"Peddler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you cowards! Who ever heard of fifty men against one, and he a cripple? The first who touches him I strike dead. A heretic! Pooh! nonsense. He is but a poor travelling peddler with his pack. See, here is the pack to speak for itself. For shame to mar a merry holiday in this unmannerly fashion! No; I will not give him up! Ye are no better than a pack of howling, ravening wolves. I am the Lord of Chad, and I will see that no violence is done this ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was the stronger for his years, and they were punching each other with relentless vigor, when suddenly they heard a voice, and stopping their fight, saw before them an humble-looking man with a pack on his back. He was a peddler known in the neighborhood, and noted for his honesty and his silence, but the boys had never seen him. They stood abashed before him, dazed with the blows they had received, and not a little ashamed; for they were well brought up, their mother being an honest ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... such as may not have read "Paul the Peddler," I will explain briefly that Mrs. Hoffman, by the death of her husband two years previous, had been reduced to poverty, which compelled her to move into a tenement house and live as best she could on the earnings of her oldest son, Paul, supplemented by the pittance she obtained ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door, selling paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long ago arose up in my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection simply of an accidental meeting I had one night between Argenteuil ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed. We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but since she never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some wandering peddler told her. That accounted for everything and Mary had no time for talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going about from house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling chicken for those who were getting well. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... considerable fortune and left the path of life much easier for his kin to pursue. Having met a peddler one day, he bought a table cover made of a combination of burlap and paint. Such things were a luxury in the country at that time, and Ezekiel Bailey was shrewd enough to foresee a big demand for them if ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... brushes, and mops hung all over it. He spied old Bill up in the tree, and sez he, 'What be yar doin', Farmer Tompkins?' 'Pickin' apples,' said old Bill. He don't waste words on nobody. 'Ain't it rather early for apples?' inquired the peddler. 'These are some I forgot to pick last fall,' replied old Bill. 'Anythin' in my line?' said the peddler. 'Ain't got no money,' said Bill. 'Hain't you got something you want to trade?' asked the peddler. 'Yes,' said ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... sour, silent people could laugh like that. "No, land no, Abby! She's as soft-spoken as anybody could be, poor thing! She ain't got nothin' to say. That's all. Why, I can git more out'n any pack-peddler that's only been from here to Rutland and back than out'n her ... and she's traveled all summer long for five years, she was tellin' us, and last year ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... his dulcimer slung like a peddler's bos at his side, and with a comic movement of respect, which no presence or position could check, he made a bow to the stranger, that forced him to smile in ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he got back from Harvard, that I was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way of talking to me in a quizzical, condescending style, in the belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while; and it was easy to see he regarded me as a "character" and thought he was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness of politics in a Parkhurstian ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... contemptuously. "There's some other reason. I've had him watched. He goes every day to visit a woman at a hotel—a confederate. They're never seen in public together. Then there's a peddler, one of those fellows who sell glass and repair windows; nobody knows anything about him. He doesn't do enough business to keep a fly alive. He's always hanging round Weald Lodge. Then there's a Miss Paines, ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... the letter would be unintelligible. We object, however, to a phrase like "vest-pocket," where we find it in the narrative, and not in the mouth of one of the personages. It is tailor's English, which is as bad as peddler's French. But this is a trifle where there is so much to commend in essentials, and we hope the translators will be encouraged to go on in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... whether this was true, disguised himself, and went with the faithful Camillo, in disguise too, to the old shepherd's house. They arrived at the feast of sheep-shearing, and, though strangers, they were made very welcome. There was dancing going on, and a peddler was selling ribbons and laces and gloves, which the young ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... again!" cried the colonel; "my two wards embracing and fondling a vagrant, vagabond peddler, before my eyes! Is this treason, Mr. Griffith? Or what means the extraordinary ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a glass of hot lemonaid and maid me go to bed. the lemonaid was all rite but i haited to go to bed. we was going to have a meating of the Terible 3 and then we was going down on the square to hear a peddler sell stuff from a wagon and a big torchlite. but father woodent let me go. but he brougt me up a new novil. it was a ripper. the naim of it is Rattlesnaik Redhead the Red Handed. we will have to have the meating of the Terible ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... man and a woman for the purpose of getting their money. On his return from that execution he came through what is called the Smithsonian grounds. This was on the same day, late in the evening. There he met a peddler, whom he proceeded to murder for his money. He was arrested in a few hours, in a little while was tried and convicted, and in a little while was hanged. And another man, present at this second execution, went home on that same day, and, in passing by a butcher-shop near his house, went in, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to the loved ones at home. Only Billy B. Hill grinned delightedly at him, as Billy grinned at every merry sight of the spectacular East, and Billy shook his head with cheerful convincingosity, so the crocodile merchant moved reluctantly on before the importunities of the Oriental rug peddler at his heels. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... birth, that there was not in the corresponding time before the births of the others?" The mother at first answered decidedly that there was nothing; but after thinking a few moments said, "Well, there was one, a very small thing, but that couldn't have had any thing to do with the matter. One day a peddler came along; and among his books was a pretty, red-covered poetry book, and I wanted it bad. But my husband said he couldn't afford it, and the peddler went off. I couldn't get that book out of my mind; and in the night I took some of my own ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... but was such a repulsive-looking personage as to render his long stay objectionable. In order to be rid of him Mrs. Barkswell made a small purchase, after which, finding that he could sell nothing further, the peddler thrust his wares back into the tin box and ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... kinds of local gossip, and observing popular scenes and characters. His father used to be vexed with him for this wandering propensity, and, shaking his head, would say he fancied the boy would make nothing but a peddler. As he grew older he became a keen sportsman, and passed much of his time hunting and shooting. His field sports led him into the most wild and unfrequented parts of the country, and in this way he picked up much of that local knowledge which ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... having seen a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... that she helped out when she could. Three years ago she made them all a complete outfit, but the "rheumatiz" has been getting all the spare money since then, so there has been nothing to sew. A peddler sold them a piece of gingham which they made up for Cora Belle. It was broad pink and white stripes, and they wanted some style to "Cory's" clothes, so they cut a gored skirt. But they had no pattern and made the gores by folding a width of the goods biasly and cutting it that way. It was put together ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... My saving and hoarding as I do is irrational, and I know it. It pains me to pay five cents for a streetcar ride, or a quarter of a dollar for a dinner. My pleasure in accumulating property is morbid, but I have felt it from the time I was a foot peddler in Charlotte, Campbell, and Pittsylvania counties, in Virginia, until now. It is a sort of insanity, and it is incurable; but it is about as good a form of madness as any, and all the world ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the way an Eskimo takes to gum-drops. My letter of credit is all shot to pieces, but it was worth it. They make you pay a separate license fee in each province, and South America is just one darn province after another. If they'd lump a peddler's license for $5,000 and tell you to go ahead, it ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... public-house in the nearest town, while their horses rested. With the above exceptions, probably not one of the villagers strayed ten miles from home, from year's end to year's end. As to visitors, an occasional peddler or small commercial traveller turned up about once a quarter. A few boys and girls, more enterprising than their fellows, went out altogether into the world, of their own accord, in the course ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in the blood of the North. Still, if anyone supposes that the ostensible causes of dislike are the real ones, he is mistaken. Does any man of them all, of these leaders, I mean, suppose for one instant that the Yankee negro-trader, overseer, peddler, lucre-loving tradesman, slaver, slave catcher, subservient politician, or mouthing, dirt-swallowing pulpit huckster, is a true representative of the influence and ideas of New England? Or that the present Copperhead Democracy of that section is the real exponent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... candy boiling on the stove, Flossie went out on the porch. There she and Stella took turns holding the doll. All this while Dinah was at the front door. A peddler had rung the bell, and it took the colored cook some little time to tell him her mistress did not want to buy a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... an insect peddler, Katsuo Takanaka by name. It was the part of this youth to search daily among the bamboo stems and hillside grasses of Meguro for the musical suzu-mushi, the hataori, and the kirigirisu. These he incarcerated ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... times there was little to disturb the monotony of village life and little to remind it of the outside world, except when a gossiping peddler chanced along, or when the squire rode away to court or to war. Intercourse with other villages was unnecessary, unless there were no blacksmith or miller on the spot. The roads were poor and in wet weather ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... again to his mother, "there comes a peddler." He pointed down the road at the figure of a man briskly ascending the lane toward the house, with a pack on his back and some strange ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... twenty cents, and a good-natured peddler gave him a large sponge, and taught him how to rinse out the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... jewels, of clocks, and of books, Many a year of his wandering youth; A peddler still, with a far richer pack, His wares are wisdom and love and truth. But now, as then, few purchase or pause, For he cannot learn the tricks of trade; Little silver he wins, but that which time Is sprinkling thick on his meek ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... too hard each day to bother their heads as to why such a fine gentleman as the Signor appeared to be, should live in such squalid quarters. No one had ever been admitted to his flat. If the baker called, he left the bread on the mat; if a chance peddler or book agent happened to wander in, he had to talk through closed doors. The Signor was always busy and could not be disturbed. The lights often burned all night long, and sometimes people drove up in a taxi and went away again. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... selling for this company that sends all goods directly to me instead of having me take orders the way the other one did. I'm just a born peddler and I know I make more when I can deliver the goods the minute they are bought and paid for. I'm going to take Buck Hill in on my rounds this year and see if all of my dear cousins won't lay in a stock of sweet soap ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... a way,—still, they were not wholly misspent. From a teacher named Monroe, [2] who then lived near Salisbury, I borrowed Draper's Chemistry, little thinking that I would one day count the author among my friends. A book peddler going his rounds offered a collection of miscellaneous books at auction. I bought, among others, a Latin and a Greek grammar, and assiduously commenced their study. With the first I was as successful as could be ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... sittin' there 's innocent 's a mule eatin' thistles, 'n' all of a sudden I felt to say, 'Mrs. Brown, did you put bakin' powder or yeast in that cake?' It was then 's she told me 't she'd up 'n' made it with suthin' 's a peddler throwed in at the door. 'Where's the label?' I says, puttin' my hand to where I felt the most need o' knowin' what in creation to come I had got in me. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, 'f she hadn't burned up the label; so there was nothin' f'r me to do but go home 'n' come nigh to dyin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... their sickness, when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner escaping from shipwreck clutches this first of his treasures and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the peddler in his crowded pack; cheers him at eventide when he sits down dusty and fatigued; brightens the freshness of his morning face. It blesses us when we are born, gives names to half Christendom; rejoices ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... heard voices talking. Oostogah had come back; he sat upon a log; and the trader, who came around once a year, stood beside him, a pack open at his feet. It was this peddler, Hawk, who was talking. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... and had the pack of a peddler, and a quantity of tow hair escaped from under a broad-brimmed hat. The brown face was half hidden in an ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... a time, that there was a great city, and that city, being devoid of a sensation, yearned for a great man. Then the wise men of the city began to look around, when lo! there entered through the gates of the city a certain peddler from a foreign country, which is called Yankee Land, and behold! the great man was found. He dealt in shekels and stocks, and bloomed and flourished, and soon became like unto a golden calf, and lo! all the wise men ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... immediately told him that they would effect his rescue, if he would trust to them. He very readily consented; whereupon these ladies disguised him as a common countryman, by furnishing him with some old clothes; they then gave him a basket of soap, with a recipe for making it, that he might pass as a peddler of that necessary article. With these old clothes, and a basket of soap on his arm, and gallantly mounted upon a mule, accompanied by his guardian angels, he passed safely through the crowds of the enemy, and was brought by them, safe and sound, into the camp of his friends at Beverly, after ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... successful—and he was generally successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends and needed little sleep and pursued his business with ferocious energy ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... voice that was keyed to a pitch almost as high as the bugle's strains. "Hold your yawp! Don't you hear that?" Lanigan screamed. "Don't you know the difference between that and a fish-peddler's horn? That's the tune we fellers heard the Huns play just before Armistice Day. That's retreat! Come on, Legion!" he urged, frantically. "Ram ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... again, signing passports to the army. But yesterday, during the interregnum, the Beaverdam Depot was burnt by the enemy, information of its defenseless condition having been given by a Jew peddler, who ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Peace in genuine astonishment. "That's what the lame peddler woman always tells you when you buy a ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... pervading. In the country the pioneers took what diversions a hard life permitted. There were "bees" and "frolics," ranging from strenuous barn raisings, with heavy drinking and fighting, to mild apple parings or quilt patchings. There were the visits of the Yankee peddler with his "notions," his welcome pack, and his gossip. Churches grew, thanks in part to grants of government land or old endowments or gifts from missionary societies overseas, but more to the zeal of lay preachers and circuit riders. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... basket of kittens to drown, he did resign. At least he was just going to resign—for he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thing—when there was an interruption. The interruption was John Canty—with a peddler's pack on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was rescued. I always will feel ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... fightin', and when they grew up to be thirty and courted the same girl—ten years younger than either of 'em, she was—twa'n't much better. Neither of 'em got her, as a matter of fact; she married a tin peddler named Bassett over to Hyannis. But both cal'lated they would have won if t'other hadn't been in the race, and consequently they loved each other with a love that passed understandin'. Tobias had got well to do in the cranberry-raisin' line and drove a fast horse. Jonadab, durin' the last ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... series of dark brown blurs. If you have ever noticed a mouse in full flight you will have some idea of how that Jap ran. He knew where the police station was, too, for he had been there once when his brother, Itchi Comia, was arrested for assaulting a Russian peddler. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... while we've been slaaping, our friends along shore have been carried away, and we're lift to make ourselves comfortable, as the peddler said when he hung himself up by ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... shape, and left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and peddler of silver and brass sleeve-buttons of his own manufacture. It made him an officer and then an armorer in the Continental service. As a fabricator of patriotic weapons, he incurred the displeasure of his Methodist brethren by working on the Sabbath, and lost his orthodoxy in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Russian Hill, San Francisco, Mr. Grile espied a man standing upon the extreme summit, with a pensive brow and a suit of clothes which seemed to have been handed down through a long line of ancestors from a remote Jew peddler. Mr. Grile respectfully saluted; a man who has any clothes at all is to him an object of veneration. The stranger opened ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... like a man who has grown from being a peddler of tape and buttons to be the greatest dry-goods-man in his town, and then to being a great dealer for many towns. When he was a peddler he could carry the profit and loss on his buttons and tape in his head, because the profits were ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... was away from home so much. He was absent the greater part of the time; for a glazier, even if he were a better workman than my grandfather, could not make a living in Yuchovitch. He became a country peddler, trading between Polotzk and Yuchovitch, and taking in all the desolate little hamlets scattered along that route. Fifteen rubles' worth of goods was a big bill to carry out of Polotzk. The stock consisted of cheap pottery, tobacco, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... with nocturnal noises, which she hoped Mrs. Crossman felt also. Fanny conveyed the note, and read it likewise, as Mrs. Crossman declared her inability to read writing with her new spectacles, which a peddler had cheated her with lately. She laughed at it, and sent word to Veronica that she was the curiousest young woman for her age that she had ever heard of; that the dog slept in the house of nights, for he was blind and deaf now; but that Crossman should ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... who keeps the store at which we stopped (a log cabin without any floor) goes by the sobriquet of "Yank," and is quite a character in his way. He used to be a peddler in the States, and is remarkable for an intense ambition to be thought what the Yankees call "cute and smart,"—an ambition which his true and good heart will never permit him to achieve. He is a great friend of mine (I am always interested in that bizarre mixture of shrewdness and simplicity of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living. I don't want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Extension peddler down in Kentucky, working on fruits and nuts and berries, and naturally that takes me into a good many counties. We have 120, and I have been in all of them. Some places didn't have anything, so no reason to go back. But I pick up a lot of conversation, people give ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... amusement and adventures, and especially to young Lincoln the journey must have been of keen interest. He drove the oxen on this trip, he tells us, and, according to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose father's store Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in Indiana, says that before leaving the ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... standard. When the General arrived; when the occasional delivery of telephoned-for supplies came; on the one occasion when a peddler on foot had entered the ground. It lacked something of being the perfect atmosphere for a honeymoon, but it was the way ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... up to folks and be friendly; always was, as a child. I can remember her, four years old, after her folks died and she came to live with Miss Lydia. Wasn't afraid of anything or anybody, ever. Used to slip out and run off down Main Street after a peddler or a gypsy or anybody she took a fancy to. But—" she came back into the present—"Mr. Daragh's been kinder queer these last two, three days. But then, far's that goes, he's always queer. Oddest mortal I ever met up with in all my born days. Odder'n ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: "Where's your mother?" "Oh, she, too, died but a short time since; she broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he. "Young Rip Van Winkle once, old Rip Van Winkle now! Does ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a country store; and, either at the same time or afterwards, the political editor of a country newspaper. He had subsequently travelled New England and the Middle States, as a peddler, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory of cologne-water and other essences. In an episodical way he had studied and practised dentistry, and with very flattering success, especially in many of the factory-towns along our inland streams. As a supernumerary official, of some kind or other, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... filled and his voice needed a cough to prime it. The fire, glowing in Emma Morton's eyes, steamed up George Brotherton's will—the will which had sent him crashing forward in life from a train peddler to a purveyor of literature and the arts in Harvey. Deeds followed impulses with him swiftly, so in an instant the floor of the Morton cottage was shaking under his tread and with rash indifference, high and heroic, ignoring with equal disdain ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... of un-Christmas tree with fishing-pole branches, from which dangled articulated figures, bodied like men, but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts, —bewitching objects in impossible evolution to a bald-pated urchin who stood gazing at it with all his soul. The peddler sat with his eyes riveted on the boy, visions of a possible catch chasing themselves through his brain. I watched him, while the crowd behind stared at me. We made quite a tail of curiosity. The opiate was having its effect; I began to feel soporifically calm. Then I went up to the restaurant ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and now you know why I bought it from the peddler," she explains; "for every household of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a few days ago," resumed the clergyman, "with a peddler,—an entire stranger to me,—who, in making change, gave me a number of bills which I have reason to suspect are ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... took a wooden box and put his brother inside. He bound the box and carried it to the seashore. He was about to throw it into the water when he remembered that it was not locked: so he left it, and went back to the house to get the key. Meanwhile a Chinese peddler selling gold rings came along. Juan heard him, and shouted, "Chino, Chino, come and see these beautiful and precious things inside!" The Chinaman approached, and opened the box. Juan came out, and said, "I will put you inside, and you will see many ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... very natural, for there is no one more in danger from these marauders than men of your itinerant calling. Good heavens! It was but three years ago a peddler was robbed and murdered in the woods around ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... been known to turn his hand to honest work, but as a timber pirate and peddler of rotgut whisky among the Indians, he had arisen to ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... making its cry outside and Mamma thought it was the bank messenger, so I rang the bell for the boy to bring him in—but alas, it was much less romantic; it was the call of the macaroni peddler. ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... that none of his neighbors had horses about that place. They must be stray horses; or must belong to some traveler who had lost his way, as the track led nowhere. He accordingly followed it up, until he came to an unlucky peddler, with two or three pack-horses, who had been bewildered among the cattle-tracks, and had wandered for two or three days among woods and cane-brakes, until he ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... each little hoof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound; He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled; his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... Nancy Jane," said the father; "only a sloop. But I don't know whose. Oh, yes; it must be that Yankee peddler back again. There's his codfish ensign at his masthead. He's making for the other side now, but he'll come over here to sell his rum and ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Gordon light-fingered a half dollar out of Delancey's pocket and was attracting the attention of a hot dog peddler by waving his program. Some folks nearby were eying Barcelona's noisemakers angrily but making very little visible protest once they identified him. Nora was reading her program and underlining some horses. The whole place began to grow into a strange excited silence as the track board began ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... George, "I like your story. Ne'th'less, tis like a strolling peddler, in that it carries a great deal of ills to begin with, to get rid of them all before it gets to the end of its journey. However, tis as you say—it ends with everybody merry and feasting, and so I like ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... purist will find occasional lapses in taste or expression, and the quibbling peddler of rhetoric will gloat over some doubtful construction; but neither purist nor peddler of rhetoric has ever been able in his writing to display the ease, the rush, the naturalness, the sparkle which were as genuine in Roosevelt as were the features of his face. On reading these pages, which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... at the office an' he laughs I guess, for then She always mumbles something 'bout the heartlessness of men. She calls to mind a peddler who came to the kitchen door, An' she's certain from his whiskers an' the shabby clothes he wore An' his dirty shirt an' collar that he must have been a crook, An' she's positive that feller came ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... warn't for dogs 'n' dark nights, I shouldn't care if I never see a man; but Gay has 'em all on her string a'ready, from the boy that brings the cows home for Jabe to the man that takes the butter to the city. The tin peddler give her a dipper this mornin', and the fish-man brought her a live fish in a tin-pail. Well, she makes the house a great sight brighter to live in, you ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it to this old tub at once,' said the professor; and the forlorn peddler went his way to cherish visions of coming glory. Just then we were electrified by a cheer from the doctor, as the lights of Norfolk flashed over this splendid harbor, yet to float the commerce ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... couple of blocks, he came to a portion of the road when the shadows were densest. Here the trees grew close to the thoroughfare, and this fact made it a splendid hiding place for anyone so inclined. There was a legend told of a peddler who had, once upon a time, been set upon by tramps at this point, and robbed and beaten, so that he died ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... that they would never start unless Achilles were found, now offered to go and get him. Disguised as a peddler, with a pack upon his back, he went first to Achilles' home, where the chattering maids told him all he wished to know, and thence he went to the Island ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave his shoulders a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him—it was like a peddler shifting his pack—as though to rid himself of too cruel cares, and again took up the burden every man carried with him, which bows his back, more or less, according to his courage or his strength, and went into de Gery's room, who ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... pension, and the honors of the Legion. Goguelat is his name. He was an infantry man, who exchanged into the Guard in 1812. He is Gondrin's better half, so to speak, for the two have taken up house together. They both lodge with a peddler's widow, and make over their money to her. She is a kind soul, who boards them and looks after them, and their clothes as if they were ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... devil-may-care suggestion about this new regime at the tavern; and after his meals Britt sat in the tavern office and smoked a cigar. Furthermore, he held a mortgage on the tavern and Files was behind on the interest and was eagerly and humbly glad to pay his creditor with food. In order to impress a peddler or other transient guest the creditor was in the habit of calling in Files and ordering him to ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... hospitable refuge. Stranded show people had known its sheltering kindness. Moreover, Tom was not likely to make particular inquiry about Hervey's chance acquaintances. The wandering minstrel had brought in laid-off farm hands, a strolling organ grinder with a monkey, not to mention two gypsies, a peddler ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the shadow of Ben Clebrig, there was a cozy little house with good fare, and abundant trout-fishing in Loch Naver and Loch Meadie. It was there that I fell in with a wandering pearl-peddler who gathered his wares from the mussels in the moorland streams. They were not of the finest quality, these Scotch pearls, but they had pretty, changeable colours of pink and blue upon them, like the iridescent ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... and her mother were busily at work with needles and fingers, exhausting the daylight to its last ray, before lighting the lamp. They could hear the shouts of children playing in the yards, the muffled notes of pianos, and the voice of a street peddler, drawing his half-empty wagon. One could smell the springtime in the air, a vague odor of ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... that a man cannot be modest, as the above quotation would indicate, and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and belief in God, and at the same time a political comedian deceiving his rivals abroad, and hoodwinking ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... He had used his eyes to purpose, and was quite assured that the bottle he wanted was not there. But the woman's words had given him his cue, and when later in the day a certain old Jew peddler went his rounds through this portion of the city, a disreputable-looking fellow accompanied him, whom even the sharp landlady in Cuthbert Road would have failed to recognise as the same man who had occupied the snuggery the night before. He was many hours ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... XIV. The peddler lifted his satchel into the buggy; the Madam hurriedly emptied it of its contents, and holding it open jammed the bundle of money into it, and handed it back to ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... the Transcendental movement was Amos Bronson Alcott, born on a Connecticut farm in 1799, successively in youth a clockmaker, peddler and book-agent, and finally driven by dire necessity to teaching school. But there could be no success at school-teaching for a man the most eccentric of his day—a mystic, a follower of Oriental philosophy, a non-resistant, an advocate of woman suffrage, an abolitionist, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... always choose to be at the pains of making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops, hawkers sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit from the booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to the houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country villages. Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took them across the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would have been well enough in the eyes of the guild, if the hawkers had ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... great walker and could go twenty or thirty miles. Indeed he used to tramp the countryside so far and so long that his father would say he feared his son was born to be nothing better than a wandering peddler. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... anxious for education or improvement of any kind. I was quite a lad before I ever saw a wagon, carriage, set of harness, or a ring, a staple, or set of bows to an ox yoke. The first wagon I ever saw was brought into that country by a Yankee peddler; his outfit created as great an excitement in the settlement as the first locomotive did in Utah; the people flocked in from every quarter to see ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... spring" "The country people warned him" "He sank, exhausted, upon the steps" "As they followed its winding course" "But St. Leonard drew his sword" "Shut up in the turret-chamber" "In the disguise of a peddler" "She fell into the court yard below" "The sweet blossoms of a tiny flower" "A great doorway in the rock" "Once more upon the bleak mountain side" "He could hear the voices of the priests" "'The Star of Bethlehem' men call it" "The bright messenger from heaven" "Then she was tied to the stake" ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... second day, Philip was some forty miles distant from Norton. He had not walked all the way, but had got a lift for a few miles from a tin-peddler, with whom he had a ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... imponderable canoe. Cancut, though for this summer boatman or bircher, had other strings to his bow. He was taking variety now, after employment more monotonous. Last summer, his services had been in request throughout inhabited Maine, to "peddle gravestones and collect bills." The Gravestone-Peddler is an institution of New England. His wares are wanted, or will be wanted, by every one. Without discriminating the bereaved households, he presents himself at any door, with attractive drawings of his wares, and seduces people into paying the late tribute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... of his studious son. At the age of thirteen, Bronson became a pupil in a private school kept by his uncle, Dr. Bronson, and at eighteen, he set out for Virginia with the secret purpose of teaching if opportunity offered, at the same time taking along a peddler's trunk out of which to turn an honest penny and pay the expenses of his journey. Circumstances did not favor his becoming a Virginia teacher, but between his eighteenth and twenty-third years, he made several expeditions into the Southern States as a Yankee peddler, with rather negative ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... hanging something to the cross bar, as the cradle swung under it, backward and forward, it would create wind enough to drive away the flies. The machine was wound up by a weight, and would run for nearly half an hour without stopping. I took out a patent for it, and one day a peddler came along with a horse and wagon, as they do in the country, and saw the cradle. He struck a bargain with me and bought the patent right for the State of Connecticut, giving for it his horse and wagon and all ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... stranger knocked at the door of the old homestead in the valley; sometimes it was a distinguished Quaker from abroad, but oftener it was a peddler or some vagabond begging for food, which was seldom refused. Once a foreigner came and asked for lodgings for the night—a dark, repulsive man, whose appearance was so much against him that Mrs. Whittier was afraid to admit him. ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... dreamdust peddler came wandering through the Enclave one night and let me have a free ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... useless distances, ineffective records, and feeble chronicles of their domestic economy. It was the thoughtful and melancholy Demorest who remembered the exact color and price paid for a certain shirt bought from a Greaser peddler amidst the envy of his companions; it was the financial magnate, Stacy, who could inform them what were the exact days they had saleratus bread and when flapjacks; it was the thoughtless and mercurial Barker who recalled with unheard-of accuracy, amidst the applause of the others, the full ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... couldn't I use that five hundred, if only my training had fitted me for such deeds as running down a nitroglycerine peddler!" ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... century opened, the old English patent medicines were still being sold. City druggists were dispensing them over their counters, and the peddler's wagon carried them to remote rural regions.[114] But the medical scene was changing rapidly. Improvements in medical science, stemming in part from the establishment of the germ theory of disease, were providing a better yardstick against ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... outside," said Bunny; and when he and Sue were outside the tent, waiting for their father, Bunny began walking slowly along, bent over as though he had a peddler's ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... day a peddler was selling spectacles and somehow the old men trying them on and squinting for "near" and for "far," seemed so quaint and countrified and like a lot of old Yankees around a country store trying to get a "new pair of ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... not fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... recall them! For in these silent wakeful hours the mind Is strangely swift. With what sharp lines The shapes of things that even years have buried Shine out upon the rapid memory, Moving and warm like life. I can see now The form of that tall peddler, whose strange wares, Outlandish dialect and impudent gait Awoke Euktemon's laughter. In mine ear Is echoing still the cracking string of gibes, They flung at one another. I remember too The grey-haired ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... much wiser the West Indian negro, who takes a burning stick from the wood fire, and tenderly lights his weed therewith, or joyfully brings a handful of the white-hot ashes in his thick-skinned palm, that 'massa' may fire his cigar! Or the travelling peddler or tinker, who, as he sits by the way-side, patiently wooes the sun with a 'burning-glass' till his tobacco ignites, or uses with equal prudence and skill the ancient but ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... very similar to that of his Bohemian companions. The younger son of a poor Gascon family of doubtful nobility, he had come to seek his fortune at Paris; by turns petty officer of a forlorn hope; provost of an academy, bath-keeper, horse jockey, peddler of satirical news and Holland gazettes; he had more than once pretended to be a Protestant, feigning conversion to the Catholic faith in order to secure the fifty crowns that M. Pelisson paid each neophyte as ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... delightedly. "M. P. stands for 'milk peddler,'" she said. "Wasn't he adorable to think ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... me, and the noises distracted me, and my flesh would fairly creep from getting no exercise. I was there nearly a month, while they were waiting for a reward to be offered. But none came; and one day, the boy's father, who was a street peddler, took me by my chain and led me about the streets till he sold me. A gentleman got me for his little boy, but I didn't like the look of him, so I sprang up and bit his hand, and he dropped the chain, and I dodged boys and policemen, and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... reasons—if ever these lines are honoured by perusal of the class—for the accusation that there is nothing in them having the virtue of newness