"Auction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Devil's auction of the corner building, man, woman and child were knocked down to the highest bidder, for the hell-minted price of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... above charges are payable on account simply of the levy: if the sum due, with the above charges, be not paid within five days (or 15 days on written request of debtor), and the goods are removed and sold by auction, all expenses of such removal and sale are ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... presume that, so far from the squire being authorized to take immediate possession of your place, he would be obliged to give legal notice of sale, on foreclosure of mortgage, by advertisement in some weekly paper. This would allow of sale at auction to ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... the sale by public auction was announced of the house in which Shakespeare was born. It had long been a show-place in private hands. A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the ungrammatical ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of Ammonal[30] (original very scarce, and believed to be in the muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... fortunate that it was not there and that it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his father's glory, and that it was far better that the colonel's sword should be sold at auction, sold to the old-clothes man, thrown among the old junk, than that it should, to-day, wound the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... about four years after the disappearance of her husband, while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the house of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk like a ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... replied Felworth; "but, since you are desirous to hear, I had better begin from the commencement, and tell you the entire history of this extraordinary animal, whose fame has reached Westminster Hall. The man who owns the coach which passes this house attended an auction in Dublin of cast horses from a dragoon regiment about a year and a half since, and among them was exhibited the horse before you. Of course he had managed to get a private opinion from the sergeant in charge; and the account ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and the old white man had been caught in the attempt to break into a house, and were sent to prison, to await their trial for burglary; and the other white man was also sent to prison, until he could be tried, for stealing a pocket-book in an auction store. ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... comparatively unburdensome means of increasing the revenue, and obtained valuable assistance from the Wealth of Nations. He imposed two new taxes in 1777, of which he got the idea there; one on man-servants, and the other on property sold by auction. And the budget of 1778 owed still more important features to Smith's suggestions, for it introduced the inhabited house duty so strongly recommended by him, and the malt tax.[253] Then in the following year 1779 we find Smith consulted by statesmen like Dundas and the Earl ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... is a monstrous price; Say two and six and further talk shun." "Take it," cried Jove; "we can't be nice,— 'T would fetch twice that at Leonard's auction." ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to hell; and yet the gars of Marignay, whose churches they have burned, stand still with folded arms! Oh! oh! this Republic of damned souls has sold the property of God and that of the nobles at auction; it has shared the proceeds with the Blues; it has decreed, in order to gorge itself with money as it does with blood, that a crown shall be only worth three francs instead of six; and yet the gars of Marignay haven't seized their weapons and driven the Blues ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... farther enacted, That the "school farms" in the parish of Saint Helena, South Carolina, shall be sold, subject to any leases of the same, by the said tax commissioners, at public auction, on or before the first day of January, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, at not less than ten dollars per acre; and the lots in the city of Port Royal, as laid down by the said tax commissioners, and the lots and houses ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... been annexed from the Marathas two years previously, are now included in the jurisdiction of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces. In such a recently-conquered country, where the sale of all widows by auction for the benefit of the Treasury, and other strange customs still prevailed, the abilities of an able and zealous young officer had ample scope. Sleeman, after a brief apprenticeship, received, in 1822, the independent civil charge of the District of Narsinghpur, in the Nerbudda valley, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... she viewed it for the first time in definite particulars, its true aspect struck her with a sudden dismay. She was expected to do nothing less than exhibit herself for sale, put herself up at auction for the highest bidder, set out her charms as a bait. And when the bait drew, and the bidders offered, and the buyer awaited—what then? She would never, her pride alone would never let her, degrade herself to a position at the very thought of which she caught her breath with horror. Come what may, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... has been conducting a Confidence Auction from a barrow and egg-box). Well, I 'ope you're