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Mercer   /mˈərsər/   Listen
Mercer

noun
1.
A dealer in textiles (especially silks).
2.
British maker of printed calico cloth who invented mercerizing (1791-1866).  Synonym: John Mercer.



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"Mercer" Quotes from Famous Books



... the house was probably built by Surveyor-General Ridout;—but it does not appear that either he or any member of his family ever resided there. The earliest occupant of whom I have been able to find any trace was Thomas Mercer Jones—the gentleman, I presume, who was afterwards connected with the Canada Land Company. Whether he was the first tenant I am unable to say, but a gentleman bearing that name dwelt there during the latter part of the year 1816, and appears to have been a well-known citizen of Little ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... 84 years of age, was born in Wayne County, up Spring Valley in 1854. He was the son of Betty Oats and Will Garddard of North Carolina. He has three sisters: Lucy Wilson, Frances Phillips that live in Ohio, and Alice Branton of Mercer County, Kentucky. He has two brothers; Jim Coffey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... three combs gules, two and one, crossed by three bunches grapes purpure, leaved vert, one and two; on the second, four feathers or, placed fretwise, with Servir for motto, and a squire's helmet. It is not much; it seems they were ennobled under Louis XIV.; some mercer was doubtless their grandfather, and the maternal line must have made its money in wines; the du Ronceret whom the king ennobled was probably an usher. But if you get rid of Arthur and marry du Ronceret, I promise you he shall ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... paid her that morning in Feltram by that 'good crayature' Mrs. Litheways, the silk-mercer, and what ''ansom faylow' was her new foreman—(she intended plainly that I should 'queez' her)—and how 'he follow' her with his eyes wherever she went. I thought, perhaps, he fancied she might pocket some of his lace or gloves. And all the time her great wicked eyes were rolling and glancing ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... van— Of all that are in London free, The mercer is the foremost man That founded a society; Of all the trades that London grace, We are the first in time ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... told you but this instant," replied Jenkin, "that it was this same Glenvarloch that rooked me, at the ordinary, of every penny I had, and made a knave of me to boot, by gaining more than was my own?—O that cursed gold, which Shortyard, the mercer, paid me that morning on accompt, for mending the clock of Saint Stephen's! If I had not, by ill chance, had that about me, I could but have beggared my purse, without blemishing my honesty; and, after I had been rooked of all the rest amongst them, I must needs risk the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... taken up by exchange of John Raynold, mercer, L60 sterling, payable the 25th day of the month and of Deago Decastron [Diego da Castro, a Spaniard] other L60 sterling, payable the 26th day of the same month, the which shall be both content at the day; and as for master Lewis More, Lombard, [he] ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the first rank of your Atholl men than as a general, where I was constantly at a loss to know what was doing. I am of opinion you should reduce your men to two battalions; one for Lord Nairn, the other Mr. Mercer. When you are quartered anywhere, if you have a hole to spare, I shall be as often with you as I can; at other times, I shall lye with the men in a barn, which I doubt not will hearten them much. In every thing, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... amusing fellow," said Mr. Prettyman, the highly respectable grocer. (Mrs. Prettyman was a Miss Fothergill, and her sister had married a London mercer.) "He's an amusing fellow; and I've no objection to his making one at the Oyster Club; but he's a bit too fond of riding the high horse. He's uncommonly knowing, I'll allow; but how came he to go to the Indies? I should like that ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... humble quarters at Cornhill they remained preaching, visiting, nursing, begging their bread, but always gay and busy, till the summer of 1225, when a certain John Iwyn—again a name suspiciously like the phonetic representative of the common Norfolk name of Ewing—a mercer and citizen, offered them a more spacious and comfortable dwelling in the parish of St. Nicholas. As their brethren at Canterbury had done, so did they; they refused all houses and lands, and the house was made over to the corporation ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... the fragrant meadow-sweet and the brilliant rose-coloured willow herb. Furthermore we were informed, by Mr. Franklin of Maidstone, that the "Red Lion," which formerly stood on the spot now occupied by Mercer's Stables, is locally considered to be the original of "a little roadside public-house, with two elm-trees, a horse-trough, and a sign-post in front;" where the Pickwickians sought assistance after the breakdown ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... very dear friend. Mademoiselle Clairfait is the daughter of a silk-mercer, once established at Chalons-sur-Marne. Her father happened to give an asylum in his office to a lonely old man, to whom 'Sister Rose' and her brother had been greatly indebted in the revolutionary time; and out of a train of circumstances connected with that, the first acquaintance ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... in a deluge, and scarcely had it struck when the door opened and Cardigan hurried in to close the window. He remained for half an hour, and after that young Mercer, one of his two assistants, came in at intervals. Late in the afternoon it began to clear up, and Father Layonne returned with papers properly made out for Kent's signature. He was with Kent until sundown, when Mercer came ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... any) shall be as the staggerings of the drunken; while, if he is a good dancer, he is nearly always petrified from the ears upward. No better examples of this law could have been found than Henry Mills and his fellow-cashier, Sidney Mercer. In New York banks paying-cashiers, like bears, tigers, lions, and other fauna, are always shut up in a cage in pairs, and are consequently dependent on each other for entertainment and social intercourse when business is slack. Henry Mills and Sidney simply ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... appears from Brayley's Londiniana, iv. 5. on the authority of Strype's Stow. b. i. p. 287., that Sir Baptist Hicks, afterwards Viscount Campden, was the son of Robert Hicks, a silk mercer, who kept a shop in Cheapside, at Soper's Lane End, at the White Bear. See also Cunningham's Handbook ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... which was harmless enough at the outset, but became inconvenient as time went on. Wenceslaus was all out for popularity among his people, especially among his Pragers. He would go about the city looking into minor matters of his people's welfare, so he would measure the mercer's cloth-yard and if it were not up to standard would crack the saucy knave's head therewith. He went among his people performing acts of charity; in fact, he generally disported himself right royally, if with an occasional lapse from discretion. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... a mercer at Vernon. For close upon five-and-twenty years, she had kept a small shop in that town. A few years after the death of her husband, becoming subject to fits of faintness, she sold her business. Her savings added to the price of this sale placed a capital of ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... was very beautiful, for Andrea painted various patterns and other ingenious devices round it, so that it was considered to be the most beautiful work that he had executed up to that time. After this he made for Giovanni di Paolo, the mercer, another picture of Our Lady, which, being truly lovely, gave infinite pleasure to all who saw it. And for Andrea Santini he executed another, containing Our Lady, Christ, S. John, and S. Joseph, all wrought with such diligence that the painting has always been esteemed in Florence ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... was not exactly new to me. Moved by the spirit of adventure, or by an access of ennui which overtakes me at times, I had several times visited the gaudy establishment of Mercer, on the fashionable side of Fifth Avenue in the Fifties. In either case I had found disappointment; where the stake is a matter of indifference there can be no excitement; and besides, I ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... huckster's booth, in every alley of every city, were now quite unable to report all the curses which were hourly heard uttered against the tyranny of the Viceroy. Evidently, his power was declining. The councillors resisted him, the common people almost defied him. A mercer to whom he was indebted for thirty thousand florins' worth of goods, refused to open his shop, lest the tax should be collected on his merchandize. The Duke confiscated his debt, as the mercer had foreseen, but this being a pecuniary sacrifice, seemed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... leisure to look upon money affairs; or if they are so saucy, so impertinent as to press a man of your quality for their own, there are canes, there's Bridewel, there's the stocks for your ordinary tradesmen; but to an haughty, thriving Covent Garden mercer, silk or laceman, your lordship gives your most humble service to him, hopes his wife is well; you have letters to write, or you would see him yourself, but you desire he would be with you punctually on such a day, that is to say, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... gauche in Prussia. It seems that she speedily made known her sentiments to the Prince, and he (notwithstanding his marriage) followed the thing up, and had two interviews with her at her own house, which were contrived by Miss Knight, her governess. During one of these Miss Mercer arrived, and Miss Knight told her that Prince Augustus was with the Princess in her room, and what a fright she (Miss Knight) was in. Miss Mercer, who evidently had no mind anybody should conduct such an affair for the Princess but herself, pressed Miss Knight to go and interrupt ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... Fie no: himself is a rhymer, and that's thought better than a poet. He is not lightly within to his mercer, no, though he come when he takes physic, which is commonly after his play. He beats a tailor very well, but a stocking-seller admirably: and so consequently any one he owes money to, that dares not resist him. He never makes general invitement, but against the publishing of a new suit; marry, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... instructions they should receive from them, and to be accountable to that corporation for their public conduct. William Stephens was made chief magistrate, and Thomas Jones, Henry Parker, John Fallowfield, and Samuel Mercer, were appointed assistants. They were instructed to hold four general courts at Savanna every year, for regulating public affairs, and determining all differences relating to private property. No public money could be disposed of but by a warrant under the seal of the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... seventeen 5 pounds; of which he made five marks, ready money: marry, then ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a 10 beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copper-spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... Uncle Matthew had told him that Herrick, the poet, was born in Cheapside, and that Richard Whittington, resting in Highgate Woods, had heard Bow Bells pealing from a Cheapside steeple, bidding him return to be Lord Mayor of London and marry the mercer's daughter. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... fifteen Miss Carroll was sent to a boarding school, at West River, near Annapolis, to pursue her studies with Miss Margaret Mercer, an ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... general reference, he will find many passages alluding to the practice amongst the ancient Romans, who manufactured balances of various kinds for that purpose: one for gold (statera auraria, Varro Ap. Non., p. 455., ed. Mercer.; Cic. Or. ii. 38.); another for silver (Varro De Vit. P.R. lib. ii.); and another for small pieces of money (trutina momentana pro parva modicaque pecunia. Isidor. Orig., xvi. 25. 4.). The mint is represented on the reverse of numerous imperial coins ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various

... whatever has a worth has also a cost. "The law of the universe," says a wise thinker, "is, Pay and take." If you desire silks of the mercer or supplies at the grocery, you, of course, pay money. Is it a harvest from the field that you seek? Tillage must be paid. Would you have the river toil in production of cloths for your raiment? Only pay the due modicum of knowledge, labor, and skill, and you shall bind its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Tower, and she liked to see any famous person of whom my Uncle Charles could tell her; but for Ranelagh she said she did not care twopence. There were men and women plenty wherever you went, and as to silks and laces, she could see them any day over a mercer's counter. Vauxhall was still worse, and Spring Gardens did not please ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... this day, out again, for which God be praised! and my Lord Sandwich hath done himself great right in it, in getting so soon out again. I pray God, he may meet the enemy. Towards the evening, just as I was fitting myself, comes W. Hewer and shows me a letter which Mercer had wrote to her mother about a great difference between my wife and her yesterday, and that my wife will have her go away presently. This, together with my natural jealousy that some bad thing or other may be in the way, did trouble me exceedingly, so as I was in a doubt whether ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... dinner with my wife and Mercer to the Bear-garden; where I have not been, I think, of many years, and saw some good sport of the bull's tossing of the dogs: one into the very boxes. But it is a very rude and nasty pleasure. We had a great many hectors in the same box with us (and ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... villa, and saying: "Well, I shall spend this Saturday afternoon on Mat Arnold's new book, and I shall not understand one word of it." It had never occurred to the good man that he was either a Hebraizer or a Hellenizer. He had always believed that he was a Liberal, a Low Churchman, and a silk-mercer. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... in Billings, Rolland Mercer—a chap about my own age, who had brought me from the East in one of the Boston Observer's planes—and I, decided on a short flight about the neighboring country to look the situation over. We started about midnight, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... second son would follow him to college and proceed to Holy Orders, but oftener he had to content himself as apprentice to an apothecary or an attorney. The third son would, like Roger Stephen, be bound to a pewterer or watchmaker, the fourth to a mercer, and so on in a descending scale. But Roger, though the only child of a rich man, had been denied his natural ambition, and thrust as a boy into the third class. His mother had died young, and from the hour of her death (which the young man set down to ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our grandmothers had its death knell sounded a few years ago, when John Mercer showed that cotton fabrics soaked in caustic soda assumed under certain conditions a silky sheen, and when dyed took on beautiful and varied hues. The demonstration of this simple fact laid the foundation for the manufacture of a vast variety ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... word cuckold will bear no action in the law, except you could prove your husband prejudiced by it. Have any of his customers forsook him for't? Or any mercer refused to trust him the less, for my ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... sent him to Mercer on Monday to buy supplies for the bank. He gave him seventy-five dollars. Back comes my young gentleman with—what do you suppose? A lot of pictures of actors ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... first station of the Underground Railway with his party numbering fourteen and hurried them from point to point until they reached the home of Levi Coffin in Indiana. They were hotly pursued and had narrow escapes, but by wise management they made their way through Spartansburg, Greenville and Mercer County, Ohio, to Sandusky, from which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... larger than the other species. It is, however, pretty hard to distinguish these three species. The Conical Morel is quite abundant about Chillicothe. I have found Morels especially plentiful about the reservoirs in Mercer County, and in Auglaize, Allen, Harden, Hancock, Wood and Henry Counties. I have known lovers of Morels to go on camping tours in the woods about the reservoirs for the purpose of hunting them, and to bring home ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... into a lovely picture, and build a conservatory with the price of lace flounces. A little higher still, and we might have model lodging-houses, and foundling hospitals, and music in the squares given us by kindly women who had saved the money from milliner, and jeweller, and silk-mercer. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... applied to both cotton yarn and cotton fabrics is that known as mercerization, called after "Mercer" an English chemist who introduced the process. Cotton when subjected to the action of strong, caustic alkali contracts violently, but when again stretched and straightened it is found to have acquired a distinct silkiness of appearance, ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous

... quarter of seven Larry was standing on the pavement, which was still radiating heat, and so absorbed in watching for the Wakehams' big car that he failed to notice a little Mercer approaching till it drew up at ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... occurred to me! True, she is as old as Ulpian's mother was when father married her; but then Mrs. Grey was not at all in love with her white-haired husband, and had set her affections solely on that Mercer-Street house, with marble steps and plate-glass windows. How do I know that, after all, Salome is not in love with Ulpian's fortune instead of the dear boy's blue eyes, and handsome hair, and splendid teeth? However, I ought not to think so harshly of the child, for I have ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... house, where I read over his proposals to the Lord Admiral for the regulating of the officers of the Navy, in which he hath taken much pains, only he do seem to have too good opinion of them himself. From thence in his coach to Mercer's Chappell, and so up to the great hall, where we met with the King's Councell for Trade, upon some proposals of theirs for settling convoys for the whole English trade, and that by having 33 ships (four fourth-rates, nineteen fifths, ten sixths) settled by the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... corn-meal this morning and he sent me some butter—a mutual interchange of good things. There are but few of your acquaintances in this army. I find here in the ranks of one company Henry Tiffany. The company is composed principally of Baltimoreans— George Lemmon and Douglas Mercer are in it. It is a very find company, well drilled and well instructed. I find that our friend, J. J. Reynolds, of West Point memory, is in command of the troops immediately in front of us. He is a brigadier-general. ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... we now met bore the Swedish flag, and was conveying the Crown Prince Oscar (the grandson of a lawyer and a silk-mercer) and his wife, to Germany. They had left Stockholm in the night time, to avoid all public ceremony and formality. A crowd of artillerymen now lined the walls of Waxholm to give the usual salute, and we could hear the booming of the guns long after ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the events of my life, it will not be amiss to give you some account of my ancestors. My great-grandfather on the male side was a silk mercer, in Cheapside, who, when he died, left his son, who was his only child, a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds and a splendid business; the son, however, had no inclination for trade, the summit of his ambition ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... since he could brandish a Pen." [3] Her Ladyship adds some further sneers on writers pensioned to amuse people with their nonsense. The other counter pamphlet consists of conversations overheard, all over the town, on the subject of Winnington and his Apology. Here a mercer and a bookseller abuse Fielding for boxing the political compass, and for selling his pen. Another bookseller insinuates that Fielding's own attack on the Apology is but a half-hearted affair—"Ah Sir, you know ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... sister, Charlotte, was born in 1858 and married, when I was thirteen, the present Lord Ribblesdale, in 1877. She was the only member of the family—except my brother Edward Glenconner— who was tall. My mother attributed this—and her good looks—to her wet-nurse, Janet Mercer, a mill-girl at Innerleithen, noted for her height and beauty. Charty—as we called her—was in some ways the most capable of us all, but she had not Laura's genius, Lucy's talents, nor my understanding. She had wonderful grace and ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... your way, Wilkinson, by following the track of Mercer's brigade. For the last three miles I could have kept the route, even if I knew not the road, by the bloody footprints. Look at the stains ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... terminated so disastrously, it was not long before another effort was made to mark the reef. The builder this time was a Cornish laborer's son, John Rudyerd, who had established himself in business on Ludgate Hill as a silk mercer. In his youth he had studied civil engineering, but his friends had small opinion of his abilities in this craft. However, he