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Townsman   Listen
noun
Townsman  n.  (pl. townsmen)  
1.
An inhabitant of a town; one of the same town with another.
2.
A selectman, in New England. See Selectman.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Townsman" Quotes from Famous Books



... Kjartan and his friends saw this. Then Kjartan said to his companions that they should also go and disport themselves that day. They did so. There was one man who was by much the best at this sport. [Sidenote: Kjartan and the townsman] Kjartan asked Bolli if he felt willing to try swimming against the townsman. Bolli answered, "I don't think I am a match for him." "I cannot think where your courage can now have got to," said Kjartan, "so I shall go and try." Bolli replied, "That you may do if you like." Kjartan then plunges ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... as one often represents them, but hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in one of Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant loves to surround himself. The scene in which the townsman who thinks that he can dispense with forms among the peasants is very entertainingly taught better, is exceedingly valuable in an educational point of view. The feeling of shame which man has in regard to his mere naturalness is often extended to relations where it has no direct significance, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... down and, catching sight of the two young men, greeted Basilio in a patronizing tone: "Hello, Don Basilio, you're off for the vacation? Is the gentleman a townsman ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... dwelling with them on their masters' premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the plantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and the masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for example, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben has formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your consent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... fix in your mind this institution of truly civil or civic building in Germany, as distinct from the building of baronial castles for the security of robbers: and of a standing army consisting of every ninth man, called a "burgher" ("townsman")—a soldier, appointed to learn that profession that he may guard the walls—the exact reverse of our notion of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... occurred in 219 A.D., when Lu Meng was occupying the town of Chiang-ling. He had given stringent orders to his army not to molest the inhabitants nor take anything from them by force. Nevertheless, a certain officer serving under his banner, who happened to be a fellow-townsman, ventured to appropriate a bamboo hat belonging to one of the people, in order to wear it over his regulation helmet as a protection against the rain. Lu Meng considered that the fact of his being also a native of Ju-nan should not be allowed to palliate ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... description which has been handed down, that the original plan, as above described, was subjected for the time to considerable modifications. The scheme, in brief, was as follows. The salutatory oration was delivered by a member of the graduating class, who is now our aged and honored townsman, Judge Baldwin. This was succeeded by the syllogistic disputations, and these by a Greek oration, next to which came an English colloquy. Then followed a forensic disputation, in which James Kent was one of the speakers. Then President Stiles delivered an oration in Hebrew, Chaldaic, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... seen one day, making towards the port and showing signals of distress. Luis, having just then found an excuse for visiting the Cathedral city, was the first to board her and was hailed with joy by the captain. He was a townsman of the youth's and had given him his first lessons in navigation. He had been bound, it seemed, for the Canary Islands, and had put in for repairs, which needed only a few days in the quiet waters of a sheltered port. He could tell Luis of his parents, of his home, and that the northern ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... was pierced by long closes from which twisting stairways led to the upper landings. I was noting its gloomy aspect under the dim February moon, when a man came towards me and turned into one of the closes. He swung along with a free, careless gait that marked him as no townsman, and ere he plunged into the darkness I had a glimpse of fiery hair. It was the stranger who had accosted me in Parlane's alley, and he was either drunk or in wild ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... to dreams and memories and scholarly pursuits. They know little of the doings and talks that go on in Billy Evans' livery barn, or the hotel. They do, of course, go to the barber shop, the bank and the postoffice, and always when abroad give courteous greeting to every townsman. But they have never sat in the smoky, red-painted blacksmith shop or among the patriarchs and town wits who in summer keep open-air sessions on the wide, inviting platform in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store, and in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... I met my first case of delirium tremens. And it was a townsman who had 'em, not a sailor. The townsman was well-dressed and well-behaved—at first ... but there lurked a wild stare in his eye that was almost a glaze ... and he hung on the bar and drank and drank and drank. It apparently had no effect on him, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... sailors, and gave four reals—I dare say the last he had in his pocket—to the steward, who waited upon him. I could not but feel a pity for him, especially when I saw him by the side of his fellow-passenger and townsman, a fat, coarse, vulgar, pretending fellow of a Yankee trader, who