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Four-in-hand   Listen
noun
Four-in-hand  n.  A team of four horses driven by one person; also, a vehicle drawn by such a team.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Four-in-hand" Quotes from Famous Books



... driving deserted England; and, I believe, trotted over to America. Where are the amusements of our youth? I hear of no gambling now but amongst obscure ruffians; of no boxing but amongst the lowest rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round the parks in London last year; but that charioteer must soon disappear. He was very old; he was attired after the fashion of the year 1825. He must drive to the banks of Styx ere long,—where the ferry-boat waits to carry him over to the defunct revellers, who boxed and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gear (see Fig. 48). The latter brake is generally arranged to withdraw the clutch simultaneously. Tests have proved that even heavy cars can be pulled up in astonishingly short distances, considering their rate of travel. Trials made in the United States with a touring car and a four-in-hand coach gave 25-1/3 and 70 feet respectively for the distance in which the speed could be reduced from sixteen miles per hour ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... for formal functions between noon and evening consists of a double-breasted black frock coat, or a black cutaway coat, with either light or dark waistcoat, gray trousers, patent-leather shoes, light four-in-hand tie, and light gloves. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... led the fashion until she was as near forty-five as a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a martinet, had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove the proprieties four-in-hand through the cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to which that team was harnessed. His proposal of marriage being accepted by the lady, the commissary took his seat behind the proprieties ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... makes it the more effective. You yacht against them, you hunt with them, you play polo, you match them in every game, your four-in-hand takes the prize at Olympia. I have even heard that you go the length of boxing with the young officers. What is the result? Nobody takes you seriously. You are a 'good old sport' 'quite a decent fellow for a German,' a hard-drinking, night-club, knock-about-town, devil-may-care young fellow. ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for a week's jolly Easter coaching trip in Southern counties. Just read "leader" in D. T. on subject, and letter from "MACLISE" saying that he did it with twelve friends, and total cost only one pound a head per day! Lucky to have secured such a good amateur whip as BOB to drive our four-in-hand. Don't mind a pound a day—for one week. Original, and rather swell way of taking a holiday. Lovely warm day when we start. Should say, when we're off, only word "off" suggests ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various

... more meagre than the ordinary accessories of an American race-course: here is no assemblage of the beau-monde, no populace, no four-in-hand drags, no costermongers, no donkeys, no dukes, no thimble-rig, no gipsies; in short, "no nothin'," except a few quiet-looking hacks and a sprinkling ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... who was winding up the dinner-hour with Nestie Molyneux, on the upper step of the club-house, "if there isn't the 'Bumbees' driving in a four-in-hand!" and the brake of the Muirtown Arms passed, with a dozen smart and well-set-up lads rejoicing openly, and, wheeling round by the corner of the Cathedral, disappeared up the road which ran to Drumtochty. "And where think ye have their ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... that the tie was a four-in-hand of raw silk, very choice in color but of a fatally loose oriental weave; and once entangled in its meshes the task of extricating its delicate threads from the clutch that gripped them seemed hopeless. It apparently ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... Frozen Nose, the Storm King, whose palace of ice was on the north shore of the Polar Sea. He had ordered Rain, Hail, and Snow, his slaves, to accompany Lord Boreas Bluster on an invasion of the temperate zone, and when they had done his bidding he harnessed up his four-in-hand team of polar bears and went as far south as he dared, just to see how well they had obeyed him. How he roared with laughter when he found nearly all vegetation killed, and the earth wrapped in a white mantle as thick as his ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... wagons and ambulances in the army, and on one occasion drove the general with four-in-hand over four hundred miles of the ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

... town-crier. The young nephews of the Baron are the two harlequins who are exchanging badinage with the group of country girls at the corner. A general pelting of sugarplums salutes the appearance of the Marchese's four-in-hand with the Marchese himself in an ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... an expedition was planned, and Uxmoor proffered his "four-in-hand." It was accepted. All young ladies like to sit behind four spanking trotters; and few object to be driven by a viscount with a ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... maid—fancy me with a maid!—and everything handsome about me, is sufficiently excellent for me, Mr. Logan; and if it were otherwise, do you disapprove of the proceedings of your own Society? But there is Lord Scremerston calling to us, and a four-in-hand waiting at the door. And I am to sit on the box-seat. Oh, this is better than the dingy ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... when somebody is too sick to be seen and the doctor is worried, Abe, he sends down word by the nurse that everything is proceeding satisfactorily, and the visitor goes away trying to remember did he or did he not throw away that fifty-cent black four-in-hand tie he wore to the last funeral he ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... of age; never did a more skillful or fatter coachman cause his seat to groan under a rotundity more imposing, nor to ornament with a powdered wig a face more rubicund, nor to collect more elegantly, in his left hand, the quadruple ribbons of a four-in-hand; as good a judge of horses as Tattersall of London, having been, in his youth, as good a trainer as the celebrated elder Chifney, the viscount had found in Edward a rare thing, an excellent coachman and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly veiled, and if lusciously painted, so much the better? a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the Four-in-Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen Anne Street East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow-Street Office? I could proceed in proving the importance of a title-page, and displaying at the same time my own intimate knowledge of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... drive four horses in their carriages are the Governor and the Archbishop: this regulation is frequently grumbled at by the Spanish Jehus, and one gentleman, the colonel of a regiment, having applied to the government for permission to indulge his taste in this respect by driving a four-in-hand, was refused it, so he had to content himself with turning out with only three in his drag. With that number of quadrupeds, however, he did a good deal to frighten and amuse the world, apparently wishing to break his neck, in which he very nearly succeeded on more than one occasion; Spanish ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... the felts are gray, brown, drab, or black. The colored shirt with white standing or turned-down collar is the usual accompaniment to the lounge suit. The fashion for colored shirts in stripes has been that the patterns run up and down and not across the bosom. The tie is a four-in-hand or an Ascot, or a simple bow, the boots black leather or dark-brown russet, and the gloves of tan or gray undressed kid or of dogskin. For ordinary business wear, suits of black or gray mixed cheviot, vicuna or worsted, or fancy Scotch goods, the coat of ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... "that has been seen to already, as I have expected as much. Admiral Bluewater keeps his ships in most beautiful order, sir! I do not think the Caesar, which leads, is two cable's-length from the Dublin, the sternmost vessel. He is driving four-in-hand, with a tight rein, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... together, as in a chorus—roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. Then all at once we are arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... I was learning—I shall not say to tool a four-in-hand—but just simply to drive four horses. Now it is all right enough to begin with four work-horses pulling a load of several tons. But to begin with four light horses, all running, and a light rig that seems to outrun them—well, when things happen they happen quickly. My weakness ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... has a multiplicity of stories about the princesses and the old King, to which Mrs. Berry never fails to call your attention in her grave, important way. Lady Pash has ridden many a time to the Windsor hounds; she made her husband become a member of the Four-in-hand Club, and has numberless stories about Sir Godfrey Webster, Sir John Lade, and the old heroes of those times. She has lent a rouleau to Dick Sheridan, and remembers Lord Byron when he was a sulky slim young lad. She says Charles Fox was the pleasantest fellow she ever met with, and has ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... fifty-six with close-clipped gray mustache and gray hair; his eyes are quick and shrewd; his face shows some slight traces of high living; he carries himself well and his general air is distinguished and high-bred. He wears a suit of thinly striped white flannel and white shoes, a four-in-hand tie of pale old-rose crape, a Panama hat with broad ribbon striped with white and old-rose of the same shade as his tie. His accent is that of a man of the world, and quite without affectation. He comes at once upon his entrance to ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson

... in 1808, was incorrectly styled the Four-in-Hand Club, and the Barouche Club. According to the Club rules, the barouches were "yellow-bodied, with 'dickies,' the horses bay, with rosettes at their heads, and the harness silver-mounted. The members wore a drab coat reaching to the ankles, with three tiers of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... of intelligent power, and made me feel less the melancholy conjunction of a piece of mechanism and a piece of criticism, which I was fast growing to be in the contemplation of the agencies leading to honour in our land. Edbury whipped his four-in-hand to conduct our voters to the poll. We had to pull hard against Tory interest. It was a sharp, dubious, hot day—a day of outcries against undue influence and against bribery—a day of beer and cheers and the insanest of tricks to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... one-mile mounted police race, gaited saddle race of one mile, steeple chase, hurdle race, polo pony dash, relay race of one mile, cowboy's relay race of same length, cowgirl's relay race, six furlongs, saddle tandem. Exposition jumping contest and five-mile Marathon four-in-hand. On the closing day of the Exposition there will be a grand parade of all first and second winners, not only in the horse display, but in all other displays ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... moment was rather mournful. He was regretting the thirty shillings the week he had for several years drawn regularly in this shop. Inside there he had introduced the Raglan shirt, the Duke of Westminster four-in-hand, and the Churchill batwing collar. He longed to enter and plead for reinstatement, but his new-found pride refused to budge his legs door-ward. Thirty shillings, twelve for his "third floor back," and the rest for clothes ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... a cheerful, disconnected whistling, sometimes high and clear, sometimes under the breath, sometimes interspersed with song, and sometimes ceasing altogether at critical moments, say, during shaving, or while bringing the four-in-hand up tight and snug under the collar. It was one of those comfortable little noises that indicate a masculine presence; one of those pleasant, reassuring, man-in-the-house noises ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... these cricketers to whom age brings golf instead of wisdom, these plutocratic products of "the nail and sarspan business as he got his money by." Do you know whether to laugh or cry at the notion that they, poor devils! will drive a team of continents as they drive a four-in-hand; turn a jostling anarchy of casual trade and speculation into an ordered productivity; and federate our colonies into a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... him to marry, received as answer: 'I would advise no man to marry, Sir, who is not likely to propagate understanding.' See ante, ii. 109, note 2. Mr. Hayward adds that 'he married a woman of the town, became a celebrated member of the Four-in-Hand Club, and contrived to waste the whole of a fine fortune before he died.' In Campbell's Chancellors (ed. 1846, v. 628) a story is told of Sir John Ladd, who is, I suppose, the same man. The Prince of Wales in 1805 asked Lord Thurlow to dinner, and also Ladd. 'When "the old Lion" arrived ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... up; and, therefore, never rises in life. I never knew a man called Willy after the age of thirty, who did not come to a melancholy end! Willy was the natural son of a rich, helter-skelter, cleverish, maddish, stylish, raffish, four-in-hand Baronet, by a celebrated French actress. The title is extinct now, and so, I believe, is that genus of stylish, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... After awhile a towering four-in-hand coach rose out of the hollow where it had been hidden, and came bowling along the level. The rapid hoofs beat the dust, which sprang up and followed behind in a cloud, stretching far in the rear, for in so still an atmosphere ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... chaise, diligence, stage; stage coach, mail coach, hackney coach, glass coach; stage wagon, car, omnibus, fly, cabriolet^, cab, hansom, shofle^, four-wheeler, growler, droshki^, drosky^. dogcart, trap, whitechapel, buggy, four-in-hand, unicorn, random, tandem; shandredhan^, char-a-bancs [Fr.]. motor car, automobile, limousine, car, auto, jalopy, clunker, lemon, flivver, coupe, sedan, two-door sedan, four-door sedan, luxury sedan; wheels [Coll.], sports car, roadster, gran turismo [It], jeep, four-wheel ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... down; the last ten miles through a pretty land, which, at the right season, would have been bright with orchards, oak-woods, and hop-gardens. Lord St. Jerome loved horses, and was an eminent whip. He had driven four-in-hand when a boy, and he went on driving four-in-hand; not because it was the fashion, but because he loved it. Toward the close of Lent, Lady St. Jerome and Clare Arundel had been at a convent in retreat, but they always passed ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... at Piccadilly oh! The coachman takes his stand, And when he meets a pretty girl, He takes her by the hand. Whip away for ever oh! Drive away so clever oh! All the way to Bristol oh! He drives her four-in-hand. ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... just as much as a four-in-hand coach or a yacht. Men go into Parliament because it gives them fashion, position, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... when the four-in-hand on which the new member had been touring the constituency drove up to the Tallyn door. Forbes hurried to the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... crosses the back of a horse of less value than a thousand pounds; and if you want to know really what horses are, you must go down to his villa at Wimbledon, if you are not lucky enough to catch a sight of him proceeding to a levee, or driving his four-in-hand to Ascot or Epsom. All Piccadilly has been seen to stand, lost in silent admiration, as he has driven his splendid britchzka along it, with his perfection of a little tiger by his side; and such cattle as never ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... The entire route was a series of vistas that apparently came to an abrupt end at the base of an insurmountable height. The mountain wall seemed to utterly arrest progress, as it rose across the ascending valley through which the driver urged his "four-in-hand," and no way to pass beyond the next mountain ahead could possibly be discerned. But as the stage drew near, a way, unseen before, revealed itself, and the winding road found its outlet and onward course in another valley opening by a natural pass ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... his four-in-hand standing at her door, as I came down the Museum Street hither, half ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... distance. The riders were cantering up and down the Row, to the admiration of the well-dressed crowds that sauntered under the trees or lingered by the railings. Carriages were passing and repassing. A four-in-hand drove past us, followed by a tandem. Beautiful young faces smiled out of the carriages. A few of them looked weary and careworn. Now and then under the smart bonnet one saw the pinched weazened face of old age,—dowagers in big fur capes looking ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Blanche LeHaye. "That's me, in the center of the bunch, with the pink reins in my hands, drivin' that four-in-hand of johnnies. Hot stuff! Just let Dacre try to get it away from me, that's all. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... was. All anarchists are shoemakers or miners, or something like that. I only said that I always longed to meet one. People who do not value their lives are generally amusing. When I was a girl, I was desperately in love with a cousin of mine who drove a four-in-hand down a flight of steps, and won a bet by jumping on a wild bear's back. He was always doing those things. I loved him ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... about for miles the planters had come into Lexington upon their blooded mounts, their wives, daughters, sweethearts, riding in great carriages. Now and then a vehicle, coming from some far-away plantation, was drawn by a gay four-in-hand, and the drivers of such equipages, negroes always, showed a haughty scorn of their black fellow-men who travelled humbly on the backs of mules, or trudged the long and dusty way on foot. Gorgeous were the costumes of the ladies whom the carriages conveyed; ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... drifting in through open windows, was cooler than it had been during the day, but still held enough of the noontide caloric to make fans a comfort, and Mr. Stuyvesant, dining at a "four-in-hand" table well to the front, and attempting to hold his own in a somewhat desultory talk with his fellow-men, found himself paying far more attention to the lovely face of the girl across the aisle than to ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... at Piccadilly, oh! The coachman takes his stand, And when he meets a pretty girl He takes her by the hand; Whip away forever, oh! Drive away so clever, oh! All the way to Bristol, oh! He drives her four-in-hand. ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous

... (behind). I do hope no Gentleman will take the reins, unless he is thoroughly accustomed to driving four-in-hand. Suppose they took it into their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... to visitors—here comes a gay four-in-hand heavily loaded sweeping by on its road to that summer town. There is much ironstone in the soil round about. At the edge of the park stands an old farmhouse of timber and red tile, with red oast-house beside it, built with those gables which our ancestors seemed to think made such excellent rooms ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... crash she was taking his measure with quick, critical glances. It was not his pale, straw-colored hair she objected to, made to look even paler by the contrast of his florid complexion and red four-in-hand with its turquoise scarf-pin. It was the way he combed his hair that she criticized, and the gaudy tie and the combination of colors. But his cordial greeting softened