attacked the problem boldly, and, altho his tower was a plain, business-looking structure, it would have been impossible ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... indebted to you for several Letters which I have not acknowledged. The Anecdote you gave me in one of them relating to a Mr Mercer & Colo Griffin in Virginia was very diverting to me. The People in this part of the Continent would never have fixed upon the Names of La Le or A1 to hold up to a publick Assembly as the Heads of a British Interest in America. It would not ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... no prospects, Johnson naturally married. The attractions of the lady were not very manifest to others than her husband. She was the widow of a Birmingham mercer named Porter. Her age at the time (1735) of the second marriage was forty-eight, the bridegroom being not quite twenty-six. The biographer's eye was not fixed upon Johnson till after his wife's death, and we have little in the way of authentic description of her ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... but their equipage) pride themselves as though they had something superior in them to the poor wretch they spurn with so much contempt; for, let me tell them, if we are apt to pay them respect, they are solely indebted for it to the mercer and tailor; strip them of their gaudy plumes, and we shall not be able to distinguish them from the lowest order of mumpers. This puts us in mind of a remarkable adventure of our hero's life, which he always told with ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... and Aurelia became visible in an instant. She was standing before the mercer's booth in the chief street of the little town which adjoined her father's castle. Her gaze was riveted on a silk mantle, trimmed with costly furs, which depended from a hook inside the doorway. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... lose ten thousand francs in travel, time, and money, to recover ten sous. The letter of the old Lorrains, addressed to Monsieur Rogron of Provins (who had then been dead a year) was conveyed by the post in due time to Monsieur Rogron, son of the deceased, a mercer in the rue Saint-Denis in Paris. And this is where the postal spirit obtains its greatest triumph. An heir is always more or less anxious to know if he has picked up every scrap of his inheritance, if he has not overlooked ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... Greenwoods Island, Miss., and Washington, D.C. The one at New Orleans continued about one year. A tract of land was purchased in Mississippi comprising one hundred and ten acres in 1853, and was occupied until 1855. At this date the inmates were removed to a branch asylum near Harrodsburg, Mercer County, Ky. This latter asylum was discontinued in 1858 under the act of March 3, 1857, and the inmates transferred to the Home near Washington, which was established in 1851-'52. This Home is situated about three miles due north of the Capitol of the nation. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... this year Mrs. Prentiss bade adieu to New Bedford, never to revisit it, and removed to Newark; her husband having become associate pastor of the Second Presbyterian church in that place. In the spring of the following year he accepted a call to the Mercer street Presbyterian church in New York, and that city became her home the rest of her days. Although she tarried so short a time in Newark, she received much kindness and formed warm friendships while there. She continued to suffer much, however, from ill-health and almost entirely ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Bench, and become a Chief Justice, was glad, after thirty years of disappointment, to get made a County Court judge. Not that this is always so; sometimes pretension, if big enough, secures success. A man setting up as a silk-mercer in a strange town, is much likelier to succeed if he opens a huge shop, painted in flaring colours and puffed by enormous bills and vast advertising vans, than if he set up in a modest way, in something like proportion to his means. And if he succeeds, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... circumstances, and those of my poor mother, I shrunk from asking more money when I left home, and went back with a heavy heart to Oxford, under the conscious weight, that my poetic scheme failing, I had no means of paying Parsons, the mercer's, bill! This was ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... the involuntary motions, to which Johnson's nerves were subject, might make him an object of ridicule with his scholars, and, by consequence, lessen their respect for their master. Another mode of advancing himself presented itself about this time. Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer in Birmingham, admired his talents. It is said, that she had about eight hundred pounds; and that sum, to a person in Johnson's circumstances, was an affluent fortune. A marriage took place; and, to turn his wife's money to the best advantage, he projected the scheme of an academy ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... vestrymen, whose names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of the oldest and most honorable names of the State—Thomas Fitzhugh, John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler, William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with letters of gold, 'In memory of the House of Moncure.' This smacks of royalty. Parallel to it ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... blue devils; and when a fellow's spirits go, he's all gone. That's why I'm dyspeptic—that and those d——d debts—and the post, with its flight of croaking and screeching letters from London. I wish there was no post here. I wish it was like Sir Amyrald's time, when they shot the York mercer that came to dun him, and no one ever took anyone to task about it; and now they can pelt you at any distance they please through the post; and fellows lose their spirits and their appetite and any sort of miserable comfort that is ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... of whom he is speaking! From his letters it might appear that all the literary talent, all the taste, and all the virtue of the country, were confined to his circle of friends—Lord Lyttelton, Mrs Montague, Dr Porteous, and Major Mercer." ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... and even a perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom—and as to admitting such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... was divulged. In the spring of 1816, the Hon. Charles Fenton Mercer, in a speech delivered by him in 1833, says, "The intelligence broke in upon me, like a ray of light through the profoundest gloom, and by a mere accident, which occurred in the spring of 1816, that, upon two several occasions, the General Assembly of Virginia had ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... this famous Poet, were partly published in Print by William Caxton, Mercer, that first brought the incomparable Art of Printing into England, which was in the Reign of King Henry the Sixth. Afterward encreased by William Thinne, Esq; in the time of King Henry the Eighth. Afterwards, in the year ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to live ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... relief by a counter-attack upon the first line of German trenches, now far, far advanced from those originally occupied by the French. This was carried out by the Ontario First and Fourth Battalions of the First Brigade, under Brig. Gen. Mercer, acting in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi—would make her ten times worse than she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is too cold. That is a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... portion—biographical and generally critical—of the article on "Goethe," from "Hours with the German Classics," by the late Dr. Frederic H. Hedge, by permission of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., the publishers of that work; and a chapter on "Tennyson: the Spirit of Modern Poetry," by G. Mercer Adam. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... a man to have retained a single slave in his possession or under his control if his conscience did not approve the relation. That Washington favored the gradual abolition of slavery his letters leave no doubt, and especially those to John P. Mercer and Lawrence Lewis, quoted by Washington Irving, but in the letterbook of the great Rhode Island merchant, Moses Brown, which I was allowed, some years ago, to examine, I read a letter from General Washington which, as I remember, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... comfits for Rusha and Ben, and a stout piece of woollen stuff for Patience which he said was such as he was told godly maidens wore, and which possibly the terror of his steel cap and corslet had cheapened at the mercer's; also he had a large packet of tractates for Stead's own reading, and he enquired ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of John Tipper, of Bablake, Coventry, a schoolmaster and local antiquary at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries), and also in the MS. in the British Museum (Additional MSS. 11,364), the entry runs simply:—"1678 Michaell Earle (Mercer) Mayor; Francis Clark, George Allatt, Sherriffs. This year y^e severall Companies had new streamers, and attended y^e Mayor to proclaim y^e faire, and each company cloathed one boy or two to augment y^e show." The latter MS. elsewhere speaks of the story of Godiva's ride ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... he came through Gottenburg again. I did not see him, for my regiment was at Stockholm at the time, but he wrote me a letter saying that he had been in Scotland to marry and bring back one Janet Black, the daughter of a mercer, whom I remember well enough as an old ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... me in nothing more but jewels and clothes, or money for clothes. He sent his gentleman to the mercer's, and bought me a suit, or whole piece, of the finest brocaded silk, figured with gold, and another with silver, and another of crimson; so that I had three suits of clothes, such as the Queen of France ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... perhaps in Braddock's defeat. In 1792 General Anthony Wayne set about gathering another army for the Indian campaign. He moved into the enemy's country slowly, building forts in Darke County and Mercer (where St. Clair was routed) as he advanced. In 1794, at the meeting of the Auglaize and Maumee, twenty miles from the last post, which he named Fort Defiance, he finally met the tribes in great force, and defeated them so thoroughly that for sixteen ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... employed as Teamsters and in the Quartermaster's Department.—Rebel General Mercer's Order to the Slave-holders issued from Savannah.—He receives Orders from the Secretary of War to impress a Number of Negroes to build Fortifications.—The Negro proves himself ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Altar, nor never do falter, So much as to change a Gold-chain for a Halter; Though some Men do flout us, and others do doubt us, We commonly bear forty Pieces about us; But many good Fellows are fine and look fiercer, And owe for their Cloaths to the Taylor and Mercer: And if from the Harmans I keep out my Feet, [4] I fear not the Compter, King's Bench, nor the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... lodging occupied by the Harveys. It was at the house of a mercer, but he and his family had, three weeks before, gone away, having gladly permitted his lodgers to remain, as their presence acted as a guard to the house. They had brought up an old servant with them, and were therefore able to ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... and continuous marching, interfered for a time with the organization of his regiment, but it was eventually completed. Second Lieutenant Alexander, of Company E, Second Kentucky, was given permission to raise a company, in the vicinity of Harrodsburg, Mercer county, and in four or five days returned with a company of over sixty men, which was admitted into the Second Kentucky, and lettered H, a letter which had been in disuse in the regiment, since the partition of the company which bore Alston into a Captaincy. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... must know, had spent the greater part of his life in the capital as a silk-mercer and linen-draper—I believe, in the Old Jewry; at any rate, not far from Cheapside. He had left us at the age of sixteen to repair the fortunes of his family, once opulent and respected, but brought low by his great-grandfather's rash ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dispose of, he had only to take it to lord Timon, and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller had a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewellery at any price, and the good natured lord would thank them into the bargain, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Orville Dewey, renowned for his intellectual attainments, preached in the Unitarian church in Mercer Street. In subsequent years his sermons were published and I understand are still read with much interest and pleasure. Archbishop John Hughes, whom I knew quite well, was the controlling power in the Roman Catholic Church. He possessed the affectionate ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... two lads separated, Harry returning to his home to break the momentous news to his sister, and elicit her views concerning the proposed expedition, and Roger proceeding to the house of his uncle, a worthy mercer of the town, with whom he was staying during the holiday which he was at that time taking in Plymouth. Little did those two boys (for they were scarcely more) realise the momentous nature of the step that ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Vienna inspired the hope that Austria, and perhaps England, might speedily be detached from their present allies. Strange as it seems to us, the French people opined that Napoleon's escape from Elba was due to the connivance of the British Government; and Captain Mercer states that, even at Waterloo, many of the French clung to the belief that the British resistance would be a matter of form. Napoleon cherished no such illusion: but he certainly hoped to surprise the British and Prussian forces in Belgium, and to sever at one blow ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... get him?" demanded Aunt Philippa. "The minister at Cliftonville is away on his vacation, and Mercer is vacant, and that leaves none nearer than town. It won't do to depend on a town minister being able to come. No, there's no help for it. You'll have to have ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... brother "mansworn" should incur a forfeit of 6s. 8d. "without forgiveness." To manswear comes from the Anglo-Saxon manswerian meaning to swear falsely or to perjure oneself. Among the men of note of this period mention must be made of Ralph Dodmer son of Henry Dodmer of Pickering who was a mercer and Lord Mayor ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... best adapted to one locality, are often inferior in another. That excellent potato, the Carter, so firm in New England and western New York, is ill-shapen and inferior in many localities in Illinois. The Neshannock or common Mercer produces a larger yield in Illinois than in the Eastern states, but of a slightly inferior quality. Most seeds do better transported from a colder to a warmer climate, but with the potato the reverse is true. The best potatoes of Ireland ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... Nature Ralph Waldo Emerson "Great Nature is an Army Gay" Richard Watson Gilder To Mother Nature Frederic Lawrence Knowles Quiet Work Matthew Arnold Nature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "As an Old Mercer" Mahlon Leonard Fisher Good Company Karle Wilson Baker "Here is the Place where Loveliness Keeps House" Madison Cawein God's World Edna St. Vincent Millay Wild Honey Maurice Thompson Patmos Edith ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... Mercer are so kind to me; and yet they are neither of them really related to me. My aunt Mary died very young, when her first baby was born, and the poor little baby died too: and uncle Mercer inherited the property from his wife, you see. He married again after two years, and his ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... and short and stubby for common ones. Then the glove is taken to the stock room, where there are endless shelves and bins to testify to the chief drawback to glove making, the necessity for innumerable patterns.—The Mercer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... J.J. Bigsby, of England, writes a letter introducing Lieutenant Bolton of the British engineers, a zealous naturalist, and Major Mercer of the artillery—both being on an official ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... of exclamations answered him. "Why, there won't be any fighting in England, sir, will there?" asked Dick Mercer, in surprise. ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston

... think, exactly what they were forty years ago. The Brothers Cadbury—a name now celebrated all over the world—were then, as will be seen by reference to the frontispiece, shopkeepers in Bull Street, the one as a silk mercer, the other as a tea dealer. The latter commenced in Crooked Lane the manufacture of cocoa, in which business the name is still eminent. The Borough Bank at that time occupied the premises nearly opposite Union Passage, which are now used by Messrs. Smith as a carpet shop. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... of an attorney, law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, a prosperous man in his profession, descended from an old Yorkshire family of landed gentry. On the mother's side, also, Wordsworth was connected with the middle territorial class; his mother, Anne Cookson, was the daughter of a well-to-do mercer in Penrith; but her mother was a Crackanthorpe, whose ancestors had been lords of the manor of Newbiggin, near Penrith, from the time of Edward III. He was thus, as Scott put it in his own case, come of "gentle" kin, and, like Scott, he was proud of it, and declared the fact in his short fragment ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... the sun shone out from behind a cloud, giving an appearance of the highest animation to the scene. Amidst an intense silence, the Mayor of Georgetown handed to Gen. Mercer, the President of the Canal Company, the consecrated instrument; which, having received, he stepped forward from the resting column, and addressed as follows ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... time I was in Ohio an attempt was made, in Mercer County, to eject by force a number of inoffensive black people. Originally slaves in Virginia, they had been liberated by the will of their late master, and located on a suitable quantity of land which he had secured for them. But the magnanimous and liberty-boasting ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a seeming chance. It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton. The grove was bounded on one side by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second growth and alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing. The picnic was over and the people preparing to go home when they were startled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... understand that there was a contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father. Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer—and Dennet and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade. Then there was a master armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Andrew Mercer was born at Selkirk, in 1775. By his father, who was a respectable tradesman, he was destined for the pulpit of the United Secession Church. He became a student in the University of Edinburgh, in 1790, and was the class-fellow and friend of John Leyden, and of Dr Alexander Murray, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Westminster, in 1477. The subject—and what can be of greater interest to us than the great event it commemorates, the vast social change it has wrought—has been very ably treated by the artist, and very successfully rendered by the engraver. The calm dignity of the patriotic mercer, Master William Caxton, as he watches the countenance of the abbot, who is examining with astonishment this first specimen of the new art, contrasts well with the expression of pride exhibited by Earl Rivers at the success of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various

... officers and men as to the necessity of observing certain simple precautions to prevent the spread of any contagious disease; and it also showed them that when disease once got out of hand it would be possible to put whole battalions hors de combat. Col. Mercer kept his brigade moving about on the sod in tents all winter, and as a result, there was very much less sickness in his brigade than in the other brigades housed ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... on behalf of Irish trade and catholic relief, rejected him as its member, and he was provided with a seat by Rockingham. Windsor refused to re-elect Keppel, and it is asserted that George so far forgot his position as to go into the shop of a silk-mercer of the borough, and say in his hurried way: "The queen wants a gown, wants a gown. No Keppel! No Keppel!"[147] Among the new members were Sheridan, the dramatist, and manager and part-owner of Drury lane theatre, one of Fox's friends, who became famous as an orator, and William Pitt, the second ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... before the Bridge was completed, King John called over a French 'Pontife' named Isembert who had built bridges at La Rochelle and Saintes. But the principal builders are said to have been three merchants of London named Serle Mercer, William Almain, and Benedict Botewrite. The building of the Bridge was regarded as a national work: the King: the great Lords: the Bishops: as well as the London Citizens, gave money to hasten its completion. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... high Spirits. I am exceedingly pleasd with the calm & determind Spirit, which our Commander in Chiefe has discoverd in all his Letters to Congress. May Heaven guide and prosper Him! The Militia of the Jerseys—Pennsylvania & Maryland are all in Motion—General Mercer commands the flying Camp in the jerseys. We have just now appointed a Committee to bring in a Plan for Reinforcement to compleat the Number of 20,000 Men to be ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... Mary Greenwater's wealth was a mystery. Those of her tribe gave themselves no concern about it, but the matter was a subject of much comment among the few white men in the territory. Mercer, a young man of adventurous spirit, hearing of her fabulous wealth, sought her hand in marriage. After the wedding, he used all his arts to wring from her the secret of her riches. Once when she started on one of her lone journeys to the hills of the Grand River, ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... MERCER mentioned that, on the death of the Danish ambassador here, (in Paris,) some commissaire of police, having come to the house for the purpose of making a proces verbal of his death, it was resisted by the suite, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... be appropriated to the residence of such people of color as have been or shall be emancipated, or hereafter may become dangerous to the public safety," etc. But of all these efforts nothing was known till their record was accidentally discovered by Charles Fenton Mercer in 1816. He at once brought the matter to light, and moved a similar resolution in the Virginia Legislature; it was almost unanimously adopted, and the first formal meeting of the Colonization Society, in 1817, was called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... agreed on, general Shirley, with the greatest part of the troops under his command, set out on his return to Albany on the twenty-fourth of October, leaving colonel Mercer, with a garrison of about seven hundred men, at Oswego; though repeated advice had been received, that the French had then at least a thousand men at their fort at Frontenac, upon the same lake; and, what was still worse, the new forts were not yet near completed; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... burned for five days before it was utterly destroyed. This was the end o' the second Eddystone. Its builder was a Mr. John Rudyerd, a silk mercer of London. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer's for things she'd never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn't going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... courage. Richard Rich—who beyond Scroggs or Jeffreys deserves to be remembered as the arch-scoundrel of the legal profession—was one of Thomas More's playmates and boon companions for several years of their boyhood and youth. Richard's father was an opulent mercer, and one of Sir John's near neighbors; so the youngsters were intimate until Master Dick, exhibiting at an early age his vicious propensities, came to be "esteemed very light of his tongue, a great dicer and gamester, and not of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... twenty-five years, was the leading mercer and tailor, reporter and originator of fashions in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. The reported fashions of Cordovell, are said to have frequently become the leading fashions of Paris; and the writer was informed, by Mr. B., a leading ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... the mercer's wife said, "lest you should not be able to gain the house, Master Vickars; for we heard that the Spaniards are ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... the country had retired westward; deer and wild turkeys were not so plentiful anywhere in Kentucky as near the site of the ancient Virginia capital, Williamsburg. In the Virginia convention of 1829, Mr. Mercer estimated that in 1817 land values in Virginia aggregated two hundred and six million dollars, and Negroes averaged three hundred dollars, while in 1829 the land values did not surpass ninety millions, and slaves had fallen ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... Cotton prepared by treating with a solution of caustic potash or soda or certain other chemicals. Discovered by John Mercer in 1844. ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet

... vanished from sight, Evelyn turned to Captain Raymond, exclaiming, "O sir, will you not point out Forts Mercer and Mifflin to us when we come ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... street ghost drew as large a "house" last night as Barnum's Circus or any of the theaters. There was a bigger crowd about "Cohnfeld's Folly" than there was three weeks ago when the flames gutted the buildings from Mercer to Greene streets and did damage away up in the millions. The wraith was not due till midnight, but the street was packed with watchers as early as 9 o'clock. The crowd was so dense that pedestrians with difficulty forced their way through it and twice a squad of blue-coats descended ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... time, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, of Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord God a thousand four hundred sixty and four, and translated and drawn out of French into English by William Caxton, mercer, of the city of London, at the commandment of the right high, mighty, and virtuous Princess, his redoubted Lady, Margaret, by the grace of God Duchess of Burgundy, of Lotrylk, of Brabant, etc.; which said translation and work was begun in Bruges in the County of Flanders, the first ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin, employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his father-in-law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some immaculate ladies—the arrangements, made necessary by the way in which everything was packed away—the plate, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770, the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney-at-law, as lawyers of this class were then called, and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of Penrith, and of Dorothy, born Crackanthorp, of the ancient family of that name, who from the times of Edward the Third had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. My grandfather was the first of the name of Wordsworth who came into Westmoreland, where he ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... most powerful athletes he could find, but caused them to seize weapons and to attack the defenceless citizens who had come to take part in the games. The Londoners hurried home, bleeding with wounds, and immediately took counsel as to what was best to be done. Serlo, the mercer, who had held the office of mayor of the city for the past five years, and was of a peaceable disposition, suggested referring the matter to the abbot; and it was then that Constantine, who had a large following, advocated an attack upon the houses of the abbot and of his ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... town[263], finding himself as well situated at Birmingham[264] as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor[265], who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old school-fellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more convenient situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom of the impending social revolution. Two years before the passing of this Act, the magnificent Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by Sir Thomas Kitson, "mercer of London,"[6] and Sir Thomas Kitson was but one of many of the rising merchants who were now able to root themselves on the land by the side of the Norman nobility, first to rival, and then slowly to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... me marry Lord Delacour? Why, my dear, you—no, not you, but any girl who is not used to have a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen-draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing—and this is so becoming, and this will wear for ever, as he swears; but then that's so fashionable;—the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... as President of the Central of Georgia Railroad for many years. A monument on Mulberry Street nearly opposite the Post Office is a constant reminder of the esteem in which he was held. His plantation was a huge one extending from the Railroad yard as far as the present site of Mercer University. A day of rest was given the slaves about once every three months in addition to the regular holidays which are observed today. On holidays, "frolics" at which square dances were the chief form of entertainment (by the music of a banjo or fiddle) were enjoyed. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... mother of Henry VII., seems to have had little taste to guide De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted the works of Chaucer or of Gower; nor did his humble patron, Robert Thorney, the mercer, lead him in a better direction. De Worde filled his black-letter books with rude engravings, which he used so indiscriminately that the same cut often served for books of a totally opposite character. By some writers De Worde is considered to be the first introducer ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Samuel Adams and James Otis of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, who spoke for freedom; Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution; Putnam who fought and Warren who died at Bunker Hill; Mercer who fell at Princeton; Nathan Hale, the martyr spy; Herkimer, Knox, Moultrie, and that long list of noble patriots whose names have already ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... sentiment for removing the Negroes to a distant territory is found in a series of resolutions passed by the Virginia Assembly on December 21, 1816. These resolutions were introduced and sponsored by Charles Fenton Mercer, a slaveholder. In the spring of 1816, he accidentally discovered the secret action of the Assembly, taken in 1800, just after the Negro insurrection of that year, the upshot of which was two resolutions directing the Governor to correspond with the President ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... afternoon, when the immense opera house was filled to overflowing and literally thousands stood on the outside in the intense cold and listened to speakers who were hastily sent out to address them. Dr. Shaw presided. The meeting was opened with prayer by the Rt. Rev. Philip Mercer Rhinelander and the music was rendered by the choir, under its director, Samuel J. Riegel, with the audience joining. An eloquent address was given, the Democracy of Sex and Color, by Dr. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, and one by Miss Addams on the Communion of the Ballot, the necessity for cooperative ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... hundred strong. Co. D received forty-six of the transferred men, all of these being from the 83rd Illinois. And they were a fine set of boys, too. Their homes were, in the main, in northwestern Illinois, in the counties of Mercer, Rock Island, and Warren. They all had received a good common school education, were intelligent, and prompt and cheerful in the discharge of their duties. They were good soldiers, in every sense of the word. It is a little singular ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... Queen who rid on the Lord Mayor's day in the pageant, in imitation of the Patroness of the Mercer's Company, had a fine suit of cloaths given her, valued at ninety guineas, a present of fifty guineas, four guineas for a smock, and a guinea for a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various

... observed of myself, that when I am out of town but a fortnight, I am so humble, that I would receive a letter from my tailor or mercer ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... ladies flocked within, And still would each one say, "Good mercer, be the ships come up?" But ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... Robert Mercer, the third laird of Innerpeffray, granted to the Abbot and Convent of Inchaffray the right to fish for eels in the water at Polpefery, within the lordship of Dullory. Eels, it appears, formed a favourite article of food among all classes of the people. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... Burr who is telling the story, and from his first day at the school he is friendly with Mercer, who is not good at his school work, but who knows a great deal about natural history, and imparts it to Burr, and of course to the readers as well. There is a gang of other boys who are inclined to bully, and at first they make life misery for Burr and Mercer—but ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... is de Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the silk mercer, lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing" (Emerson, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... and English verses. Under such a master he was likely to form a taste for poetry. Being born without prospect of hereditary riches, he was sent to London in his youth, and placed apprentice with a silk mercer. How long he continued behind the counter, or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, is not known. The report ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... to the proper degree of literary accomplishment? It is undeniable, that small towns stand in pressing need of local channels for advertisements, and here, we think, is their strongest ground. How much more important, in a town of 5000 inhabitants, that the principal mercer should have his fresh arrival of goods advertised in a paper which circulates 500 copies in that town, than in some county-town journal which sends to it only some thirty or forty copies! A sale of growing crops ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... had been known on the Continent for something over twenty years, when William Caxton, a citizen and mercer of ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... as at first view we might imagine; because it furnishes every inducement to the master to attend to the negroes, to encourage breeding, and to cause the greatest number possible to be raised. Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising State, for other States.'—Mr. C.F. Mercer asserted, in the Virginia Convention of 1829, 'The tables of the natural growth of the slave population demonstrate; when compared with the increase of its numbers in the commonwealth for twenty years past, that an annual revenue of not ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... cabaret stuff" was the phrase that brought the applicants to a lively swarm about the little window. Evening clothes, glad wraps, cigarette cases, vanity-boxes—the Victor people doing The Blight of Broadway with Muriel Mercer—Stage Number Four at 8:30 to-morrow morning. There seemed no limit to the people desired. Merton Gill joined the throng about the window. Engagements were rapidly made, both through the window and over the telephone that was now ringing those people who had so long been told that ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson



Words linked to "Mercer" :   trader, bargainer, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, monger, United Kingdom, manufacturer, UK, John Mercer, producer, U.K., Britain, dealer, Great Britain



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