... unfledged chicken. You leave this matter with me. I begin to think I'd like to see Miss Clay. I admire that handsome, dashing sort of girl—yes, that I do. All I want you to do, Jim, is to introduce me to the young lady. If her father is a pawnbroker he must have a bit of money to give her, and a gel with a fat purse is just my style. You come along to the Clays and give me a footing in the house, and that's all ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... him call to her; but she was already on the street again, and hurrying along. She felt better, somehow, in a mental way, for that little encounter with the shady old pawnbroker. She was not so much alone, perhaps, as she had thought; there were many, perhaps, even if they were of the underworld, who had not swerved from the loyalty they had once professed to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider's nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... that Ann Simmons and Alice W——n are one has been found in the circumstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of Alice's real children. Bartrum was a pawnbroker in Princes Street, Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... was agreed that I should exert myself in his behalf, and after a visit to the pawnbroker's, where Dannevig had deposited his dignity, we parted with the promise to meet again ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... due impress of the author's mind. No doubt as a rule editors have no discretion to be trusted; but happily Mr. Ainger has plenty, and most sincerely do we thank him for withholding from us A Vision of Horns and The Pawnbroker's Daughter. Boldly to assert, as some are found to do, that the editor of a master of style has no choice but to reprint the scraps or notelets that a misdirected energy may succeed in disinterring from the grave the writer had dug ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... prisoner could not satisfactorily account. He was asked why he had assured the officer he had no duplicates? He replied, that he had not said so; but Mr. Cornell, who was present during the search, averred that the prisoner had most positively declared that he had not a pawnbroker's ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead, "I have a small pawnbroker's business at Saxe-Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... the station, as per esteemed favour from the governor, telling me to. Just as I got on the scene, to my horror, amazement, and disgust, I saw a middle-aged bounder, in loud checks, who, from his looks, might have been anything from a retired pawnbroker to a second-hand butler, sacked from his last place for stealing the sherry, standing in the middle of the field, on the very wicket the Rugborough match is to be played on next Saturday (tomorrow), and digging—digging—I'll trouble you. Excavating great chunks of our best turf with ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... financier is a man who makes money without a trade or profession, and Mulhausen had made a great deal of money, despite this limitation, during his twenty years of business life, which had started humbly enough behind the counter of a pawnbroker's in the Minories. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... A pawnbroker in Augusta, Georgia, has $5,000 capital. The largest and best equipped drug store in Anniston, Alabama, is owned by a colored physician. He has a considerable wholesale trade in patent ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... the house of his old friend the pawnbroker—that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete. "I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, "with some family plate, of which I ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... money, but only enough to last for two or three weeks. Gnecco had a few valuables in the shape of a gold watch and chain, a pearl breast-pin, and a fur-lined coat, and he soon had recourse to my friendly help to dispose of these articles to the best advantage with a pawnbroker, and on the proceeds, eked out by some small help which he received from his family, he managed to rub along, and he and his mandolin were soon familiar features at the office. But with Bonafede the case was different. He was a man of too active and independent a character to be long idle. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... The pawnbroker looked from money to jewels and from jewels to money with an expression of curiously mingled grief and greed. Finally, taking Ricketty by the coat-tails, he dragged him towards the door, saying, "I nefer go pack by anydings vat ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... get any one to go for me, I must go myself," said Barry, who was quick to perceive that his companions thought nothing of a man having to avail himself of a pawnbroker's shop, but did think it exceedingly improper to be seen entering ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... his mind the silly thought of its signification of the infinite leagues that lay between him and Billy Goodge. He could pawn it for ten pounds—it would be like pawning his heart's blood—but where? Not in Morebury, even supposing there was a pawnbroker's in the place. He had many friends in his profession, scattered up and down the land. But he had created round himself the atmosphere of the young magnifico. It was he who had lent, others who had borrowed. Rothschild or Rockefeller ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... haggard women; and I drew near faster, but still cautiously, to hear what they were saying. Surely on them the spirit of death and decay had descended; I had no education to dread here: should I not have a chance of seeing nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not have been more practical and commonplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said to the woman upright—this and nothing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... MINE UNCLE'S. A pawnbroker's shop; also a necessary house. Carried to my uncle's; pawned. New-married men are also said to go to their uncle's, when they leave their wives soon after ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... excellence, when once pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's garret? ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... Philip," said the Constable, resuming self-command. "I grieve less that she has left me, than that she has misjudged me—that she has treated me as the pawnbroker does his wretched creditor, who arrests the pledge as the very moment elapses within which it might have been relieved. Did she then think that I in my turn would have been a creditor so rigid?—that I, who, since I knew her, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... through one stage of decadence after another. First it was rented, by its new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with his numerous family. Good, honest folk they were, who tried to make the house look fine, and the five daughters made the front stoop resplendent of summer evenings. But they had long ago moved up-town. Then ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... used to get full with Pa years ago when they were both on the turf; and Pa's friend said the man that sold the stock was a fraud, and that he didn't own no mine, and that he borrowed the samples of ore and silver bricks from a pawnbroker in Denver. I guess it will break Pa up for a while, though he is well enough fixed with mortgages and things; but it hurts him to be took in. He lays it all to Ma—he says if she hadn't let that exhorter for the silver mine go home with her this would not have occurred, and Ma says she ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... The local pawnbroker's shop was on fire, and among the crowd of spectators was an old woman who attracted much attention by her sobs and cries ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... winning numbers; and thus they gamble away almost every thing belonging to them, even to the very clothes on their back. This is so true that it is not, I understand, at all uncommon in Paris, for a Cyprian nymph to send her last robe to the nearest pawnbroker's, in order to have the chance of a prize in the lottery, and to lie in bed till she obtains the means of purchasing another. Nor is this by far the worst part ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... close to the Academy of Science in Market Street, he saw a lady get out of a taxi and quickly enter a pawnbroker's. Her whole life at once rose up before him. She was Ella Crockford, the wife of the Californian Street Sugar King, and, unknown to her husband, she spent her afternoons at a gambling saloon in Kearney Street, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... entering details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of petits chevaux, and just round the corner is Monte Carlo. Very brisk was the business done by M. Gandinot, the pawnbroker, and very frequent were the pitying shakes of the head and clicks of the tongue of M. Gandinot, the man; for in his unofficial capacity Ruth's employer had a gentle soul, and winced at the evidences of tragedy which presented themselves before his ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... pawnbroker, traitor!" he cried, shaking his fist at this portrait of a stout and smiling-looking gentleman. "I loathe you! I despise you! I spit upon you!" And ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... dressing-room. However, she identified a gold and turquoise letter-weight; and the setting of a seal, whence the stone with the crest had been extracted, both of which had been found in the man's pocket, together with some pawnbroker's tickets, which represented a buhl-clock and other articles from Beauchamp. She was made to give an account of the robbery. Honor had never felt prouder of any of her favourites than of her, while listening to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... buxom lady, much given to gay attire and reminiscences of past glory, 'Before me 'usband went into public life.' The strangers innocently supposed the departed Mr. K. to have been an M.P. at least, and were rather taken aback on learning that he had been a pawnbroker. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... at a pawnbroker's. I could go mad to think that my last memorial of Mary is in all probability glittering in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... night, or that his lady has not made an arrangement for leaving them, and running off with the Captain? How do you know that those footmen are not disguised bailiffs?—that yonder large-looking butler (really a skeleton) is not the pawnbroker's man? and that there are not skeleton rotis and entrees under every one of the covers? Look at their feet peeping from under the tablecloth. Mind how you stretch out your own lovely little slippers, madam, lest you knock over a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... design by the Inca must not be exhibited for sale in the shop window of a pawnbroker. [He flings himself ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw

... of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber and found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's watch which he had pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... policeman guided him to a pawnbroker's shop. What would the pawnbroker lend him on that—his watch? Fifteen shillings would do quite well. That was his reply to an offer to advance that sum, if he was going to leave the chain as well. It was ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... everything and says little, gave me afterwards to understand that he thought he had seen the piece of plate Mr. Stanley mentioned, in the possession of a certain Mrs. Nosebag, who, having been originally the helpmate of a pawnbroker, had found opportunity, during the late unpleasant scenes in Scotland, to trade a little in her old line, and so became the depositary of the more valuable part of the spoil of half the army. You may ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... case of a watch. Can't you see it all plainly now? Van Heerden neither trusted his memory nor his subordinates. He had his simple code written, as we shall find, upon thin paper enclosed in the case of a hunter watch, and this he pledged. A pawnbroker's is the safest of safe deposits. Searching for clues, suppose the police had detected his preparations, the pledged ticket might have been ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... (clients) klientaro. Patter guteti. Pattern patrono, modelo. Paunch ventro. Pauper malricxulo, almozulo. Pause pauxzo. Pave pavimi. Pavement pavimo. Paving-stone pavimero. Pavilion tendo, paviliono. Paw piedego. Pawn (chess) soldato. Pawn garantiajxo. Pawnbroker pruntisto. Pawnbroker's pruntoficejo. Pawn-office pruntoficejo. Pay pagi. Pay (military) soldo. Pay (in full) elpagi. Payable pagebla. Payment (wages, etc.) pago. Pea pizo. Peace paco. Peace, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... his luck. So there the mystery remained. But (as I was telling you), though a first-rate manager, my poor dear wife had a number of romantic notions; and often she has said to me after I'd shut up shop, 'If wishes grew on brambles, Ebenezer, it's not a pawnbroker's wife I'd be at this moment.' 