had made money in San Diego, and was eating out the very vitals of the Bandinis, fattening upon their extravagance, grinding them in their poverty; having mortgages on their lands, forestalling ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... the cause of human freedom received the powerful and ever-memorable support of a native of Pernambuco, whose name is dear to me, Joaquim Nabuco—a name inherited from a distinguished ancestry by my good friend, your illustrious townsman, the present ambassador of Brazil to the United States. It is the chief function of an ambassador from one country to another to interpret to the people to whom he goes the people from whom he comes; ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... do of their unbroken succession from the Apostles) of a transmitted blessing from the whole company of sainted Pilgrims, among whom the venerable magistrate had been an honored companion. Viewing their townsman in this aspect, the people revoked the courteous Doctorate with which they had heretofore decorated him, and now knew him most familiarly as Grandsir Dolliver. His white head, his Puritan band, his threadbare garb (the fashion of which he had ceased to change, half a century ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... turnpike, whom Mr. Daniel Harcourt passed with his fast trotting mare and sulky, saw that their great fellow-townsman was more than usually preoccupied and curt in his acknowledgment of their salutations. Nevertheless as he drew near the creek, he partly checked his horse, and when he reached a slight acclivity of the interminable ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... came to me that a wounded man wanted to see me. I went back a few rods and there found my personal friend and townsman, Edgar J. Willey—the man who had lost a part of his ear before we became engaged. He had been hit several times, but the one mortal wound was through his lungs. Every breath he drew was an effort, and the inhaled air ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... in town, Mort," Thatcher interrupted. "I've been in Chicago a week and only got back this evening. I found your esteemed fellow townsman about to hit a one-arm lunch downtown and thought it best to draw him away from the lights ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... friends. Pale Luna, through her misty veil, smiles at these harmless pleasantries, and lends the merry group her aid to smuggle signs, alter names, and play off a thousand fantastic vagaries; while the Eton Townsman, robed in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... City Kaukabn of Al-Yaman there was a man of the Fazl tribe who had left Badawi life, and become a townsman for many years and was a merchant of the most opulent merchants. His wife had deceased when both were young; and his friends were instant with him to marry again, ever quoting to him the words of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... where Townsend had formerly resided, and where he was very highly respected, issued a noble remonstrance to Governor Stuyvesant against this persecution of their former townsman. ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... would be such that everyone could do it without having muscles of steel, or without having even worked the ground before. The initiative and the general distribution of work would come from those who know the soil. As to the work itself, there is no townsman of either sex so enfeebled as to be incapable of looking after machines and of contributing his share to agrarian work after a few ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... the professors, and the excellent individuals who were placed against him; among whom were the late minister Canning, and Sir Walter Scott. The students of Glasgow College considered that the celebrity of the poet, his liberal principles, his being a fellow-townsman, and his attention to their interests, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various

... suspect a fellow-townsman, whose character is as high as mine, of untruth and theft. And to whom else have you communicated the facts connected with a memoir and a request of so ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I had not seen for several years. There was a change of passengers at every stage; but I saw little in any of them to interest me, till within about a score of miles of my destination, when I met with an old respectable townsman, a friend of my father's. There was but another passenger in the coach, a north country gentleman from the West Indies. I had many questions to ask my townsman, and many to answer—and the time passed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... Shakespeare's tomb in Stratford-on-Avon Church, which acclaimed Shakespeare a writer of supreme genius, gave the inhabitants of the little town no opportunity of ignoring at any period the fact that the greatest poet of his era had been their fellow-townsman. Stratford was indeed openly identified with Shakespeare's career from the earliest possible day, and Sir William Dugdale, the first topographer of Warwickshire, writing about 1650, noted that the place was memorable for having given "birth and sepulture ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... countrymen, and I'm no believer in the English countryside under the Bladesover system as a breeding ground for honourable men. One hears a frightful lot of nonsense about the Rural Exodus and the degeneration wrought by town life upon our population. To my mind, the English townsman, even in the slums, is infinitely better spiritually, more courageous, more imaginative and cleaner, than his agricultural cousin. I've seen them both when they didn't think they were being observed, and I know. There was something about my Wimblehurst companions that disgusted ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... perceive for quite one of the most hopeless of the many difficulties which Modernism