"Labourer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see "that delicate lassie, so bonny and gentle, more fit for the manse parlour or the drawing-room at Pentlands than any other place,"— to see her so utterly unmindful of pride or station, wishing so eagerly, for the sake of those she loved, to become a herd-girl or a field-labourer, quite disarranged all Nancy's ideas. By another great effort, she checked the expression of her feelings, ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... out all their skill on this slough. More cartloads than you could count of the best material for filling up a slough have been shot into it, and yet you would never know that so much as a single labourer had emptied his barrow here. True, excellent stepping-stones have been laid across the slough by skilful engineers, but they are always so slippery with the scum and slime of the slough, that it is only now and then that a traveller can keep his feet upon them. Altogether, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... exposed to physical evils, and are more interested in removing them than any other class of the community. If any one is concerned in knowing the ordinary laws of mechanics one would think it is the hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and pulleys; or among the other implements of artisan work. And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-prepared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad drainage, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... his birth, that it has not been discovered that he was christened at all; while the fact of his new birth by the Holy Ghost is known over the whole world to the vast extent that his writings have been circulated. He entered this world in a labourer's cottage of the humblest class, at the village of Elstow, about a mile from Bedford.[3] His pedigree is thus narrated by himself:—'My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... world there was vegetable, animal, and human life. Egypt was there, all complete, with her two chains of mountains, her Nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and the nomes themselves. Then the soil was more generous; the harvests, without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when the Egyptians of Pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Government, and thus venting his spite, disappointed ambition, and mortified vanity; on which Brougham rose in a great rage, and said he did not know who the gentleman was who, coming at the eleventh hour, attacked him, who had been a labourer in the cause for thirty years; to which the other retorted that he did not know what he meant by his coming at the eleventh hour, that he had been for many years in Parliament, and had voted against ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... necessary to preserve some seed. For my part, I think that the tree ought to be preserved, so that we may graft new life on it. The political revolution, you know, has already taken place; to-day we have got to think of the labourer, the working man. Our movement must be altogether a social one. I defy you to reject the claims of the people. They are weary of waiting, and are determined to have their share ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... sullenly, "this it is to be leagued with one who knows not even so much of Scripture, as that the labourer is worthy of his hire. I must, as usual, take all ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... off what is popularly known as the "wrong side." Being an angry man, the contractor called the baby bad names, and would have whipped it had it been his own. Going to his office before breakfast with the effects of the howl strong upon him, he met a humble labourer there with a surly "Well, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... in common—a character without flaw, and a good physique. For the rest, there are all types, with the agricultural labourer predominating—a country-house footman, an Irishman from some tiny village near Kilkenny, a sailor, a clerk, a provincial constable hoping to better himself, and, more raw than the rawest, men from Devonshire, Yorkshire, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... The Squire was soon out of breath—it was twenty years or more since he had run a quarter of a mile. He did not, however, relax his speed. Ahead of him in the distance ran the second groom; behind him a labourer and a footman. The stable-bell at Worsted Skeynes began to ring. Mr. Pendyce crossed the stile and struck into the lane, colliding with the Rector, who was running, too, his face flushed to the colour of tomatoes. They ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... delicacy and caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... civiliz'd states, and is the result of the unbounded voluptuousness of their superiors. At Otaheite there is not, in general, that disparity between the highest and the meanest man, that subsists in England between a reputable tradesman and a labourer. The affection of the Otaheitans for their chiefs, which they never fail'd to express upon all occasions, gave us great reason to suppose that they consider themselves as one family, and respect their eldest borm in the persons of their chiefs. The lowest man in the nation ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... to show. Cut on one of these pillars we discovered the crude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat what appeared to be the figure of an Egyptian god, doubtless the handiwork of some old-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was executed at the natural height at which an idle fellow, be he Phoenician workman or British cad, is in the habit of trying to immortalise himself at the expense of nature's masterpieces, namely, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the Poet of the Sun, and cried, "Take me!—Hero, warrior, statesman, sage, priest of the God of Light! Take thy slave! Command her—send her—to martyrdom, if thou wilt!" A pretty price would that have been wherewith to buy the honour of being the meanest of thy apostles, the fellow-labourer of Iamblichus, Maximus, Libanius, and the choir of sages who upheld the throne of ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... been adapted by the language, e.g. sound, Fr. son, and we have the name Kitching for kitchen. The usual additions are -d, -t, or -g after n, e.g. Simmonds, Simon, Hammond, Hammant, Fr. Hamon, Hind, a farm labourer, of which the older form is Hine (Chapter XVII), Collings for Collins, Jennings, Fr. Jeannin, dim. of Jean, Aveling from the female name Avelina or Evelyn. Neill is for Neil, Nigel. We have epithetic -b in Plumb, the man who lived by the plum-tree and epithetic ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... reading cannot trace it. However we are to suppose, that a person of his Lordship's great age and experience, would hardly act such a piece of singularity without some extraordinary motives. I cannot but observe, that his fellow-labourer, the author of the paper called The Englishman,[3] seems, in some of his late performances, to have almost transcribed the notions of the Bishop: these notions, I take to have been dictated by the same masters, leaving to each writer ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... short time, a labourer in the kitchen grounds of the Royal Gardens at Kew. King George the Third often visited the gardens to inquire after the fruits and esculents; and one day, he saw here Cobbett, then a lad, who with a few halfpence in his pocket, and Swift's Tale of a Tub in his hand, had been so captivated ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... but a common labourer," says Moll, disgusted to see him regaling himself in this fashion, as we returned to our room. "A pretty picture we are like to get for all this mess ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... what I really mean is this: that the fortune which has been sent to me is far too big for one pair of hands and one brain to manage: so my son-in-law has agreed to help me—and the labourer, you know, is worthy of his hire! Surely I don't need to explain the meaning of that text to you! Since we last conversed in this room on the disposal of my surplus funds, Jeff and I have had many a long talk and walk together. Moreover, I have kept the young secretary's nose so tight to ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... nature. That is a bad mistake to make about any nation, but perhaps worst when it is made about the English, for the cavalier temper in England runs through all classes. You can find it in the schoolmaster, the small trader, the clerk, and the labourer, as readily as in the officer of dragoons, or the Arctic explorer. The Roundheads won the Civil War, and bequeathed to us their political achievements. From the Cavaliers we have a more intimate bequest: it is from them, not from the Puritans, that the fighting forces of ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus persecuted is simply that one of them—the man—chose to obey the law of the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of his mother. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Clarke junior, a labourer, was tried for witchcraft; John Browne, a tailor, deposed that he met Clarke on the road, Clarke 'said he was in haste; for his Father and Mother were accused for Witches, and that hee himselfe had beene searched: and ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... gripped hold of her wrists, the mark of his fingers was to be seen on the delicate skin, and threatened to kill her and himself. She had been terrified, thinking he meant to kill her. The approach of a farm labourer had saved her, and the curate ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... Neither shall we need to fast and weep and watch any more, being out of the reach of sin and temptations. Nor will there be use for instructions and exhortations; preaching is done; the ministry of man ceaseth; sacraments useless; the labourer called in because the harvest is gathered, the tares burned, the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... dominions to persons in whom he could confide, he now disguised himself, and travelled as one of their retinue. He first disclosed himself to the elector of Brandenburgh in Prussia, and afterwards to king William, with whom he conferred in private at Utrecht. He engaged himself as a common labourer with a ship-carpenter in Holland, whom he served for some months with wonderful patience and assiduity. He afterwards visited England, where he amused himself chiefly with the same kind of occupation. From thence he set out for Vienna, where receiving advices from his dominions, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... mass of mankind are {54} subject must be contributory to forming their spirits for their future existence? Leaving out of consideration who are the elect, and who not, which God only knows, can we think that the patience of the labourer and artisan, the endurance of the seafaring man, and the devotedness of the soldier, who at the call of duty, and in spite of the promptings of self-preservation, exposes himself to almost certain death on ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... the central government at the "City of the Golden Gates," the produce of the whole district or kingdom was divided among the inhabitants—the local viceroy and his retinue of officials naturally receiving the larger portions, but the meanest agricultural labourer getting enough to secure him competence and comfort. Any increase in the productive capacity of the land, or in the mineral wealth which it yielded, was divided proportionately amongst all concerned—all, therefore, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... forgetting errands entrusted to him, throwing stones at passing carriages and making a general nuisance of himself. The PARROCO knew that he had been dismissed as incompetent by tradespeople to whom he was apprenticed, by farmers who had employed him as a labourer. He could not even repeat his Ave Maria without producing sinister crepitations from his gullet. And now he had crowned all by this surpassing act of imprudence. If he had only kept his mouth shut, like everybody else. But there! What could ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of Mr. Billing's speech was indecently nude. The remainder of it was offensively bald. There was once an elderly and cantankerous farm labourer who complained that he could not hear the curate when he preached. He was on the next occasion set in the forefront of the congregation and the curate spoke directly into his ear. The old man was unable to say that he did not hear, but he maintained an aggrieved attitude. "I heard him," ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... congenial to them. If there were less gold and silver in the purses of the citizens to reward the dexterous handler of the knife and scissors amidst the crowd in the market-place; if fewer sides of fatted swine graced the ample chimney of the labourer in Spain than in the neighbouring country; if fewer beeves bellowed in the plains, and fewer sheep bleated upon the hills, there were far better opportunities afforded of indulging in wild independence. Should the halberded bands of the city be ordered ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... but I'm going to tell you. He is not a rich man, Harry, but he pays me to teach you all that will help you to rise above the level of an ignorant labourer. Culture and education are as necessary to a gentleman as bread is for food. I am doing my utmost, but I cannot pour instruction down your throat any more than you can make a horse drink by leading him to the trough. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... The labourer shook his head as he hurried quickly away. He had daughters of his own, and the Rector had been kind when one of those daughters had suddenly come home from service, ill, and with no ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... thick line of dark brows, throwing the eyes into shadows, imparted an appearance of sullen reserve that belonged to an older face. His scrutiny condemned men and repelled them. His figure, about three inches above middle height, was that of a labourer whose strength was diffused through the limbs by swift and subtle exercise. There was nothing rugged in his powerful outline, and every attitude had ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Giotto and in some others among those painters of whom we have spoken hitherto, has been revealed most recently in Domenico Beccafumi, the painter of Siena, in that he, while guarding some sheep for his father Pacio, the labourer of the Sienese citizen Lorenzo Beccafumi, was observed to practise his hand by himself, child as he was, in drawing sometimes on stones and sometimes in other ways. It happened that the said Lorenzo saw him one day drawing ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one of the labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged just as one charges a man at football. The second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first labourer ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... rust of money in the rich man's purse, unjustly detained from the labourer, will poison and infect his whole estate. Fuller's Holy State, p. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... clerk, the teacher, the petty Government official, whose exiguous salaries have remained the same, find themselves to-day relatively, and in many cases actually, worse off than the artisan or even the labourer, whose wages have in many cases risen in proportion to the increased cost of living. Plague, which in the course of the last 14 years has carried off over 6,000,000 people, and two terrible visitations of famine have caused in different parts of the country untold ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... accommodation found among the Arctic races of Siberia, but I fancy those accustomed to "roughing it," as the word is generally understood in England, would find even a trip as far as Yakutsk rather a trial. Of course, these establishments vary from the best, which are about on a par with the labourer's cottage in England, to the worst, which can only be described as dens of filth and squalor. All are built on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... have done for us. You saved my father's life. If it had not been for you his dream would never have been carried into effect, and he would now be lying in the graveyard on the top of the hill, and I should be working hopelessly as a day labourer. I only want to say, that if at any time you want a friend, you can rely upon James Adams up to the last penny he ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill; and no one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the lot of a doomed labourer. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... two hundred guineas! Thus a flower, which for beauty and perfume was surpassed by the abundant roses of the garden,—a nosegay of which might be purchased for a penny,—was priced at a sum which would have provided an industrious labourer and his family with food, and clothes, and lodging for six years! Should chickweed and groundsel ever come into fashion, the wealthy would, no doubt, vie with each other in adorning their gardens with them, and paying the most extravagant ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... as Bonaparte never pardoned a Septembrizer, and the English guineas he possessed might be claimed and seized as national property, to compensate some of the sufferers by the unprovoked war with England. In vain did he address himself to his fellow labourer in revolutionary plots, the Counsellor of State, Real, who had been the intermedium between him and Talleyrand, when he was first enlisted among the secret agents; instead of receiving money he heard threats; and, therefore, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pleasing to see numbers at work to repair the building and cultivate the garden and to observe that at length from this inhospitable mansion, 'health to himself, and to his children bread, the labourer bears.' Within it were all the biggest schoolgirls, with one of their mistresses to direct them in mending such furniture as was not quite destroyed; and I was pleased to see with how much art they repaired the decays of time, in things which well deserved better care, having ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... beautiful—wonderful undulating country—but with no habitations, except, perhaps, a few miserable sheds miles and miles apart. At Nueva Odena the Government is experimenting with Russian and Italian labourers, for whom it has built a neat little colony. After a time each labourer becomes the owner of the land he has cultivated. I am told that the colony is ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the native princes, the nominal governors of the greater part of the country, are kept in the most perfect subjection by the Company; and the common Javanese are in the most abject state of slavery. The labourer is not only obliged, at fixed periods, to deliver a certain quantity of the fruits of his industry to the regent placed over him on behalf of the Company, for whatever price the latter chooses ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... leisure time on the hills to miscellaneous reading. Learning scraps of old ballads from the cottage matrons, as they sung them at their distaffs, he early began to essay imitations of these olden ditties. As a farm-servant and an agricultural labourer, he continued through life to seek repose from toil in the perusal of poetry and the composition of verses. "My simple muse," he afterwards wrote, "oft visited me at the plough, and made the labour to seem lighter and the day shorter." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... upon the tombstone, wrapped in thought, and apparently quite unconscious of the moonlight which now fell upon his chest and legs. He was of middle stature, rather thick-set, with over-developed arms and a labourer's hands, already hardened by toil; his feet, shod with heavy laced boots, looked large and square-toed. His general appearance, more particularly the heaviness of his limbs, bespoke lowly origin. There ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... flogging will make a bad-behaved boy a good boy; it has the contrary effect. "'I dunno how 'tis, sir,' said an old farm labourer, in reply to a question from his clergyman respecting the bad behaviour of his children, 'I dunno how 'tis; I beats 'em till they're black and blue, and when they won't kneel down to pray I knocks 'em down, and yet ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... As soon as the labourer's task was over, his scientific friends thought the best monument which they could raise to his memory was to complete his "Natural History." This duty was discharged by two men, who, both well qualified, worked, however, on independent lines. Count Lacepede, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... when it takes the form of professional skill. . . . Why, put it to yourselves. Here's th' old man gone up for his reward: an' you can hear th' Almighty sayin', 'Well done, thou good an' faithful servant.'"—"Amen," from the listeners.— "Yes, an' 'The labourer is worthy of his hire,' and what not. 'Well, then,' the Lord goes on, flatterin'-like, 'what about that there talent I committed to 'ee? For I d' know you're not the sort to go hidin' it in a napkin.' An' d' 'ee reckon th' old chap'll ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... burning in the souls of us that proves the case for democracy. For at base and underneath we are all equals. In crises the rich man, the poor man, the thief, the harlot, the preacher, the teacher, the labourer, the ignorant, the wise, all go to death for something that defies death, something immortal in the human heart. Those truck-drivers, those mule whackers, those common soldiers, that doctor, these college men on the ambulances are brothers ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... skilful in the humble food and cooking of the farm-labourer; indeed, he seems never satisfied until he fairly exhausts all the useful matter contained in every subject upon which he touches. He not only breeds, and feeds, and kills, and cooks, but he does the latter with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... now fifty years old. Cato, the censor, was of opinion that no man can endure so much as he who has turned the soil and reaped the harvest. Marius was such a man. His family were clients of the Herennii. His father was a day-labourer of Cereatae, called today Casamare, after his illustrious son, and he himself served in the ranks in Spain. [Sidenote: Previous career and present position of Marius.] Soon made an officer, he won Scipio's favour as a brave, frugal, incorruptible, and trusty soldier, ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... man—a farm labourer—who in conversation disclosed a surprising interest in the traces of early and mediaeval habitation of the country. The discovery delighted him. In the catalogue of a secondhand bookseller of Ipswich he noticed the "Excursions in the County of Suffolk," ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... to the inclusion of certain consumptive goods in the possession of labourers under capital. Ricardo, for example, thus expresses himself:—"In every society the capital which is employed in production is necessarily of limited durability. The food and clothing consumed by the labourer, the buildings in which he works, the implements with which his labour is assisted, are all of a perishable value. There is, however, a vast difference in the time for which all these different capitals will ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... visitations; but the harp Was soon defrauded, and the banded host Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds, And lastly utter silence! "Be it so; Why think of any thing but present good?" [H] 100 So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed Mild influence; nor left in me one wish Again to bend the Sabbath of that time To a servile yoke. What need of many words? 105 A pleasant loitering journey, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... countenance as he jogs home, wrapped against the wind in the cloak that was once his father's, along the muddy autumn lanes, upon his strong but not over-impetuous nag. Surely I have seen that particular cast of features in the weather-beaten face of many a farm labourer, and listened too, from the same lips, to just as relishing a commentary upon the surprising ways of providence ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... as a rule, more rustic than the present labourer, but they lived a life of far less care, if of more toil, than their successors, having ample means for their simple needs, and enjoying jocund plenty. The clean kitchen, with the stone floor, the beaupot of maythorn on the empty hearth, the shining walnut-wood table, the spinning-wheel, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... agencies on the other. The full cost of the education of the children of the lower working classes in Great Britain as in other countries has never been wholly paid for out of the wages of the labourer, and hence the question lies between the State provision of education and its provision by certain charitable agencies. As a rule, when provided by the latter, it is both inefficient in quantity and poor ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... the man who took his typewriter on the Underground and was made to buy a bicycle-ticket for it. But I have no doubt he deserved it. I am sure that he did it in spiritual pride. He was trying to make himself equal to the manual labourer who carries large bags of tools on the Tube and sighs heavily as he lays them on your foot. I am sure that he was tired of being scornfully regarded by manual labourers, and was determined to make it quite clear that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... a labourer with twelve shillings a week and a couple of pounds more at harvest; and, of course, in bad weather there was no work and no wages, which is the rule among the agricultural labourers about Downside, as in many other parts, so did not present ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... copying one or other of the masters, taking hints from each other. The Venetian love of splendour was turning to the collection of works of art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. Bissolo was a fellow-labourer with Catena in the Hall of the Ducal Palace in 1492; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies Bellini, and has imbibed something of his tenderness ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... [Footnote: Spartian, Caracalla, c. 9.] of 'Franks'; [Footnote: Vopiscus, Aurel. 7; about A.D. 240.] of 'Prussia' and 'Prussians'; [Footnote: 'Pruzia' and 'Pruzzi' first appear in the Life of S. Adalbert, written by his fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.] of 'Normans'; [Footnote: The Geographer of Ravenna.] the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; [Footnote: Probably in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.] the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the grounds and the park, they were overlooked in more senses than one by a labourer and his sons, who lived in a hamlet called Bridgepath, which was situated on the estate, about a mile from the house, in the rear, and contained some five hundred people. John Willis and his sons were paid ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... such a pity, too, and I could not help thinking that this bad habit of Ike's was the reason why he had lived to fifty and never risen above the position of labourer. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... the labourer may till the ground without paying away half of what he produces, the day when the machines necessary to prepare the soil for rich harvests are at the free disposal of the cultivators, the day when ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your profit, to your gain, to your ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... suspected, but it could not be brought home to them. Aram left the town, and in various places followed his calling—that of a school teacher. The mystery of Daniel Clarke remained for some years unsolved, but in 1758 a labourer found at Knaresborough some human bones, and it was suspected that they were Clarke's, and were shown to Houseman, who was supposed to have a knowledge of the missing man, and in an unguarded moment said that they were not those ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... steadily, a new race of wild birds establishing itself there, as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and the idle contadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay and death, replacing the lusty Roman labourer, never had that poetic region between Rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunless day of early autumn, under which all that fell within the immense horizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear, penitential ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the peculiarities of each are universal in their respective countries. The Gaucho seems part of his horse, and scorns to exert himself excepting when on its back; the Guaso may be hired to work as a labourer in the fields. The former lives entirely on animal food; the latter almost wholly on vegetable. We do not here see the white boots, the broad drawers, and scarlet chilipa; the picturesque costume of the Pampas. Here, common trousers are protected by black and green worsted ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the labourer's blazing fire, When evening shades invite to rest; Though weary, home does joy inspire, And social love dilates ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... of picking up the fragments that remained. How to live? Survivors have often to make that painful inquiry. There was little money in the house. The painter's life had been hard-working enough; the labourer was willing, but the harvest was very scanty. Such a limited art public! such low prices! The six 'Mariage a la Mode' pictures had been sold for one hundred and twenty guineas, including Carlo Maratti frames that had cost the painter four guineas each. The eight 'Rake's Progress' pictures had ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... mortgaged, by little and little, most of his lands, and nothing now remained to make money of, but the Castle itself and a few acres around it, with the exception only of a cottage and a small field, hitherto occupied by a labourer, which lay in a kind of hollow on the side of the knoll, where the entrance of the secret cavern was. This cottage was as remote from Dymock's Tower in one way, as Shanty's shed was in another; although the three dwellings formed together a sort of equilateral triangle. ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... most eminent writers in Europe have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, for my part, venerate the inventor of indexes; and I know not to whom to yield the preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid open the nerves and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... How the menage goes on—and: how domestic education is regulated—strikes the inexperienced eye of an Englishman as a thing quite inconceivable. The temperature of Paris is no doubt very fine, although it has been of late unprecedentedly hot; and a French workman, or labourer, enjoys, out of doors—from morning till night those meals, which, with us, are usually partaken of within. The public places of entertainment are pretty sure to receive a prodigious proportion of the population of Paris every evening. A mechanic, or artisan, will devote two thirds of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... metayer, who has hope of making a little money over and above what is barely sufficient to support himself and his family, and knows that results will depend largely upon his own sagacity and industry, works with a steady zeal that it would be unreasonable to expect of the hired labourer, who, having his measured wage always in his mind's eye, has no incentive to do more than what ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... devil in her, and it was her family heritage. Her father, a poor cottager and day labourer, had been in his youth one of the most notorious and boldest brawlers in the neighborhood; even now, when prematurely aged and half-broken down by want and hard work, people willingly avoided him ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... function of the school is to initiate a smaller or greater proportion of the population into the ampler world, the more efficient methods, of the reading and writing man. And with the disappearance of the slave and the mere labourer from the modern conception of what is necessary in the state, there has now come about an extension of this initiation to the whole of our English-speaking population. And in addition to reading ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Lieursaint, were equally positive as to Lesurques being the one whose spur wanted mending, and who came back to fetch the sabre which he had forgotten. Lafolie, groom at Mongeron, and la femme Alfroy, also recognised him; and Laurent Charbaut, labourer, who dined in the same room with the four horsemen, recognised Lesurques as the one who had silver spurs fastened by little chains to his top-boots. This combination of testimony, respecting one whom they had seen but a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... superior share of the world's goods; and that society is bound in justice rather to make compensation to the less favoured, for this unmerited inequality of advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary side it is contended, that society receives more from the more efficient labourer; that his services being more useful, society owes him a larger return for them; that a greater share of the joint result is actually his work, and not to allow his claim to it is a kind of robbery; that if he is only to receive as much as others, he can only be justly required to produce as ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... George, who couldn't hunt, and wouldn't dance, and didn't care for mountains, could enquire with some zeal how much wages a peasant might earn, and what he would do with it when earned. It interested him to learn that whereas an English labourer will certainly eat and drink his wages from week to week,—so that he could not be trusted to pay any sum half-yearly,—an Irish peasant, though he be half starving, will save his money for the rent. And ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... his progenitors, to the remotest generations; and a regard to ancestral honours, however contemptible the forms which the appropriation of them often assumes, is a plant rooted in the deepest soil of humanity. The high souled labourer will yield to none in his respect for the dignity of his origin, and Malcolm had been as proud of the humble descent he supposed his own, as Lord Lossie was of his mighty ancestry. Malcolm had indeed a loftier sense of resulting dignity ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... girl with headaches, a youth with inflamed eyes, and a farm-labourer incapacitated by varicose veins. In each case Coue stated that autosuggestion should bring complete relief. Then it was the turn of a business man who complained of nervousness, lack of self-confidence and ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... with you. We can dig holes, you see. Perhaps we might put somebody in one and cover him up.—Now, you understand. Behave yourself and you shall come to no harm; but play any tricks, and—Look here, my lads; show our new labourer what you have in ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Probably he would make it stringent and uniform. He would treat divorce in some great soul of steel—the divorce of a Julius Caesar or of a Salt Ring Robinson— exactly as he would treat some no-account tramp or labourer who scoots from his wife. Science has views broader and more humane. Just as murder for the scientist is a thirst for absolute destruction, just as theft for the scientist is a hunger for monotonous acquisition, so polygamy for the scientist is an extreme development of the instinct for variety. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... his legal business: his London agents, Messrs. Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick, occupying the ground floor; the junior partner, Mr. Gustavus Blatherwick, the second flat of the house. Scully made no secret of his profession or residence: he was an attorney, and proud of it; he was the grandson of a labourer, and thanked God for it; he had made his fortune by his own honest labour, and why should he ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the elements of knowledge were in keeping with his humble station. Parker Clare, out of his miserable and fluctuating earnings as a day labourer, paid for his child's schooling until he was seven years of age, when he was set to watch sheep and geese on the village heath. Here he made the acquaintance of "Granny Bains," of whom Mr. Martin, quoting, doubtless, from ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... harder in the day time; when, try as we might, we could not count on avoiding for our hiding place the scene of some labourer's toil or perhaps the covert of some child's play. We slept by turns with one always on guard. It was difficult indeed for the guard not to neglect his duty, so utterly weary were we. The lying position we needs must retain all day long aided ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... A Labourer's little son was bitten by a Snake and died of the wound. The father was beside himself with grief, and in his anger against the Snake he caught up an axe and went and stood close to the Snake's hole, and watched for a chance ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... A Bolton labourer who picked up twenty-five one-pound Treasury notes and restored them to the proper owner was rewarded with a shilling. It is only fair to say that the lady also ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... my plantation in 1858, the pay of a labourer was 2 rupees 4 annas (4s. 6d.) a month. It is now, throughout the numerous plantations in Mysore, from six to seven rupees a month, and a labourer can live on about two rupees a month. Such a statement made of any country would indicate a satisfactory degree of progress; ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... on rapidly," they observed, with the assistance he so kindly gave May. She received him as a relative of the ladies without supposing that had she not been his fellow-labourer he might not have taken so great an interest in the work. Frequently Miss Jane and Miss Mary were present, but sometimes they sent May and Harry by themselves, and only followed when at leisure. Those moments were very ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... 418, is characteristic. Electra has been compelled to marry a Mycenean labourer, a man of noble instincts who respects the princess and treats her as such. Both enter the scene; the man goes to labour for Electra, "for no lazy man by merely having God's name on his lips can make a livelihood without toil". Orestes ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... never questioned this; he knew right well Who had earned it for him; and he lived grateful and obedient, filling up the duties of his humble station. This was his faith, and his works followed it. He believed that God had placed him in his lot, to be a labourer, and till God's earth, and, when his work is done, to be sent on better service in some happier sphere: the where, or the how, did not puzzle him, any more than divers other enigmatical whys and wherefores of his ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... could such people, with few exceptions little above the average of an English farm-labourer, do with independence. Many years were wasted in quarrelling and even fighting among themselves, every leader of a district with a few scattered farms claiming independence, before all were united under one government. There was constant war with natives on ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the wide world, and has been punished with the penalty of extermination. The poor cotter suffered sorely under the famine, and under the pestilence which followed the famine; but he, as a class, has risen from his bed of suffering a better man. He is thriving as a labourer either in his own country or in some newer—for him better—land to which he has emigrated. He, even in Ireland, can now get eight and nine shillings a-week easier and with more constancy than he could get four some fifteen years since. But the other ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... these fields they saw the two white oxen at their toil, and behind them the labourer, a tall man of about fifty years of age, bearded, and having a calm face and eyes that were very deep and quiet. He was clad in a rough robe of camel's hair, fastened about his middle with a leathern girdle, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... expenses on the road; for as the insolence of these knights was vast, so was their rapacity enormous; they had been so long accustomed to have crowns and half-crowns rained upon them by their admirers and flatterers, that they would look at a shilling, for which many an honest labourer was happy to toil for ten hours under a broiling sun, with the utmost contempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it into the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was given them, as would occasionally happen—for how could ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... works would recommend them to the world. Poor creatures! they knew nothing of the world, to suppose so; for merit is the only thing in the world not recommendable. To prevent starving, Architecture hired herself as a brick-layer's {23}labourer to a Chinese temple-builder; Painting took on as a colour-grinder to a paper-stainer; Poetry turned printer's devil; Music sung ballads about the streets: and Astronomy {24}sold almanacks. They rambled about in this manner for some time; at last, they picked ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... expectation of the reward due to a complete discovery; yet, not without hopes that I might be considered as an assistant to some greater genius, and receive from the justice of my country the wages offered to an honest and not unsuccessful labourer in science. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... grace disposing and assisting—I may make compensation to thy church for the unused talents thou hast entrusted to me, for the neglected opportunities which thy loving-kindness had provided. O let me be found a labourer in thy vineyard, though of the late hour, when the Lord and Heir of the vintage, Christ Jesus calleth for his ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... difficult, as in the case of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Symnell, it has been sometimes to identify the living; and shall we now assign personality to bones—bones which may belong to either sex? How know you that this is even the skeleton of a man? But another skeleton was discovered by some labourer! Was not that skeleton averred to be Clarke's full ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... taking off my hat, I departed with my guide. I asked him her name, but he could not tell me. Before she was out of sight, however, we met a labourer of whom John Jones enquired ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the same time, the celebrated Father Kircher published his "Subterranean World," in which he called the alchymists a congregation of knaves and impostors, and their science a delusion. He admitted that he had himself been a diligent labourer in the field, and had only come to this conclusion after mature consideration and repeated fruitless experiments. All the alchymists were in arms immediately, to refute this formidable antagonist. One Solomon de Blauenstein was the first to grapple with him, and attempted to convict ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... drainage; let it also be close, hard, and perfectly smooth; so that it may be cleanly swept out. A capital plan is to mix a few bushels of chalk and dry earth, spread it over the floor, and pay a paviour's labourer a trifle to hammer it level with his rammer. The fowl-house should be seven feet high, and furnished with perches at least two feet apart. The perches must be level, and not one above the other, or unpleasant consequences may ensue to the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... marriage Esther continued to manage the house and the dairy, leaving the cooking to her sister-in-law and the needlework to her mother. Soon after five o'clock on a bright summer morning the labourer going to his work heard the unbarring of Mrs. Sutton's shutters and the withdrawal of bolts. The casement windows and the door were then flung open, and Esther generally came into the doorway and for a few minutes ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Henry; 'the man I mean has more brains than Thompson. He's a man I never heard of before. His name is Conneally. He looks as if he came up from the wilds somewhere. He has hands like an agricultural labourer, and a brogue that I fancy comes from Galway. But he's a man to keep an eye on. He may do something by-and-by if he doesn't go off the lines. We must try and lick him ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... written on the same subject will be found, says M. de Lincy, on folio 44 of the Premier Recueil de toutes les chansons nouvelles (Troyes, Nicholas du Ruau, 1590). It is there called "The facetious and recreative story of a certain labourer of a village near Paris, who, thinking that he was enjoying his servant, lay with his wife." This song was reprinted in various other collections of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... sacrifice or exertion, she acquired such a knowledge of mathematics and calculations, mysterious as these generally seem to the feminine mind, that she was able to formulate with exactness the result of her brother's researches. She never failed to be his willing fellow-labourer in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope, in order to record his observations, during the dark and bitter mid-winter nights, when the very ink was frozen in the bottle. It may be said, without ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... again. We lived in Dorsetshire, not far from the town of Poole. Father was a day labourer; he had never saved a sixpence. His club buried him, and we were left to live as we could, or to go to the workhouse. Mother said that she would never do that, and with God's help she'd try to feed and clothe us. She found ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... twenty-six bishops and the warden of Galway, a dignitary enjoying Catholic jurisdiction. The number of Roman Catholic priests in Ireland exceeds one thousand. The expenses of his peculiar worship are, to a substantial farmer or mechanic, five shillings per annum; to a labourer (where he is not entirely excused) one shilling per annum; this includes the contribution of the whole family, and for this the priest is bound to attend them when sick, and to confess them when they apply to him; he is also to keep his chapel in order, to celebrate ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... are but few, from being able to buy slop clothes, tea, and the other necessaries, at wholesale prices, of the importing merchant. The waste, also, made by the convicts in their meat, &c. is a serious consideration: the head and entrails of animals slaughtered for their use, and which an English labourer would be glad of, are thrown away as only fit for the dogs; nothing but the body and legs are deemed sufficiently good for these dainty characters. Taking all expenses into consideration, I think that from 25l. to 30l. per man may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... ended with the house itself. The sea was breaking on the few yards of beach sheer below the windows. To his right was a walled garden, some lawns and greenhouses; to the left, stables, a garage, and two or three labourer's cottages. At the front door another soldier was stationed doing sentry duty. He stood on one side, however, and allowed ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Besides which, writing is done by innumerable persons in their spare time—Literature is a world of inky-fingered blacklegs. Thus, writing admits neither of the union-fixed minimum wage of the manual labourer, nor of the etiquette-fixed fee of the professional; so that the methods of the trade union are only partially applicable to the ink-horny-handed sons of toil. But even the possible has not yet been achieved, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... that I would not take them away; a request to which, after some time, I assented. They then conducted me into the house, where I found an old man and three women, who entertained me with bread, cheese, and new milk. While I was sitting here, a third youth, in the dress of a labourer, entered, and whispered to one of the sailors, who immediately rose to go out, but I commanded him to sit still, declaring that I was not satisfied, and should certainly arrest him if he attempted to escape. The man sat down sulkily; and ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... yourself! But for you, I should have gone without dinner many a day; but for you, I should most likely have had to chuck painting altogether, and turn clerk or dock-labourer. But let me stay in your debt a little longer, old man. I can't put off my marriage any longer, and just at first I shall want all the money I ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... of labour; and then, how to distribute them. But since in art the labour which we have to employ is the labour of a particular class of men—men who have special genius for the business—we have not only to consider how to apply the labour, but, first of all, how to produce the labourer; and thus the question in this particular case becomes fourfold: first, how to get your man of genius; then, how to employ your man of genius; then, how to accumulate and preserve his work in the greatest quantity; and, lastly, how to distribute his work ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... of earth-fed fire.[4] Giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy, among these hills; was found by Cimabue near his native village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up by his father, "a simple person, a labourer of the earth," to the guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made the streets of Florence ring with joy; attended him to Florence, and became ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... the remembrance of only one vile deed, one treacherous act—an act that has made his name a curse and a byword throughout the ages. The same remark is applicable to Demas. His name is familiar enough, but the story of his life is almost unknown. Paul refers to him more than once as a fellow-labourer, which shows that for a time at least he was an exemplary Christian. But he failed in the hour of trial—failed through being dominated by an inordinate love of the world—and his memory survives, therefore, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all, feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain labourer's family that had lately migrated from Newlands to Sandyfield. But Ormiston's voice broke in upon the inquiries with a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Horns a fellow-labourer in the same hempen walk of life. Crib offers to buy a little Spanish of Horns. "My dear Crib," says Horns, "it is impossible; I can't sell; for I have just received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down to nothing. I am a Christian, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... of about fifty from a neighbouring village, 'not a manager' as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the thrifty head of a household but lived most of his time away from home as a labourer. He was valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work, and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper. But he never settled down anywhere for long because about twice a year, or even ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... proposed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a given subject, and that at the end of an hour's hard study, they found they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain," said the unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, "that you and I need never think of getting our living by writing poetry!" In a year or so after this, he set to work, and poured out quarto upon quarto, as if they had been drops of water. As to the rest, and compared with true and great poets, our Scottish ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... He was exceedingly well-dressed, though he told us he was only a common labourer. He had long given up his "'art" to God, but to little purpose until he came to this chapel. "But there," he said, "down in that corner under the gas-lamp, I prayed for the first time. I prayed that God would take ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to the parliament of Turin to repress these heretical movements. They send out two of their body, who visit the valley of San Martino, and publish an edict threatening all who refuse obedience to its commands. They summoned before them a labourer, and asked him why he had taken his child for baptism to the temple at Angrogna? He replied, "Because baptism was there administered according to the institution of Jesus Christ." The same man, on being ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... faint light of his course pierced into the dwellings of men, it fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling children; on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness; on the hasty uprising of the hard-handed labourer; and on the late sleep of the night-student, who had been questioning the stars or the sages, or his own soul, for that hidden knowledge which would break through the barrier of man's brief life, and show its dark path, that seemed to bend no whither, to be ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... elaborate story (as, that I had been set upon by a tramp who forced me to change clothes: that I dressed thus for a bet: that I was an officer employed as a spy, and was about to cross the frontier into Germany in the guise of a labourer: that my doctor forbade me to shave—or any other such rhodomontade): I saw, I say, that by venturing upon any such excuses I might unwittingly offend some other unknown canon of theirs deeper and more sacred than their rule on clothes; it ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and women, there is nothing that we require more than to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his, years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul; and yet, here ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... normal Londoner from the effects of insanitary cottages, bad water, and starvation food—these figures and types had been a ghastly and quickening revelation to Marcella. In London the agricultural labourer, of whom she had heard much, had been to her as a pawn in the game of discussion. Here he was in the flesh; and she was called upon to live with him, and not only to talk about him. Under circumstances of peculiar responsibility ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see that it fitted their psychology to a fraction. These people are more ignorant than our worst educated agricultural labourers. They own and live on huge tracts of land, in most cases as large as a great English estate. Their method of living is many stages below that of our landless farm labourer. Their ignorance is colossal, their cupidity and cunning the envy of the Armenians, who openly confess that in a bargain the Russian peasant beats the Jew to a frazzle. The order of the Soviet Government to the peasants to take possession ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... and crew of the ship, were duly elected members of council; the other four being William Fell, once a solicitor's clerk; Henry Burgess, lately a colliery agent; John Monroe, formerly a builder; and Samuel Hilary, late agricultural labourer. These four last, as may be readily understood, owed their election not so much to their superior qualifications as to the fact that they were red-hot Socialists, full of plans to enable everybody to enjoy a maximum amount of comfort at the cost of a minimum of labour; and they proved the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... thee to make a sacrifice to him in return, he will compel thee to make it, doubt it not. But meanwhile abide in the calling wherein thou art called. Do the duty which lies nearest thee. Whether thou art squire or labourer, rich or poor; whether thy duty is to see after thy children, or to mind thy shop, do thy duty. For that is thy vocation and calling; that is the ministry in which thou canst serve God, by serving thy fellow-creatures ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... ears and I saw myself stripped of everything. How was it? I forget now! A concession repudiated, a bank failure, a big slump—what does it matter? The money was gone, and I was simply myself again, Scarlett Trent, a labourer, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prince always disguises himself when danger becomes very great. So Alfred disguised himself as a farm labourer, and went to live with a farmer, who used to make him feed the beasts and help about the farm, and had no idea that this labourer ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a labourer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper understanding of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the mildest and most irresolute of minds and the weakest of physical frames are often seen to resist "Death" longer than the powerful will of the high-spirited and obstinately-egotistic man, and the iron frame of the labourer, the warrior and the athlete. In reality, however, the key to the secret of these apparently contradictory phenomena is the true conception of the very thing we have already said. If the physical development ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various |