her critical glances somewhat. He was genuinely glad ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... worried out of all your interest in it! Yes, my lads, although I would not wish to see the return of those stirring days, I'm free to assert that the world lost something good, and that it was not all clear gain when the old four-in-hand Royal Mail coaches drove out of the present into the past, and left the Iron Horse in possession ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... to Washington was in places good, and often turned in among the pines. At Riverdale they saw the deer of Mr. George Calvert, a descendant of one of the Lords Baltimore, browsing in his park, and his great four-in-hand carriage was going in the lodge-gates from a state visit to the Custises. Passing direct to Georgetown from Bladensburg, they encountered General Jackson, taking his evening ride on horseback, and saw the chasm of the new canal being dug along the Potomac, and then, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... us over a fine road and through a shady avenue of sycamores and lebbec-trees, the latter remarkable for its umbrageous character. This is the favorite drive of the citizens at twilight, where every known modern style of carriage may be met, from the Khedive's equipages, four-in-hand, and those of the ladies of his harem, to the single English gig or dog-cart. There are also the light American trotting wagons, elegant European barouches, mingled with equestrians upon spirited Arab horses; ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... postillion's horn, reminds the visitor lingering lovingly over the shores at Cahirciveen that the coach for the coast tour is ready. With a crack of the whip that would do credit to Will Goldfinch, in the coaching days of old, the driver urges on his team, and the blooded four-in-hand cut their way clear of the town. The tour along the Atlantic between Cahirciveen and Kenmare is nearly fifty miles, and passes through the most diversified country. The eleven miles as far as Waterville is first inland, passing ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... formidable for a single pair. But in effect our concession to apparent necessity turned out to be a mere display of superfluous luxury, for the two white leaders did little more than show their feeble paces, leaving the gray wheelers to do the work. We had the elevating sense of traveling four-in-hand, however—a satisfaction to which I do not believe any human ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... sufficiently expressive. "One old mare in a hired trap, when I've driven a four-in-hand over some of the wickedest roads in America! If we are smashed, Aunt Soph, you can lay it to providence, and not to my driving. Don't get to worrying if we are late. If we're killed you'll hear all about it soon enough. You can only die once, and a carriage spill is a good ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... govern the arrangement of the layers. People interested in the same things will naturally come together. The youthful heirs of fortunes who keep splendid yachts have little to talk about with the oarsman who pulls about on the lake or the river. What does young Dives, who drives his four-in-hand and keeps a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus, who feels rich in the possession of a horse-railroad ticket? You know how we live at our house, plainly, but with a certain degree of cultivated propriety. We make no pretensions to what is ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... these diagrams so that they may be used by men or boys; the last one shows a gateway large enough to admit a "four-in-hand" stage-coach or an automobile, but the boys may build it in miniature so that the opening is only large ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... was a vast crowd of on-lookers, chiefly foreigners, in cabs and carriages and four-in-hand coaches from the principal hotels. The Master of the Hunt was ready, with his impatient hounds at his feet, and around him was a brilliant scene. Officers in blue, huntsmen in red, ladies in black, jockeys in jackets, a sea of feathers and flowers and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... The preparatory piano rehearsals are going on; celebrated artists are growing thick on the ground, like the suitors at Penelope's court. Joseph Rubinstein suspends his commercial occupations, and returns from Cracow to drive the four-in-hand accompaniment of Rheingold. The architects, painters, decorators, machinists, costumiers and their people are continuing their work; therefore, in spite of difficulties and obstacles, the great work of Art of this century—Wagner's ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... must load my sledges up, With reindeers four-in-hand, That go to the North, South, East, and West, ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr. Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from the stage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seat of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... Lillian Russell somehow became confused with a new apparition. Something that was and was not Miss Virginia Dabtree, but most certainly wore silver stockings, which it would be his duty and privilege to protect. "Well, anyhow, she'll drive a four-in-hand and wear pearls for breakfast," he concluded, and, whistling, he went down to dream out the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... careful evolution planned, With many a gliding wheel, To warn, to comfort, to command, Or fly, or drive a four-in-hand, Or ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... satire, the Irish often show a sort of cool good sense and dry humour, which gives not only effect, but value to their impromptus. Of this class is the observation made by the Irish hackney coachman, upon seeing a man of the ton driving four-in-hand down Bond-street. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... of Business," "Gospel of Wealth," "Triumphant Democracy," "American Four-in-Hand in Britain," ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... his coach horn, a crack of his long whip over his four-in-hand, proud Lemuel led the way along the city street, out of the town, and into the open ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... is to be feared, has bad associates. The boy makes interest, through Nat Boody, with the stage-driver; and one day the old ladies are horrified at seeing the parson's son mounted on the box of the coach beside the driver, and putting his boyish fingers to the test of four-in-hand. Of course he is a truant that day from school, and toiling back footsore and weary, after tea, he can give but a lame account of himself. He brings, another time, a horrid fighting cur, (as Miss Eliza terms it in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... my bad luck to be in a great many accidents," said the other. "But that one was remarkable. As far as I can recollect, we drove into the Grand Duke's four-in-hand on one side and drove out of it on the other. I never drove through a Grand Duke's equipage on any other occasion. It was lucky that his Serenity did not happen to be in it just at the time. There you have my history in a nutshell. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... four-in-hand in the square, and there is a crowd round it. Yes, I see the lady upon the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Mr. Pisgah on the road to glory, Mr. Simp on the smooth sea, Mr. Freckle in the debtor's jail, Mr. Risque behind his four-in-hand, and Mr. Lees in the charity grave, let us sit with the two remaining colonists in the cabriolet at Bellinzona; for it is the month of April, and they are to cross the great St. Gothard en route for Paris. Here is the scene: a gloomy stone building for the diligence company; two great ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... he sought traces of the hard-hearted husband, but in his departure, presumably sometime earlier, Congdon had made a clean sweep; there was nothing to afford a clue to his character beyond a four-in-hand tie whose colors struck Archie as execrable. Below in the snuggery fitted up for masculine use was a table, containing a humidor half filled with dried-up cigars, and an ill-smelling pipe—Archie hated pipes—and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The other's "four-in-hand" was a narrow blue one pinned ...
— Options • O. Henry

... to be fust vip to the Queen herself; and I'm proud to call him my poople. Why, sir, - if his honour here will pardon me for makin' so free, - this 'ere gent is Four-in-hand Fosbrooke, of which you ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... attiring herself as a boy, and secreting them in the lining of her hat. In the latter character she always rode as a boy would, which was nothing to her, for she could govern any horse that any man could ride, and could drive four-in-hand with the best whip in those parts. Setting forth on one of her patriotic missions, she appropriated to herself the first horse she could lay her hands on; and this offence had brought her where I saw her. She had ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... same time, they hinted that other things were not as they used to be—that the old man had had losses—that Redford was heavily burdened—that the proud Pennycuicks, already humbled, were likely to experience a further fall. Certainly, the governess was dispensed with, and the dashing four-in-hand withdrawn from the local racecourses and agricultural show-grounds, of which it had long been the constant and conspicuous ornament, to be sold at public auction, without reason given. The great, hospitable house got a character for dullness for the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover, reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and bearing an elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in part, "The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate Towns, and those at which the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... handsome, 12-year-old son of the aged headmaster. The boy, O., sat next me at the table, and I never tired of gazing at him. It gave me a special sense of pleasure to look at him when he wore a certain flowing, scarlet, four-in-hand necktie. But O. was not attracted to me—for one thing I was