'Well, my dear,' I'd say to soothe her, 'there is a little bit of that about the profession, now you come to mention it.' 'And them there was a time,' she'd go on, 'when I dreamed of marryin' a red-cross ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... in the Northern wilderness in quest of the same thing! It occurred to the wondering boy that Pierre might have been sent into the Hudson Bay country in quest of the individual who had purchased the Little Brass God at the pawnbroker's shop. ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... told me quite a different story of the house's abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt, shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining years been a familiar figure on the roads of ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... no pawnbroker's shop," he asserted. "I'll give you a hundred dollars, outright, for this pearl brooch—as a purchase, understand—but the rest of the junk ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... him a little; and he gave him at once all he had, amounting to six pounds,—a wonderful amount for Roger to have accumulated; with the help of which we got on to the end of Jemima's month. The next step I had in view was to take my little valuables to the pawnbroker's,—amongst them a watch, whose face was encircled with a row of good-sized diamonds. It had belonged to my great-grandmother, and my mother had given it me when ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... highwayman, who is just taken, and who robbed me among others; as Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, etc. He took an odd booty from the Scotch Earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidably upon the justice's table. He was taken by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. His history is very Particular, for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero that he cries and begs, and I believe, if Lord Eglinton ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... glazes the body, the Scythian eats it, the Egyptian embalms it. In Egypt, indeed, the corpse, duly dried, is actually placed at table,—I have seen it done; and it is quite a common thing for an Egyptian to relieve himself from pecuniary embarrassment by a timely visit to the pawnbroker, with his brother or father deceased. The childish futility of pyramids and mounds and columns, with their short-lived inscriptions, is obvious. But some people go further, and attempt to plead the cause of the deceased with his infernal judges, or ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... fast as I could down Pyle Street, where I knew of a pawnbroker on a second-floor (one, besides, to whom I had never been before). When I got inside the hall I hastily took off my waistcoat, rolled it up, and put it under my arm; after which I went upstairs and knocked at the office door. I bowed ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... not where to go, but spent the sleepless night under an arch. Early the next morning he went to a pawnbroker's, and raised L2:10s. on his watch, with which money he walked ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... months the regular police were not only befogged, but they blatantly sounded the alarm to every thief in Europe. All the pawnbrokers' shops of Great Britain were ransacked, as if a robber of so valuable a collection would be foolish enough to take it to a pawnbroker. Of course, the police say that they thought the thief would dismantle the cluster, and sell the gems separately. As to this necklace of emeralds, possessing as it does an historical value which is probably in excess of its intrinsic worth, what more natural than that the holder ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... goods from the pawnbroker, and prevent a moonlight flitting, this landlord had printed on his sheets the words "stolen from —-" and on the blankets and counterpane were ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... 'Gene, but it will not pay the rent. Listen." The timid flush mounted to her cheek as she made the suggestion, "Go to the pawnbroker's. Take these trinkets of mine. Beg him to loan you sufficient for your rent. Now, don't refuse. You may redeem them when you can. Besides, you gave them to me." She looked down with affectionate regret at the bracelets, the bangles, the rings, which use and the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... question: "We certainly did not return the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the "Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the thief is the most notorious in the city—when his picture has been in the paper a thousand times? ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... his decision; and indeed he wrote him several imploring letters, in vain. Yet never had his need of money been so urgent. His creditors were becoming uneasy; bills actually rained in upon his concierge; his next quarterly allowance was not due for some time to come, and it was only through the pawnbroker that he could obtain money for his more pressing requirements. He had begun to consider himself ruined. He saw himself reduced to dismissing his carriage, to selling his third share of Pompier de Nanterre and losing the esteem of ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... startling to a primitive community. Escorted by the obsequious and unruffled beadle to the seat he seemed already to have engaged—that high-priced seat facing the presidential pew that had remained vacant since the death of Tevele the pawnbroker—Simeon Samuels wrapped himself reverently in his praying-shawl, and became absorbed in the service. His glossy high hat bespoke an immaculate orthodoxy, his long black beard had a Rabbinic religiousness, his devotion was a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... I will say, for my father was weakly an' goin' with consumption, an' she was fond of him. But