finds, and will find, insuperable either by steam or dynamite, that of either wedging or welding into its own cast-iron head, any conception of a king, monk, or townsman of the twelfth and two succeeding centuries. And yet no syllable of the utterance, no fragment of the arts of the middle ages, far less any motive of their deeds, can be read even in the letter—how much less judged in spirit—unless, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... hand. I reached that town next morning nearly two years, as I have said, after the beginning of my journey to the New World. Not stopping to breakfast even, I started out to find the house, which my busy imagination had already pictured for itself. The first townsman I saw directed me ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... army. Learning that Sheridan's division was encamped not far from us at Blain's Cross-roads, I rode over to find Colonel Emerson Opdycke of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Ohio, who was in that division. He was a townsman of mine, and our families were intimate, and other neighbors and friends were with him. I could give them later news from home than any of them had, for until the end of the year the newspapers I brought from Cincinnati were the latest in camp. I found Opdycke's camp like our own. He was in the woods, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... choice of topics and the mode of viewing them was distinctly intellectual. Phrases often occurred such as have no equivalent on the lips of everyday people in our own country. For instance, a young fellow in no way distinguished from his companions, fell to talking about a leading townsman, and praised him for his ingenio simpatico, his bella intelligenza, with exclamations of approval from those who listened. No, it is not merely the difference between homely Anglo-Saxon and a language ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... sentence is a significant one. Here is the central expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,—resolute maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism throws down, to ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. This may relieve Tom Widlake of the duty of shooting the colonel in revenge for his father. It is commonly believed that Colonel Randolph's horses were maddened by the smell of the blood which ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... of time, became a reproach to the neighborhood and a scandal to the town. They were, however, kept up with few interruptions, for several months. More than one townsman declared that so intolerable a nuisance must be abated, but no one liked to be the first to stir in such an unpleasant business, and the bacchanalians continued to "vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night," unchecked by more cleanly-living citizens. But just about the time when ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... is held in the utmost awe by the villagers. The paper speaks of him as "our esteemed and talented townsman, Col. W.," and alludes to his "beautiful and accomplished wife," who, by the way, was formerly waiter in an oyster saloon, and won the Colonel's affection by the artless manner in which she would shout: "Two ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... charmed. 'Ah! you clever townsman,' said he, 'see how at first trial you equal poor me, who have been at it for months! It had better be you, after all, to do the play when it is called for at the court.' And this Killian proposed truly out of pure modesty, but also because he did not like the ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... issued by the executive. This fact was interpreted as implying something more than a mere coincidence. It was thought that Sumner's friend, who had been supported by him as a candidate for high office, who shared many of his political ideas and feelings, who was his intimate associate, his fellow-townsman, his companion in scholarship and cultivation, his sympathetic co-laborer in many ways, had been accounted and dealt with as the ally of an enemy, and that the shaft which struck to the heart ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... being drawn from the same veracious sources; and at the end of the article was a somewhat guarded but altogether sympathetic reference to the distressful recollections borne for so long and so patiently by an esteemed townsman, with a concluding paragraph to the effect that though the gentleman in question had declined to make a public statement touching on the remarkable disclosures now added thus strangely as a final chapter to the annals of an event long since ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... hunger. The defeated besiegers panted, stumbled, ran on again, or lay still in trembling. The victorious besieged were gorging from fingers crammed full. It was the hour for trophies. A prosperous townsman bore a stack of tortillas, and gloated leeringly as he hurried to put his treasure safely away. A dashing Hungarian with fur pelisse shouted gallant oaths at a yoke of oxen and prodded them with his curved sword, as though ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... for an indefinite period! One might have imagined that the whole of rural England was depopulated; that Eden itself had been cut up into building lots; that, in fact, the land-agent was subsidised by a paternal government to persuade the townsman to turn landed proprietor on terms which even the squatter in new ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... sorry to add, with unusual effect, for in the duet, which lasted several hours, a missile killed Sergeant-Major Moss and wounded six men. The death of Mr. Moss caused very general regret; like many who had gone before him, he was a well-known townsman; like others, too, he left a wife to mourn him. The body of a white lad who had disappeared some weeks before was discovered on Saturday; and these two additions brought up our total of deaths to forty-four. It may be well to explain that the list included three or four natives. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... ceremonies were held. Almost every building in town bore over its entrance-door a large black and white rosette with other sombre draperies. The public buildings were heavily draped, and even the homes of the very poor bore outward marks of grief at the loss of their friend and fellow-townsman. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... brought them the richest of gifts and the rarest of presents and the Prince's mother rejoiced with joy exceeding. They butchered beasts and spread mighty bride-feasts for the people and kindled fires,[FN431] that it might be visible afar to townsman and tribesman that this was the house of hospitality and the stead of the wedding-festival, to the intent that, if any passed them by, it should be of his own sin against himself. So the folk came to them ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... translator of Homer; the Counts Stolberg, Hoelty, and others. With Goethe, too, Boie had been on terms of intimacy, and when, in after life, he settled down at Meldorf, many of his old friends, his brother-in-law Voss, Count Stolberg, Claudius, and others, came to see him and his illustrious townsman, Niebuhr. Many a seed was sown there, many small germs began to ripen in that remote town of Meldorf, which are yielding fruit at the present day, not in Germany only, but here in England. The sons of Boie, fired by the descriptions of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... but dared not follow. He read "thou shalt not" as plain as print on her back as she walked quietly away; that same little peremptory back that once in her father's caleche used to hold itself stiff when 'Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman that lifted his slouch hat in deep deference to her silent bow, did not read unusual care on her fair brow; yet she, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... August, when the pale face of the townsman and the stranger is to be seen among the brown skins of remotest uplanders, not only in England, but throughout the temperate zone, few of the homeward-bound labourers paused to notice him further than by a momentary turn of the head. They had beheld such ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... "Women have a sort of feeling about things that men haven't—leastways, no men that I've ever met had it. But of course, I'd more than that. Mr. Kitely, now, he was a townsman—a London man. I'm a countrywoman. He didn't understand—you couldn't get him to understand—that it's not safe to go walking in lonely places in country districts like this late at night. When I'd got to know his habits, I ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... their belts were much in evidence. There were already several organized military companies in the county. The Rockbridge Rifles, and a company of cavalry left Lexington April 17, under orders from Governor John Letcher, our townsman, who had just been inaugurated Governor of Virginia, to report at Harper's Ferry. The cavalry company endeavored to make the journey without a halt, and did march the first sixty-four miles in ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... George Borrow had been a travelling missionary of the Bible Society in Spain, though in early life he had prided himself on being an athlete, and had even taken lessons in pugilism from Thurtell, who was a fellow-townsman. He was a native of Dereham, Norfolk, but had wandered much in his youth, first following his father, who was a Captain of Militia. He went from south to north, from Kent to Edinburgh, where he was entered as pupil in the High School, and ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... all to look for a man. It was strange but true that a prophet never received honour in his own land. They had been wasting the precious time running about all over the country, begging and praying for a candidate, and overlooking the fact that they had in their midst a gentleman—a fellow townsman, who, he believed, would have a better chance of success than any stranger. Surely they would all agree—if they could only prevail upon him to stand—that Adam Sweater would be an ideal ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... charges, and it was on record that a person who ventured to bake a cake in his own oven was summoned, but discharged on his begging pardon and paying expenses. This unsatisfactory state of things continued until the year 1758, when a rebellion arose headed by a local patriot named Bickley. This townsman roused his fellow-citizens to resist, and built a malthouse of his own, his example being soon followed by others, who defied the owner of the privileged mill, and entered into a solemn bond to defend any action that might be brought against them. The contest was one of the most interesting ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Seaverns, grandfather of our townsman, resided here with his family for many years. The original Seaverns homestead, owned by Mr. Joel Seaverns, the ancestor of the family, was upon a farm of some fifty-five acres, now included in Forest Hills cemetery. In this old house, during the later years of Mrs. Abijah Seaverns' life, a ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb

... refrained them for courtesy's sake. For her part, Birdalone longed sore to ask them somewhat of the Castle of the Quest, but the words clave to her throat for very fear; and she sat restless and ill at ease. However at last said a townsman to a chapman: Art thou for the Red Hold, Master Peter, when thou art done here? Birdalone turned very pale at that word; and Master Peter spake: Yea, surely, neighbour, if the folk leave aught in my packs for others to buy. He spake in a jovial ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... return to London, Haydon was gratified by the news that his friend and fellow-townsman, George Eastlake, had proposed and carried a motion that he should be presented with the freedom of his native city, as a testimony of respect for his extraordinary merit as a historical painter. Furthermore, the Directors of the British Gallery sent him a hundred guineas as a token of their ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... beach just above high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a "landing" was coming off. It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman, but also to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just beyond the billows, lay the vessel, well moored with anchors at stem and stern. Between the ship and the shore boats, laden to the gunwale, passed to and fro. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... it all end? the reader will ask. Why, like this: Naum, after having kept the inn successfully for about fifteen years, sold it advantageously to another townsman. He would never have parted from the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog, sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl. He went out into the road the second time, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... surrounded! Yet there were only two of them—a big, slouching villain and a short thin one, who wore a giant hat. The chirping sound of a kiss damped the fierce martial ardour of William, and greatly reassured Billy. It was only a townsman taking a night ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... whom, according to Miss Seward, he had been in love before he married her mother. He was at least tenderly attached to her through life. And, for the most part, the good people of Lichfield seem to have been proud of their fellow-townsman, and gave him a substantial proof of their sympathy by continuing to him, on favourable terms, the lease of a house originally granted to his father. There was, indeed, one remarkable exception in Miss Seward, who belonged to a genus specially contemptible to the old doctor. She was one of the fine ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... an old personal friend as an honest and industrious man, was made the most of. It was published by Colonel Corkhill in large type with flaming headlines, as evidence of a secret understanding between Mr. Cushing and the leader of the Rebellion. Senator Sargent, who was hostile to Mr. Cushing, his townsman, read this letter in a Republican caucus, and it fell upon the Senators assembled like a heavy clap of thunder, while Senator Brownlow (more extensively known as Parson Brownlow) keenly said that he thought the caucus had better adjourn, convene the Senate in open session, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... that, in fact, he did not do justice to the art he professed; and yet he was never wanting to his duty, either in the private causes of his friends and dependents, or in his senatorial capacity.—My townsman too, P. Pontidius, pleaded a number of private causes. He had a rapidity of expression, and a tolerable quickness of comprehension: but he was very warm, and indeed rather too choleric and irascible; so that he often wrangled not only with his antagonist, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... had some work to survive. Elgin, with its finer palate for sensation, saw in it heightened chances, both for Lorne and for the case; and if any ratepayer within its limits had remained indifferent to the suit, the fact that one side of it had been confided to so young and so "smart" a fellow townsman would have been bound to draw him into the circle of speculation. Youth in a young country is a symbol wearing all its value. It stands not only for what it is. The trick of augury invests it, at a glance, with the sum of its possibilities, the augurs all sincere, confident, and exulting. They ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... joke went on till Jimmy Phoebus, Judge Custis, and some others prompted Jack Wonnell, with the promise of a gallon of whiskey, to ask Meshach to trade the steeple-top for the bell-crown. The intense look of outrage and hate, with the accompanying menace his townsman returned, really frightened Jack, and he had prudently avoided Milburn ever since, while keeping as close a watch upon his movements and whereabouts as upon some incited ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... sometimes the custom of the officials of the port of St Malo to mark down in the records of the day the death of any townsman of especial note. Such an entry as this is the last record of the great pilot. In the margins of certain documents of September 1, 1557, there is written in the quaint, almost unreadable penmanship of the time: 'This said Wednesday about five in the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... of the audience were mingled, but among them amazement led all the rest. The great Jimmy Grayson, the Presidential nominee, the unconquerable, the man of world-wide fame, the victor of every campaign, was being beaten by a young townsman of their own, not known twenty miles from home. Incredible as it seemed, it was true; the fact was patent to the dullest in the hall. Harley saw a look of astonishment and then dismay overspread the faces of Mrs. Grayson ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... Mississippi has already been shown. Suffice it to say that the control of the mouth of the great Father of Waters was of direct personal consequence to almost every tree feller, every backwoods farmer, every land owner, every townsman, who dwelt beyond the Alleghanies. These men did not worry much over the fact that the country on the farther bank of the Mississippi was still under the Spanish Flag. For the moment they did not need it, and when they did, they knew they could take it without the smallest difficulty. But the ownership ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... description will induce our townsman, Mr. Roach, to successfully produce an instrument that will meet the wants of our artists in that part of ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling

... Colquitt Street, near a fashionable promenade of Liverpool, will be found the rich, valuable, and interesting museum which we are about briefly to describe. It is the property of Mr Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., a townsman of Liverpool, esteemed as much for his private worth as for his refined classical taste. This gentleman has been long known as a collector; and by the purchase of an entire gallery of antiquities, formed by one who travelled long in Egypt and Nubia, and visited the remains of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... mother, living in the same town, and how Jesus "came and took her by the hand and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her"? Jesus started for the house, followed by a throng, some doubtless full of tender sympathy for their townsman, and some curious to see what ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... know him; he is my townsman, my near neighbour; he comes from the place where I was born. How far do you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Germain-en-Laye,[1056] on the twenty-seventh of August, that the "tiers etat" expressed with greatest distinctness its sentiments respecting the present condition of the realm. Jacques Bretagne, vierg[1057] of the city of Autun, a townsman of the clerical orator of the first of January, whose arrogance had inspired such universal disgust, was their spokesman. After reflecting with considerable severity upon the deficiency of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... Mrs. Mesurier seemed to see her faith in her boy beginning to be justified; and when James Mesurier opened his local paper one morning, and found a long and appreciative article on a certain "fellow-townsman," he cut it out to paste in his diary. Perhaps the lad would ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... punch hand, I hope. No; all's right. A neat fellow you have for a servant, that Mickey Free. I was asking him about a townsman of his own—one Tim Delany,—the very cut of himself, the best servant I ever had. I never could make out what became of him. Old Hobson of the 95th, gave him to me, saying, 'There he is for you, Maurice, and a bigger thief ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... would have frightened the old fellow out of his wits; and it is always time enough to let him know who we are if he won't speak without. But I know these animals of friars, Signor Giovacchino, I know them well; and there isn't a man or woman, townsman or countryman, noble or peasant that I wouldn't rather have to deal with than a monk or a friar. Let 'em so much as smell the scent of layman in any position of authority, and it makes 'em as obstinate and contradictious and contrary as mules, and worse. If this old fellow here has got anything ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... the selection of the rocks. Usually the rock close at hand, perhaps on the very grounds, will answer every purpose. If you are not fortunate enough to own any, very likely there is more than one townsman who will be glad to give you all the boulders and smaller rocks that you want, if you will only remove them from spots where they are not desired. The cost of removal, even in the case of boulders of fair ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams

... A worthy Quaker, a fellow-townsman, was so impressed by his tone of quietistic mysticism that he felt sure the philosophic doctor was guided by "the inward light," and wrote, sending a godly book, and proposing to clinch his conversion in a personal interview. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... the splendor of the wedding—there could still be seen posted in the houses of the workmen the newspaper cuts showing the bride and groom leaving the church—silenced all opposition to "our fellow townsman's" financial responsibility, even when that opposition was led by so prominent a ward heeler as Mr. Patrick McGowan, who had planned to get the position himself—and who became Garry's arch ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was our "prominent citizen," and when he was elected president of the district bankers' association, and his name appeared in the papers as a possible candidate for United States Senator or Minister to Mexico or Secretary of the Interior, we were glad that "Honest John Markley" was our fellow-townsman. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... removing from the Bagni to Pisa, for the Serchio has broken its banks, and all the country about is under water. An old friend and fellow-townsman of mine, Captain Medwin, is on a visit to us at present, and we anxiously expect Keats, to whom I would write if I knew ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... assembled crowds, his appearance being invariably greeted with a round of cheers. When we reached the station at North Platte, we found that the entire population had turned out to receive their fellow-townsman. The "Cody Guards," a band to which Will presented beautiful uniforms of white broadcloth trimmed with gold braid, struck up the strains of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes." The mayor attempted to do the welcoming honors of the city, but it was ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... birth to ... the "Pale of Settlement." At that time the Jews were confined within the limits of the "Pale" neither more nor less than the Ukrainian population of that section, or the people of the old Russian provinces were. It will be remembered that in those times the law forbade a townsman to take up his residence in another town or in a village. It was not a special limitation intended for the Jews, it affected all the Russian subjects throughout the Empire. How then did it result in a ...
