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noun
Pew  n.  
1.
One of the compartments in a church which are separated by low partitions, and have long seats upon which several persons may sit; sometimes called slip. Pews were originally made square, but are now usually long and narrow.
2.
Any structure shaped like a church pew, as a stall, formerly used by money lenders, etc.; a box in theater; a pen; a sheepfold. (Obs.)
Pew opener, an usher in a church. (Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books



... parochial charges and livings and stipends and glebes, and Maria Edgeworth was rather helpful; but Brian and Sitric glared at each other and brandished their hymn-books threateningly, while Ossian refused to sit in the same pew with Mickey Free, who behaved in an odious manner, and interrupted each of the speakers in turn. Incidentally a group of persons huddled together in a far corner rose out of the dim light, and flapping huge wings, flew over my head and out of the window above the altar. This I took to be the Flight ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and teach the commandments. One of the best lessons that the clergy can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the past. They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... serves to convey the most secret intelligence, which a lady would be ready to burst with, if she could not find vent for it by this kind of auricular confession. A piece of scandal transpires in this manner from one pew to another, then presently whizes along the channel, from whence it crawls up to the galleries, till at last the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind freshened to meet the interest ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... "I didn't like to say anything sooner, for fear of making you nervous. You'd done it all so well that I wanted you to finish it. You're been in the right church all along, but the wrong pew. Those fellows aren't movie actors, except Oliver, who will be freed now, and come after me with a gun, as like as not! They're real dyed-in-the-wool desperadoes and there's a reward of five thousand ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... brief "How d'ye do?" with the not-too-profound bow, the subdued and deprecatory smile, and the comparative absence of compliment that church demanded, then, seating himself, leaned forward with his arm upon the back of their pew and entered into ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... was to see Aunt Ruth Marion waiting at her door, while the bells were going, for Will to come and take her to church, while Uncle Abram in his best blue coat, with crown-and-anchor buttons, smoked his pipe to the last minute and then trotted after them along the cliff path to the pew close under the reading-desk. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... Mac-Casquil, formerly of Drumquag, who was ruined by having a legacy bequeathed to him of two shares in the Ayr bank. His hopes on the present occasion are founded on a very distant relationship, upon his sitting in the same pew with the deceased every Sunday, and upon his playing at cribbage with her regularly on the Saturday evenings—taking great care never to come off a winner. That other coarse-looking man, wearing his own greasy hair tied in a leathern cue more greasy still, is a tobacconist, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, antipodes, podium, polypod, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... went to church to worship the British God Respectability, he did so with impeccable unction. No undertaker listened to the funeral service with more portentous solemnity than Paragot exhibited during the Vicar's sermon. Indeed, sitting bolt upright in the pew, his lined, brown face set in a blank expression, his ill-fitting frock coat buttoned tight across his chest, his hair—despite the barber's pains—struggling in vain to obey the rules of the unaccustomed parting, he bore considerable resemblance to an ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... where yo live; If yo're poor, it's mooast likely they'll pass, An call where fowk's summat to give. Yo may have a trifle o' sense, An yo may be booath upright an trew, But that's nowt, if yo can't stand th' expense Ov a whole or a pairt ov a pew. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... inevitable question "What's the date?" elicited the fact that it was the 25th. (You can imagine the chorus "A month to Christmas!" and Sunday.) Sunday, and you probably in your frock coat and patent boots, luxuriously reclining in an upholstered pew, listening to promises of peace and rest, or standing up half thinking of the good meal to follow, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... solemn household. All was stately and well ordered, and—when company came—splendid; but the house always seemed to me much gloomier than the great Parish-Church, whither I was taken every Sunday morning on the shoulder of a tall footman, and shut up alone in a great Pew lined with scarlet baize, and where I felt very much like a little child that was lost in the midst of the Red Sea. Far over my head hung a gallery full of the children of Lady Viellcastel's charity-school; and these, both boys and girls, would make grimaces at me while the Psalms were being ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... presented an appropriate design for a monument, and sufficient subscriptions having been obtained for the purpose, he superintended its erection. On Tuesday afternoon, March 18th, 1884, the monument, which was affixed to the wall of the church where the gallery containing Pepys's pew formerly stood, was unveiled in the presence of a large concourse of visitors. The Earl of Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, consented to unveil the monument, but he was at the last moment prevented by public business from attending. The late ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... is dedicated to St. Peter, is a quaint old building with a Norman porch, the rest of it being of more modern construction. It contains a raised pew, which is approached by a winding flight of stairs, and is covered in, so that it resembles nothing so much as a four-post bedstead. This pew used to belong to the Milbanke family, with which Lord Byron was connected. Mr. Dodgson found the chancel-roof in ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... considerable importance, and was visiting Philadelphia. Just at this time a noted Massachusetts divine, Reverend Doctor Todd, was announced to preach in the Presbyterian church, and both these Haverhill schoolmates were moved to hear him. By a singular chance they occupied the same pew, and sat close together, but Miss Bray was the only one who was conscious of this, and she was too shy to reveal herself. It must have been her bonnet hid her face, for otherwise Whittier's remarkably keen eyes could not have failed to recognise the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... deceased; Martha Brown, the housekeeper; and her sister; Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Wainwright. There were several gentlemen followed the corpse whom we did not know. All the shops in Haworth were closed, and the people filled every pew, and the aisles in the church, and many shed tears during the impressive reading of the service for the burial of the dead, by the vicar. The body of Mr. Bronte was laid within the altar rails, by the side of his ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... and the cutting wind at times drove the sleet and rain in slanting scourges, before which scarce man or beast could stand. The funeral was held in the village church, which was larger than the college chapel. Long before the hour at which the services were to begin, every pew was filled, and the aisles were crowded with those who could not find seats. From every parish within twenty miles the mourners had come. There was not one there who had not heard words of help or comfort from Parson Dorrance's ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... all obeyed its summons—for who among the aged, middle-aged, or the young, did not wish to fitness the marriage ceremonies of their favourite, Ellen Lawton? Ere the tolling of the bell had ceased, the gray-haired man was leaning on the finger-worn ball of his staff, in the corner of his antiquated pew; the hale, healthy farmer came next; and then the seat was filled with rosy-cheeked boys and girls, till the dignified matron brought up the rear at the honourable head. The church became quiet, eager eyes were fastened upon the door. Presently a tall form entered, that of a handsome man, apparently ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... followed by a trophy. This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect, he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's to the square pew of the most influential of the wardens, who was also the first man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... apartment [U.S.], flat, story; saloon, salon, parlor; by-room, cubicle; presence chamber; sitting room, best room, keeping room, drawing room, reception room, state room; gallery, cabinet, closet; pew, box; boudoir; adytum, sanctum; bedroom, dormitory; refectory, dining room, salle-a-manger; nursery, schoolroom; library, study; studio; billiard room, smoking room; den; stateroom, tablinum, tenement. [room for defecation and urination] bath room, bathroom, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... you should pipe the herdics they use for railroad cars in this man England's country. Instead of making the grand entrance from the end you sneak in at the side and sit in a kind of a pew thing, making faces at some one across the aisle. Wilbur got sore 'cause he blew himself for a couple of tickets and the conductor, I mean, the guard, didn't come around to collect them until we go nearly into ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... belfry at the boy's elbow. He wore his surplice, and held his prayer-book, with a finger between the pages. Glancing down toward the nave, he saw Humility sitting in the big vicarage pew—no other soul in church. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... years: a present and actual, though it might be seldom a directly conscious, influence. When he said afterwards, that, while writing the book on which he is now engaged, he had not seen less clearly each step of the wooden midshipman's staircase, each pew of the church in which Florence was married, or each bed in the dormitory of Doctor Blimber's establishment, because he was himself at the time by the lake of Geneva, he might as truly have said that he saw ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... had been deacon in said church, and was president of the official board. In fact, he was as truly a part of the Church as was the pulpit on the platform or the bell in the steeple. No meeting was complete without him. He was an indispensable part of the service. He always sat in the same pew, and none coming into the Church previously to Deacon Gramps ever dared sit in his pew any more than they dared to monopolize the preacher's chair in the pulpit. He always enjoyed the double pleasure of chewing his tobacco and hearing the sermon simultaneously, and ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison

... must come to the rescue. There was nothing good which could come from the South; all was tainted with this crying sin. New England purity, through New England Puritanism, must permeate all the land, and effect the good work—and none so efficient as Beecher. The students of the law-school had a pew in his little synagogue—it was after the fashion of a square pew, with seats all around, and to this he would direct his eye when pouring out his anathemas upon the South, Southern habits, and Southern institutions; four ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... almshouse in Westminster, upon which Fuller remarks, in his quaint way, "It giveth the best light when one carrieth his lantern before him." The brother of Pepys was buried here in 1664 under his mother's pew. The old church was swallowed up by the Great Fire, and the present building erected in 1680, at a cost of L11,430 5s. 11d. The tower and spire were considered masterpieces of Wren. The spire, originally 234 feet high, was struck by lightning ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... used to go into Mrs. Morel's pew. Morel never went to chapel, preferring the public-house. Mrs. Morel, like a little champion, sat at the head of her pew, Paul at the other end; and at first Miriam sat next to him. Then the chapel was like home. It was a pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and flowers. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... made. In the Chapel Royal, St. James's, after the reading of the sentence at the offertory, "Let your light so shine before men," etc., while the organ plays, two members of Her Majesty's household, wearing the royal livery, descend from the royal pew, and, preceded by the usher, advance to the altar rails, where they present to one of the two officiating clergymen a red bag, edged with gold lace or braid, which is received in an alms dish, and then reverently placed upon the altar. This bag, or purse, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... they lived. On Sundays after Mass the ordinances of the Intendant were read at the doors of the churches. These related to any number of subjects—regulations of inns and markets, poaching, sale of brandy, pew-rents, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, domestic servants, quarrelling in church, fast driving, the careful observance of feast ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... were already in their pew. There was a general commotion among the children when they saw Mrs Hope and Mr Walcot walking up the aisle arm-in-arm. Matilda called her mother's attention to the remarkable fact, and the little heads ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... wife took her Presbyterian husband into the Established Church and we find Washington crediting him with L33 for pew No. 20 in Alexandria (Christ) Church in January 1773. But the Presbyterian citadel of learning was the choice over William and Mary College when time came for the eldest son, William Jr., to prepare for a professional career. The strict discipline of Old Nassau was more to the liking ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... parties, and here, before beginning their round, he would tell his eager listeners something of the general history of the foundation. After that the Dean used to lead the way into the building itself, by the little door beneath the Abbot's Pew, and show them all the most notable tombs and monuments. He now lies at rest beneath the very stones which his feet so often passed over on {23} these happy Saturday afternoons, close to the vault of an eighteenth-century ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... visible. He was standing inside the window on the steps, hanging up the last strip of his background from the brass rail along the ceiling. Within, the Manchester shop window was cut off by a partition rather like the partition of an old-fashioned church pew from the general space of the shop. There was a panelled barrier, that is to say, with a little door like a pew door in it. Parsons' face appeared, staring with round ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... impressive; carrying all the appearance of devoted earnestness. My father had on a certain occasion, when I was still a small Eton boy, taken time by the forelock, and secured the use of a convenient pew in the first rank of the gallery. From this elevated situation we surveyed at ease and leisure the struggling crowds below. The crush was everywhere great, but greatest of all in the centre aisle. Here the mass of human beings, mercilessly compressed, swayed ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... at the intersection of Wall and Broadway, may be seen the original Trinity Church structure which was completed in 1697. It was replaced by the present edifice in 1846. President Washington, who was an Episcopalian, did not attend Trinity, but maintained a pew in St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey Street, which remains as it was when he ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... rather set in meeting and look at the back of Persis Dale's bonnet than to have a nice wife of your own in the pew beside you." ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... or, "To be married to this man?" her father advances and places her right hand in that of the clergyman, who places it in the groom's right hand. After this her father retires to his seat in the pew with his family. ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... unaccountable thing, Lawrence," said Mrs. Hildreth, "why the church should be so heavily encumbered. I am sure you contribute handsomely and the pew rents are high. There is always a large congregation. I ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... a handsomer horse. So on they went, through the lychgate to the church; and while the Corporal waited outside with the horse. Lady Eleanor and the children went in. There at the back of a square family pew, among strange old monuments, all showing heraldic shields coloured white and blue, was a tablet: "To the memory of Captain Richard Bracefort of the 116th Light Dragoons, who fell in the glorious action of ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... who was obliged to ride away upon his round of visits. Accordingly, Mr. Talcott walked twice to and fro across the green, with Miss Amelia tripping demurely by his side, and served as the target for a thousand eyeshots as he stood up at the head of the Doctor's pew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... The Poet at the Breakfast Table Over the Teacups Elsie Venner The Guardian Angel A Mortal Antipathy Pages from an Old Volume of Life Bread and the Newspaper My Hunt after "The Captain" The Inevitable Trial Cinders from Ashes The Pulpit and the Pew Medical Essays Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science Scholastic and Bedside Teaching The Medical Profession ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... it! Look at the extras—gas, coals, washing bed—linen, washing table—linen, washing towels, kitchen fires, service, oil for three lamps, afternoon tea, and three shillings for sundries on the fourth page! What can sundries include? She hasn't skipped anything but pew-rent." ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... seated in the comfortable pew which the iron merchant was able to pay for. And, by the way, what a comfortable thing is wealth in the various ramifications of life, even to one's church relationships! No fear of the unwelcome bidding, "Sit thou here under my footstool"—in ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... house from the little circulating library round the corner. The ringing of the neighbouring church bell had come to its final tinkling, and Mrs. Duffer knew that she must start, or disgrace herself in the eyes of the pew-opener. "Come, my dear," she said; and away they went. As the door of No. 10 opened so did that of No. 11 opposite, and the four ladies, including Marion Fay, met in the road. "You have a visitor this morning," ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... wearing their swords." Young men are urged to qualify as notaries. In addition to the title of "Sieur," baronies are created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms emblazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial mansion itself is taking on more of pomp. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... protracted remark: "Guess the ole gal feels rather big since she got inter wot they call good s'ciety, eh?" This was in allusion to the recent successful speculation in tobacco, which had enabled Mr. Crull to buy the best house in Twenty-third street, and take the second best pew in a fashionable church, thereby placing Mrs. Crull at once within the charmed circle ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... early vision. Places and things have their sanctifying influences, and can recall us to lost experiences. I know a man to whom the scent of a white, wild rose is always a call to prayer. I know another to whom Grasmere is always the window of holy vision. Sometimes a particular pew in a particular church can throw the heavens open, and we see the Son of God. The old Sunday-school has sometimes taken an old man back to his childhood and back to his God. So I do not wonder that God led Jacob back to Bethel, and that in the old place of blessing ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... all, and they came slowly up the aisle, while countless eyes were turned upon them, every woman noticing Katy's dress sweeping the carpet with so long a trail, and knowing by some queer female instinct that it was city-made, and not the handiwork of Marian Hazelton, panting for breath in that pew near the door, and trying to forget herself by watching Dr. Grant. She could not have told what Katy wore; she would not have sworn that Katy was there, for she saw only two, Wilford and Morris Grant. She ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... illustrated magazine a long article about the late Czar of Russia, then just come to the throne or about to come to it. After that, lying in the hammock on the front porch on summer evenings, or sitting through a long sermon in the family pew, she amused herself by trying to make up her mind whether she would or would not be the Czar's mistress when she played in his Capital. Now Edna had met this fascinating word only in the novels of Ouida,—her hard-worked little mother kept a long row of them in the upstairs storeroom, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... from half a text, after the manner of curates. "For they shall see God"—he repeated it in a poignant undertone—he, tall and young and priestly in his vestments, seen against the dim glory of a stained window—and Mr. Newman, attentive in his pew, leaned forward suddenly to hear, like a ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... why poor Paterfamilias, sitting in the family pew, is not so enamoured of that idea of accomplishing those threescore years and ten which the young parson, fresh from Cambridge, is describing as such a lucky number in life's lottery. The attempt to paint it so is well-meaning, no doubt, 'the vacant chaff well meant for grain;' and it is ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... first back in Newark. You're not up yet owing to the difference in time—I can imagine the quiet house with the first of the morning stealing greyly in. You'll be presently going to church to sit in your old-fashioned mahogany pew. There's not much of Sunday in our atmosphere—only the little one can manage to keep in his heart. I shall share the ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... enjoyed themselves; the sweet spring flowers in the church, the joyous Easter hymns, and the familiar story read once again by the rector, satisfied their little souls. They sat with radiant faces in the family pew, and when they caught sight of Bob singing away with tearful eyes and a happy smile in the village choir, they nodded across at ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre

... solemnity of the church banished the light mood. A new joy, deeper, and more lasting, took the place of laughter as they sat in the front pew, reading over the service. Barbara and Roger sat together, half way down to the door. Neither had spoken since ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... the subject, and a few minutes later he was following her rustling skirts up the broad centre aisle to the pew four rows back from the pulpit. He wished it had not been so far forward, because the worshippers interested him, if only by reason of their sameness of type. You could see they were all people ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... brief that lay on the desk before him. Straight before us were the seats for the jury, rising one above the other, and at their side the witness-box. Above us on the right was the judge's seat, and immediately below it a structure somewhat resembling a large pew or a counting-house desk, surmounted by a brass rail, in which a person in a grey wig—the clerk of the court—was mending a quill pen. On our left rose the dock—suggestively large and roomy—enclosed ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... fellow of your town, one Tisdall,(10) lodges in the same house with me. Patrick told me Squire Tisdall and his lady lodged here. I pretended I never heard of him; but I knew his ugly face, and saw him at church in the next pew to me, and he often looked for a bow, but it would not do. I think he lives in Capel Street, and has an ugly fine wife in a fine coach. Dr. Freind and I dined in the City by invitation, and I drank punch, very good, but it makes me hot. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... is a great deal of poor stuff in it, but there is more that is first-rate than I thought. I had quite forgotten Flora's enumeration of the number of times Mr. F. proposed to her—"seven times, once in a hackney coach, once in a boat, once in a pew, once on a donkey at Tunbridge Wells, and the rest on his knees." But she is ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... of worship. It is not an impertinence, but stands in the line of duties along side of prayer and singing. To give money each time you go to church, and in the appointed way will bring blessings from God. Pew rent is not "giving" in this sense, any more than paying the butter bill or for a seat at the opera house. We refer to the offering to God for religious or charitable purposes, regularly through the Offertory in church. So your alms will go up with your prayers as ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... pretty, attractive girls—city girls—in one pew, occasioned some comment in church; otherwise there was scarcely a ripple to disturb the calm that rested ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... excitement prevailed, not long since, because a colored man had bought a pew in one of our churches. I heard a very kind-hearted and zealous democrat declare his opinion that "the fellow ought to be turned out by constables, if he dared to occupy the pew he had purchased." Even at the communion-table, the mockery of human pride is mingled with the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... "not particularly; a walk under the 'broad canopy' is preferable on a beautiful morning like this to a poky little pew; and I like the singing of the birds better than the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... Dr. P. Brooks, the great preacher who everyone was raving about last spring in London, (or was it last year?) his church is like a great temple, or public hall, and cost [pound symbol]180,000. Mr. Winthrop gave us his pew, so we were well placed, and as he is very rapid and not very loud, the strain to hear his discourse would have been very great if we had not been near. "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh." Christ ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... toward my husband, it will probably not be pleasant for you to come to our pew" she had said; "but I hope the time will come when bygones will be bygones. The sexton, however, will give you a seat, and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... live. Only genius could have invented John Silver, that terribly smooth-spoken mariner. Nothing but genius could have drawn that simple yokel on the island, with his craving for cheese as a Christian dainty. The blustering Billy Bones is a little masterpiece: the blind Pew, with his tapping stick (there are three such blind tappers in Mr. Stevenson's books), strikes terror into the boldest. Then, the treasure is thoroughly satisfactory in kind, and there is plenty of it. The landscape, as in the feverish, fog-smothered flat, is gallantly painted. And there ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Willenhall, on the north side of the road, is Bentley Hall, the 'hall' from which the postillion must have been returning when overtaken by the thunderstorm. The church attended by Borrow and his gypsy friends, when Mrs. Petulengro horrified the sexton by invading the nobleman's vacant pew, may confidently be identified with Bushbury Church, which has all the features described by Borrow. It is rather over three miles' distance from the dingle, has a peal of bells, a chancel entrance, and is surrounded by lofty beech-trees. The vicar in 1825 was a Mr. Clare, but whether of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the recollection of those costumes in the Manor House pew, which appeared so lovely in her eyes while she played the Magnificat. Dreams of dainty dresses are dear to her heart as the occasional thoughts of love which steal over her at times. "If the two could be combined," she thinks, "love ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... been regular in my attendance at the sanctuary. Certainly I have never been a scoffer; but, on the other hand, I must confess that somehow it has come to pass since Josephine and I plighted our troth that our pew has stood empty on the Lord's day oftener than the orthodox consider fitting. And the worst of it is I used to attend service about every other Sabbath before I became a benedict, and Josephine taught a Sunday-school class up to within ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... nephew up the aisle and into their pew, for fear of coming face to face with Jimmy; she remains a few moments on her knees, and so does not interfere with Teddy, who having hurried through his own private devotions, turns round and watches the stream of ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton

... nine cheese dollars would be ten per cent, below the face value of ten silver dollars, you would take the cheese. You could use it to better advantage in your business. Hence I say cheese is more valuable than silver, and it should be made legal tender for all debts, public and private, except pew rent. I may be in advance of other eminent financiers, who have studied the currency question, but I want to see the time come, and I trust the day is not far distant, when 412 1/2 grains of cheese will be equal to a dollar in codfish, and when the merry jingle ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... highest seats in the church as well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a parson should be raised above his parishioners. The new-order churches consult the public convenience, and place every body on a level, as it might be. Now, in old times, a family was buried in its pew; it could neither see nor be seen; and I can remember the time when I could just get a look of our clergyman's wig, for he was an old-school man; and as for his fellow-creatures, one might as well be praying in ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... same thought, 'Thou art near me,' seems to bathe the heart in a sea of sweet rest, and to bring the assurance of a divine Companion that cheers all the solitude. And why is the difference? There are two people sitting in one pew; to the one man the thought of God is his ghastliest doubt, to the other it is his deepest joy. Wherefore? And ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... they moved from theirs. The magnitude of their wrongs would admit of nothing like routine or monotony. The chairs were pushed back, and I saw five tall, slim figures standing erect, in straight black gowns, white kerchiefs and spotless caps. They were devout Lutherans, and their pew at the Sunday service was never vacant; but I had never seen ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,—still, and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Venners had a pew in the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr. Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... of a child who has inherited the disease, or of a person who has suffered from its obscurer symptoms, there may be produced a "reaction." This may take the form of "a large, indurated, reddish papule" which in a pew days become of a dark, bluish-red colour; or the inflammation may be of a severer type, resulting in a "pustule." A positive result is more frequently obtained when the disease is of long standing, or comparatively inactive. But may not this "reaction" occur ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... diamonds and jacinths which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... treacherous lamp. The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs. Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... once before, and as she softly passed up the broad aisle she saw nothing in the building or the people around her that was not strange, no familiar face, no familiar thing. But it was a church, and she was alone; quite alone in the midst of that crowd; and she went up to the empty pew and ensconced herself in the far corner of it, with a curious feeling of quiet and of being at home. She was no sooner seated, however, than leaning forward as much as possible to screen herself from observation, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... nose, knocked him down, kicked him in the ear, and when pulled off by a policeman, he said no holyghoster could call his dead father names, not around him. The minister said he couldn't have been more surprised if some one had paid a year's pew rent, than he was when that young ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... these chiefs had shown much regard for Livingstone, and on the death of Bubi, Sechele and his people indicated a strong wish that a missionary should reside among them. On leaving Mabotsa, Livingstone transferred his services to this tribe. The name of the pew station was Chonuane; it was situated some forty miles from Mabotsa, and in 1846 it became the centre of Livingstone's operations among the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... blossomed out from her retirement, and became quite voluble, in the front pew before the ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... Hospital officials sit in transverse pews of an old-fashioned shape, which run down the sides of the walls. The organ, presented by Major Ingram in 1691-92, is in a gallery at the west end, and immediately beneath the gallery on the right-hand side is the Governor's pew. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... that nobody hereabouts doubts the Judges generosity. Does he know whether the sheriff has fairly made up his mind to have a reading desk or a deacons pew under the pulpit? I have not heard my cousin speak on that subject, lately, replied Marmaduke. I think its likely that we will have a pretty dull court on't, from what I can gather. I hear that Jotham Riddel and the man ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... everywhere for the little damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen. Meanwhile she had not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come. He fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone visible. She was a dear little soul, he thought. He wondered why she called him Bogy. Perhaps it was a way little ladies had ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... could agree upon no candidate for settlement. They demanded the respectability of belief with the showy talents of skepticism,—an impossible combination, at least for a parish which offered only eight hundred dollars and a decrepit house. At length Colonel Prowley took a pew in the Orthodox Church;—it was a temporary arrangement, he said, to be terminated whenever a settled minister should be provided for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... something awful, and then you'll feel ashamed and wish you'd never asked him to go, and we'll all be disgraced. It's all right to have our mite boxes for the heathen, and send missionaries to them. They're far away and we don't have to associate with them. But I don't want to have to sit in a pew with ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to say, in all relations of life not pertaining to eating—Mr. Port was very much what was to be expected of him from his birth and from his environment. Every Sunday, with an exemplary piety, he sat solitary in the great square pew in St. Peter's which had been occupied by successive generations of Ports ever since the year 1761, when the existing church was completed. Every other day of the week, from his late breakfast-time for some hours onward, he sat at his own particular window of the Philadelphia Club and contemplated ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... of Long Ago, where as a boy I sat With mother in the family pew and fumbled with my hat— How I would like to see it now the way I saw it then, The straight-backed pews, the pulpit high, the women and the men Dressed stiffly in their Sunday clothes and solemnly ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... and crowded almost to suffocation. On entering, we found three priests standing side by side, in a sort of tribune, placed where the altar usually is, handsomely fitted up with crimson curtains, and elevated about as high as our pulpits. We took our places in a pew close to the ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... estimable and we trust very religious young women sometimes enter the house of God in a costume which makes their utterance of the words of the litany and the acts of prostrate devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquant; and, if she came there for ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the swollen lapels of his coat, like a bursting magnolia bud, Colonel Starbottle began. The present associations were, he might say, singularly hallowed to him; not only was Pineville—a Southern centre—the recognized nursery of Southern chivalry, Southern beauty (a stately inclination to the pew in which Miss Sally and Julia Jeffcourt sat), Southern intelligence, and Southern independence, but it was the home of the lamented dead who had been, like himself and another he should refer to later, an ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... while Squire is in his pew, He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare; For though low down upon the list, I'm there: "In proud and glorious memory"—that's my due. Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire; I suffered anguish that he's never guessed; Once I came home on leave; and then went ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... to listen to his sermon with outward calm. But it was a happiness to Mrs. Churton when Wood End House sent so large a contingent of worshippers to the village church, where the pew in which she had sat alone on so many Sundays—poor Mr. Churton's increasing ailments having prevented him from accompanying her—was so well filled. Glancing about her, as was her custom, to note which of her poor were present and which absent, she was surprised to see ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... exclaimed. "Goodness, no! When I'm here of a Sunday, I lie in bed all day, or most of it. Otherwise, I'd have to walk with my parent to the family pew. No—my Sundays are days of rest! You really think this disappearance ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... those who paid pew-rents—upon the great importance of a change in the pulpit of the First M. E. Church. A change in persons must of course take place, for their present pastor had exhausted the three-year maximum of the itinerant system, but there was needed much more ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... gave him a small table for a pulpit. The others, with Gipsey, and a large gray cat, the property of Robby and Kitty, which marched in after them, were the congregation, sitting on the edge of the bed, to be like the long church pew. The minister took for his text, "Little children, love one another," and his sermon was such a dear, funny little discourse, that I must write ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... crowd was entranced. The big thin man replied, saying, "They had done right to guillotine Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and all the family." The indignation increased, and the men from Bois-de-Chenes, and especially their wives, wanted to get into the pew to knock him down, but just then Sirou came up, crying "Room! room!" and old Koekli in his red gown threw himself before the man, who escaped into the sacristy, raising his hands to heaven and declaring that he was converted, and that he renounced the devil and all his ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... is the sphere and the opportunity for the enterprising middleman. He appeals to a tuft-hunting instinct so deep in human nature that the mere surface difference of republic or monarchy hardly touches it. In a London church you will see a pew full of ladies' maids, and presently there is a great crowding and squeezing, and a low whisper of "make room for Lady Philippa." It is only another lady's maid joining her friends; but they all get titles by reflection. Turn from this scene to the New York area steps, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... despiser of fashion, you know you wouldn't wear a two-year-old bonnet to church, on a pleasant Sunday morning, for the price of a pew in ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... purchase Bank-stock and rear their own pine-apples—the common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various



Words linked to "Pew" :   bench



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