this time there was no stoppin' her. She'd pawn everything: she's taken the jacket off me in a winter's day an' sent me with it to the pawnbroker's, an' I not darin' not to go. To the last minute my father did what he could. I was six when he died, an' he'd dress me himself an' try to keep me decent. She was drunk the very night he died, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... she told Jurgis—he was afraid to stay there now, on account of the police. The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that he had never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to a "fence" in the rear of a pawnbroker's shop, and thence to a number of assignation rooms, in one of which ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... Chilmark since the time when every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling. "But they didn't," said Lawrence, drily. "My grandfather was a pawnbroker ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... in the jungle as it did to his brethren in the big pit near the entrance to the Zoo, and ignoring the rather cheap gibes of the rest of the party, I provided myself with half-a-dozen buns, three of which I attached by long strings to the front of my howdah, where they swung about like an edible pawnbroker's sign. The bear was lying in a very small patch of bamboo, and broke cover at once. As I had anticipated, the three swinging buns proved absolutely irresistible to him. He came straight up to me, I shot him with a smooth-bore, and he is most decorative ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... One day, in a pawnbroker's shop, he lighted upon a rarity indeed, which might or might not have a history attributed to it, but was in itself more than interesting for the beauty of both material and workmanship. The sum asked for it was large, but ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... the procedure?" he asked, after a pause. "I am new to the sort of thing." He had the air, I thought, of talking to some respectable tradesman that one calls in only when one is in extremis—to a distinguished pawnbroker, a man quite at the top of a ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... stated by the police authorities, that the description of Mr. NATHAN'S watch has been spread so widely, that the robber will be unable to dispose of it to any jeweler or pawnbroker." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... boy! He's foiled me this time!" muttered Coleman. "Shall I take the watch? No; it might expose me, and I could not raise much on it at the pawnbroker's. He must have left his money with the clerk downstairs. He wouldn't think of it himself, but probably he was advised to do so before he left home. I'll get up early, and see if I can't get in ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... doesn't sound nice; but it was much the safest plan. I redeemed it the day before yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker cleared out ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... came first to London in 1756, a raw Irish student, aged twenty-eight. He was just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine or Padua, had been "bear leader" to the stingy nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played the flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught of beer and a crust of bread. No city of golden pavement did London prove to those worn and dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been, then an apothecary's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... pertic'ler responsibilities and troubles. She is a turrible expense to Watty on account of eating so much. The tales that feller told of how hard he has to hustle showing her off in order to support her appetite would of drawed tears from a pawnbroker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says. Which he found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and sleep in the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... people need not imagine that other people hadn't got eyes in their head! Everything they possessed had gone to the pawnbroker's; there was barely enough of the tin-ware left to put in his cracked windows. And what they lived on, nobody round there could imagine, unless it was the payment they got for that poor little ill-used boy, that they gave lager-beer to, to keep him quiet. For no one would put up there ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... the daughter of Mr. Hezekiah Popps, a highly respectable pawnbroker, residing in —— Street, Bloomsbury. Being an only child, from her earliest infancy she wanted for 0, as everything had been made ready to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... when you ask to see them, and not know imitation paste—like the stuff Lady Beltus showed her old husband. Our mother wore them, and she prized them. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather hear they were exhibited in a Bond Street jeweller's shop or a Piccadilly pawnbroker's than have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... carpet lay in wrinkles at the foot of a curtainless walnut-wood bedstead; dingy curtains, begrimed with cigar smoke and fumes from a smoky chimney, hung in the windows; a Carcel lamp, Florine's gift, on the chimney-piece, had so far escaped the pawnbroker. Add a forlorn-looking chest of drawers, and a table littered with papers and disheveled quill pens, and the list of furniture was almost complete. All the books had evidently arrived in the course of the last twenty-four hours; and there was not a single object of any value in the room. In ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... only already discussed but arranged. I learned that in desperation, through these ignoble creditors, Monsieur Moore had placed the ring not in the safe but in the Mont de Piete, which here is called the pawnbroker, or uncle. Mademoiselle had evidently regretted it, fearing that the procedure was not honest, but Monsieur had convinced her that, as the jewel was her property, she had a legal right to dispose of it. And indeed, for all I can tell to the contrary, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... of nature by the revolution of the year; and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet!" How original and profound! Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to regard his work ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... proprietor to his surroundings, and when he invited her to follow him, she went without hesitation back through winding passages until they stepped out into a beautiful garden, where sat a charming invalid lady, wife of the pawnbroker. It seemed that they were people who had fallen from a high estate, and, through devotion to his wife, who was helplessly confined to her chair, he had for years kept the secret of his occupation from her, and she had lived in her garden like ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... patches and pieces of other people's individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round the corner, as if they were eternally going to the pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they coughed like people accustomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and in draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink, which gave the recipients of those manuscripts ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... a time when misfortune lay thick upon him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he would invite a large party to a dinner, which a prince might have given, and to which one prince sometimes sat down. On one occasion, having no plate left from the pawnbroker's, he had to prevail on 'my uncle' to lend him some for a banquet he was to give. The spoons and forks were sent, and with them two of his men, who, dressed in livery, waited, no doubt with the most vigilant attention, on the party. Such at that period was the host's reputation, when ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... putting the question reminded her of Mr. Bonsfield's chief clerk—the son of a pawnbroker in Camberwell. He assumed the same attitude of body. Certainly Mr. Arthur did not fold his hands together before him—he did not sniff through his nostrils; but her imagination supplied these ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... Norman had ever had command of much money. Her mother had made a good appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs. Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the pawnbroker's so well that if she threw them in the street they would roll ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... had won my battle, and went on to tell the whole story. When I produced my pearls, of which I was horribly ashamed, she broke out anew, declaring we were all mere traders, and did we think her a pawnbroker? and ended by giving me an hundred pounds, and bidding me to be careful and pay at once, as it was a debt of honour. "As to the pearls, let Madam Marie keep them for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... chalets we give to children to play with; all very light and fragile, hardly more than resting on the ground, as if ready to fly away at the slightest breath of bankruptcy or caprice: the villa of a cocotte or a pawnbroker. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... Foreign birds often get into good society, but British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... a long way, and the bag was heavy. His first attempt at barter was alarming, for the pawnbroker, who had just been cautioned by the police, was in such a severe and uncomfortable state of morals, that the boy quickly snatched up his bundle again and left. Sorely troubled he walked hastily along, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... cent. of the great landowners in the great travelling counties are manufacturers, or merchants, or lawyers, by one or two descents. In Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, or Warwickshire, examine closely, and you will find it so. As a general rule, a rich pawnbroker retired will make a better landlord than a poor baronet. But in this country two generations will make one of the baronet's sons a successful shopkeeper, and the pawnbroker's a baronet, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... which is still performed once a year in his memory. The last years of his life were very unhappy. His dissipated son reduced him to poverty, and the poor old man, tired of study and broken down with sorrow, was obliged to beg for a miserable employment at the city pawnbroker's. A few years before his death he embraced the Catholic faith, and, seized with fresh inspiration, composed the tragedy of "The Virgin" and one of his best poems entitled "The Mysteries of the Altar." He died at a great age, and was buried in a church at Amsterdam, where a century afterward ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... stolen diamonds and of the suspected persons are in every police office in Great Britain and in most Continental centres by this time. Passengers by all steamers are most carefully scrutinised. Every pawnbroker and diamond merchant in the country is on the look-out, and, generally speaking, it will be odd if somebody does not drop into the net before many ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... silent agony of half an hour's duration, he rose trembling from his chair, blew out his candle, and, in a few minutes' time, might have been seen standing with a pale and troubled face before the window of old Balls, the pawnbroker, peering through the suspended articles—watches, sugar-tongs, rings, brooches, spoons, pins, bracelets, knives and forks, seals, chains, &c.—to see whether any one else than old Balls were within. Having at length watched out a very pale and wretched-looking ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... persons of good character and integrity shall exercise the calling. They must have been dreamers who framed this law, or they must have known but little of the class who carry on this business. The truth is, that there is not a pawnbroker of "good character and integrity" in the city. In New York the Mayor alone has the power of licensing them, and revoking their licence, and none but those so licensed can conduct their business in the city. "But," says the Report of the New York Prison Association, "Mayors of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... when, out of the darkness of a side street, there came the slight, graceful figure of a young girl, who, crossing Broadway, glided into the glare of the great arclight that was stationed directly opposite a pawnbroker's shop. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon



Words linked to "Pawnbroker" :   pawnbroker's shop, pledgee



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com