— The Shield • Various

... Painting by F. Gueldry to illustrate an official report. GERMAN ATROCITIES At Senlis, Department of Oise, on September 2,1914, French captives were made to walk in the open so as to be hit by French bullets. Many were killed and wounded. The townsman on the left was struck in the knee. A German officer asked to see the wound and shot him through the shoulder. On the right a German officer is seen torturing a wounded French soldier by beating him in the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... notable: that of the Commissioners or Representans. Merlin of Thionville, in hussar uniform, distinguishing himself by wild beard and look, had another person in similar costume on his left; the crowd shouted out, with rage, at sight of this latter, the name of a Jacobin Townsman and Clubbist; and shook itself to seize him. Merlin drew bridle; referred to his dignity as French Representative, to the vengeance that should follow any injury done; he would advise every one to compose himself, for this was not the last time they would see him here. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... tapestries took on the rules of composition of these talented and original men. Easily distinguishable is the strong influence of the religious feeling, the fidelity to standards of the church. When a rich townsman wished to express his praise or gratitude to God, he ordered for the church an altar-piece or dainty gilded Gothic carving to frame the painted panels of careful execution. When Jean de Rome executed a cartoon, he treated it in much the same way; built up ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... was one Love-no-Good; he was a townsman, but a Diabolonian; he also received his mortal wound in Mansoul, but he ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... whole thus derived from all, should as a whole belong to each, and all to all. We thought there might be some often persons in this society; some of whom were very rich, especially Romanianus our townsman, from childhood a very familiar friend of mine, whom the grievous perplexities of his affairs had brought up to court; who was the most earnest for this project; and therein was his voice of great weight, because his ample ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... declaration shall be drawn up without delay. Heaven bless you, dear Sir, for thus taking the part of a poor fellow-townsman! [Exit. ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland

... not counting one's self is found in a number of Eastern stories (see Clouston 1, 28-33; Grimm, 2 : 441). For a Kashmir droll recording a similar situation, where a townsman finds ten peasants weeping because they cannot account for the loss of one of their companions, see ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... his side always. By day he walked near him as he piloted the column through the trackless forest. At night he slept in the same tent, stretched across the doorway. Despite the enormous fatigue, he slept the light sleep of the townsman, and often he was awakened by Durnovo talking aloud, groaning, tossing on ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... forbid a central garden plot or peristyle, such as one sees in Pompeii, within the house walls, and it is almost as difficult to deny a little private territory beyond the house. Yet if we concede that, it is clear that without some further provision we concede the possibility that the poorer townsman (if there are to be rich and poor in the world) will be forced to walk through endless miles of high fenced villa gardens before he may expand in his little scrap of reserved open country. Such is already the poor Londoner's ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... tell me, good sir, to whom the umpires of the field have given their judgment?" said a townsman to his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... connexion with European culture in its historical development. The Classics are not taught; the Bible is not taught; history is not taught to any effect. What is even more serious, there are no social traditions. The modern townsman is déraciné: he has forgotten the habits and sentiments of the village from which his forefathers came. An unnatural and unhealthy mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of nature, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... the assembly was disturbed by loud cries and imprecations from without. Gilbert quick as thought passed through the doorway and stood in the street. The bourgeois of Mayence were zealous partisans of Henry, and had already scowled upon the honors paid to his rival. The maltreatment of their townsman had kindled the spark of discontent to flame. They had attacked the soldiers of Rodolph, who, as was customary, attended the joust unarmed, and had rescued the thief. As Gilbert stood watching the tumult, he was singled out as the object of attack, probably at the direction of the citizen who ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... of my present hearers may remember, I had the privilege of addressing a large assemblage of the inhabitants of this city, who had gathered together to do honor to the memory of their famous townsman, Joseph Priestley; and, if any satisfaction attaches to posthumous glory, we may hope that the manes of the burnt-out philosopher were ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the Americans derive the cant phrase of "doing the sober Indian," which they apply to any one of a company who will not drink fairly. One of the Indians had a pony which he wished to sell, having occasion for some articles, and his skins not bringing him as much as he had anticipated. A townsman demanded the price. The Indian put up both his hands, intimating that he would take ten dollars. The pony was worth double the sum; but the spirit of barter would not permit the white man to purchase without reducing the price: he offered the Indian five dollars. The Indian was ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... joys of summer less, for you may read Greek and Latin in the shadow of the courtyard where the fountains splash, while your girls are learning songs and your boys are busy with the contadini, in the vineyards or beside the stream. It is a spirit of pure delight, we find there in that old townsman, in country life, simple and quiet, after the noise and sharpness of the market-place. And certainly, as we pass from Fiesole down the new road where the tram runs, turning into the lanes again just by Villa Galetta, on our way to Maiano, we may fancy we see many places where such a life as ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... certainly been injured, but that was the result of an accident; they had Dr. Goldberg's word for it. It was then that the younger wiseacres smiled. Baron Petrescu was an easy lover, and had been punished for some indiscretion. Some townsman, perhaps, with the luck on his side, had got the better of the master of fence. No wonder the Baron wished to keep the matter quiet. Lord Cloverton knew the true story. Captain Ward had sent to him directly Dr. Goldberg had got him home, and the Ambassador ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... of them being connected with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the State and National Legislatures, was the motive which led to the foundation of this excellent Charity. Our late distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is welt known, bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to this establishment,—"being thereto moved," as his will expressed it, "by the desire of N. Dowing some publick Institution for the benefit of Mankind." ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... more grime, no more mud, no more cow milking, no more horse currying! For five months we were to live the lives of scholars, of boarders.—Yes, through some mysterious channel our parents had been brought to the point of engaging lodgings for us in the home of a townsman named Leete. For two dollars a week it was arranged that we could eat and sleep from Monday night to Friday noon, but we were not expected to remain for supper on Friday; and Sunday supper, was of course, extra. I thought this a great deal of money then, but I cannot understand ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... keep about me any freed serfs, who have been house servants, or, at least, not to intrust them with duties of any responsibility.' (Arkady glanced towards Piotr.) 'Il est libre, en effet,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch in an undertone; 'but, you see, he's only a valet. Now I have a bailiff, a townsman; he seems a practical fellow. I pay him two hundred and fifty roubles a year. But,' added Nikolai Petrovitch, rubbing his forehead and eyebrows with his hand, which was always an indication with him of inward embarrassment, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... of the Moot Hall in Colchester was filling rapidly. Every townsman, and every townswoman, wanted to hear the examination, and to know the fate of the prisoners—of whom there were so many that not many houses were left in Colchester where the owners had not some family connection or friend among them. Into the hall, robed in judicial ermine, filed ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... it, you townsman, too! That fruit of love's seed may be present, Our thanks must fall ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... find room for a family, as most boarding houses would accept only single men, and refused to admit women and children. Many a man, who with his family occupied only one or two rooms, made place for a friend or former townsman and his family. In many instances this was done from unselfish motives and in a ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... files of the old "Picayune" and "Price-Current" of 1837 may be seen the mention of Galahad Shaughnessy among the merchants—"our enterprising and accomplished fellow-townsman," and all that. But old M. D'Hemecourt's name is cut in marble, and his citizenship is in "a city whose maker and builder ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... gaseous, and some of them at least are in a state of rotation. Laplace could not have known this for certain, but he suspected it. The first distinctly spiral nebula was discovered by the telescope of Lord Rosse; and quite recently a splendid photograph of the great Andromeda nebula, by our townsman, Mr. Isaac Roberts, reveals what was quite unsuspected—and makes it clear that this prodigious mass also is in a state of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... to the bar in Cambridge. Chicopee, the town wherein his active career in life had begun, he made his permanent home, and with the various interests of that town he identified himself closely and pleasantly, exemplifying in many ways the character of a true townsman, and associating himself with every movement for the good of his fellow citizens. In 1873 he was elected to represent the town the ensuing year in the State Legislature, and as a member of the House he was noted for the promptness and fidelity with which he attended ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... October 12, 1825, in Zuerich, and is thus a fellow-townsman of Keller. Like Keller Meyer is a master of the Novelle, but in all other respects there is a most striking difference. Keller was a sturdy commoner and always retained a certain affinity with the soil; there ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... Carolina in 1671. James Moore, a native of Ireland and a descendant of the famous Irish chieftain, Rory O'More, was governor of South Carolina in 1700; Matthew Rowan from Carrickfergus was president of the North Carolina Council during the term of office of his townsman, Governor Arthur Dobbs (1754 to 1764); John Connor was attorney-general of the Province in 1730, and was succeeded in turn by David O'Sheall and Thomas McGuire. Cornelius Hartnett, Hugh Waddell, and Terence Sweeny, all Irishmen, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... astonishment of the people of Corinth when a trireme came into their harbor with tidings of the remarkable success of their townsman, and bearing as striking evidence the person of the late tyrant of Sicily. Only fifty days had passed since he left their city with his thousand men, and already he had this extraordinary prize to show. At once they voted him a reinforcement ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Calcutta, was at pains to thank 'Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for extended executive and administrative duties in foreign parts beyond our ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent fellow-townsman, Mr. Grish Chunder De, Esq., M. A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali, notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and peshbundi may be set on foot to insidiously nip his fame and blast his prospects ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... know not well. Indeed, I am a townsman of the world. For once my mother told me that she saw The Angel of the Cross Roads lead me out, And point to every corner of the sky, And say, "Thy feet shall follow in the trail Of every tribe; and thou shalt pitch thy tent Wherever thou shalt see ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... citizen officer resumed his conversation where the private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war, of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and modest-salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send about one dispatch a week in ordinary times, and two when there was a rush of business; consequently, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain



Words linked to "Townsman" :   match, townee, towner, equal, occupant



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