in a disagreeably pimpled condition—and I could not induce him to linger in my room nor to sleep with me. My passion for O. did not diminish, and it rose to its supremacy on the evening when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of American residents of Melbourne and members of the Victorian Cricket Association, met us with four-in-hand drags appropriately trimmed with the American colors, and as we entered them and drove up Collins street we felt that we were the observed of all observers. At the Town Hall we were received by Mayor Benjamin and the members ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... within I replace my uplifted hat and seek an egress through the crowd, past the restive four-in-hand and down the street which leads to Wooded Island, in pursuit of the little brunette, who had vanished in that direction. And now there seemed a breaking up of the crowd, strains of music could be heard in the distance, and rumours of an approaching parade are ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... this was because he liked to indulge him, or because it gave him an opportunity to study a type of man entirely new to him, the result was always the same,—the colonel had his way. Had the Virginian insisted upon waiting on the offending broker in a palanquin or upon the top of a four-in-hand, Fitz would have found the vehicle somehow, and have crawled in or on top beside him with as much complacency as if he had spent his whole life with palanquins and coaches, and had had no other interests. So when the order came for the carriage, Fitz winked at me with his left eye, ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and you will ruin me," Da Souza moaned. "How am I to have a quarter share if Monty is to come in for half, and how are you to repay him all that you would owe on a partnership account? You couldn't do it, Trent. I've heard of your four-in-hand, and your yacht, and your racers, and that beautiful house in Park Lane. I tell you that to part with half your fortune would ruin you, and the Bekwando ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth. There is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist. He is an old Etonian. Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time. Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years since, looked forward to a supper of steak and onions, with bottled stout, on a Saturday night, as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... the Clowns, the Fine Ladies (who should wear a little Rouge even by Daylight), the 'performing' Elephants, the helmeted Cavaliers, and last, the Owner (I suppose) as 'the modern Gentleman' driving four-in-hand. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... without toe caps—rather old-fashioned footgear, Florry thought; but they were polished brightly. A tailor-made, double-breasted blue serge suit, close-hauled and demoded; a soft white silk shirt, with non-detachable collar; a plain black silk four-in-hand tie, and a uniform cap, set a little back and to one side on thick, black, glossy, wavy hair, completed his attire. He had his right hand in his trousers pocket; his left was on the doorknob. He glanced ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... devoutly in medicine, and with his family indulged with freedom in the use of calomel and such agents. Presently he abandoned Ireland for the Continent. He took his horses with him, and astonished Europe with a four-in-hand of his own. Carlsruhe knew him well, as Belgium and the Rhine had known him. He only left the Reider Schloss at Bregenz to conquer Italy; and at Florence, Spezzia, and finally ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... retrograde movement, he gave a gentle pull to the wooden handle of an old-fashioned wire bell-pull in the midst of buggy, four-in-hand, and other whips, hanging in the entrance, a touch that was acknowledged by a single tinkle of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat, white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, of the well-known "immaculate" trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... satin and velvet garments, and, despite his empty stomach, he chants the praises of a bountiful table and rare old wine. That is what I am doing—I, Robert Dalbou, Marquis de Valorsay! At the races at Vincennes, about a fortnight ago, I was bowling along the boulevard behind my four-in-hand, when I heard a laborer say, 'How happy those rich people must be!' Happy, indeed! Why, I envied him his lot. He was sure that the morrow would be like the day that preceded it. On that occasion my entire fortune consisted of a single louis, which ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... on wheels I had seen before: later on I became familiar enough with the carts of the country; they are long-bodied, rough constructions, wonderfully adapted to the uneven roads. In this case there were four horses abreast, which sounds imposing, as any four-in-hand must always do. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse



Words linked to "Four-in-hand" :   carriage, box seat, box, stage, tie, equipage, necktie, coach, rig



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