Ledger

"A ten-bob note secured me quarter of an hour alone with the attendance ledger in a backroom." Holmes said, with a touch of chagrin.

The firſt Leidger, or Leidger Nº A. being thus finiſh'd, it is requiſite to prepare for the erecting of thy Accounts anew in a Leidger Nº B. or thy ſecond Leidger, which thou ſhalt do thus.

That all ſtock bought and ſold, is transferred or poſted from his journal, produced at his examination, into his ſaid leidgers, but the journal doth not contain all the matters concerning monies that are entered in his leidgers; […]

You muſt make an accompt of balance on the next void leaf or folio of your ledger to your other accompts; but after ſo done, do not venture to draw out the accompt of balance in the ſaid folio, till you have made it exact on a ſheet of paper, ruled and titled for that purpoſe, becauſe of miſtakes or errors that may occur or happen in the courſe of ballancing your ledger; […]

Commerce has done its perfect work; it has withdrawn our eyes from every general public care, from every generous manly thought, to our ledgers and our day-books—we are a nation of tills and counters, not of states and provinces!

[T]his city of "merchants, whose counting-houses are their churches, whose money is their God, and whose legers, (defaced legers, of course, the delegate from Indiana will understand me,) whose legers are their bibles."

The original charges, however, are made in what is called a day book, where they are written one after another, in the order in which the transactions occur. During the hours of leisure, these charges are copied into another book, […] the account of each man being placed under his name. This book is called the leger. The act of copying from the day book into the leger is called posting.

John de Rutherwyke was chosen abbot in 1307. In the Landsdowne Library is a Leiger-book of the abbey of Chertsey, containing a regular account of the affairs of the monastery under his presidency, from the time of his election till within two years of his death, which took place in 1346. In the Exchequer Leiger the abbot is styled "a most religious Father, and a most prudent and most profitable Lord;" […]

A Peruvian bookkeeper's ledger was a regular rope curtain with knots running up and down the ropes. He took to knots because he had no system of writing by which to keep his accounts. Each rope represented an account; the bookkeeper had twenty-four rope accounts on one ledger—the ledger being a heavy rope from which all the accounts hung.

Of course, ledgers conceal as much as they reveal; they tell us who formally paid and represented the family, not necessarily who truly chose. […] [A] woman's decisions in the shop often lie concealed behind her husband's name in the ledger. Sometimes, as a late-eighteenth-century shop ledger from Penmorfa in North Wales reveals, they were concealed from the husband as well. The ledger includes repeated entries for purchases on men's credit by wives or maidservants that use phrases such as "handkerchief … wife, not to tell" or "hat 11s. 6d. to tell 8s." Evidently, the purchase or its real cost was not to be divulged to the man of the house.

To be clear: there's only one ledger, but that ledger is not stored in any one central location. Rather, identical copies exist on every node—a copy on every computer.

The Leger exhibits at one view the accounts with an individual, as it contains on the Dr. [debit] side whatever he has received, and on the Cr. [credit] side whatever he has paid. […] Let each account be posted from the Day Book in its proper place in the Leger. If a mistake be made, let it be corrected by an account in the Day Book, clearly stating the correction, and then let this account be posted in its proper place in the Leger, that no blot or erasure may disfigure its pages.

He keeps a ledger or a debtor-and-creditor account between the Government and the Country, posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injustice against so much contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it is due.

In Great Britain ledgers that were placed outside of churches are sometimes termed external ledgers, while those placed within churches are called internal ledgers […] Ledgers generally sit directly on the ground or on low supports.

They [19th-century headstones] instead normally recorded only the names and birth and death dates of family members buried in a plot over a period of seventy-five years, a century, or even longer. Stones that William Bigham Sr. made in Pennsylvania, especially the ledger stones but even small headstones, often seem intended to provide space for a similar record.

[The dome was] turned upon a centre laid without any standard from below to support it. Every story of the scaffolding being circular, and the ends of the ledgers meeting as so many rings, and truly wrought, it supported itself; […]

For more secure rooftop decks, a ledger (a joist mounted against the side of the house to support one side of a deck) is attached to the face of the house with perpendicular sleepers (wood planks laid horizontally at wide intervals) aligned with the roof rafters below.

[W]hen fishing for Eels with a ledger line as well as a floated line, don't be in too much haste to strike when you see a bite, for Eels generally gorge the bait, and consequently hook themselves, if you give them time, […] I always use two hooks on my ledger, placing the top one about two feet above the bottom, and to prevent it from moving from its proper place, fix a shot above it and below it, […]

Stream fishing is, as I have said, subdivided into fishing with a travelling or tripping bait, with or without a float, and also with a stationary one, with or without float. The first of these latter is termed "tight corking," and the latter ledgering or ledger fishing. […] If the angler likes it better, a combination of ledger and float can be made, which is the acmè of tight corking and one of the most killing methods employed. It is simply to use a light ledger lead instead of fixed shots.

Our tears are bottled, to signify that our griefs are carefully measured; and they are booked, to teach us that they are numbered.—Psal[ms] lvi. 8. Our tears being bottled, and ledgered, will signify that our afflictions are not the effects of change, but the registered dispensations of heaven. Ay, and your enjoyments are by lot.

I never saw a man who knew so thoroughly well all that he [Philip Syng Physick] knew. It seemed as if his science and art were ledgered in his brain, so that he could turn on the instant to page and line.

[T]he only thing that can cause delay is the calling for explanations at the end of the year, and this can be avoided if you ledger for each registering post or group the figures of each month as received, and in making progressive totals compare them each month with the totals of former years, which can be entered at the head of the ledger. The labour of ledgering is but small, and it enables you to keep your eye on the progress of trade all through the year, […]

[In the play Angels in America] [Tony] Kushner is less interested in objectifying or ledgering the specific sufferings AIDS causes than in how it collates and coalesces those aspects of our suffering that are general and ordinary.

They were not looking for their reckoning but totally rejected Our revelations. Everything We had ledgered in a book.

The added advantage of legering a small bait rather than freelining one is that you can tighten up harder to the bait and so spot runs earlier.

The flounder spends its life between the tideline and the 25 to 30 fathoms mark, but they are often caught several miles upstream in freshwater rivers by anglers legering worms or gentles.

In the fashion pursued by the fishermen who require to cast a long line on the Thames, for ledgering or spinning more particularly, the line is drawn off the reel and laid loosely in coils at the fisherman's feet, […]

The best baits for ledgering are, firstly, worms; secondly, greaves; and, thirdly, a bunch of gentles, though some people occasionally catch barbel with raw beef or ham; […]

[T]he salmon were playing hard to get. So were the trout. So, come to that, were any fresh water shrimps that might be around. Obviously the recommended bunch of worms on a large hook ledgered to the bottom was an insufficient inducement.