"Coolie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you something that happened once—down in Indo-China," whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Once when you were away," she confided breathlessly, "I pulled a half-drowned coolie out of a canal." ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... an end of me at once or leave me to rot here, my answer will always be the same. I will not become a dishonorable tool. You have offered me freedom and jewels. No; I repeat, I will free all slaves, abolish the harems, the buying and selling of flesh; I will make a man of every poor devil of a coolie who carries stones from ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... taking soundings in the still waters of unexplored lakes. The cases could be used as tanks for photographic work. In case of emergency they might serve even as water-casks for carrying water in regions where it was not to be found. Each of these boxes, packed, was exactly a coolie load, or else in sets of two they could be slung over a pack-saddle by ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... den, knocked briskly on the door. The Chinese proprietor evidently suspected the purpose of his visit, however, for he was unable to gain admittance. So that night, wearing the huge straw sun-hat and flapping garments of blue cotton of a coolie, he tried again. This time in response to his knock the heavy door swung open. Within all was black and silent as the tomb. The lintel was low and Jennings was compelled to stoop in order to enter. As he cautiously set foot across ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the man couldn't have ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... clear to a supersensitive degree—too clear and active to allow of sleep—and soon came the time when he longed with a great yearning for the sleep that would not come. It seemed cruel and unfair that any beggar, any coolie in the fields, any convict could have this sleep that was denied him. How he tried to fix his mind on quiet scenes with the sound of falling water, or the sound of falling breakers fringing the rocks of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn! ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... household. "What rudeness! How inconsiderate your way of acting! You behave in very bad taste; with the roughness of an ashigaru (foot soldier). The Yamadaya does not entertain such miserable scamps. The Tayu is ill. This Kayo says it. Get you hence—to some coolie house. Return the day before yesterday."[33] Kibei gave a yell—"Yai! You old bitch! The whole affair is plain to Kibei. Out of money, his presence is no longer desired. Ah! Kibei will have vengeance." Without arms, before the sullen determination ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... bright with whitewash. Outside the compound lay the lines of the "Zouaves," some forty negroes whom Goree has supplied to the Gaboon; they were accompanied by a number of intelligent mechanics, who loudly complained of having been kidnapped, coolie-fashion. We then debouched upon Fort Aumale; from the anchorage it appears a whitewashed square, whose feet are dipped in bright green vegetation, and its head wears a dingy brown roof-thatch. A nearer view shows a pair of semi-detached houses, built upon arches, and separated ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... object very much," Mrs. Orban said with a laugh; "you would look like a coolie. But let us ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... all others on this earth - must be content with the money of the enslaved East Indian coolie; must be content with the money of the decaying Chinaman; must be content with the money of the half savage republics to ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... he called the passengers' "traps," and something else to every man of the busy crew, who, in consequence of a hint given by Captain Banes to his first officer, carefully took everything on board themselves, without invoking any of the black or coolie labour to be ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... yet?" Victor enquired in simulated surprise. "Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left us ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... am of opinion that the suppression of his export slave trade to the Americas was a grave mistake. It has been fraught with untold suffering to the African, which would have been avoided by altering the slave trade into a coolie system. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... heard a murmuring of tongues Sound through the ceiling of the hollow earth, As if the anti-coolie ques——ha! friends, Well met. You see I keep my ancient word: Where two or three are gathered in my name, There am ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... next Sewing Circle afternoon when Sylvia Gray came and sat down beside her. The Old Lady's hands trembled a little, and one side of a handkerchief, which was afterwards given as a Christmas present to a little olive-skinned coolie in Trinidad, was not quite so exquisitely done as ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Parsee merchants with large stakes in the State and well-appointed residences, people whose very religion exacted the most scrupulous cleanliness and who had all proved themselves obedient and law-abiding. These were classed under one rubric with the vastly inferior coolie labourer, with Kaffirs and Hottentots, and actually compelled to abandon their stores and residences to reside in one common ghetto upon the outskirts of the towns, a measure which entailed great losses apart from the gratuitous humiliation—to ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... meant to take his time this evening. It was nearly five miles to Burton's plantation at Halaliko, and half an hour would finish his business there. He knew that, as soon as he left, Marie would tell the native servant to go to her bed in the coolie lines, and then she would herself retire; and when he returned he would find her lying asleep ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... A coolie made a lunge at her. With closed fist Page Hanaford struck him full in the face; the other arm shielded Zura. Another man spat at her, and met the fate of his brother from Page's well-directed blow. There is nothing so savage as a Japanese mob when roused to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... description to make the purpose plain. The whole process of intoxication by opium was before me, from the heating of the metal pipe to the final stupor that is the gift and end of the Black Smoke. Here, was a coolie mixing the drug; there, just beyond him, was another, drawing whiffs from the bubbling narcotic through the bamboo handle of his pipe; there, still beyond, was another, lying back unconscious, half-clad, repulsive, a very sorry reality indeed to the gorgeous dreams that are reputed to follow ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... involved in the substitution of the locomotive for the coolie as a motive power, the freight car for the wheelbarrow in the shipment of produce, and the passenger coach for the cart and the mule-litter in the transportation of people. Railways will inevitably inaugurate in China a new era, and ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... on to Dannhauser, which consists of a railway station, two farms, a store, a couple of coolie stores, a mine, and a few huts. We approached with magazines charged and expected to see a Boer every minute, but found that they were not expected to come down as far as that till next day. I then made my way slowly back by the main road, and reached camp about 5 ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... defended too, from the injustice and cruelty of the class he calls 'poor white trash;' but the protection should be in reason, or it becomes an injustice. Why, for instance, did the unwise negrophile propose to protect the Jamaica negro against the Indian coolie? Because Niger wants it? Pure ignorance and prejudice of gentlemen who stay at home! Though physically and mentally weaker than Europeans, the negro can hold his own, as Sa Leone proves, by that combination which enables cattle to resist lions. Japhet Albus ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... seems to have been a great amusement to the Sherwoods. Late one evening he quietly observed, "The coolie does not come with my money: I was thinking this morning how rich I should be, and now I should not wonder in the least if he has run off and taken my treasure with him." Thereupon it turned out that, not having ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the question. But this desire of yours to scent Japanese intrigues everywhere, to figure out all politics by the Japanese common denominator, and to see a Japanese spy in every coolie is becoming a positive mania. No, I can't agree with you there," added Webster, who seemed to regret the passionate outburst into which his temperament ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... fool of a coolie did. Jumps up as soon as he was brought into court, and whines and scratches at the dock rails and barks, and goes on tremenjus, trying ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... drink a cup of cocoa or eat some morsels of chocolate, that our liking for these delicacies has set minds and bodies at work all the world over! Many types of humanity have contributed to their production. Picture in the mind's eye the graceful coolie in the sun-saturated tropics, moving in the shade, cutting the pods from the cacao tree; the deep-chested sailor helping to load from lighters or surf-boats the precious bags of cacao into the hold of the ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... the deserted colonnade and walked quickly down Paradise Street, which was still awake and would be awake for hours. Once clear of the lessening crowd and on to the wharf, he ran again; past the business houses, past the long quarter where the Coringyhis and coolie-folk lived, and, lastly, with a slow, lurking step, to the close vicinity of a house standing alone upon high supports. He skirted round it, but to all appearances it was closed and empty, and he sat down behind a clump of rough elephant-grass and tucked ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... upon certain "glittering generalities," as, that "eggs was eggs," and that the return of them on the fowl's part, in consideration of an advance of corn, was not altogether a voluntary barter,—quite, in short, after the pattern of Coolie apprenticeship. And thus the high moral lesson of the morning was sadly shaken. Of course this boy did not belong to any of the model mammas, for whom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... necessarily explain their walking in company through the early dusk of a December evening in Bentinck Street. It seems desirable to supply a reason why anyone should be walking there, to begin with, anyone, at all events, not a Chinaman, or a coolie, a dealer in second-hand furniture, or an able-bodied seaman luxuriously fingering wages in both trouser pockets, and describing an erratic line of doubtful temper toward the nearest glass of country spirits. Or, to be quite comprehensive, a draggled person with a Bulgarian, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... torrid state of the weather, can the Oriental craftsmanship lately introduced here be properly termed Coolie labor? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... lines of shipping, and landing as a stranger at Port Louis, perhaps the first thing to engage attention is the strange mixture of nations—representatives, he might at first be inclined to imagine, of half the countries of the earth. He stares at a Coolie from Madras with a breech-cloth and soldier's jacket, or a stately, bearded Moor, striking a bargain with a Parsee merchant; a Chinaman, with two bundles slung on a bamboo, hurries past, jostling a group of young Creole exquisites smoking their cheroots at a corner, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... followed out of the lock, Cochrane was helping Jones set up the device that had been prepared for this test. It was really two devices. One was a very flat cone, much like a coolie-hat and hardly larger, with a sort of power-pack of coils and batteries attached. The other was a space-ship's distress-signal rocket, designed to make a twenty-mile streak of red flame in emptiness. Nobody had yet figured out what good a distress ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... restaurant for supper. This was a fish restaurant, and we cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumerable. Instead of bringing you in a bill of fare to order from, the coolie brings a big tray with samples of everything on it, and you help yourself. One thing was abalones on the half shell, these being babies, about like our clams, but not so tough, to say nothing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't try the fried devil fish and other luxuries, ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... to be in these monuments of past events than the corresponding class of English labourers would have been. But on arrival we found there was no question of intelligent historical interest. The fact was that a poor coolie—who had just climbed up the Memorial Tower by the inner staircase—had fallen out of one of the windows described, and was lying on the marble floor below, at the far side from us, crushed and dying. We were told that an Englishman had, fortunately, been present, and had driven off at ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... a coolie, expanding in the warmth. He has opened his ragged upper garments and his bronze body is naked to the belt. He is examining it minutely, occasionally picking at something with the dainty hand of the Orient. If he had ever seen a zoological garden I should say he was ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... point onwards, seemed to imagine that he was talking at a coolie; coolie intercourse cultivates the faculty of expression wonderfully, and Reginald Hampton's host entertained that amused aeronaut for fully ten minutes with a wealth of epithet—very old in bottle, and of a fine tawny flavour. Hampton took advantage of ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of tender and beatable years was Ah Kim. His was the store of Ah Kim Company, and his was the achievement of building it up through the long years from the shoestring of savings of a contract coolie labourer to a bank account in four figures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century of summers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing, fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his full front ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... You've got a tan that would be the envy of an African explorer; and you are building up a muscle, too; you are almost as good a man in the field as a Chinese coolie—really better than a Mexican." ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby |
