"Verger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "En co verger troveroums les flurs Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel) Les herbes ausi pur medicine La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie) Liz vaut ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of penance or of absolution. We followed a crowd of Italians who were going into a chapel at the side where preparations were being made for a special service. There being no pews or sittings in the chapel, but a few plain chairs for hire, we paid the verger two cents for the use of a chair and waited. Wooden benches were placed in line to form an aisle and a number of women and children knelt at the benches, each holding ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... only to enhance the cool brown emptiness of the church, the rows and rows of empty pews, disengaged prayerbooks and abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the heavy Norman architecture it was about to overthrow. The sculptures on the W. portals, however, almost wholly and clumsily renewed, need not detain us long. We enter and descend from the sombre vestibule. As we wait for the verger we revel in the airy and graceful symmetry of the nave and aisles; the beautiful raised choir and lovely apse with its chevets and round of chapels, where structural science and beauty of form are so admirably blended. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... have been its fate in our hands. Edward the Confessor's shrine, which is chiefly of wood, likewise abounds in these inscriptions, although this was esteemed the holiest shrine in England, so that pilgrims still come to kneel and kiss it. Our guide, a rubicund verger of cheerful demeanor, said that this was true ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he might get rid of half an hour. He had not often been in cathedrals of late years, and now looked about him with something of awe. He could remember that when he was a child he had been brought here to church, and as he stood in the choir with the obsequient verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through the minutes of a long sermon,—a sermon that had seemed to be very long,—in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb to the pinnacle which culminated over the bishop's seat, and thence make his way along the capitals ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 20th, therefore, which was Sunday, service was performed for the last time. On the 23rd the steeple fell in and took the roof with it; the workmen had left the church a few minutes before. Even then there was at least one untroubled soul in Guildford. The verger was told that the steeple had fallen. "That cannot be," he replied, "I have ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and asked what was to be seen. Nothing here but churches and monks. One of the little girls, three years old, looked with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out, "Quel jolie poupee!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall ye be taught wisdom." The old man dropped her hand, and looked as ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... visit the library?" she asked, dazzling the verger with a smile in her best manner. "I have heard so much about the books in chains, and the Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon characters. Is the volume really a thousand ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... for the ring. R'c'lect it'll be on the top of my right-hand little finger, and just be careful how you draw it off, because I shall have the Verger's fees somewhere ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... not only the baker, he was the church verger. He had quite sympathized with Mrs. Butler's wishes, while selling her a two-penny loaf yesterday. But why did he not put in an ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... discover a solution to the mystery, but failed. One day, however, I showed the Dean the old manuscript in my possession, and was surprised to hear that he knew of a tradition of the appearance, once a year, of the apparition. An old verger, since dead, had declared several times that he had seen it; but, being old and childish, no one took any notice ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... du Pilier, Mindin, Ville Martin; Quiberon, with Fort Penthievre; L'Orient, with its harbor defences; Fort Cigogne; Brest, with its harbor defences; St. Malo, with Forts Cezembre, La Canchee, L'Anse du Verger, and Des Rimains; Cherbourg, with its defensive forts and batteries; Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Cherbourg, Brest, and Rochefort, are great naval depots; and Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux, the principal commercial ports. Many of the works above enumerated are small in extent ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... stairs to the reading-desk and pulpit were occupied by a lot of brickmakers, among whom the parson from Barchester did not venture to attempt to make his way, although he was fortified by the presence of one of the cathedral vergers and by one of the palace footmen. I can hardly believe about the verger and the footman. As for the rest, I have no doubt it is all true. I pity Crawley from my heart. Poor, unfortunate man! The general opinion seems to be that he is not in truth responsible for what he does. As for his victory over the bishop, nothing on earth ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... evidence in Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. i. p. 79., that remains of the painted figure of Chaucer were to be seen in Nolleken's times. Smith reports a conversation between the artist and Catlin, so many years the principal verger of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... To-day we saw the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far-away humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, and could put one in the right humour for seeing an old place, very much as, according to my ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is dedicated to St. Peter, and the Parish Church to St. John. The Head Verger of the Cathedral until recently had charge of both clocks, and St. John's Clock was always kept slightly faster than the Cathedral Clock. Canon Jones, when Vicar of St. John's, one day met the late Verger, (Mr. H. Plowman, Senr.) ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... married in a parish where neither of them was known; he had got a special licence, and there was nobody in the church but the verger and Sangster, and a deaf uncle of Christine's, who thought the whole affair a great bother, and who had looked up a train to catch back home the very moment that Christine should have safely passed out of his ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... them in their parrot-like description, and they flounder about in most comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it was considered a good likeness. He was staggered for a moment, and then replied hurriedly that it was. But, thank goodness, here comes the lunch. I feel as hungry as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... cathedral of those islands, located in the said city of Manila, has no building, ornaments, or other adornments pertaining to the service of divine worship; or income, or alms for its aid, or in order to provide it with sacristans, verger, or other necessary assistants; and that being, as is the case, in the gaze of so many idolatrous enemies and Mahometans, both natives and foreigners who meet there—especially the Chinese, who have observed this condition—it is very annoying that they should see it served ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful; then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and organ. For ever requiem—repose. Tired with scrubbing the steps of the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to the Very Rev. the Dean, the Rev. E. J. Nash, Mr. George Payne, F.S.A., and Mr. S. S. Brister, for kindnesses and helpful suggestions, as also to the head-verger, Mr. Miles, who, having been connected with the fabric for more than half a century, has a personal knowledge of its ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... he was to be married in October, and in these circumstances Mrs. Gibson, Miss Banks, and Mrs. Church put their banns up. This acted as a specific, and Captain Barber, putting the best face he could on the matter, went and interviewed the verger on ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Cathedral, which is depicted as a living organism with all its great history behind it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the Canons—down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, England; behind England, the world, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... a demeanour of stately calm, as she waited for the arrival of the Darcy family, but even she felt a tremor of excitement when the verger hobbled up to the square pew and stood holding the door open in his hand. The heads of the villagers turned with one consent to the doorway; only one person in the church disdained to move her position, but she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs from without, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... a scholar, something of a philosopher, but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the "starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ornaments. [38] First: It was declared and resolved that his Majesty should be informed that the cathedral of these islands has no buildings, ornaments, or suitable equipment for divine worship; nor has it any income or contributions for these purposes, or for sacristan, verger, or other necessary assistants. And being built of wood and straw, as it is, and so poor, weatherbeaten, and deprived of necessities, it is a reproach and a cause of loss to our faith and Christian religion, and to our state and the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... MacMahon's dismissal of his ministry on the 16th of May, 1877, had been a success. But, strange to say, I see among those who sat beside a future prelate a young man destined to sharpen his knife so well that he will drive it home to his archbishop's heart.... I think I can remember Verger, and I may say of him as Sachetti said of the beatified Florentine: Fu mia vicina, andava come le altre. The education given us had its dangers; it had a tendency to produce over excitement, and to turn the balance of the mind, as ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... them in his blue silk gown, And humbly bowed his neck with reverence down, Low as an ass to lick a lock of hay: Looking the frightened verger through and through, And with his eye-glass—"Well, sir, who are you? What, what, sir?—hey, sir?" deigned ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... country church draws as many gazers as a blazing star; no sooner he comes into the cathedral, but a train of whispers runs buzzing round the congregation in a moment: Who is he? Whence comes he? Do you know him? Then I, Sir, tips me the verger with half-a-crown; he pockets the simony, and inducts me into the best pew in the church; I pull out my snuff-box, turn myself round, bow to the bishop, or the dean, if he be the commanding officer, single ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... by the Normans, a great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong keep. The ruins of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1241 by Meyler, of Birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its pendant in the story of a Mayence verger, who holds British visitors to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it is said that a Mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to be of English extraction, or like ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... The verger is surprised. "Where have you been, sir, not to have heard of the celebrated Dean Maitland?" The great dean! The books he has written, the things he has done! All the world knows Dean Maitland, the greatest preacher in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... conventional and improbable—with whimsically ugly names; while his invented names are whimsically perfect: that of Vholes for the predatory silent man in black, and that of Tope for the cathedral verger. A suggestion of dark and vague flight in Vholes; something of old floors, something respectably furtive and musty, in Tope. In Dickens, the love of lurking, unusual things, human and inanimate—he wrote of his discoveries delightedly in his letters—was hypertrophied; ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Maggie Oliphant, touching her young companion; "we are in good time; this is the outer chapel. Yes, I know all that you are thinking, but you need not speak; I did not want to speak the first time I came to St. Hilda's. Just follow me quickly. I know this verger; he will put us into two stalls; then it will ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... took a fly (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a boy acolyte doubtless sufficed, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... they were married by a bishop, with two priests and three curates to assist. The ceremony was held at the great stone church; and as the procession came out, the verger had a hard time to keep the crowd back, so that the little girls in white could go before and strew flowers in their pathway. The organ pealed, and the chimes clanged and rang as if the tune and the times were out of joint; then other bells ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... of wall, (3) double archway of door. Before returning to the nave the visitor should make an examination of the Monuments in the transepts and choir aisles. Their identity will best be discovered from a glance at the plan provided by the verger. Here mention will only be made of the most notable. In S. transept, against S. wall (1) William de Marchia (1319), builder of the chapter house; (2) Viscountess Lisle, with coloured canopy (14th cent.). In ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... old-fashioned eaves, seemed less busy, less active on their bright pinions, and skimmed to and fro with a gliding ease, suggestive of happy indolence and peace. The doors of the church were set wide open,—and Adam Frost, sexton and verger, was busy inside the building, placing the chairs, as was his usual Sunday custom, in orderly rows for the coming congregation. It was about half-past ten, and the bell-ringers, arriving and ascending into the belfry, were beginning to 'tone' the bells before pealing the full chime for the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of his servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler, but that his integrity had made him Mr. Blakeney, verger of St. Patrick's, an officer whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a year; yet he still continued for some years to serve his old ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... Gert again, when the Bishop's Secretary enters, preceded by a verger, who calls upon ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... Hill!—Phoebe! Phoebe! There's the cathedral bell, I say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger;" cried Mr, Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he was waiting in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... forty year, but I never heard a Amen carry so far as Muster GELGE pitches his.' It's something to be appreciated, TOBY. Can't say that House of Commons has taken to me kindly; but toward what may be the close of a Parliamentary career, the tribute of this honest Verger is, I will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... uncertainties and misfits of these frequently rusty keys to the past excite a mirth that lightens the toil with which one rummages through the corridors of time. It would be treason to tell the name of that antique university-chapel where a certain wooden-headed verger was betrayed into the absurdest error; it would be personal to give the name of the waggish friend who made him his innocent butt; but the facts and the joke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... here every day," said Mellicent softly, "every single day. I should like to be a verger, and spend my life in an abbey. I think I could be awfully good if I lived here always. It makes one feel so small and insignificant, that one wouldn't dare to be selfish, and think one's own happiness ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... her own personal and religious character were imparted to the performances, which in tone and manner were admirable and precise. She made the boys understand the sense of the words they sang, till I have seen them even in tears during the singing. The "chaste old verger" (as our reporter called him), who headed the procession at least four times a day, up and down the church, was a very important and successful part of the machinery, and from him, up to the highest official, everything was ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... have gone on playing till midnight 'but for a very earthy verger,' who insisted on locking up the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... left undisturbed till the year 1000, when the Emperor OTTO THE THIRD opened his tomb, and, finding his great predecessor sitting on a marble chair, helped him down. The marble chair is on view in the Cathedral to this day (verger, I mark) to witness to the truth of this narrative. One hundred and sixty-five years later, FREDERICK BARBAROSSA opened the second tomb where OTHO had placed C., and transferred to a marble sarcophagus what, at this date, was left of him. In the following ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... gain nothing from him, tho a chatty, communicative man. At the venerable stone church of Scrooby, very rude and plain in architecture, but by no means devoid of picturesqueness, I was equally unsuccessful. The verger of the church, who is generally the learned man of the village, was absent; and his daughter knew nothing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... enforced the Sacrist's rules, and took care that bad characters were not harboured in the church, and that burden-bearers were kept out. We have seen that these duties fell largely into abeyance at certain times. Every Michaelmas Day the Verger appeared before the Dean to give up his wand, and to receive it back if his character was satisfactory. The Verger was bound to be a bachelor, because, said the statute, "having a wife is a troublesome and disturbing affair, and husbands are apt to ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... Greenwell, and the "County of Durham," by J.R. Boyle, F.S.A. Thanks are also due to the authorities of the Cathedral for having freely given permission to make drawings and measurements, and to the late Mr Weatherall, chief verger, for his ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... the day of exultation came, and I and Enoch, with Miss and her Mamma, for I could not be satisfied with less than the whole family, repaired early to the cathedral, bribed the verger, procured ourselves places, and rallied our devout emotions as stedfastly as we could, amid the indecent riot of boys, the monotony of the responses, and the apathy ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... found All Saints' far more crowded than they had anticipated, the result being, that as they waited with many others in the aisle, Denys found herself put into a row where there was but one seat, and she could only look helplessly on while Charlie was marched by the verger, who knew him but did not know Denys, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... himself was aware of Mrs. Harding. Miss Woodruff approached her, smiling impersonally, with rather the air of a kindly verger at a church. Yes, she seemed to say, she could find a seat for her. She pointed to the one she had risen from. Mrs. Harding, almost tearful in her gratitude, slid into it with the precaution of the reverent sight-seer who fears to disturb a congregation at prayer, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... (1664-1752), Spanish—Italian cardinal and statesman, was born near Piacenza, probably at the village of Fiorenzuola, on the 31st of May 1664. His father was a gardener, and he himself became first connected with the church in the humble position of verger in the cathedral of Piacenza. Having gained the favour of Bishop Barni he took priest's orders, and afterwards accompanied the son of his patron to Rome. During the war of the Spanish succession Alberoni laid the foundation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the "Cock and Bottle," a very decent second class inn on the other side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she owned two ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest. At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father's breakfast. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... being thus settled, the clock no sooner struck twelve, than they all set out together; they who laid the wager being resolved not to be imposed on by his tampering with the verger. As they passed along, a scruple arose, which was, that though they saw him enter the church, how they should be convinced he went as far as the vault; but he instantly removed their doubts, by pulling out a pen-knife he had in his pocket, and saying, "This will I stick into ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... course, you must know the day on which I was missing. On that day I walked out with him, and we were in a few minutes joined by a friend of his, whom he introduced as Major Argat. After proceeding about one hundred yards farther we arrived at a chapel, the doors of which were open, and the verger looking out, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... should have liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible, and had made springs come out ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... station, and the nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—mais c'est ires curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service ... vous savez ces ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... admission, a slight which accounts in some measure for the continued antipathy he displayed during his life towards the Jesuits. At Louvain, too, he was associated very closely with a brilliant young French student, John du Verger de Hauranne (1581-1643), better known as the Abbot of St. Cyran, whom he accompanied to Paris and afterwards to Bayonne, where both lived for almost twelve years. During these years of intimate friendship they had many ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... soldier, the church verger's assistant, is standing behind the candle cupboard. Raising his eyebrows and stroking his beard he explains in a half-whisper to an old woman: "Matins will be in the evening to-day, directly after vespers. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to a drawl. "In Fighting-green, I believe, sir: they told me Poets' Corner was already bespoke for a turn-up between the Dean and Sall the charwoman, with the Head Verger for bottle-holder—" ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hear how he indulged in Drolleries and Raileries in the very edifice itself. He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, the Rich Framing of the Relics, and all he came across, seeming no more impressed by their solemnity than the Verger Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. "Surely," I thought, "there must be something wrong in a Faith whose Professors make so light of its ceremonies, and turn Buffoons in the very Temples;" ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... inn, where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... breath I withdrew my head, feeling that I was almost committing sacrilege. Unfortunately for me, I dislodged some loose mortar, and I heard this rattle noisily into the chamber below. Then I fled as rapidly as I could down the dim alley-way to the silent sunlit Grand' Place. Here I found the verger, and he admitted me to the great old church, in return for a one-franc piece, and brought me a rush-bottom chair to a choice spot before the wondrous Jube, where ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... "A verger, I suppose," thought Wingfold.—"Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... measure and photograph the buildings in their charge; to Mr. J. Oldrid Scott for the loan of drawings of St. Michael's; to Mr. A. Brown, Librarian of the Coventry Public Library for advice and help in making use of the store of topographical material under his care; to Mr. Owen, Verger of St. Michael's and Mr. Chapman, Verger of Holy Trinity, for help in various directions, and to Mr. Wilfred Sims for his energy and care in taking most of the photographs required ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... the Poets' Corner, listening while Mrs. Homer named the illustrious dead around them; followed the verger from chapel to chapel with intelligent interest as he told the story of each historical or royal tomb, and gave up Madam Tussaud's wax-work to spend several happy hours sketching the beautiful cloisters ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He had ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... would, on this principle, be diffused by colonies from some centre of the faith. The images of mice in Apollo's temples would be nothing more than votive offerings. Thus, in the church of a Saxon town, the verger shows a silver mouse dedicated to Our Lady. 'This is the greatest of our treasures,' says the verger. 'Our town was overrun with mice till the ladies of the city offered this mouse of silver. Instantly all the mice disappeared.' 'And are you ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... afterwards learned that the Easter Offering for that year was one hundred and twenty-seven pounds, which was made up of the amounts collected from the parishioners by the children, the district visitors and the verger, the collection at a special Service, and donations from the feeble-minded old ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe Roustan's ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... verger to the cathedral becoming vacant, Swift called Robert to him, and asked him if he had any clothes of his own that were not a livery? Robert replying in the affirmative, he desired him to take off his livery, and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... each other,' said Little Dorrit, recognising the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was, 'when I ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... prankt, and the spring in Italy is like one long Forestieri day. At the church of Eremitani in Padua I was taken to see some Mantegnas at a side-altar while a very devout congregation was celebrating Eastertide, and the verger unlocked a gate and pocketed his tip with undiminished piety. How apt an image of life, these Italian churches—some of us praying and some of us sightseeing! It must be confusing to the celestial bookkeepers to distinguish the Bibles from ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... The verger who took them in charge was an ancient man called Paulinus of Mansfield, having been born in that place. And he soon saw that what he had to show of the unfinished cathedral was lost on the heavy-lidded boy who was half asleep, and upon the Saxon serving-man, who felt no interest in such matters. ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... Chapel. The Aide-de-Camp in waiting, an extremely youthful warrior as a rule, had to stand until the door of the pew was shut, when a folding wooden flap was lowered across the aperture, on which he seated himself, with his back resting against the pew door. At the conclusion of the service the Verger always opened the pew door with a sudden "click." Should the Aide-de-Camp be unprepared for this and happen to be leaning against the door, with any reasonable luck he was almost certain to tumble backwards into the aisle, "taking a regular ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... founded by King Stephen about the year 1141, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; however, it obtained the name of St. Stephen's Chapel. It was rebuilt by King Edward III., anno 1347, who placed in it a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along the Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at the dissolution of monasteries in the reign of Edward VI. amounted to near eleven thousand pounds per annum. Almost ever since the dissolution, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... monuments, the boast and glory of this church is that of the famous MARSHAL SAXE; who died at the age of 55, in the year 1755. While I was looking very intently at it, the good verger gently put a printed description of it into my hands, on a loose quarto sheet. I trust to be forgiven if I read only its first sentence:—Cette grande composition reunit aux richesse de l'art des Phidias et des Bouchardon, les traits de la grande poesie." "Take any shape but this"—thought I ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he does not want, the nearest emblem of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Cathedral testified that there "had been no superintendence at all comparable to that of Mr. Sydney Smith"; that he had warmed the Library and rebound the books; that he had insured the fabric against fire; and had "brought the New River into the Cathedral by mains." The Verger testified that the monuments had fallen into a dreadful state of decay and disfigurement, and that there were "twenty thousand names scratched on the font"; but that now by Mr. Smith's orders everything had been repaired, cleaned, and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... them from above. These benches are long, and I was sorry to see the girls planting themselves fast at the outer end, and making themselves square, so as to hinder any one else from getting in, till the verger came and spoke to them, when Charley giggled offensively; and even then they did not make room, but forced the people to squeeze past. Isa could not help herself, not being the outermost; but she ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge |
