"Auction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat," there was related our hero's adventures in a fine craft which was recovered from the thieves and sold at auction. There was a mystery connected with the boat, and for a long time Tom could not solve it. He was aided, however, by his chum, Ned Newton, who worked in the Shopton Bank, and also by Mr. Damon and Eradicate Sampson, an aged colored whitewasher, who ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... after we had returned on board with our sad report, an auction was held of the poor man's effects. The captain had first, however, called all hands aft and asked them if they were satisfied that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... nearly all of them. The very worse thing I ever knowed about it was some white men raised hands to sell like they raise stock now. It was hard to have your child took off and never see or hear tell of it. Mean man buy it and beat it up. Some of them was drove off to be sold at auction at New Orleans. That was where some took them cause they could get big money ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... noble Aztec ladies. Indeed I saw and heard the soldiers gambling for these women when they were weary of their play for money, a description of each of them being written on a piece of paper. One of these ladies answered well to Otomie, my wife, and she was put up to auction by the brute who won her in the gamble, and sold to a common soldier for a hundred pesos. For these men never doubted but that the women and the gold would be ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... foundations were made of boxes of plug tobacco—part of a jettisoned cargo—used instead of more expensive lumber; and the adjacent warehouse where the trunks of the early and forgotten "forty-niners" were stored, and—never claimed by their dead or missing owners—were finally sold at auction. I remember the strong breath of the sea over all, and the constant onset of the trade winds which helped to disinfect the deposit of dirt and grime, decay and wreckage, which were stirred up in the later ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... sad household, that of Mark Nelson, on the day preceding the departure from the farm. There was to be an auction the next day, at which the farm-stock and farm-implements were to be sold. It was well understood that Squire Hudson was to be the buyer of the farm, and as he was not likely to have any competitor there was little hope that it would fetch more than ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... on a fortnight had passed before I got the chance I had been looking out for. I went home in good spirits (for me) to report what had happened, and found the brokers in the house carrying off the furniture which I had bought with my own money for sale by auction. I asked them how they dared touch it without my leave. They answered, civilly enough I must own, that they were acting under my husband's orders; and they went on removing it before my own eyes, to the cart outside. I ran up stairs, and found ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the fine weather because the house stood just at the end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was also the road to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as the Shrubs. In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the races. The second day, when the best ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... experience at stake, or if you were in the position of men like myself,—free from the encumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged lands. Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier, he has the power to put up at public auction, and there to buy in for ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seemed as solemn as a judge, climbed up the wheel and on to the cart with another man following him; and as the crowd increased about our cart I realised that everything was being sold by auction, for the busy man kept shouting prices quickly higher and higher, and then giving a tap with a pencil on a basket, entering something in a memorandum-book, while his red-nosed clerk did ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... from the history of a certain Bishop of Necomus, that a woman named Antonia, in the Territory of Mutina, Italy, now called Modena, had brought forth 40 sons before she was forty years of age, and that she had had 3 and 4 at a birth. At the auction of the San Donato collection of pictures a portrait of Dianora Frescobaldi, by one of the Bronzinos in the sixteenth century, sold for about $3000. At the bottom of this portrait was an inscription stating that she was the mother of 52 children. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... salle-a-manger. And what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de Vauversin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sinuessa; and Quintus Fabius also, having first consulted the senate, issued a proclamation, that all persons should convey corn from the fields into fortified towns, before the calends of June next ensuing: if any neglected to do so he would lay waste his lands, sell his slaves by auction, and burn his farm-houses. Not even the praetors, who were created for the purpose of administering justice, were allowed an exemption from military employments. It was resolved that Valerius the praetor ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... overtaken the caravan. The mother had died; the father was disgusted with the country and everything in it; and his one idea was to sell his outfit and get the children back East, back to school and granny. At the auction, the cattle brought good prices, but no one wanted the horses. They were gaunt and weary, saddle-and spur-galled; one young and the other past middle life. It was the young horse that caught Hartigan's ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that 's it,—said the Master,—two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money. I've seen an old woman that wouldn't fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at. I don't think your ant-eating specialist, with ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Ann, Soho, dealer" appears in the bankrupt list of The London Gazette of November, 1772; and in December of the same year, this temple of festivity, and all its gorgeous contents, were thus advertised to be sold by public auction:— ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... fellow, I know more about auction pinochle than Hoyle. At home I am recognized as the champion card player of—" He breaks off, when he sees us, and turns to Duke. "Hello!" he calls over. "Are you ready to admit now that my idea of making feature productions is ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her since. She had had children, assorted colors—had one with her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... This I resisted, with the result that our whole family was banished, and those fools of Corsicans broke into our house and smashed all of our furniture. They little knew that that furniture, if in existence to-day, would bring millions of francs as curios if sold at auction. It was thus that the family came to move to France and that I became in fact what I had been by birth—a Frenchman. If I had remained a Corsican, Paoli's treachery would have made me an Englishman, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... feeling along with my left hoof, when my right suddenly give a slip on a bit of rock as seemed like glass, and there it was slithering away more and more. If you hadn't ha' held on, you might ha' told 'em to sell off my kit by auction when you ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... flees to a neighbouring district. The Zemindar enjoys the same right of tenure as the peasant: the amount of impost laid on his property was fixed for perpetuity; whatever his revenue be, he must pay so much to the Company, or he forfeits his estates, and they are put up for auction. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... have an auction," I cried. "There's nothing succeeds like an auction out here. We'll sell the things at boom prices—we'll ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... been captured and brought to that city, in which was contained a present from the Queen of France to Mrs. Washington, as "an elegant testimonial of her approbation of the, general's conduct," and that it had been sold at auction for the benefit of the captors. This intelligence was so confidently affirmed from such a respectable source, that General Washington had requested the Marquis de Lafayette to make inquiry as to the truth of it through the medium of Madame de Lafayette.—Writings of Washington, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... herein Marseilles was a powerful seconder; for she kept up communications with all the neighboring tribes, and fanned the spirit of faction. After his victories, the consul C. Sextius, seated at his tribunal, was selling his prisoners by auction, when one of them came up to him and said, "I have always liked and served the Romans; and for that reason I have often incurred outrage and danger at the hands of my countrymen." The consul had him set free,—him and his family,—and even gave him leave to point out ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was always nothing, and find yourself, Master Godfrey," said Ned. "And as for your chest and its contents, they've been sold by auction on the capstan-head long ago, so that it would be a hard job ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... cross-legged idol till policemen moved him on. And after closing hours back he would go to his dingy room, in that part of our capital where English is seldom spoken, to supplicate little idols of his own. And when Pombo's simple, necessary prayer was equally refused by the idols of museums, auction-rooms, shops, then he took counsel with himself and purchased incense and burned it in a brazier before his own cheap little idols, and played the while upon an instrument such as that wherewith men charm snakes. And still the idols ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... should a boy have dreamed such dreams? And what was it in a married old pair of brass-headed hearth tongs that a boy in his teens should have bought them at auction and then have carried them to college with him, rattling about on the bottom of his trunk? For it was not an over-packed trunk. There were the tongs on the bottom and a thirty-cent edition of "The Natural History of Selborne" on the top—that is ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... which made the conquest of the clapper possible, and revel in the faculty's amazement at the sudden silence of the tyrant will. Macnooder would have proceeded to capitalize this imagination by fabricating clapper watch charms and selling them at auction prices. The Gutter Pup might organize the sporting club in memory of the lamented Marquis of Queensberry; Macnooder sold the tickets and extinguished the surplus. His ambition was not to be a philosopher, or a benefactor. He ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... must own he looked a little dull, And now and then a tear stole down by stealth; Perhaps his recent loss of blood might pull His spirit down; and then the loss of wealth, A mistress, and such comfortable quarters, To be put up for auction amongst Tartars, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was almost stationary during a period of twenty years. In Virginia good lands sold for less than the cost of the buildings on them. Jefferson's home, Monticello, including two hundred acres of land, sold at public auction in 1829 for $2500. Each autumn saw thousands of masters with their families and slaves take up the march over the up-country road through Danville, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, to Georgia and Alabama, or over the mountains to the valley of Virginia, whence they ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... There are probably more horses than people on the Islands; and the native family is poor, indeed, which has not two or three hardy, rough, grass-fed ponies, easy to ride, sometimes tricky but more often quite trustworthy, and capable of living where a European donkey would die in disgust. At a horse auction you see a singular collection of good and bad horses; and it is one of the jokes of the Islands to go to a horse auction and buy a horse for a quarter of a dollar. The Government has vainly tried to put a check to the reckless increase of horseflesh ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... from Braelands until their return. Marion had different plans. She induced Archie to sell off the old furniture, and to redecorate and re-furnish Braelands from garret to cellar. It gave Madame the first profound shock of her new life. The chairs and tables she had used sold at auction to the tradespeople of Largo and the farmers of the country-side! She could not understand how Archie could endure the thought. Under her influence, he never would have endured it; but Archie Braelands smiled on, and coaxed, and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... much pleasanter matter for the King to take account of by this time; and a fleet might have been floating under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and useless remnant of one, about to be put up to auction. ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... great leader of secession, (including slaves) more than three fourths of the people can neither read nor write. Such is the State, rejoicing in the barbarism of ignorance and slavery, exulting in the hope of reviving the African slave trade, whose chief city witnesses each week the auction of slaves as chattels, and whose newspapers, for more than a century, are filled with daily advertisements by their masters of runaway slaves, describing the brands and mutilations to which they have been subjected; that passed the first secession ordinance, and commenced ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Americans may, perhaps, taunt us with the shameful treatment of a poor Negroe servant, who not long ago was put up to sale by public auction, together with the effects of his bankrupt master.—Also, that the prisons of this free city have been frequently prostituted of late, by the tyrannical and dangerous practice of confining Negroes, under the pretence of slavery, though there have ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... days, when religion suffered most in the house of her friends, so was it with Savonarola. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the increasing corruption and licentiousness of popes and clergy. The offices of cardinal and bishop were put up to auction, and sold to the highest bidder. The bishop extorted money from the priests, and these robbed the people. The grossest immorality was prevalent in all ranks of the Church, and without concealment. Even the monasteries and convents ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the trial of something better. Send the "incurables" to the auction room, and fit him out anew with what should be the visible expression of your love and your desire for his welfare. Why expect him to take these on trust any more than you expect the daughters to do this? Yet their apartments ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Jose. The little immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two of the swarms were sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively. Other importations were made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus, and, though great pains were taken to insure success, about one half usually died on the way. Four swarms were brought safely across the plains in 1859, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... and courteous in conversation, and, as a natural consequence, much beloved by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. But to that brilliancy in conversation which some of his admirers have been pleased to attribute to him in my opinion he could lay no claim. His library was sold at auction in New York on the evening of October 12, 1868. If the collection disposed of on that occasion was really his library in full, it must be confessed it was a sorry affair and meagre in the extreme. In surveying the collection a judge of the value of such property would perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... down, the house purified from the auction-mob—every thing changed; a new name occupied the doctor's place in the "Court Guide"—and in three months the family seemed as completely forgotten amongst those of whom they once formed a prominent ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... York, Crown Street has become Liberty Street; King Street, Pine Street; and Queen Street, then one of the most fashionable quarters of the town, Pearl Street. Pearl Street is now chiefly occupied by the auction dealers, and the wholesale drygoods merchants, for warehouses and counting-rooms.] had been transferred to the Locusts, and gave to the room that indescribable air of comfort, which so gratefully announces the approach of a domestic winter. Into one of these recesses Captain Wharton ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... an auction at Lucena on the 28th of April of horses and mules taken in the battle. Another paper states the gratuities of the alcayde of los Donceles to the soldiery—four fanegas, or about four hundredweight, of wheat and a lance to each horseman, two ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... only appraised at L300, though the whole collection of the king's curiosities were sold at above L50,000.[191] Hume adds, "the very library and medals at St. James's were intended by the generals to be brought to auction, in order to pay the arrears of some regiments of cavalry; but Selden, apprehensive of this loss, engaged his friend Whitelocke, then lord-keeper of the Commonwealth, to apply for the office of librarian. This contrivance saved ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... were angry, the Regiment were furious, and the Bandsman swore— like troopers. The Drum-Horse was going to be put up to auction—public auction—to be bought, perhaps, by a Parsee and put into a cart! It was worse than exposing the inner life of the Regiment to the whole world, or selling the Mess Plate ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... or not. He would always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, the bills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even the non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that is nearer the home equivalent. He ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday an Eastern apologue, as richly coloured as the Tales of Scherezade; on the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyere; on the Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Congreve's books remained until about 1930, when the eleventh Duke of Leeds sold his English estates and authorized Sotheby's to auction off "aSelected portion of the Valuable Library at Hornby Castle." Among the 713 items advertised for sale on June 2, 3, and 4, 1930, were ten books containing the signature of William Congreve. These ten, along with ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... a Bania is on the other side of a river you should leave your bundle on this side for fear he should steal it. If a Bania is drowning you should not give him your hand; he is sure to have some pecuniary motive for drifting down-stream. A Bania will start an auction in a desert. If a Bania's son tumbles down he is sure to pick up something. He uses light weights and swears that the scales tip up of themselves; he keeps his accounts in a character that no one but God can read; if you borrow from him your debt ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... had been made bankrupt and his goods and chattels sold to make good the sums which he could not collect from his group, whether it arose from their poverty, death, or from their having absconded. I have been present at auction sales of live-stock seized to supply taxes to the Government, which admitted no excuses or explanations. Many Barangay chiefs went to prison through their inability or refusal to pay others' debts. On the other hand, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... latter part of 1834 a man named Van Bergen, who held one of the Lincoln-Berry notes, refusing to trust him any longer, had his horse, saddle, and surveying instruments seized by the sheriff and sold at public auction, thus sweeping away the means by which, as he said, he "procured bread and kept soul and body together." Even in this strait his known honesty proved his salvation. Out of pure friendliness, James Short bought in the property and gave it back to the young surveyor, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... Jesus." And a memorable day it was in Rome, and a very singular sight, when, the dreaded fathers of the terrible "Company" having taken their departure, the few remaining goods and chattels in the convent were sold by public auction. Few and not of much value were the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had long foreseen that their day in Rome ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... pittance. There was a heavy mortgage upon the farm, and even a chattel-mortgage upon the furniture, and as the man who held them was stern and unrelenting, he had foreclosed, and the house was to be sold at auction. "Why has mother kept it from us?" said Maude, and Mrs. De Vere replied, "Pride and a dread of what you might say prevented her writing it, I think. I was there myself a few weeks since, and she said it could do no good to trouble you. The ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... unfortunately his guileless countenance too often shields him from this searching and wholesome instrument. When he is sent for a hack buggy and returns after half- an-hour, with a perplexed face, saying that there is not one to be had anywhere, who would suspect that he has been holding an auction at the nearest stand, dwelling on the liberality and wealth of his master and the distance to which his business that morning will take him, and that, when he found no one would bid up to his reserve, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... week of rain, October began with perfect weather, and from the strangers who flocked to the auction, attracted by reports of Lowestoft plates and Sheraton furniture, were heard many expressions of delight at the beauty of ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... Secession; the throne of Greece put up to auction; Poland in chains, defying the Russian Bear; the ghost of Charles I. warning the King of Prussia, by the block to which he points, of the punishment that awaits the would-be despot; Napoleon crushing the prostrate figure of France; the wars between "father-in-law Denmark," Germany, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... to Key West for a market are almost always sold at auction and the auction houses in the early morning are busy marts. Cargoes of sponge, fruit, vegetables, lumber and other goods are sold in lots to suit purchasers, who range from the dealer who buys by the cargo, or the small merchant who takes a few boxes of ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... how you look at it. Time was when Andrew Bolton wouldn't have parted with the place for three times that amount. It was rated, I remember, at eighteen thousand, including live stock, conveyances an' furniture, when it was deeded over to the assignees. We sold out the furniture and stock at auction for about half what they were worth. But there weren't any bidders worth mentioning for the house and land. So it was held by the assignees—Cephas Dix, Deacon Whittle and myself—for private sale. We could have sold it on easy terms the next year for six thousand; but in ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... soon as you leave school or college and continue until past middle age, absorbing information from stalls, from catalogues, and from sale-rooms. The records of prices at which books have been sold in the auction rooms, and which are regularly issued, are useless in the hands of an inexperienced person. To make up your mind on Monday that you are going to begin a career of successful bargain-hunting and book-collecting is only to be defrauded on all the other five remaining days. Experience ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... woman; but he—he knows well that a true workman never gives up his own inventions for money, no more than a soldier would give up his cross. That is his glory; he is bound to keep it for the honour it does him! Ah! thunder! if I had ever made a discovery, rather than put it up at auction I would have sold one of my eyes! Don't you see, that a new invention is like a child to a workman! he takes care of it, he brings it up, he makes a way for it in the world, and it is only poor creatures ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... favorite in Parisian society, and that you have not only a beautiful voice, but also that you have beautiful toilettes. This is a great attraction. In the second place, I allow (as a great privilege) the tickets to be subscribed for; the remaining ones are bought at auction. You see, in this way the bids go 'way up.... I am glad I ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Hocus Pocus. Examination of the different editions of this book in my library discloses the fact that there are no fire formulas in the second edition, 1635, which is the earliest I have (first editions are very rare and there is only one record of a sale of that edition at auction). From the fact that this formula was published during the time that Powell was appearing in England I gather that that circumstance may account for its addition to the book. It does not appear in the German or ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... the rate for license for the houses, business, &c., be assessed as follows, payable as set forth in section 1: On all family groceries, porter-houses, eating-houses, oyster houses, and restaurants, per year $40; on all auction stores, per year, $200; on all public auctioneers, $50; on all banks, brokers, and exchange offices, $500; on all insurance companies having agents in this city, $100; on all express companies, $200; on all wholesale and retail ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... too many such personages, and the price of wood would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would be absurd to see our ancestors in their urns in the procession at Longchamps. And if the urns were valuable, they were likely some day to be sold at auction, full of respectable ashes, or seized by creditors,—a race of men who respected nothing. The other side made answer that our ancestors were much safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise, for before very long the city of Paris would ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... marks. Lord North was then on the outlook for fresh and comparatively unburdensome means of increasing the revenue, and obtained valuable assistance from the Wealth of Nations. He imposed two new taxes in 1777, of which he got the idea there; one on man-servants, and the other on property sold by auction. And the budget of 1778 owed still more important features to Smith's suggestions, for it introduced the inhabited house duty so strongly recommended by him, and the malt tax.[253] Then in the following year 1779 we find Smith consulted by statesmen like Dundas and the Earl ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... lordship into the best circles there; only I shall have him accompanied on his calls by a sentry of two disguised as valets. For the Earl's to be on sale, mind; so much ransom; that is, the nobleman, Lord Selkirk, shall have a bodily price pinned on his coat-tail, like any slave up at auction in Charleston. But, my lad with the yellow mane, you very strangely draw out my secrets. And yet you don't talk. Your honesty is a magnet which attracts my sincerity. But I rely on ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and ninety-nine years' lease at a nominal sum. I owned the lease for precisely ninety days, when I sold it to a company for half a fortune. Always it was Otoo who looked ahead and saw the opportunity. He was responsible for the salving of the Doncaster—bought in at auction for a hundred pounds, and clearing three thousand after every expense was paid. He led me into the Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... remonstrated; but Bolivia insisted, and declared, in addition, that the tax was meant to be retrospective, and that unless all dues were paid before February 14, 1879, the nitrates in the hands of the exporters would be seized and sold by auction. As the day which had been fixed for the seizure drew near, a Chilian squadron, under Rear-Admiral Rebolledo Williams, was got ready for the purpose of seizing Antofagasta itself. It was this fleet which, on the morning of February 7, 1879, steamed out ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... By attending auction sales, visiting dealers constantly and all exhibitions, reading all art periodicals, she soon learned the commercial value of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... The Confederate Congress had passed a bill ostensibly to make effective the clause in its constitution prohibiting the African slave-trade. The quick eye of Davis had detected in it a mode of evasion, for cargoes of captured slaves were to be confiscated and sold at public auction. The President had exposed this adroit subterfuge in his message vetoing the bill, and the slavery-at-any-price men had not sufficient influence in Congress to override the veto, though they muttered against ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... pitied the gentle lady, the benefactress of the poor, when she dismissed her servants, sold her jewels, and quitted her beautiful home to seek a humbler shelter. Amongst the hundreds who crowded to the public auction of the magnificent furniture and plate, which had been the admiration of all who had seen them, many thought with compassion of the late owners, reduced to such sudden poverty, though the generosity of the lady's family had saved them ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... bless 'em!—the landlord came down on Mr. O'Clery, sold out his sixty milch cows, after being twenty-one days in pound; and though the cows were worth ten pounds each, Lord Mandemon's agent sold them by auction, and he bought them back himself for two pounds each; and so the poor family was ruined. After that, O'Clery sold out another farm he had; and, collecting all that was due to him, he came to America, against the advice of the priest, his brother. He thought, he said, to live with his family in 'a ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the auction bridge proceeded, Otley withdrew from it and went to his room, where he sat down and wrote two notes—one to Peggy and the other to his hostess. In the latter he apologized that he had been suddenly recalled to London on some very urgent business, and that he would leave Malton ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... to remain idle. It soon was seized by the city authorities and rented to Baron Steuben, the disciplinarian of the American Army and the author of its first Manual of Arms. The household furniture, too, had been removed and offered for sale at public auction, while the coach and four was bought by a trader at the Coffee House. Arnold's presence in the city was now no more than a memory—a memory, indeed, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Then followed an auction, the strangest that history has recorded. On one side the King, on the other the Church, began to bid eagerly against each other for the favour of those whom tip to that time King and Church had combined to oppress. The Protestant Dissenters, who, a few months before, had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reader. It is a fact that such an article was forgotten, or left or lost, on a railway, and, more amazing still, it was never claimed, but after having been advertised, and having lain in the lost goods office the appointed time, it was sold by auction with other things. Many of the articles were powerfully suggestive of definite ideas. One could not look upon those delicate kid gloves without thinking of the young bride, whose agitated soul was incapable of extending a thought to such trifles. That Mrs Gamp-like umbrella raised to mental ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the left of the entrance, was a long admirably proportioned room, and the large room above, which embraced the entire floor, Miss Dwight had converted into a library both sumptuous and stately. She had bought her furniture at auction that it might not look too new, and on the longer walls were bookcases seven feet high. She had collected a small library before the war; and for the many other books, some of them rare and all highly valued by their present possessor, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... enormous price of 500 per cent—the male slaves even fetching 100 dollars per head, though the females went for less. The Hottentots now arrived, with many more of my men, who, seeing their old "flames," Snay's women, sold off by auction, begged me to advance them money to purchase them with, for they could not bear to see these women, who were their own when they formerly stayed here, go off like cattle no one knew where. Compliance, of course, was impossible, as it ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... one of the others, but I restrained myself when I learnt for certain from the friars that their Highnesses had sent him. I wrote to him that his arrival was welcome, and that I was prepared to go to the Court and had sold all I possessed by auction; and that with respect to the immunities he should not be hasty, for both that matter and the government I would hand over to him immediately as smooth as my palm. And I wrote to the same effect to the friars, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... statement of Herodotus (see Herodotus, vol. i., p. 196. Compare "Nic. Dam. Fr.," 131, and AElian. "Var. Hist.," iv. 1), who says all the marriageable virgins in all the towns of the empire or kingdom were sold at public auction. The beautiful maidens were sold to the highest bidder, and the proceeds were deposited before the herald. The ugly maidens in turn were then put up, and the bidders were called upon to take them as wives with the smallest dowry to be paid from the proceeds of the sales of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... she couldn't leave it. In view of this important creature's indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my clothes. Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers. I say, Hoape, they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge." ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... of fifty pieces, he began to put his retrenching scheme in execution; all his servants, Pipes excepted, were discharged, his chariot and running horses disposed of, his housekeeping broken up, and his furniture sold by auction: nay, the heat of his disposition was as remarkable in this as any other transaction in his life; for every step of his saving project was taken with such eagerness, and even precipitation, that most ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... five o'clock stage. Mrs. John had been there three days now, and John's father and mother were almost packed up—so Mrs. John said. The auction would be to-morrow at nine o'clock, and with John there to see that things "hustled"—which last was really unnecessary to mention, for John's very presence meant "hustle"—with John there, then, the whole thing ought to be over ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... integrity inspired so much respect, that the creditors were disposed to grant him any indulgence not incompatible with their own interests. They agreed to accept the proffered note, all except Mr. Grossman. He insisted that the girl should be put up at auction. For her sake, the ruined merchant condescended to plead with him. He represented that the tie between them was very different from the merely convenient connections which were so common; that Loo Loo was really good and modest, and so sensitive by nature, that exposure to public sale would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... with much enthusiasm, and Bishop Simpson renewed his plea for donations. At last Mr. Lincoln, who had been growing tired and bored at the performance, craned his head around toward Bishop Simpson, and said in a tone that everybody heard: "Simpson, if you will stop this auction I will pay the ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... that proposition of a ransom [Footnote: 66] by auction; because it is a mere project. It is a thing new, unheard of; supported by no experience; justified by no analogy; without example of our ancestors, or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular Parliamentary taxation, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... anxious to clear out their stock at any old price. The wise wife—and Johnnie's missus is one—waits until this hour before making her large purchases. For now excellent joints and rabbits and other trifles are put up for auction. The laureates are wonderful fellows, many of them, I imagine, decayed music-hall men. A good man in this line makes a very decent thing out of it. The usual remuneration is about eight or ten shillings for ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... already. Strip you, and be ashamed for the poor women who were the first wives of your daughters' husbands, and for the children whom such men abandon and forget! In leading your innocent daughters to courts and receptions you are only leading them to the auction-room; and in dressing and decorating them you are preparing them for the market of base men. Last week some titled philanthropist had hauled up a woman in the East End of London for attempting to sell her daughter. How shocking! everybody said. What a disgrace to the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... called, "The Monarch of the Glen," and well known all over the world from engravings, was recently exposed to auction, when it fetched the enormous price of 6,510 pounds. It is said that the painter sold it off his easel for 800 guineas. The bidding at the sale began at 2,000 pounds, and by bids of one hundred guineas reached 4,000 pounds, at which price it was hoped that it might have been ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Kennedy. They b'long to Master John Kennedy. I was raised round Aberdeen, Mississippi but they come in there after freedom. I heard em talk but I couldn't tell you much as where they come from. They said a young girl bout got her growth would auction off for more than any man. They used em for cooks and house women. I judge way they talked she be fifteen or sixteen years old. They brought $1,600 and $2,000. If they was scared up, where they been beat, they didn't sell off good. I knowed Master ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... it is with life," I said to myself;—"with time." This world is a sort of auction-room; we do not know that we are buyers: we are, in fact, more like beggars; we have brought no money to exchange for precious minutes, hours, days, or years; they are given to us. There is no calling out of terms, no noisy auctioneer, no hammer; but nevertheless, the time ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... and, perhaps, feel ashamed that your grandparents should have started in life with so little, and that so plain, especially if you hear others boasting of the wealth and grandeur of theirs. But, when I tell you that after awhile we had a nice sofa, (bought at auction, because it was cheap), and that at another time a small side-board was provided, in like manner, by that dear grandpa, who always did the best he could; and when I tell you that "grandma" was so happy, and so well ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... the expense is greater, as, after an application being made, the land is put up to public auction, and may fetch a very low or higher price according to the bidding. The land secured, contracts are made with natives of the lower class to clear the forest and plant cinchona. The contracts are often sublet to Indians. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... anyhow," remarked Price, rousing his mind from a retrospect of its extensive past. And, no doubt, the old man was right; for a relic, answering to Mosey's description, was sold by auction in Melbourne, with other assets of the expedition, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of government. In my version of this passage I have conformed to the emendation of the original first proposed by Gronovius, and admitted by Stroth and Bekker; scil. in publicum omne sumptum.—They did not let these salt-works by auction, but took them into their own management, and carried them on by means of persons employed to work on the public account. These salt-works, first established at Ostia by Ancus, were, like other public property, farmed out to the publicans. As they ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... to go to Lao by land at my own expense, in search of the king of Camboja, for I knew that that way led thither. Accordingly, as soon as we arrived in Cochinchina, the captain sent Diego Belloso and myself to Lao, and Captain Gregorio de Vargas to Tunquin. Meanwhile he held an auction among the soldiers of everything valuable from the Chinese ships, and of what else he had taken from the soldiers; but the men were all without a real, and so he had everything bought for himself, at whatever price he was pleased to give. The king of Sinoa, a province of Cochinchina, equipped ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... mind,' said the lady, rising into the tone and manner in which she was accustomed to address her audiences; 'it's Jarley's wax-work, remember. The duty's very light and genteel, the company particularly select, the exhibition takes place in assembly-rooms, town-halls, large rooms at inns, or auction galleries. There is none of your open-air wagrancy at Jarley's, recollect; there is no tarpaulin and sawdust at Jarley's, remember. Every expectation held out in the handbills is realised to the utmost, and the whole forms an effect of imposing brilliancy ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... probably {209} could not pay for them, and the population of the district would have made the place very uncomfortable for any of the clergymen's friends who showed an anxiety to buy up the impounded beasts. In some cases when cattle were sold by public auction no bidder ventured to come forward but the farmer himself who owned the cattle, and they had to be knocked down to him at a purely nominal price because there was no possible competitor. The farmer drove home his beasts ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... trade with the natives, except in the presence of a magistrate. The accounts of guardians of minors shall be examined by the probate judge. Attorneys are restricted in bringing new suits between Indians. Goods sold at auction for the benefit of the royal treasury must be knocked down to the highest bidder, and for cash only. Lawyers are ordered to follow the customs of the natives, where these are involved in lawsuits. Collection of tributes shall not be made by the alcaldes-mayor; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane; Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court; From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain, Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane; The lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark, The full-price master, and the half-price clerk; Boys who long linger at the gallery-door, With pence twice five—they want but twopence more, Till some Samaritan the twopence spares, And sends them ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Mrs. Wentworth had sold her last piece of furniture, Dr. Humphries was walking along one of the principal streets in Jackson when he was stopped by a crowd that had gathered in front of an auction mart. On walking up he learned that it was a sheriff's sale of a "likely young negro girl." Remembering that Emma had requested him to purchase a girl as a waiting maid for her, he examined the slave and found her in ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... king of the range. And bulls with red rings round the eyes by preference, as they can stand the bright glare of these hot, dry countries better. It used to be my keen delight to attend the annual cattle shows and auction sales of pure-bred bulls, and I would feel their hides and criticize their points till I almost began to imagine myself as competent as ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... it would have been strange if he had; and all these debts entered in the pocketbook weren't good enough to raise a millrei on—let alone a shilling. The Portuguese officials begged him not to distress himself. They gave him a week's grace, and then proposed to sell the brig at auction. This meant ruin for Morrison; and when Heyst hailed him across the street in his usual courtly tone, the week was ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... motions, and this control made an unpleasantly near approach to slavery. Instead of workmen going with the eagerness of energy and hope to the employer who gave them most wages, they too often went to the employer to whom the parish sent them. The degrading spectacle of labourers set up to auction in the parish pound was frequently exhibited. Apart from the poor-law system, the actual feudal serfdom, which gave landowners great powers over the peasantry on their estates, was not abolished until the reign ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... said land for a market place, and public landing as to them shall seem convenient; and when the said town shall be so laid out, the said directors and trustees shall have full power and authority to sell all the said lots, by public sale or auction, from time to time, to the highest bidder so as no person shall have more than two lots."[13] The money arising from the sale was to be paid to the two Alexanders and ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... advocated direct taxation, he insisted upon the strictest observance of appropriation laws, and he opposed the sale of the canals. In his speeches he probably exaggerated the canal debt, just as he minimised the canal income and brushed aside salt and auction duties as of little importance; yet everybody recognised him as the schoolmaster of the convention on financial subjects. His blackboard shone in the sunlight. He was courteous, but without much deference. There was neither yielding ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... France, as you anticipate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast? There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones at auction. ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a meeting of the Farmers' Telephone directors;—to see how his neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing else to look after. He preferred his buckboard to a car because it was light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... memoranda. He kept several series of notebooks concurrently with great diligence and method. In all of those which have been preserved there is more or less matter of value to the student of history. But at his death his library was sold by public auction. The MSS. were dispersed, though their existence and value was known to some of his contemporaries.[4] Some are lost, in particular the series of Historical Observes, 1660-1680, which, judging from the sequel, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... be fairer to put it up to auction. There were other enquiries. Oh! She's a leery old bird—reminds me of one of those pictures ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of joy. He has rich food to eat every day. He goes to the show every evening, when he is not on duty. He has a fine shirt on his back; patent-leather boots on his feet; the pick and choice of a dozen houses. He is of any age—chiefly of the conscript age; ranges singly or in couples; haunts auction houses; dodges enrolling officers; eats canvass-backs; smells of greenbacks; swears allegiance to both sides; keeps faith with neither; is hand and glove with ABE'S detectives as well as with WINDER'S Plugs; smuggles in an ounce of quinine for the Confederate Government, and smuggles out ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... dragged her from the house; a judge gave speedy sentence that she was a slave; she was taken sobbing to jail; and the next day she was carried down the river to New Orleans, where she was sold on the auction ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... bows and square stern.'' Later she was sold to a New Bedford owner, converted into a bark and turned into a whaler. In 1890, she came to Yokohama much damaged, was officially surveyed and pronounced not worth repair, was sold at auction and bought as a coal hulk for the Canadian Pacific Company's steamers at that port, and in 1899 was sold to the Japanese, burned and broken up at Kanagawa. The fate of these vessels, with that of the Alert burned at sea by the Alabama, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... in the mother's mind; and, with her fear of losing an admirer for her Phoebe, the value of that admirer suddenly rose in her estimation. Thus, at an auction, if a lot is going to be knocked down to a lady, who is the only person that has bid for it, even she feels discontented, and despises that which nobody covets; but if, as the hammer is falling, many ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... strengthened by luxury and a universal profligacy of manners, will have tainted every heart, broken down every fence of liberty, and rendered us a nation of tame and contented vassals; when a general election will be nothing but a general auction of boroughs, and when the Parliament, the grand council of the nation, and once the faithful guardian of the State, and a terror to evil ministers, will be degenerated into a body of sycophants, dependent and venal, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... her father, who had found a taxicab to take him back to the purlieus of Piccadilly and auction bridge, sauntered along at the back of the tennis nets until she arrived at the court where Nigel and his party ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Praetorian guards. "Julian was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not agreeable to the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... before we left, the sketches and other matter were sold by auction, it having been previously decided to devote the proceeds of the sale to the last No. 1 Hut annual ball. By way of explanation, it must be noted that the hut had an annual ball once a week, "dancing strictly prohibited." To be explicit, the annual ball was a weekly dinner. The auction was ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... driven from town to town; offered by auction at two-pence a day; harnessed to gravel carts; mocked by being sent with a barley straw fifteen miles a day; imprisoned in pits, and kept standing morning after morning in a public pound. Such were the scenes which induced Horton to lecture through the country ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... contained shall be construed so as to effect the title of any individual; Provided nevertheless, That no lot or parcel of lands laid off under the direction of said commissioners, shall exceed two hundred acres; And Provided further, That no lease shall be made but by public auction, of which due notice shall be given in the Halifax ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... Kaiser—Germany's navy was little more than a joke. In 1848 the National Parliament voted six million thalers for the creation of a fleet, and some boats were constructed. But the attempts to weld Germany, then little more than a federation, into a nation having failed, the fleet was put up at auction, and actually sold in 1852. Prussia, a separate state, had started a fleet of her own and purchased the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... draft of the 'Hyperion.' The responsible authorities soon after, offered the fortunate possessor five hundred guineas for the manuscript, but courteously and honestly informed her that, were it put up to auction, some American collector would be almost sure to give a much larger ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... furniture from vanishing into thin air to-morrow morning at the auction mart, eighteen hundred francs! To repay my friends, as much again! Three quarters' rent to the landlord—whom you know.—My 'uncle' wants five ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... into my hands by a purchase at auction, some twenty years after I had abandoned the Legend of the Cave and the Hawks as a hopeless quest. In running over its contents, I found that a Colonel George Talbot was once the Surveyor-General of Maryland; and in two short marginal notes (the substance of which I afterwards found in Chalmers's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Now their father died; he had a good deal of personal property, which was not easy to divide, but the brothers decided, in order that this should be no cause of disagreement between them, to put the things up at auction, so that each might buy what he wanted, and the proceeds could be divided between them. No sooner said than done. Their father had owned a large gold watch, which had a wide-spread fame, because it was the only gold watch people in that part of the country ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... which is butter and the local which is a mask and color and the local which is a decoration and a platter, that which when the local spectacle is traded away for something established to be regular and surprising and unwillling, that which is the scene of an auction is the time when a name is stronger and old age which is ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... other season is there so much. This is the moment when the two whited sepulchres at either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of bargain and sale. The old is going; the new is coming. Wealth, office, power are at auction. Who bids highest? who hates with most venom? who intrigues with most skill? who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the darkest, and the most, political work? He ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... solace in our solitude—were not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered over the place. My stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... supported by interest; the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my Negroes produce if sold at public auction to-morrow. I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favor; nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... whipping slaves who were caught away from their respective homes without passes from their masters. When asked about the buying and the selling of slaves Mrs. McDaniel said that she had never witnessed an auction at which slaves were being sold and that the only thing she knew about this was what she had been told by her mother who had been separated from her husband and sold in Georgia. Mr. Hale never had the occasion to sell any of those slaves ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... farmers will be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction, and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes necessary to expropriate the most miserable ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Cicero; and, till Cicero's fame surpassed his, he was accounted the most eloquent of all the Romans. He was Verres's counsel in the prosecution conducted against him by Cicero. Seneca relates that his memory was so great that he could come out of an auction and repeat the catalogue backward. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... I sat beside her, feeling very hot and uncomfortable in the crape veil in which I was pinned. The others walked behind us, two by two, in a long procession. We went five times around the circle, while Sim Williams, on the wood-shed roof, tolled a big auction bell, which he had ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... gods come rarely, and spectres appear at five shillings an interview; where science is popular, and philosophy cries aloud in the market-place, and clamour does duty for government, and Thais and Lais are names of power—here, Lucian, is room and scope for you. Can I not imagine a new "Auction of Philosophers," and what wealth might be made by him who bought these popular sages and lecturers at his estimate, and vended them at ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... a great deal—in fact, I had suffered with chills and fever ever since Mr. Reid bought me. He, therefore, concluded to sell me, and, in November, 1844, he took me back to Richmond, placing me in the Exchange building, or auction rooms, for the sale of slaves. The sales were carried on in a large hall where those interested in the business sat around a large block or stand, upon which the slave to be sold was placed, the auctioneer standing beside him. When I was placed upon the block, a Mr. McGee ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... with her. Mistress and servant regarded each other as two enraged tigers might do, whenever they met. Mrs. Lisle made up her mind she would have Kizzie taken to the Court House and sold. Court was to be holden in a week or so; at such a time more or less slaves were put up at auction. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee |
