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Peddler   /pˈɛdlər/   Listen
Peddler

noun
(Written also pedlar and pedler)
1.
Someone who travels about selling his wares (as on the streets or at carnivals).  Synonyms: hawker, packman, pedlar, pitchman.
2.
An unlicensed dealer in illegal drugs.  Synonyms: drug dealer, drug peddler, drug trafficker, pusher.



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"Peddler" Quotes from Famous Books



... Only Billy B. Hill grinned delightedly at him, as Billy grinned at every merry sight of the spectacular East, and Billy shook his head with cheerful convincingosity, so the crocodile merchant moved reluctantly on before the importunities of the Oriental rug peddler at ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... practised a number of these queer trades: had been a strolling dentist, a lecturer on mesmerism, a salesman in a village store, a district schoolmaster, editor of a country newspaper; and "had subsequently travelled New England and the Middle States, as a peddler, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory of Cologne water and other essences." The Note Books tell us that, at North Adams in 1838, the author foregathered with a surgeon-dentist, who was also a preacher of the Baptist persuasion: and that, on the stage-coach between ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... man seemed to be turning the matter in his mind. "I cannot send the boat alone, but you shall have the man who usually sails her since I have been laid by, Joe Savin, and my lad Tom Peddler, provided you pay their wages from the time they sail to the ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... station who makes his scanty living selling just such 'trash.' I'll give you just five minutes to select whatever you really wish to keep, five minutes more to stow them compactly for our long buckboard-drive, and about as much longer to make the acquaintance of my lame peddler and give him your leavings. Five seconds wasted already, ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... believe I will carry a bunch of those violets;" and she waited for him to go back through the fountain spray, find the peddler, and rummage among the perfumed heaps in the basket. "Because," she added, cheerfully, as he returned with the flowers, "I am going to the East Tenth Street Mission, and I meant ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... through, A peddler's wagon, trotting in; A haggard man, of sallow hue, Upon his nose the goggles blue, And in his cart a model U- ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of such as may not have read "Paul the Peddler," I will explain briefly that Mrs. Hoffman, by the death of her husband two years previous, had been reduced to poverty, which compelled her to move into a tenement house and live as best she could on the earnings of her oldest son, ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... or more before the night of which we write, there had come to Allington a peddler, whose home was across the sea, in Carnarvon, Wales. He was a little, cross eyed, red-haired, wiry man, with a blunt, sharp way of speaking, but was very popular with the citizens of Allington, to whom he sold such small articles ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... having seen a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering "assortment of everything," ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... life enough, without any signs—most of us do. He won't have to make shirts, anyhow," rejoined her daughter, who had worn out her youth with fine stitching of linen shirts for a Jew peddler. Then she settled back over her needle-work with a heavy sigh, indicative of a return from the troubles of others to ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... him heah about half an hour ago," said the colored cook, "an' den, all to oncet, I didn't see him ag'in. I wonder if dat ole peddler could hab took him?" she asked, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope

... and there's a story about how the lady came to have this one. One day, driving in a poor street, she saw a coster—that is a London peddler—beating his tired donkey that refused to pull the load. The lady got out of her carriage, fed the animal some carrots from the cart, talked kindly to him right into his big, surprised ear, and stroked his nose. Presently the poor beast felt better and started off cheerfully with ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... into the seat after William had lowered the buggy top and unhitched the horse from the post. The loafers were mildly curious. Guessed Bill had got hooked onto by a lightnin'-rod peddler, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... young boy. He had contrived to buy a few cheap odds and ends likely to attract women buried in the country far from shops. He had somehow known exactly what odds and ends to select. That was genius; and he had coined money as a peddler. In his wandering life he made acquaintance with many tramps and saw how he might make even the lowest useful. After a few years he scraped up enough capital to start a small store in New York, far downtown, where rents ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... such a repulsive-looking personage as to render his long stay objectionable. In order to be rid of him Mrs. Barkswell made a small purchase, after which, finding that he could sell nothing further, the peddler thrust his wares back into the tin box and shuffled out ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton

... into tears, and told his friend of all that had happened that night. The peddler's face grew graver and graver as the boy told him it was on this very spot that he lost his ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... with his dulcimer slung like a peddler's bos at his side, and with a comic movement of respect, which no presence or position could check, he made a bow to the stranger, that forced him to smile ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... had horses about that place. They must be stray horses; or must belong to some traveler who had lost his way, as the track led nowhere. He accordingly followed it up, until he came to an unlucky peddler, with two or three pack-horses, who had been bewildered among the cattle-tracks, and had wandered for two or three days among woods and cane-brakes, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... got back from Harvard, that I was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way of talking to me in a quizzical, condescending style, in the belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while; and it was easy to see he regarded me as a "character" and thought he was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness of politics in a Parkhurstian fashion, and I was ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... did such a one appear. A wayfarer, also, in former times was but a goer of ways, a man afoot, whether on pilgrimage or itinerant with his wares and cart and bell. Does the word not recall the poetry of the older road, the jogging horse, the bush of the tavern, the crowd about the peddler's pack, the musician piping to the open window, or the shrine in the hollow? Or maybe it summons to you a decked and painted Cambyses bellowing ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... seen) it tolerated the wolf, tamed, domesticated, and become in some sort a dog, tolerated the regular vagabond, become in some sort a subject. It did not trouble itself about either the mountebank or the travelling barber, or the quack doctor, or the peddler, or the open-air scholar, as long as they had a trade to live by. Further than this, and with these exceptions, the description of freedom which exists in the wanderer terrified the law. A tramp was a possible public enemy. That modern thing, the lounger, was then unknown; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the peddler, "haf n't I always dealt fair mit you?" He fumbled in his half-opened pack, and shoving three razors out of sight, he produced a fourth, which he held out to the servant. "Dot iss only dree shillings, und it iss ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;—a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—a Peddler;—a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death;—a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... became mixed with a species of comedy called Interludes, a merry and farcical dialogue. The Four P's, one of the best of these early Interludes, was written by John Heywood, an entertainer at the Court of Henry VIII. It turns upon a dispute between a Peddler, a Palmer, a Pardoner and a Poticary, in which each tries to tell the greatest lie; plays of this kind are seen in France at the present day. In the fifteenth century the drama in France became more secularized and included political events and satire, but the French were ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... picturesque old fountain at the head of the Calle Centrale. Here he will find at almost any time of the day scores of weary burros slaking their thirst; busy water-carriers filling their red earthen jars; the street gamin wetting his thirsty lips; the itinerant fruit peddler seeking for customers; the gay caballero pausing to water the handsome animal he bestrides; while the tramway mules seek their share of the refreshing liquid. Dark-hued women are coming and going with earthen jars poised upon their heads, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... given to few men to marry their daughters to champion boxers: and as Dutch Sam was not a Don Quixote, the average peddler or huckster never enjoyed the luxury of prancing gait and cock-a-hoop business cry. The primitive fathers of the Ghetto might have borne themselves more jauntily had they foreseen that they were to be the ancestors of mayors and aldermen descended from Castilian hidalgos ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... 'a molangeon.' 'And what, in the name of God, is a molungeon?' inquired the astonished 'Northern man.' 'A mulatto,' replied Wise, is the child of a female house-servant by young master'—a molungeon is the offspring of a field hand by a Yankee peddler.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Birch, the hero of The Spy, is a portrait from the life of a revolutionary patriot who appears in the book as a peddler with a keen eye to trade as well as to the movements of the enemy. One of the best known incidents in the book is that in which Harvey, by a clever stratagem, assists Capt. Wharton to escape. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was born ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... ever a pair in the colony, and I'm not saying that the governor could find a better assistant in his weighty affairs of State, but you've no more eye for a gentlewoman's good qualities than I have for a peddler's. 'Mild and biddable,' forsooth! Those virtues were left out when they brewed the Standish blood, Master Allerton, and courage and honor and some other trifles thrown in to make amends. Why man, should you wed Barbara Standish and raise a hand upon her as ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... comment from one who made most of his sales to kids, Rick thought. He noticed that the peddler was eying the bag Scotty had picked up, and was trying to be surreptitious about it. Anyone would be curious about someone carrying a moldy bag, but why try to conceal that curiosity? On impulse, Rick said, "There's a trash can, Scotty. Throw the bag away and let's ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... grew dark and I was much in need of rest I had a street peddler direct me to a synagogue. I expected to spend the night there. What could have been more natural? At the house of God I found a handful of men in prayer. It was a large, spacious room and the smallness of their number gave ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... exposition. Every year there is some common experience which welds the population, increases acquaintance and intensifies social unity. The tillage of the soil in those farming communities from which the blacksmith, the storekeeper, the peddler and the shoemaker have ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... most manageable shape, and left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and peddler of silver and brass sleeve-buttons of his own manufacture. It made him an officer and then an armorer in the Continental service. As a fabricator of patriotic weapons, he incurred the displeasure of his Methodist brethren by working on the Sabbath, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... twenty cents, and a good-natured peddler gave him a large sponge, and taught him how to rinse out the parched ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... saloon porter. I made a little bet with meself you was ejucated. Why, y'r cuffs ain't even doity—not very doity. Course you kinda need a shave, but dem little blond hairs don't show much. I seen you was a gentleman, even if de bums didn't. You're too good t' be a rum-peddler. Glad y're going, boy, mighty glad. Sit down. Tell us about it. We'll miss yuh here. I was just saying th' other night to Mike here dere ain't one feller in a hundred could 'a' stood de kiddin' from an ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... an Italian peddler, carrying two large packs. He was a small man with a swarthy olive-colored skin, and dark beady eyes, set ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... surprise that its most fertile ridges and slopes hardly show a field, much less a farm, and that agriculture is confined to raising a little garden-stuff for the town-market. The peasant, the hand, is at a discount. The Sierra Leonite is a peddler-born who aspires to be a trader, a merchant; or he looks to a learned profession, especially the law. The term 'gentleman-farmer' has no meaning for him. Of late years a forcing process has been tried, and a ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... could!" retorted old Meyer brusquely. "You could do it for five hundred. That's what you will do it for, if you do it at all." He treated Jared with no more consideration than he would have given a peddler vending shoe-strings and suspenders ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... very much frightened. You must have thought me very silly, but I had never seen any man except Uncle Thomas and Neil and the egg peddler. And you are different from them—oh, very, very different. I was afraid to come back here the next evening. And yet, somehow, I wanted to come. I did not want you to think I did not know how to behave. I sent Neil back for my bow in ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... what heart there was within, taking note willfully, but I hope not wantonly, what an absurdly limp figure he was for a peddler of starch,—"certainly from you, brave fellow;" and the package being taken from his basket, the man turned to go away, so very wearily, that a cheap philanthropy protested: "For shame! ask him to sit down in-doors and ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... wakeful hours the mind Is strangely swift. With what sharp lines The shapes of things that even years have buried Shine out upon the rapid memory, Moving and warm like life. I can see now The form of that tall peddler, whose strange wares, Outlandish dialect and impudent gait Awoke Euktemon's laughter. In mine ear Is echoing still the cracking string of gibes, They flung at one another. I remember too The grey-haired merchant with his bold black eyes And brace of slaves, the old ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... come to him in the guise of a peddler, and had opened its box and let silver ribbon come fluttering out, with verses ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... the Lease, too, that no peddler or agent, or suspicious stranger was to enter the Santa Maria, neither by the front door nor the back. The janitor stood in his uniform at the rear, and the lackey in his uniform at the front, to prevent any such intrusion upon the privacy of the aristocratic ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... to the inevitable missing spoke. It pointed to a ranch-type establishment that lay sprawled out in a billow of dead area. I eyed it warily and kept on driving because my plans did not include marching up to the front door like a rug peddler. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... Ostensibly to carry out Vanderbilt's plans he persuaded that magnate to allow him to bring in as directors two men whose pliancy, he said, could be depended upon. These were Jay Gould, demure and ingratiating, and James Fisk, Jr., a portly, tawdry, pompous voluptuary. In early life Fisk had been a peddler in Vermont, and afterwards had managed an itinerant circus. Then he had become a Wall street broker. Keen and suspicious as old Vanderbilt was, and innately distrustful of both of them, he nevertheless, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... the transoms accommodated the same number, so that eight could sleep comfortably aboard the little craft. Early the next morning, while the appetizing aroma of coffee and frizzling bacon filled the cabin from Ben's galley, a youthful news peddler wandered on to the dock and took up his place with other curious persons; for the equipping of the Bolo had made quite a stir among the water-front loungers of Galveston. The lad insisted on throwing a paper on ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... wuz a-comin' onto me, though I didn't know it. I owed a tin peddler; had been owin' him for four weeks. I owed him twenty-five pounds of paper rags, for a new strainer. I had been expectin' him for over three weeks every day. But in all the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, there wuzn't another day that would satisfy him; he had got to come on jest ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice: "Where's your mother?" "Oh, she, too, died but a short time since; she broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he. "Young Rip Van Winkle once, old Rip Van Winkle now! Does ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... how pleasant a thing is mirth on the stage. Who does not thank William the Great for Falstaff, and Hackett for his personation of the fat knight? Who does not chuckle over the humors of Autolycus, rogue and peddler? Who has not felt his eye glisten, as his lips smiled, when Jesse Rural has spoken, and who will not say to Ollapod, 'Thank you, good sir, I owe ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... did hitch. When they was boys together at school they was always rowin' and fightin', and when they grew up to be thirty and courted the same girl—ten years younger than either of 'em, she was—twa'n't much better. Neither of 'em got her, as a matter of fact; she married a tin peddler named Bassett over to Hyannis. But both cal'lated they would have won if t'other hadn't been in the race, and consequently they loved each other with a love that passed understandin'. Tobias had got well ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... forms of the literary value of a book, but that commercial estimate that a good salesman is able to make. The literary adviser can state in terms of literary criticism the reasons why the Ms. is worthy of publication; but the traveller, if he happens to be more than a mere peddler, can, after reading the Ms., take pencil and paper and figure out how many copies he can place. Publishers are growing to appreciate this quality in a salesman and are seeking his advice before accepting a Ms. Some ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... figures, bodied like men, but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts, —bewitching objects in impossible evolution to a bald-pated urchin who stood gazing at it with all his soul. The peddler sat with his eyes riveted on the boy, visions of a possible catch chasing themselves through his brain. I watched him, while the crowd behind stared at me. We made quite a tail of curiosity. The ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... speaker Paul Hoffman, whom some of my readers will remember as "Paul the Peddler." Paul was proprietor of a necktie stand below the Astor House, and was just returning home ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... ninety miles by river. News of his determination to try the Tiber having preceeded him to Orte, he was royally received by the authorities and populace. When the start was made, the mayor escorted him to the river, lustily blowing a horn all the way, like a fish peddler trying to attract attention. The Tiber is an uninteresting stream, running through the Roman Campagna, and is made up of great bends. He left Orte in the afternoon, and night came on terribly cold. Now ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... of peace and sunshine—of droning bees and the nameless fragrance of summer fields it was! And the struggling nomads of the dusty road! Diane felt a kindred thrill of interest in each one of them. Now a Syrian peddler woman, squat and swarthy, bending heavily beneath her pack amid a flurry of dust from the sun-baked roads her feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with another load of hay, and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... An old peddler was trying to find shelter from the rapidly increasing storm under the lea of the castle wall. He crouched so close to the stones that he could scarcely be seen at all, in spite of the light from the snow. Finally he disappeared altogether behind one of ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner

... Street makes a bend and joins Hester. And in the Bend Guido found thousands of his fellows sleeping twenty in a room and over-crowded into the street: some who had but just arrived, and others who had already learned to swear in English, and had their street-cleaning badges and their peddler's licenses, to show that they had not been overlooked by the kindly society of Tammany, which sees that no free and independent voter shall ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... interrupted Brydges. "Seems your night for deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know—he looks like a peddler—has a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... peddler has come also to this closing of the mass, and displays among the roses of the tombs his linen foot coverings ornamented with woolen flowers. Young men, attracted by the dazzling embroideries, gather around ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... others?" The mother at first answered decidedly that there was nothing; but after thinking a few moments said, "Well, there was one, a very small thing, but that couldn't have had any thing to do with the matter. One day a peddler came along; and among his books was a pretty, red-covered poetry book, and I wanted it bad. But my husband said he couldn't afford it, and the peddler went off. I couldn't get that book out of my mind; and in the night ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... Thanksgiving Day, when their descendants all gathered together as long as either of the grandparents lived, we had an illustration of something very like Heine's touching picture of an old Jewish peddler who worked hard through the week, but on Friday night put on his long black coat and his three-cornered hat, lit the seven candles at the table, and told his children and grandchildren how Jehovah had led His people through the wilderness, and how the Egyptians ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... he said. "'Independence shows a proper sperit and saves grocery bills,' as old man Scudder said when his wife run off with the tin-peddler. What kind of a place was ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... of your grand master was grossly attacked this morning, after our memorable joke with Fario's cart,—attacked by a vile peddler, and what is more, a Spaniard (oh, Cabrera!); and I have resolved to make the scoundrel feel the weight of my vengeance; always, of course, within the limits we have laid down for our fun. After ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... desires of each producer were realized, the world would rapidly retrograde towards barbarism. The sail would proscribe steam; the oar would proscribe the sail, only in its turn to give way to wagons, the wagon to the mule, and the mule to the foot-peddler. Wool would exclude cotton; cotton would exclude wool; and thus on, until the scarcity and want of every thing would cause man himself to disappear from the face of ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... milked into it the required two quarts. It is a large, square room, where I was so agreeably entertained. The well-chinked logs are scrupulously whitewashed; the parental bed, with gay pillow shams, bought from a peddler, occupies one corner; a huge brick fireplace opens black and yawning, into the base of a great cobblestone chimney reared against the house without, after the fashion of the country; on pegs about, hang the best clothes ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... aprons and things, because her girls do! Of course, I said it sort of laughingly, you know, but I don't think Clara White liked it ONE BIT, and I don't care! Clara is rather mad at me, anyway," she went on, musingly, "because yesterday she telephoned that she was going to send that Armenian peddler over here, with some Madeira lunch cloths. They WERE beauties, and only twenty-three dollars; you'd pay fifty for them at Raphael Weil's—they're smuggled, I suppose! But I simply said, 'Clara, I can't afford it!' and let it go at that. She laughed—quite cattily, Parker!—and said, 'Oh, that's ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... long as the Government does not accord equal rights to the Jew, general culture will only he his misfortune. The plain uneducated Jew does not balk at the low occupation of factor [1] or peddler, for, drawing comfort and joy from his religion, he is reconciled to his miserable lot. But the Jew who is educated and enlightened, and yet has no means of occupying an honorable position in the country, will be moved by a feeling ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... runs red with strife, And wealth is won by peddler-crimes, Let who will find content in life And tinkle in unmanly rhymes: I wait and seek; through dark and light, Safe in my heart my hope I bring, Till I once more my faith may plight To him my whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... least, earnestly seeking sight of them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... Extension peddler down in Kentucky, working on fruits and nuts and berries, and naturally that takes me into a good many counties. We have 120, and I have been in all of them. Some places didn't have anything, so no reason to go back. But I pick up a lot of conversation, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... flying machine, the boys watching every rod of the winding road below. Once Tom gave a cry, as they saw a turnout at a distance. But it proved to be nothing but a tinware peddler's wagon. On the ground lay various pieces of tinware, scattering over a distance ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... against the door and watched him with profound satisfaction. When he had polished the last bone to an ivory whiteness, Emma reached behind her and handed Peter the book she had that morning wrested from a peddler whose shirt she had washed and ironed. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... young lady going to one of the Cincinnati academies; next to her sat a Jew peddler—for Cowes and a market; wedging him in was a dandy blackleg, with jewelry and chains around his breast and neck—enough to hang him. There was myself and an old gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... for his years, and they were punching each other with relentless vigor, when suddenly they heard a voice, and stopping their fight, saw before them an humble-looking man with a pack on his back. He was a peddler known in the neighborhood, and noted for his honesty and his silence, but the boys had never seen him. They stood abashed before him, dazed with the blows they had received, and not a little ashamed; for they were well brought up, their mother being an ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... vendue, which brought in a little ready money. There was straw to be braided at one and a half, sometimes two cents per yard; in summer huckleberries were picked and sold for three and four cents a quart. There was a peddler who made his rounds monthly and always put up for the night at my mother's house, paying his score with a liberal barter of such articles as he carried, dry goods, women's shoes and small wares. Dresses were made over and over, were darned and patched as long as the cloth would hold the stitches. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... picturesque, imposing, and eclectic because of the transient guests that gave it change and variety. Here might be found a judge or lawyer on his way to court; a sheriff with a handcuffed prisoner; a farmer or two, stopping on the road to market with a cartful of produce; and an occasional teamster, peddler, and stage-driver. On winter nights champion story-tellers like Jed Morrill and Rish Bixby would drop in there and hang their woollen neck-comforters on the pegs along the wall-side, where there were already hats, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... after friend wife had been given the camera she had me set up as a statue all over Uncle Peter's lawn, and she was snapping at me like a Spitz doggie at a peddler. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... former peddler, breaking into the carpenter's story, 'I assuredly have not forgotten the nut-tree, where I always set down my pack when my shoulders were nearly broken, and under whose shade I used to rest my weary limbs before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was a big trading centre, shipping produce abroad and importing in vessels of her own that sailed from Wethersfield or New Haven. Some few towns developed a special industry, like Berlin and New Britain, that made the Connecticut tin-peddler a familiar figure even in the Middle and Southern states. There were also several towns with large shipyards, where some of the largest ships were built. But back of all such centres of activity, the whole state was solidly agricultural. Connecticut's ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want the money for? ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... all three, was the wagon of a travelling peddler, a wagon drawn by his own arms, which had stopped in ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France

... their sickness; when the fever of the world is on them, the aching head finds a softer pillow if such leaves lie underneath. The mariner, escaping from shipwreck, clutches this first of his treasures, and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the peddler, in his crowded pack; cheers him at eventide, when he sits down dusty and fatigued; brightens the freshness of his morning face. It blesses us when we are born; gives names to half Christendom; rejoices ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... tailor's shop-board; and she from a milliner's hack room,—the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us, but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin-peddler, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor, or opposition sun; and on the other side a seller of spruce-beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a party of ladies ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Bunny; and when he and Sue were outside the tent, waiting for their father, Bunny began walking slowly along, bent over as though he had a peddler's ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack; His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... hot cakes!" Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang the old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the first ten or twelve years of my life, passed under our window.—When I think of those bygone days I ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... is so high now, ah likes groundhog. Ground hog is good eatin. A peddler was by wid groun' hog fo ten cents apiece. Ground hog is good as fried chicken any day. You cleans de hog, an boils it in salt water til its tender. Den you makes flour gravy, puts it on after de water am drain off; you puts it in de oven wif de lid on an bakes hit a nice brown. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... grocery store, trading merchandise for eggs. 2—An independent traveling peddler. 3—A cash dealer who buys his load, and hauls it to the nearest city where he peddles the produce from house to house or sells it to city grocers. 4—A representative of the local produce buyer. 5—A fifth style of egg wagon does ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... the dress and had the pack of a peddler, and a quantity of tow hair escaped from under a broad-brimmed hat. The brown face was half hidden in an enormous growth of ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... peddler had told them that the letters on it meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that Hirschvogel had been a great German potter and painter, like his father before him, in the art-sanctified city of Nuernberg, and had made many such stoves, that were all miracles of beauty and ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... brother inside. He bound the box and carried it to the seashore. He was about to throw it into the water when he remembered that it was not locked: so he left it, and went back to the house to get the key. Meanwhile a Chinese peddler selling gold rings came along. Juan heard him, and shouted, "Chino, Chino, come and see these beautiful and precious things inside!" The Chinaman approached, and opened the box. Juan came out, and said, "I will put you inside, and you will ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... and we halted to see where the cage could be hung. And then we saw our warbler. He was little and plump and red-faced, with a greasy hat and a drooping beer-gilded moustache, and he wore on his coat a bright blue peddler's license badge. He shuffled along, stooping over a pouch of tin whistles and gurgling in one as he went. There's your poem, we said to Endymion—"The Song-Sparrow on ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... knee and looking through the railing and hearing the chanting and singing, I longed to go. One day when I was quite small I slipped out and tried to find the synagogue, but I lost myself a long while till a peddler questioned me and took me home. My father, missing me, had been much in fear, and was very angry. I too had been so frightened at losing myself that it was long before I thought of venturing out again. But after Signora left us we went ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Bohemian companions. The younger son of a poor Gascon family of doubtful nobility, he had come to seek his fortune at Paris; by turns petty officer of a forlorn hope; provost of an academy, bath-keeper, horse jockey, peddler of satirical news and Holland gazettes; he had more than once pretended to be a Protestant, feigning conversion to the Catholic faith in order to secure the fifty crowns that M. Pelisson paid each neophyte as the price of conversion. This cheat discovered, the chevalier was condemned to the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... were approaching the door—not the bounding step of Maggie, but a tramping tread, followed by a heavy knock, and next moment a tall, heavy-built man appeared before her, asking shelter for the night. The pack he carried showed him at once to be a peddler, and upon a nearer view Hagar recognized in him a stranger who, years before, had craved her hospitality. He had been civil to her then; she did not fear him now, and she consented to his remaining, thinking his presence there might dispel the mysterious terror hanging around her. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... The Polish peddler had slipped into Toni's hand not only the arsenic but also the deadly little discs called "crow's eyes." These must help her, if used ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... friend, Williams, was a thorough-going Yankee from Maine, who had been both a peddler and a pedagogue in his day. He had all manner of stories to tell about nice little country frolics, and would run over an endless list of his sweethearts. He was honest, acute, witty, full of mirth and good humour—a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... He's too busy to be disturbed by every book agent and insurance peddler in town. Tell me what you want and I'll see if it's important enough. That's ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... slaaping, our friends along shore have been carried away, and we're lift to make ourselves comfortable, as the peddler said when he hung ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... leads a life in which the extremes of solitariness and of activity are combined. Separated from his nearest neighbor by a journey of half a day, visited only rarely at his hato or farm-house by some casual traveller, or by the itinerant Galician peddler, whom he contemptuously denominates the merca-chifles, the silent horseman lives wrapt up in ignorance of all but the care of the roving beasts that are intrusted to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... had moved into a house a trifle better suited to her exalted station in life; one where the view was better, and the society worthy of a fish-peddler's family. Accordingly we transferred the Kennetts into Number 32, an honor which they took calmly at first, on account of the odor of fish that pervaded the apartments. The three and four year old Kennetts were now members of our flock, the dull baby was ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... consciousness of dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, which in you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration," a big doctor's fee, and a change of air. Yet mark my words, if the dark-browed liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my little fruit peddler the exchange of death for all this wearing apprehension and constant toil, do you think she would accept the transfer? Not she. The "captain" out snow-balling to-day in her love-guarded home, with never ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... verb from which "peddler" comes?—In what other way is "peddler" sometimes spelled? Ans. It is sometimes spelled with ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... the inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... not peasants, these farmers. Nor, she learned, were they the "hicks" of humor. She could never again encounter without fiery resentment the Broadway peddler's faith that farmers invariably say "Waal, by heck." For she had spent an hour talking to one Dakota farmer, genial-eyed, quiet of speech. He had explained the relation of alfalfa to soil-chemistry; had spoken of his daughter, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... of humble station—the comic man. The village blacksmith or a peddler. You never see a rich or aristocratic comic man on the stage. You can have your choice on the stage; you can be funny and of lowly origin, or you can be well-to-do and without any sense of humor. Peers ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another invention was a machine for mowing grass, constructed on the principle ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... digging tools, and also to buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat. There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by day and in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... bar. Tens were always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... left off teasing him about it, asking him what he had done with his hair, and, encouraged by Melchior's pleasantries, threatening to smack it. He was the first to laugh at them, and put up with their treatment of him patiently. He was a peddler; he used to go from village to village with a pack on his back, containing everything—groceries, stationery, confectionery, handkerchiefs, scarves, shoes, pickles, almanacs, songs, and drugs. Several attempts had been made to make him settle down, and to buy him a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... transaction a few days ago," resumed the clergyman, "with a peddler,—an entire stranger to me,—who, in making change, gave me a number of bills which I have reason to suspect are counterfeits. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... reasons—if ever these lines are honoured by perusal of the class—for the accusation that there is nothing in them having the virtue of newness or novelty. But I am not a professor with a mind like a warehouse, rich with the spoils of time, but a mere peddler, conscious of the janglings of an ill-sorted, ill-packed knapsack ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... been to market with my butter and eggs,—for the price of both is so high, one can soon get rich nowadays,—and, being tired, I stopped to rest a bit, but fell asleep by the road. Somebody—I think it's a rogue of a peddler who sold me wooden nutmegs, and a clock that wouldn't go, and some pans that came to bits the first time I used them—somebody cut my new gown and petticoat off all round, in the shameful way you ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... dey wuz peddlers gwine 'roun' de country sellin' things. Dey toted big packs on dey backs filled wid everythin' from needles an' thimbles to bed spreads an' fryin' pans. One day a peddler stopped at Mis' Fanny's house. He was de uglies' man I ever seed. He was tall an' bony wid black whiskers an' black bushy hair an' curious eyes dat set way back in his head. Dey was dark an' look like a dog's eyes after you done ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... skillful gauger I ever knew was a maligned cobbler, armed with a poniard, who drove a peddler's wagon, using a mullein stalk as an instrument of coercion to tyrannize over his pony shod with calks. He was a Galilean Sadducee, and he had a phthisicky catarrh, diphtheria, and ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... woods, and were not very rich, Mr. Alcott went down into Virginia and wandered about among the rich planters and the poor slaves who then lived there; selling the gentlemen and ladies such fine things as they would buy from his boxes,—for he was a traveling merchant, or peddler,—staying in their mansions sometimes, and sometimes in the cabins of the poor; reading all the books he could find in the great houses, and learning all that he could in other ways. Then, he went back to Connecticut ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... tree-tops, had set every leaf a-whispering and nid-nodding to its gossips,—just as the peddler on his way through the village at home stirs all the women-folk to chattering about the latest news from the whole countryside. In the thicket beside us a chorus of feathered singers were all a-twitter, each trying to outdo his neighbour; ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... and strolled away. He had used his eyes to purpose, and was quite assured that the bottle he wanted was not there. But the woman's words had given him his cue, and when later in the day a certain old Jew peddler went his rounds through this portion of the city, a disreputable-looking fellow accompanied him, whom even the sharp landlady in Cuthbert Road would have failed to recognise as the same man who had occupied the snuggery the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... discovered that Achilles was at Scyros with the king's daughters. He soon made his way to the island, but here there was a new difficulty. He had never seen the young prince, and how was he to know him? But he devised a scheme which proved entirely successful. Equipping himself as a peddler, he went to the royal palace, exhibiting jewelry and other fancy articles to attract the attention of the ladies of the family. He also had some beautiful weapons of ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... returned the maid; "because I thought first he said 'silver lace,' and I thought maybe he was a peddler, 'cause he had a bag; so I told him we didn't want anything, and he was real nice. His eyes sort of twinkled up, and he said he did want something. He wanted to see Miss—Sylvia—Lacey, real slow; and was you here? and I said you was, and he told me to tell you a ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... bought out a peddler's cake and lemonade stand on the main line of this ghastly procession and through every bitter hour from sunrise until dark stood there cheering and serving the men without money and without price, while the tears slowly ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... peddler of love- papers, of divining-papers, pretty tinted things with little shadowy pictures upon them. When held near a fire or a lamp, words written upon them with invisible ink begin to appear. These are always about sweethearts, and sometimes tell one what he does not ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... the daughter of an old peddler had a dowry of five hundred rubles, exactly the amount he needed. After careful planning of the undertaking he hired a horse and drove to the lonely cottage of the rag peddler to whom he explained as clearly as he could, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... at him. "Oh, my dear Michael, you will never be a man of business. In our line that is always the way. Only to make a groschen on a gulden is peddler's trade. The chief thing is to have interest, and you don't want for that; that's what I am good for. We have been good friends ever since our school days: rely on me. How do you mean you have no money to deposit? Hand over the receipt ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai



Words linked to "Peddler" :   malefactor, criminal, muffin man, seller, marketer, felon, crook, trafficker, sandboy, vender, outlaw, peddle, dealer, chapman, cheapjack, crier, vendor, transmigrante



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