all satisfied, and if you ain't —(candidly)—it don't make no bloomin' difference to me, for I'm orf—these premises is comin' down fur alterations. [He gets off the barrow, shoulders the egg-box, and departs in search ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... bringing the mushrooms up out of the caves they are covered over with a cloth to avoid contact with the outer air, which is apt to turn them brown. They are then placed in baskets that contain twenty-three to twenty-five pounds and sent to market, where they are sold at auction as they arrive. Or they may be sent to preserved-vegetable manufacturers, who contract for them ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... almost as any bay in Laputa—that voyage which resulted in the founding of a cluster of great nations any one of whose mammoth millionaires could now buy up Ilium and the Golden Fleece combined if offered in the auction mart? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain. In a thousand years' time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic treatment as the voyage of the Argonauts; but on a planet like this a good ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... dealer, "is such a jumble and so dark that nobody can see what he's got. Ought to be very grateful to me that I put 'em where people could see 'em. If I can pay for 'em, all right, and if I can't, let him take 'em back. He always knows where to find 'em. I'm not going to have an auction." ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reckon our sale went pretty well. Just before closing time we held a rubbish auction, with Ginger in the chair. Ginger would make an absolute Napoleon among auctioneers. He can bully, lie, despair, wheedle and take you into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... skilfully, although as yet she had no instrument. Three weeks, however, after her return a rich man, who lived in the village which was known as "Over the River," failed, and all his furniture was sold at auction. Many were the surmises of my grandmother, on the morning of the sale, as to what "Cap'n Howard could be going to buy at the vandue and put in the big lumber wagon," which he drove ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... a few years customary for the members of the Senior Class, previously to leaving college, to bring together in some convenient room all the books, furniture, and movables of any kind which they wished to dispose of, and put them up at public auction. Everything offered was either sold, or, if no bidders could ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... road of Kensington Gardens, with the master, mistress, and dog walking in front of the house, and evidently portraits. I always suspected it might be by Hogarth; but I am very sorry to say I parted with it at auction for a few shillings. It was (say) two feet square: the figures were about four inches in height, and dressed in the then fashion. I would further ask if any oil painting or sketches are known of the minor engravings, such as "The Laughing ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... performed its scouring work so well, that it would have puzzled a wiser man than Solomon to have decided what was each individual's personal property, the whole having been thrown together like one of the odd lots at an auction sale. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it up at auction, and Tim Bluster bid the most, Who always said "There want no hants nor any kind of ghost That ever walked a graveyard in the middle of the night Could make his nerves unsteady, or could ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... West Indies or America, it being one of the conditions of the contract that the services of the prisoner were the property of the contractor for a given number of years. On landing, these wretched prisoners were put up to auction and sold to the highest bidder—in other words, they were slaves. Many men made large sums of money in this inhuman trade, trafficking in the lives of their fellow-countrymen. The thing at last reached such a pitch that practically no able-bodied man was safe from the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... a coarse mode of flattery, by repeating his bon-mots in his hearing[1042], told us that he had said, a certain celebrated actor was just fit to stand at the door of an auction-room with a long pole, and cry 'Pray gentlemen, walk in;' and that a certain authour, upon hearing this, had said, that another still more celebrated actor was fit for nothing better than that, and would pick your pocket after you came out[1043]. JOHNSON. 'Nay, my dear lady, there ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... official reputation as a member of the London school-board, attracted unusual attention. For some time she kept her doors barred against the coarse minions of the law, but ultimately they entered the house, seized her goods and carried them off to be sold at public auction, but they were bought in by friends next day. Miss Charlotte E. Hall and Miss Babb have protested and resisted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to stand well with everybody during this last festa, Maurice began to speak to Salvatore of the donkey auction. When would it begin? ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... cash left was barely enough for the funeral expenses. The bonds which were found proved to be so many worthless pieces of parchment. The jewellery of recent workmanship consisted of a set of valueless shirt-studs and a watch that would not have fetched ten florins at auction. Of silver there was a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a ladle, and two or three pieces of tableware, bent, crooked, and broken, hardly worth the mentioning. Of horses there were two lean and decrepit-looking animals, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he may protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such a dignitary ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... execution against you, on the part of Mr Richard Gruff; and if your husband does not instantly discharge the debt, with interest and all costs, amounting altogether to the sum of thirty-nine pounds ten shillings, we shall take an inventory of all you have, and proceed to sell it by auction for the discharge ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... enough these days," retorted Shakespeare. "When a man's autograph brings five thousand dollars, or one thousand pounds, in the auction-room, there isn't a bank in the world fool enough to decline to honor any check he'll sign under a thousand dollars, or ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... is an advertising age, and an advertising age is a sensational age. Religion itself—the staid, the demure—shares in the general tendency. She preaches in the style of the auction room, she beats drums and shakes tambourines in the streets, she affects criminals and dotes on vice, she bustles about the reformation of confirmed topers. By-and-bye she will get up a mission to lunatics and idiots. She is now a very "forward" person. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... eye-witness to one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling them separately at the public auction at Rio. Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... have heard of a connoisseur who was one day in an auction-room where there was an inimitable piece of painting of fruits and flowers. The connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture till he had first examined the catalogue; and, finding it was done by an Englishman, he pulled out his eye-glass. "Oh, sir," says he, "those ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it; his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the back part of his grammar, made poems from it for years, and appeared in many transfigurations, as this and that god and demigod and hero ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... man to his humour. Business of whatever description, from the purchase of a borough to that of a brooch, was alike the object of Mr. Brown's most zealous pursuit: taverns, where country cousins put up; rustic habitations, where ancient maidens resided; auction or barter; city or hamlet,—all were the same to that enterprising spirit, which made out of every acquaintance—a commission! Sagacious and acute, Mr. Brown perceived the value of eccentricity in covering design, and found by experience that whatever can be laughed at as odd will ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tableau or end of the table won, the other lost. The croupier threw the coins in payment. I let my double stake lie, and so did Anastasius. At the next coup we lost again. The banker stuffed his winnings into his pocket and declared a suite. The bank was put up at auction, and was eventually knocked down to the same personage for fifty louis. The horse-headed Englishman cried "banco," which means that he would play the banker for the whole amount. The hands were dealt, the Englishman lost, and the game started afresh with a hundred louis in the bank. The ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the soiled green notes that he pinned in his waistcoat was a strip of firm ground he had made, over which he advanced a few steps nearer her. And Bertha was very happy, even forgetting, for a while, to be afraid of the smallpox, which had thrown out little flags, like auction signs, here ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... will be an adventure in itself; and we can see just how people behave when they are buying a schooner, and how prices are running, so that when the time comes we will be more experienced. Besides, the club remembered the ship auction scene in "The Wrecker" and felt that the occasion might be ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... original portrait of Nell Gwynn. She supposed it to be immensely valuable, and was keeping it safe until prices rose a little higher still, after the war, when she had hopes of launching it on the auction rooms in London, and realizing a sum that would make ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... place, before they left the drawing-room, Miss Juliana O'Leary pointed out to his lordship's attention a picture over the drawing-room chimney-piece. "Is not it a fine piece, my lord?" said she, naming the price Mrs. Raffarty had lately paid for it at an auction. "It has a right to be a fine piece, indeed; for it cost a fine price!" Nevertheless this fine piece was a vile daub; and our hero could only avoid the sin of flattery, or the danger of offending the lady, by protesting that he had no judgment ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... by auction near the Mosquee Djama-ez-Zitouna," he said. "Would the gracious Princess like to see ...
— The Princess And The Jewel Doctor - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... next tiny, dilapidated weatherboards. In the roadway, handsome chaises, landaus, four-in-hands made room for bullock-teams, eight and ten strong; for tumbrils carrying water or refuse—or worse; for droves of cattle, mobs of wild colts bound for auction, flocks of sheep on their way to be boiled down for tallow. Stock-riders and bull-punchers rubbed shoulders with elegants in skirted coats and shepherd's plaid trousers, who adroitly skipped heaps of stones and mortar, or crept along the narrow ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the mass of haggard men at a large stock auction which half the street attended. The panic had spread. Sleeplessness and anxiety had carved the crowding faces with hard chisels. The shouts, the scramble, the oaths, the clinched hands, the pitiful pushing, affected me like a dismal spectacular play on some barbarian stage. How shall I ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... accusation brought against him. In reality it was not so at all, but his treatment was due to his having offended some of the freedmen. So he brought together all his furniture, considerable in amount and very beautiful, in the auction room as if he were going to call for bids on all of it: but he sold only his senatorial dress. By this he showed that he had received no deadly blow and could enjoy life as a private citizen.—Beside these events of the time the weekly market was transferred ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... on the five o'clock stage. Mrs. John had been there three days now, and John's father and mother were almost packed up—so Mrs. John said. The auction would be to-morrow at nine o'clock, and with John there to see that things "hustled"—which last was really unnecessary to mention, for John's very presence meant "hustle"—with John there, then, the whole thing ought to be over by one o'clock, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... you! Joseph Bright, the father of John Bright, never voluntarily paid church-tithes. Every year the bailiff came, demanded money, was courteously refused, and proceeded to levy on goods which were carried away, duly advertised and sold at auction. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... he was always free of the handsome salons wherein the Friends of Humanity devoted themselves to roulette, auction bridge, baccarat and chemin-de-fer: and of this freedom he now proceeded to avail himself, with his hat just a shade aslant on his head, his hands in his pockets, a suspicion of a smile on his lips and a glint of the devil in his eyes—in all an expression accurately reflecting ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the day. The first step of the housekeeping powers was to choose the least agreeable and least available room in the house for the children's nursery, and to fit it up with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neighboring auction-shop could afford, and then to keep them in it. Now everybody knows that to bring up children to be upright, true, generous, and religious, needs so much discipline, so much restraint and correction, and so many rules and regulations, that it is all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... have been successful also. To this each person contributes a pound of something useful, all of which is sold by auction during the evening, causing a good deal ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... gambler! Not in cards, but in lost luggage! In America, all baggage etc. lost on trains and not reclaimed is put up to auction unopened. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unaccountably—ornament is every where; we have not a town where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... auction of the wreck, which, by arrangement, is to be Pinkerton's prey, the mysterious opposition of the other bidder, so determined to win an object apparently so worthless, is no less thrilling than the sale of the fur coat in Boisgobey's "Crime de l'Opera." But the reader knows why the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prices ranging from 10 to 12 reals each. Borrow made a special point of this, "to give a direct lie to the assertion" that the Bible Society, having no vent for the Bibles and New Testaments it printed, was forced either to give them away or sell them by auction, when they were purchased as ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... was this season sold in London by auction. Mr. Wilkes said, he wondered to find in it such a numerous collection of sermons; seeming to think it strange that a gentleman of Mr. Beauclerk's character in the gay world should have chosen to have many compositions of that kind. JOHNSON. 'Why, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... retire by an offer of twelve thousand solidi, Pope Sabinianus, who was then the head of the Church, iussit aperiri horrea ecclesiae (threw open the granaries), and offered their contents at auction, at a valuation of one ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... then turns cumbrously in his chair, permitting his eye to rove round the room in search of the unwary prey. He smiles cynically at the intense concentration of the Auction parties; winces at the renewed and unnatural efforts of those who make music; glares unamiably at the feverish book-worms, and suddenly breaks into little chuckles of satisfaction. The Ante-Room peers cautiously round to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... performance of Shirley's masque, entitled The Triumphs of Peace. In 1789, when Dr. Burney published the third volume of his History of Music, it was in the possession of Dr. Morton of the British Museum.—Query, Was Dr. Morton's library disposed of by auction, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... day been filled with all the 'plant' of the restaurant, and all or almost all the poor household stuff from upstairs. It was an odd, ramshackle collection; and poor Dora, who had been walking round looking at the auction tickets, was realising with a sinking heart how much debt the sale would still leave unprovided for. But she had found friends. Father Vernon had met the creditors for her. There had been a composition, and she had insisted upon working off to the best of her power whatever sum might ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it, that 's it,—said the Master,—two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money. I've seen an old woman that wouldn't fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at. I don't think your ant-eating ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from vanishing into thin air to-morrow morning at the auction mart, eighteen hundred francs! To repay my friends, as much again! Three quarters' rent to the landlord—whom you know.—My 'uncle' wants ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and Rachel came home after the New Year and set to work at once to break up the old home. All the furniture is to be sold by auction, and the house is to be sold too, or let upon a very long lease. I wanted to see Rachel, but dreaded seeing her, at the same time, so at last I sent a letter asking when I might come, and she wrote back a dear little affectionate note fixing the very next afternoon. When ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said Mr Felix quietly, affably. 'I gave precisely five pounds for it, at an auction, and I warn you that it is worth just thrice that sum. Still, if you would prefer ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do,—he felt in his breeches pocket—'here are the five sovereigns, and—once more— ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... afternoon, the girls made ready to go to the bazaar. They were to serve as assistants in the cake department, for the majority of the cakes were to be sold. The prize cake, and those having honourable mention would be exhibited, and later sold at auction, but much cake would be disposed ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... part with the poor,—as they always do, God bless 'em!—the landlord came down on Mr. O'Clery, sold out his sixty milch cows, after being twenty-one days in pound; and though the cows were worth ten pounds each, Lord Mandemon's agent sold them by auction, and he bought them back himself for two pounds each; and so the poor family was ruined. After that, O'Clery sold out another farm he had; and, collecting all that was due to him, he came to America, against the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... indignant. "I am going to tell them about my mother and the auction; I never said a word about an auctioneer; there mightn't have been one, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... 1790 there was a sale by Oliver Hasting to M. le chevalier Chs. Boucher de la Bruere, de Boucherville, of a Negro of the name of Antoine, aged eight years and a half. The price was 90 minots de ble. On September 9, 1791 followed the sale at auction of the female Negro slave Rose, aged 19 years, by William Matthews, merchant of Sorel, to Lambert Saint-Omer, Merchant of Montreal, for 38 louis and 5 shillings. This slave had already belonged to S. Mix as set ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... the parties of the witty Minister. They hugged Talleyrand's poodle; they vied with one another in gaining a smile from the child whom he brought up at his house. [92] The shrewder of them fortified their attentions with solid bargains, and made it their principal care not to be outbidden at the auction. Thus the game was kept up as long as there was a bishopric or a city ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: "There's a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand." The last he examined, ran: "A deal I can swing with a little cash. It's big, I tell you. It's so big I don't dare tell you." He remembered that deal—a Latin-American revolution. He had sent the cash, and Tom had swung it, and himself as well, into ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... feeling very hot and uncomfortable in the crape veil in which I was pinned. The others walked behind us, two by two, in a long procession. We went five times around the circle, while Sim Williams, on the wood-shed roof, tolled a big auction bell, which he ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... be young enough to catch a butterfly in Lady Adela—still be bold enough to chain a panther in Flora Vyvyan. Let the world know—your world in each nook of its gaudy auction-mart—that Lione: Haughton is no pauper cousin—no penniless fortune-hunter. I wish that world to be kind to him while he is yet young, and can enjoy it. Ah, Morley, Pleasure, like Punishment, hobbles after us, pede claudo. What would have delighted us yesterday does not catch us up till ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plate once at an auction over to the Ridge for almost nothin' and your pa was as mad as a wet hen. There was a name on it, but it could have been scraped off, and the rest of it was perfectly good. When you need a coffin plate you need ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... a certain Bishop of Necomus, that a woman named Antonia, in the Territory of Mutina, Italy, now called Modena, had brought forth 40 sons before she was forty years of age, and that she had had 3 and 4 at a birth. At the auction of the San Donato collection of pictures a portrait of Dianora Frescobaldi, by one of the Bronzinos in the sixteenth century, sold for about $3000. At the bottom of this portrait was an inscription stating that she was the mother of 52 children. This remarkable woman never had less than 3 at ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Seven-Years War on his hands. Diligently coining, this Mouldy Individual; still more successfully, is trading in Friedrich's Meissen China (bought in the cheapest market, sold in the dearest); has at Hamburg his "Auction of Meissen Porcelain," steadily going on, as a new commercial institution of that City;—and, in short, by assiduously laboring in such harvest-fields, gathers a colossal fortune, 100,000 pounds, 300,000 pounds, or I will not remember what. Gets "ennobled," furthermore, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Instead of workmen going with the eagerness of energy and hope to the employer who gave them most wages, they too often went to the employer to whom the parish sent them. The degrading spectacle of labourers set up to auction in the parish pound was frequently exhibited. Apart from the poor-law system, the actual feudal serfdom, which gave landowners great powers over the peasantry on their estates, was not abolished until the reign ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... the little tables set about the room; they also presided, more or less alluringly, at fruit, coffee, and ice-cream stands; and—I will not be sure, but I think—some of them seemed to be flirting with the youth of the other sex. There was an auction going on, and the place was full of tobacco smoke, which the women appeared not to mind. A booth for the sale of wine and beer was set off, and there was a good deal of amiable drinking. This was not like our fairs quite; and I am bound to say that the people ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... vinous or spirituous liquors—or all three of them at once—and should, without seeming provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the middle-aged stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along in the voyage Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a little game of auction bridge for small stakes in order to while away the tedium of travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr. X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being still hostile ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... coach, and a pair of gray horses with beautiful harness. Another offered twelve acres of land, and he also was refused. On the registers of Alkmaar it is recorded that in 1637 there were sold in that city, at public auction, one hundred and twenty tulips for the benefit of the orphanage, and that the sale produced one hundred ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... mail. Not only people in Westcote wrote for prices, but people away over in New Jersey and up in Westchester Country, and even from as far away as Poughkeepsie and Delaware. We had twice as many requests for lots as there were lots to sell, and we decided we would have an auction and let them go to the highest bidders. You see Remington Solander's Talking Tomb was becoming nationally famous. We began to negotiate with the owners of six farms adjacent to our cemetery; we figured on buying them and making more new ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler
... I buy las' May Wan horse on de Comp'nie Passengaire, An' auction feller w'at sole heem say She's out of ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... up, bidding against one another good-humoredly and naming prices as though they had been haggling over Nana at an auction. La Faloise said he would cover her with gold. Besides, everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and pick up backers. But as the three young men were darting off to propagandize, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... of the Republic, he misnames equality under the Constitution—in other words, the full power in the National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction block—then, sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... afterwards there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy saw from his window how they carried the old knights and the old ladies away, the flower-pots with the long ears, the old chairs, and the old clothes-presses. Something came here, and something came there; the portrait of her who had been found ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Auction Block". You hear the moans and screams of mothers torn from their offspring. You see them driven away, herded like cattle, chained like convicts, sold to "master's" in the "low ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... ("ole Marse Lockwood's pay chair") and a graceful, brass-handled serving-table, "what his grandpa done leave fo' li'l Marse Lockwood fer ter rec'leck' him by." I picked up a silver cup, at a roadside auction (and bid high for it against a Fifth Avenue dealer) engraved with his mother's coat-of-arms, and shamelessly inveigled Margarita into taking it, later, and giving me in return the silver bowl that stood for ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... this reef she was sold by public auction at Halifax, and fell to a syndicate of private individuals for L440. These gentlemen at once decided to raise her if possible, transport her into dock, and repair her. They commissioned Captain Kelly, of the Princess Beatrice, a ship then in harbor, to visit her ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... truly believe this story as I saw the dead gentleman auction off four times the same basket of roses at a Red Cross benefit, and each time he got a hundred dollars for the basket... However dead he may have been, he certainly was not ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... food is placed in conspicuous places about the house, that it may understand that its relatives are willing to support it. The mourners for some time wear wretched clothes, and neither dress their hair nor wash their faces. Every year the lamas sell by auction the clothing and ornaments, which are ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... one can scarcely blame the worthy burghers for mistrusting the newcomers and refusing to grant them welcome. They were unfortunate enough to have been robbed at Jamaica where they rested on their journey; when they reached here there was the disgrace of an auction in which their goods were sold to pay for their passage, and two of the passengers, David Israel and Moses Ambrosius, were held for security. You remember how a law suit was brought against them by Jacques de la Motthe, master of the vessel, for this same passage ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a meeting of the Farmers' Telephone directors;—to see how his neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing else to look after. He preferred his buckboard ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... that by my irregular way of living I had wretchedly misspent my time which is the most valuable thing in the world. Struck with those reflections, I collected the remains of my furniture, and sold all my patrimony by public auction to the highest bidder. Then I entered into a contract with some merchants, who traded by sea: I took the advice of such as I thought most capable to give it me; and resolving to improve what money I had, I went to Balsora and embarked with several merchants on board a ship ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... ask some girl who sings to preside at the Shamrock booth and sing Irish songs as Nora O'Malley did," planned Grace. "We can't have the Mystery Auction, because we don't care to ask the girls for packages, and we can't have the Italian booth, either, it would be too hard to arrange, but we can have a gypsy camp and a Japanese booth and an English tea shop and two or three funny little shows. The best thing to do is to call a meeting ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... buns being sold on that day is reported. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, 1712, writes: "Pray are not fine buns sold here in our town as the rare Chelsea Buns?" In 1839 the place was pulled down and sold by auction. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... strength and aptitude in the saddle and with their weapons, I knew well enough that such was not the case. The posts are mainly given to whoever can afford to pay most for them, and to men of families under special protection of the Lamas. In many cases they are actually sold by auction. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... it is with life," I said to myself;—"with time." This world is a sort of auction-room; we do not know that we are buyers: we are, in fact, more like beggars; we have brought no money to exchange for precious minutes, hours, days, or years; they are given to us. There is no calling out of terms, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Ohio to the attack, the night of October 9-10; and on the battlefield during the 10th and 12th, were collected 23 guns, 27 tomahawks, 80 blankets, and great numbers of war-clubs, shot-pouches, powder-horns, match-coats, deer-skins, "and other articles," all of which were put up at auction by the careful commissary, and brought nearly L100 to the army chest.—R. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... courting customs. We are no advocates of the formal modes of contracting matrimonial alliances common among many nations, and illustrations of which we find at all ages of the world. For example, among the ancient Assyrians it was a custom to sell wives to the highest bidder, at auction, the sums received for the handsomer one being given to the less favored ones as a dowry, to secure a husband for every woman. The same custom prevailed in Babylon in ancient times, and has been practiced in modern times in Russia. At St. Petersburg, not many years ago, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... But the money'll go to the child, and aren't we the proper ones to look after it for her. If the old woman dies and there's an auction—there'll be good bids for it, and whoever buys the quilt'll get the two hundred crowns as well. You'd better go over and have a talk with her, and make her leave everything ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of the oil yourselves, or is it done for you by the landlord?-I always knew of it being sold by public auction on the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... below proof. If made from domestic products, the tax should be from nine to twenty-five cents per gallon. The first was practically a tax on rum, the second on whiskey. This excise was followed in subsequent years by duties on carriages, on snuff, on property sold at auction, on refined sugar, and by the sale of stamps. Other articles were in after years added to the list, and to aid the Treasury during the period of the second war with Great Britain, a heavy imposition of internal duties was resorted to as the most prompt and efficient mode ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... most astounding colours, the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder immoderately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamont had made a purchase of cigars and French silks from some duffers in Fleet Street about this period; and he was found by Strong in the open Auction Room in Cheapside, having invested some money in two desks, several pairs of richly-plated candlesticks, a dinner epergne, and a bagatelle-board. The dinner epergne remained at chambers, and figured at the banquets there, which ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... third day he was convicted of duplicity. She went off for a walk alone, leaving him safely anchored in what he afterwards came to look upon as a pre-arranged game of auction-bridge. When she came in after an absence of at least two hours, the game was just breaking up. He noted the questioning look that Mrs. Gaston bestowed upon her fair charge, and also remarked that it contained no sign of reproof. The girl went up to her room without so much as a word ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... negro in a way that to him was more memorable. He and the young fellows with him saw, among the sights of New Orleans, negroes chained, maltreated, whipped and scourged; they came in their rambles upon a slave auction where a fine mulatto girl was being pinched and prodded and trotted up and down the room like a horse to show how she moved, that "bidders might satisfy themselves," as the auctioneer said, of the soundness of the article to be sold. John ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and as this annex was spared any damage by the fire, there was a supply of cereals, flour, bacon, and other necessities for meals. With the thrift of a good housekeeper, Mrs. Dickens had laid in a stock of purchases when the Army Supply had been sold off at auction in the city. So Mrs. Vernon found gallon cans of stewed prunes ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... salesmanship. Thus he quickly divined that whoever sought to sell Elkan a residence in Burgess Park must first convince Yetta, and he proceeded immediately to apportion the chips for a five-handed game of auction pinocle, leaving Yetta to be entertained by his wife. Mrs. Ortelsburg's powers of persuasion in the matter of suburban property were second only to her husband's, and the game had not proceeded very far when Benno looked into ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... into the territory. Indentured black servants were not exactly sold, but the law permitted the transfer from one owner to another when the slave acquiesced in the transfer before a notary, but it was often done without regard to the slave. They were even bequeathed and sold as personal property at auction. Notices for sale were frequent. There were rewards for runaway slaves. Negroes whose terms had almost expired were kidnapped and sold to New Orleans. The legislature imposed a penalty for such, but it was not generally enforced. They were taxable property valued ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... well give me the address of a shop where I can buy meat for fourpence a pound, or sovereigns for fifteen shillings apiece. At the game of auctions, docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning; and I would as soon think of buying jewellery at an auction in Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful needy wine-agents such as infest every man's door. Grudge myself good wine? As soon grudge my horse corn. Merci! that would be a very losing game indeed, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... idle dilletante reader, all the foregoing, from the first Chapter, might go by the board—that is, as far as the Baron can make out. He speaks only for himself. The Chapter describing the sale by auction is first-rate; no doubt about it. The Baron's spirits, just now down to zero, rose to over 100 deg.. On we go: Throw over OSBOURNE, and come along with Louis STEVENSON of Treasure Island. Bah! that exciting Chapter was but a flash in the pan: brilliant but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... irrelevant violence of tongues, the broken, half-comprehensible tumult, was smitten and divided by a wave of rhythmic sound. It pushed aside the cries of the sweetmeat sellers, and mounted above the cracked bell that proclaimed the continual auction of Krist, Dass and Friend, dealers in the second-hand. In its vivid familiarity it seemed to make straight for the two Englishmen, to surround and take possession of them, and they paused. The source of it ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... which she was accustomed to address her audiences; 'it's Jarley's wax-work, remember. The duty's very light and genteel, the company particularly select, the exhibition takes place in assembly-rooms, town-halls, large rooms at inns, or auction galleries. There is none of your open-air wagrancy at Jarley's, recollect; there is no tarpaulin and sawdust at Jarley's, remember. Every expectation held out in the handbills is realised to the utmost, and the whole forms an effect of imposing ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his endorsement in a few days, which was satisfactory to them, and they let him have the goods. But the paper did not come. One of the firm went to New York and there found some of the goods in an Auction store, and a part of them sold. He got out a writ and arrested Frank. His father was sent for, and settled this matter satisfactorily. I thought I would go up to New Hartford and see Capt. Merrills about Frank's affairs—he told me all about them, and said ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... native of Sana, China; John Brown, native of Glasgow, Scotland; John Hardy, native of London, England. The Flying Scud is ten years old, and this morning will be sold as she stands, by order of Lloyd's agent, at public auction, for the benefit of the underwriters. The auction will take place in the Merchants' Exchange at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