or novelty. But I am not a professor with a mind like a warehouse, rich with the spoils of time, but a mere peddler, conscious of the janglings of an ill-sorted, ill-packed knapsack of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... simplicity of her dress, for neither bright-hued calicoes nor muslins found their way to Walton. Once in a long while, a print, at five times the present prices, was introduced into the social circles of Walton by an occasional peddler, or possibly by the adventurous spirit of Swan Day. But these were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... them!) with bandages, that it's cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend as we see him these days you wouldn't be sure whether it was true or not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was not in it the same day with your brother's friend! I do assure you. And anyhow—even if he still has brains—his writing apparatus is all done up in arnica, so there ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... crammed his mouth, and Emma leaned against the door and watched him with profound satisfaction. When he had polished the last bone to an ivory whiteness, Emma reached behind her and handed Peter the book she had that morning wrested from a peddler whose shirt she had washed and ironed. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... peasants, these farmers. Nor, she learned, were they the "hicks" of humor. She could never again encounter without fiery resentment the Broadway peddler's faith that farmers invariably say "Waal, by heck." For she had spent an hour talking to one Dakota farmer, genial-eyed, quiet of speech. He had explained the relation of alfalfa to soil-chemistry; ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... for the food, but bade me farewell with a vehement "Dios se lo pagara"—whether in Honduranean change or not she did not specify. The majority of the inhabitants of the wilds of Honduras live and die without any other medical attention than those of a rare wandering charlatan or pill-peddler. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... therefore they carefully concealed their real character. Every minister possessed a knowledge of some trade or profession, and the missionaries prosecuted their work under cover of a secular calling. Usually they chose that of merchant or peddler. "They carried silks, jewelry, and other articles, at that time not easily purchasable save at distant marts; and they were welcomed as merchants where they would have been spurned as missionaries."(101) All the while their hearts were uplifted to God for wisdom ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... city and town and even in the villages peddlers went along the streets selling these chapbooks, as they were called. Imagine how the children, and the grown people too, must have flocked around the peddler as he began taking out one after another of his queer little books, for he had something to please every one. The boys might choose stories like The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, A Wonderful and Strange Relation of a Sailor or The True Tale of Robin Hood, and we can see them almost getting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... shirt his mother had sat up the night before to iron for him, his ready-made black frock-coat that the sun had faded out on the shoulders, the old brown slouch hat he had traded another one for with a lightning rod peddler, his shoes blacked with stove blacking, instead of being greased, as usual. He thought how a gambler at the State fair picked him out for a greeny before he had fairly got through the gate, and wondered ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... reports that seemed true startled her,—he was dead. Alas! it might be true, for how could he live in the midst of enemies to whom his high spirit would not bend, wounded, suffering, deprived of the loving care for which he pined? Again, he had tried to escape in the garb of a peddler, and had been taken up as a spy (which no one who knew him believed). In that sad household Mrs. Caldwell's duties became onerous and multifarious enough to appall one less stout-hearted or less devoted to the cause. The inmates of the dwelling looked to her ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Anna Street had moved into a house a trifle better suited to her exalted station in life; one where the view was better, and the society worthy of a fish-peddler's family. Accordingly we transferred the Kennetts into Number 32, an honor which they took calmly at first, on account of the odor of fish that pervaded the apartments. The three and four year old Kennetts were now members of our flock, the dull baby was cared for daily by the Infant Shelter, and ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... major, as he jerked the reins, that old Battle might take heed, and quicken his pace. Another blast from the fishmonger's horn, and his wagon appeared in the road, approaching at a rapid pace. The fishmonger, doubtless, thought there was no trade to be had of a tin peddler, whose wares had nothing in common with his own, and was about to drive by at a brisk pace, when the major reined up old Battle, and half hidden in a cloud of dust, cried out, in a thin, squeaking voice, "Ho! stranger, what like ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... of speech &c (metaphor) 521; byword. colloquialism, informal speech, informal language. substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology^. pseudonym &c (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em^, whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy^, thingumbob; je ne sais quoi [Fr.]. neologist^, coiner of words. V. coin words, coin ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pleasant smiles as he whirled breathlessly past, and her eyes followed him with a look which poor Barker would have given worlds to interpret as he stood sad and humble in all his unwonted magnificence by her side. The fiddler, who was a tin-peddler and a poet and the teacher of a "cipherin'-school," as well as a musician, played with great gusto, and was continually calling upon the dancers to "warm up 'n' shake their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various |
