"Drudgery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Constitution in moderately pursuing them, but in most or all of them find considerable Profit and Advantage, when you can spare leisure Hours from your Devotions, or to unbend your Cares after the tiresome Drudgery of weighty Temporal Matters; Not that I think it is proper so eagerly to pursue them, as if you made them rather a Business than a Recreation; for though in themselves they are harmless, yet a continual or insatiate Prosecution of any Thing, not ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... widows of their own class as concubines, and the spurious offspring of such connections are called Jausis. These, having betaken themselves to agriculture and commerce, have become exceedingly numerous, and are reduced to perform every kind of drudgery. Among the poor people whom I observed coming to the markets in the Gorakhpur district, loaded with goods even from the distant hills of Malebum, at least a half stated themselves to be of this class. These, although of illegitimate ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... the ladies of China may be induced to continue the custom of maiming their female infants, in order that their children may be distinguished from those of the peasantry, who, in most of the provinces, are condemned to submit to the drudgery of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... sole reward and profit to be reaped from such arduous toil. The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but instruments of the drudgery and slavery of the many. The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health or for change ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the race, carried as a prize the situation of sick-nurse beside the delicate patient; that Peg Thomson was permitted the privilege of recommending her good-daughter, Bet Jamieson, to be wet-nurse; and an oe, or grandchild, of Luckie Jaup was hired to assist in the increased drudgery of the family; the Doctor thus, like a practised minister, dividing among his trusty adherents such good things as ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... an amanuensis. "Salary," said "Anon," who seemed to be a humourist, "salary large but uncertain." He added with equal candour: "Drudgery great, but to an intelligent man the pickings may be considerable." Pickings! Is there a finer word in the language? T. Sandys had felt that he was particularly good at pickings. But amanuensis? The thing was unknown to him; no one on the farm could tell him what it was. But ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... happy, for it has been my fortune so far to conjure up only pleasure through day-dreaming—the things I like and long for become my very own then. But if you mean, as I suspect, that I do not enjoy the dirt and drudgery of life, then my plea will have to be guilty. I, of course, grant their necessity, yet apparently there are plenty who find them well worth while, and there should be other work for those who aspire. Back of what you term practical ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... talisman, which he now considered lost. The only course left him was to return to the garden from whence he had come, to rent it of the landlord and continue to cultivate it by himself, deploring his misery and misfortunes. He hired a boy to assist him to do some part of the drudgery: that he might not lose the other half of the treasure which came to him by the death of the gardener, who died without heirs, he put the gold-dust into fifty other jars, which he filled up with olives, to be ready ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... a wife, and she must find some one who would depend upon her, look up to her, obey her, who would, incidentally, take some of the tiresome and monotonous drudgery off her shoulders. The moment she saw Maggie she was resolved; here was just the creature, a mouse of a girl, no parents, no money, no appearance, nothing to make her proud or above herself, some one to be moulded and trained in the way she should ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... courts of all kinds and assisting as junior counsel in trying cases and all the drudgery of a lawyer's life. One end of my labor has been happily attained, for about three weeks ago I arrived at the age of twenty-one, and last week I mustered courage to stand an examination of my qualifications for an attorney, and the result (unlike that of some ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... standard, could not be called in question. I mentioned several particulars, wherein I showed that I had no authority in the station I was in, and that others acted as General who had not any call, but used his Royal Highness's name. That in the drudgery, I was employed, but anything of moment was done without my participation. That, in short, I had ventured my all—life, fortune, family—every thing, my honour; which last I had some to lose, but none to gain, in the way things were managed, and therefore ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... until I was ruined. You can describe the havoc made by drought, and frost, and cutting sand. Then there's the other side of the matter; the hardships a woman must bear on the plains when money's scarce. The loneliness, the monotonous drudgery, the heat, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... the United States and in several of the appellate courts of the larger States each judge is provided with a clerk at public expense. While this is a means of relief from much which is in the nature of drudgery, it sometimes leads to a deterioration in the quality of the judicial opinions. A dictated opinion is apt to be unnecessarily long, and when a clerk is set to looking up authorities, although he can hardly be ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... become fashionable to inveigh against the necessary labour of learning by heart the essential principles of grammar, as a useless and intolerable drudgery. And this notion, with the vain hope of effecting the same purpose in an easier way, is giving countenance to modes of teaching well calculated to make superficial scholars. When those principles are properly defined, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... clergy of New France did not form a privileged order, living on the fruits of other men's labour. On the contrary, they gave the colony far more than they took from it. Although paid a mere pittance, they never complained of the great physical drudgery that their work too often required. Indeed, if labourers were ever worthy of their hire, such toilers were the spiritual pioneers of France beyond the seas. No one who does not approach their aims and achievements with sympathy can ever fully understand ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... had shared Dion Leith, or rather who, not knowing it doubtless, had shared Dion Leith with her. And she wondered whether Rosamund, in her Sisterhood, was happier than she was in the world. In the Sisterhood there must surely be peace—monotony, drudgery, perhaps, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... has become strong. One of the examples usually given to our children, to teach them to admire strength of will, is that of Vittorio Alfieri, who began to educate himself late in life, overcoming the drudgery of the rudiments by a great effort. He, who had hitherto been a man of the world, set to work to study the Latin grammar, and persevered until he became a man of letters, and, in virtue of his ardent ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district, or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to the public.—For the first six months they do it with good grace; their zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against "brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by her summer's work in the stock company earned immunity from drudgery, she had earned no more than that. With the exception of this one gown, she dressed almost as simply as in the old days. She confined her wardrobe to one or two serviceable one-piece dresses, a coat suit and a quantity of dainty white silk blouses and lingerie. ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... whole ruling class, with its clouds of retainers, turned out either an increasing flood of praise of these conditions, or masses of misinforming matter which tended to reconcile or blind the victim to his pitiful drudgery. The masters of industry, who reaped fabulous riches from such a system, were covered with slavish adulation, and were represented in flowery, grandiloquent phrases as indispensable men, without whom the industrial system of the country could not be carried on. Nay, even more: while being plundered ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... years he worked hard and steadily on the Gazette. Much of the work was simple drudgery. He shirked nothing. The editor-in-chief was a somewhat grim man, who believed in snubbing his subordinates, and who, though he recognized the talents of the "clever pup," as he called him, and allowed him ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... result might follow is evident from our ordinary observation of young children. To the boy interested in a game of ball, the request to come and join his sister in playing housekeeping would, more than likely, be positive drudgery. May it not follow therefore, that a trade or guessing game given by the kindergarten director will fail to call forth the free activity of the child? One of the arguments of the advocates of the Montessori Method in favour of that system is, that the specially prepared apparatus of ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... understanding with plain, household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. "But I cannot submit to drudgery like this: I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well: be above it then; only do not repine that you ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Waterloo actually makes a private enjoy pipeclaying his trousers, or that the 'health of humanity' softens the momentary phraseology of a physician called out of bed at two o'clock in the morning. But although no ideal obliterates the ugly drudgery and detail of any calling, that ideal does, in the case of the soldier or the doctor, exist definitely in the background and makes that drudgery worth while as a whole. It is a serious calamity that no such ideal exists in the case of the vast number of honourable trades and crafts on which ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... blindness, that the great things were the easiest to do, but now I see that drudgery is an inseparable part of everything worth while, and the more worth while it is, the more drudgery ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... sometimes I just let him talk till he has got a page or section into shape. Even in this handling of finance, you feel the flame that makes life with him so exciting. It is absurd to say, as his enemies do, that he has no steadiness of purpose. I have seen him go through the most tremendous drudgery the last few weeks,—and then throw it all into shape with the most astonishing ease and rapidity. And he is delightful to work with. He weighs all I say. But no false politeness! If he doesn't like it, he frowns and bites his lip, and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... obligation was amply recompensed, by the gain he had made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as I was out of all fear of being ill-treated ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... sums which they obtained from the sale of their half-pay, almost expended in the transportation of their little families, before arriving on the lands assigned them by government—unfitted, from their former pursuits, to bear the drudgery their new course of life required, it was frequently the case, that before they could raise anything from their lands, they became perfectly destitute of the necessaries of subsistence. Too proud to seek assistance, they would starve rather than communicate ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... painful lack of strength is the result of long-continued demand or strain; one is exhausted when the strain has been so severe and continuous as utterly to consume the strength, so that further exertion is for the time impossible. One is fagged by drudgery; he is jaded by incessant repetition of the same act until it becomes increasingly difficult or well-nigh impossible; as, a horse is jaded by a long ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... well-connected young Englishmen, and others like them from Canadian cities. They naturally look for some grace of culture or refinement in the woman they would marry, and there are few women of the station they once belonged to who could face the loneliness and unassisted drudgery that must be borne by the small wheat-grower's wife. There were also reasons why this question had been troubling Hawtrey in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... it's not fair to shut me out from all the excitement and fun after I did all the drudgery. Think how I used to struggle here ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... old failure, the old ill luck, the old unrewarded drudgery,—no, you sha'n't go back to them. You shall be true to the illusion—we shall be true to it—I will help you in it, strengthen you in it! I needed only to see the old Murray Davenport appear in you one moment. Hereafter you shall be Francis Turl, the happy and fortunate! But ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... course. But when the hours grew longer, and he was forced to rise before daylight to milk the cows and feed the horses, and was not allowed to retire until the same services had been performed late at night, with hours of drudgery in the field, during the intervening time, he had rebelled, only to be soundly beaten by his uncle, and told to return to his work under the penalty of being beaten till ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... could nor would do anything of the sort. With their heads as full of the Anticipations of Mr H. G. Wells as the heads of our actual rulers were empty even of the anticipations of Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, they refused the drudgery of politics, and would have made a very poor job of it if they had changed their minds. Not that they would have been allowed to meddle anyhow, as only through the accident of being a hereditary peer can anyone in these days ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... made her the idol of half of France. And she had made a game of their poverty in the wee white cottage with the roses—until her child was born and poverty could no longer be played at. Then work became drudgery, and love naught. The woman went back to her theater—and another man, a man who had gold a-plenty. And the child grew up playing alone ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... find real because they make thee brave. And the pain and the drudgery and the hot tears shall be the easier to bear for this knowledge, which should be strong within thee as ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... gets out a Greek book and translates to me. Sometimes I listen to the sea, instead of to him, and go to sleep. But he doesn't mind. He is looking better, but work is loading up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar—he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life is ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... horses, make saddles, &c. &c. The duties of the women, are to skin the game when brought home and prepare the skins for market, to cook, to make the camp, cut and carry wood, make moccasins, plant and gather the corn, beans and pumpkins, and do all the drudgery connected with the domestic affairs. It is the commonly received opinion among the whites that the female Indians are the slaves of their husbands. This is not literally true. The men seldom make their wives feel their authority: as a general rule among the Sauks and Foxes, they live happily together. ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the great art of intrinsically beautiful colour form of Giorgione and Titian. These two schools were bound to be, each in its degree, idealistic. Complete power of mere representation in tint and colour having been obtained through the realistic drudgery of the early Renaissance, selection in the objects thus to be represented had naturally arisen; and the study of the antique had further hastened and directed this movement of art no longer to study but to achieve, to be decorative once more, decorative no longer in subservience to architecture, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... three thousand words which are spelled in more or less irregular ways. The best that can be done with these words is to classify them as much as possible and suggest methods of association which will aid the memory. But after all, the drudgery of memorizing must ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... nursery-gardens, at ordinary farm-work. On some of the canals they manage the boats, open the locks, drive the horses, and sometimes even draw the boats with the line across their shoulders. In short, wherever the lowest and dirtiest drudgery is to be done, there they are almost invariably to be found. For wages, they sometimes get tenpence a day, sometimes only sixpence. If they perform overwork, they get a penny an hour,—a penny for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... think this worth their pains; since all Men are not born to be Ambassadors: And, accordingly, we are told of a very Eminent Antiquary who has thought fit to give his Labours in this kind the Title of Aurum, ex Stercore. There's a deal of Servile Drudgery requir'd to the Discovery of these riches, and such as every Body will not stoop to: for few Statesmen and Courtiers (as one is lately said to have observ'd in his own Case) care for travelling in Ireland, or Wales, purely to ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... discordance are apt to come to a signal defeat when Love takes the field. But now there seemed to be no question of wooing; Love was not on hand, where his power was wanted; the friends were all scattered one from another—Lois going to the drudgery of teaching rough boys and girls, she herself to the seclusion of some quiet seaside retreat, and Mr. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... mill, but having employed his spare time in writing, he established a sufficient reputation to be able to devote the rest of his life to the pursuit of his art. He did not, however, form a high conception of his responsibility. The drudgery of manual labour and the hardships under which he had begun his literary career were unfavourable to the finer susceptibilities of an enthusiastic nature. So long as the spectators applauded he was satisfied. He was a prolific writer; 130 plays are attributed to him, but their genuineness was ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... had no bright side. It was a youth of license, an age of drudgery. Despite an organization which, while it perhaps made them less sensible of pain, certainly made them less susceptible of passion, than the higher races of men, the Hurons were notoriously dissolute, far exceeding in this respect the wandering and starving Algonquins. [ 1 ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... to work in the kitchen and go to market from time to time, performing this menial drudgery under the personal inspection of the warrior who governed the garrison and fortress, but who in vain attempted to make Maria van Reigersbergen tremble at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all ages have been comparatively rich. They have made or inherited money. Without money they could not have accomplished what they did. The man engaged in physical drudgery is not likely to have the same high ideals as the man that can command ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... a huge, methodical woman, seasoned to the drudgery of a farm wife. Quite methodically she'd arise every morning at 4:00 A.M. with her husband and each would do their respective chores until long after the sun had set on their ...
— The Shining Cow • Alex James
... taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,—indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the only place I can fancy where housekeeping becomes an enthralling occupation. All drudgery disappears in a rosy glow of unexpected, unique, and stimulating conditions. I would rather superintend Miss Grieve, and cause the light of amazement to gleam ten times daily in her humid eye, than lead a cotillion with Willie Beresford. I would rather do the marketing for our humble ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the last use—of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... Average Jones had evolved from experience. A professed student of life, he maintained, must keep in touch with life at every feasible angle. No experience should come amiss to a detective; he should be a pundit of all knowledge. A detective he now frankly considered himself; and the real drudgery of his unique profession of Ad-Visor was supportable only because of the compensating thrill of the occasional chase, the radiance of the Adventure of Life glinting from time to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Cedric hastened not to reply; "the sounds of my native language are sweet to mine ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues of the wretched and degraded serfs on whom the proud Normans impose the meanest drudgery of this dwelling. Thou art a Saxon, father—a Saxon, and, save as thou art a servant of God, a freeman.—Thine accents are sweet ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... The insipidity, the drudgery of it, would kill me. I should lose sight of the fact that I was my own mistress in such genteel slavery. Besides, as a concert singer (and I can sing), I should earn as much in one night, probably, as I should otherwise ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... to do? If she was to marry at all in the army—and how could she marry anywhere else?—she must soon make up her mind. Her experience now stood her in good stead. Had she not seen these very first-class cadet officers only three years before as mere despised "beasts," doing all kinds of drudgery for their oppressors? Had she not seen her fiance, Saunders, himself, a short twelvemonth ago, with nose intact, slinking like a pariah about the post? She had learned the lesson which the younger ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... carried the dishes to and fro, but her face remained blankly expressionless as before. Margot smiled at her radiantly every time that they met, and mentally decided to bequeath to her half her own wardrobe before leaving the Glen. In comparison with such a lot of drudgery, her own life seemed inexcusably idle and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... time (1591) Shakespeare had been in London only from four to five years, and, judging from the prominence in his profession which he shortly afterwards attained, we may be assured that these were years of patient drudgery in his calling. Neither in his Stratford years, nor during these inceptive theatrical years, would he be likely to have had much, if any, previous experience with the social life of the nobility; ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... on our way home; but she knows but little of the rules and grammar. I think you will do very well together; for her fluency will tempt you on to talk, and your perseverance will keep her up to the exercises and conjugations, which are sad drudgery, but very needful if you are ever really to know anything of the language. You are persevering, are ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... time in a man's life at which he comes to himself, and some men never come to themselves at all. It is a change reserved for the thoroughly sane and healthy, and for those who can detach themselves from tasks and drudgery long and often enough to get, at any rate once and again, view of the proportions of life and of the stage and plot of its action. We speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who "have ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in the telling. Hetty did not go forth to encounter drudgery, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... her, if I had not already seen you. But don't worry about that. There is no child; there is nothing between us and a million, and you have only to appoint the day which will make me the happiest of men, and free you from a drudgery, which just to think of sets my teeth on edge. Will you name the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... all sullen in their manner, and walked with heavy gait and downcast countenances, looking very much as if they considered they had sold themselves when striking such a heavy bargain with us, for they evidently saw nothing before them but drudgery and a continuance of past hardships. The nature of the track increased the general gloom; it lay through fields of jowari (holcus) across the plain of Unyanyembe. In the shadow of night, the stalks, awkwardly lying across the path, tripped up the traveller at every ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... written story of a girl of twelve, who, when the mystery of her birth is solved, like Cinderella, passes from drudgery to better circumstances. There is nothing strained or unnatural at any point. All descriptions or portrayals of character are life-like, and the book has an indescribable appealing quality which wins ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... rounds and table legs, to prove that no dust was left. I could not wait to put my dress in order before running out into the street to see how my windows shone. Every workman who carries a dinner pail has these moments of keen delight in the product of his drudgery. Men of genius, likewise, in their hours of relaxation from their loftier tasks, prove this universal rule. I know a man who fills a chair at a great university. I have seen him hold a roomful of otherwise restless youths spellbound for an hour, while he discoursed about the respective ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... position relieved him of a great deal of the drudgery he had previously performed, but it kept him on the continual spring, and burdened him with fresh responsibilities; for it was necessary that he should be all over the ship at once, so to speak. All the details of the daily life on board passed under his supervision; all the multitudinous ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... the patience nor steadiness needful to keep her at the piano; and she much preferred to settle herself comfortably in front of the fire, and listen to her cousin's performances, rather than go through the drudgery of scales and exercises, upon which Charlie insisted, as the orthodox preparation for later work. Accordingly, Allie's music usually ended in a playful skirmish which sent Charlie back to the piano, ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... the mill, and had been kept up to the knowledge of its events, and he well knew that Leonard was heartily sick of it. That the occupation was uncongenial and tedious in the extreme to a boy of good ability and superior education—nay, that the drudgery was made unnecessarily oppressive, was not the point he complained of, though it was more trying than he had expected, that was the bed that he had made, and that he must lie upon. It was the suspicion of frauds and tricks of the trade, and, still worse, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... former, and on the 12th of October I dispatched Brigadier-General A. McD. McCook to command the latter, which had been moved forward to Nolin Creek, fifty-two miles out of Louisville, toward Bowling Green. Staff-officers began to arrive to relieve us of the constant drudgery which, up to that time, had been forced on General Anderson and myself; and these were all good men. Colonel Thomas Swords, quartermaster, arrived on the 13th; Paymaster Larned on the 14th; and Lieutenant Smyzer, Fifth Artillery, acting ordnance-officer, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... invasion upon the settlement a few months since, and stole away all the young and fair muchachas, leaving them but a few old squaws. These poor withered creatures, who are seldom seen far from the encampment, do all the drudgery. Their entire wardrobe consists of a fringe about two feet in length, which is formed of the branch or root—I cannot ascertain exactly which—of a peculiar species of shrub shredded into threads. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... an infinite pity for the dependent and submerged life of the generality of women. Man could ask woman to mate, but women were denied this privilege, and, even when mated, oftentimes a life of never ending drudgery followed. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... their names as evidence of their Jewish origin, but they are actually spoken of as "praedictus Judens." Their transactions, however, are purely financial, and do not lead us to suppose that the Jews, in order to make tin, condescended, in the time of King John or at any other time, to the drudgery of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... members do not now work very hard, as will appear from these hours; but they are steadily industrious; and as most of them superintend some department, and all of them work cheerfully, the necessary amount of labor is accomplished. Mere drudgery they nowadays ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... was removed to Philadelphia. He was again a resident at Mount Vernon, after the death of his wife, and was present when the master of the mansion died. Mr. Lear relieved Washington of much of the drudgery of the pen, and also took charge of the instruction of his adopted children, Master and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her children to take a still more responsible position ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... annoyance against the correctors for the blunders they let pass. The idea that so magnificent a person as an editor or author should correct proofs had not arisen. It was the business of the young men who had been hired to do this drudgery; and all blame rested with them. So far as the evidence goes, it was the same all through Erasmus' life. In the case of one of his most virulent apologies (1520) he says that he corrected all the proofs himself; but from the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... untiring whirl and tangle of court life and gaiety Rallywood lived and moved with a growing enjoyment that half surprised himself, and for which he accounted on the score of change from the dull drudgery of the frontier. His acceptance by the Guard had been thorough; even the colonel-in-chief, Count Sagan, whose strongest point was not courtesy, had given him a pronounced recognition. The pretty Countess demanded ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a tree. Now, I have a certain liking for donkeys, principally, I believe, because of the delightful things that Sterne has written of them. But this was not after the pattern of the ass at Lyons. He was of a white colour, that seemed to fit him rather for rare festal occasions than for constant drudgery. Besides, he was very small, and of the daintiest proportions you can imagine in a donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to look at him to see he had never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greatly to the income of the parental household. It is said that even at a very early age, his quick perception and his acute nervous organisation enabled him to produce much finer work than others of far greater experience in the same trade, whose obtuseness had kept them in a state of comparative drudgery all ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... burden of labor, examining and cross-examining men for hours upon a single point of essential fact—quick to detect fraud and intolerant of humbug,— but infinitely patient with those who were merely dull, evading no drudgery, and, above all, never evading the dear pains ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... position with undisguised satisfaction. But now that she had become a governess he was not at all inclined to relax his exertions in her behalf. She was of too much importance, he said, to waste her life and injure her health in constant drudgery, and so he determined that she should not suffer for want of recreation. In Naples there need never be any lack of that. The city itself, with its noisy, laughing, jovial population, seems to the English eye as though it was keeping one perpetual ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... morale. When they reflected, they realized it. And it had been a wicked thing to face—the prospect that they might quit! With Latisan of the Latisans present with them, pursuing an honest vengeance, there were lift and sweep and swing which made their toil an adventure rather than plain drudgery. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... stood firm and spoke on; he then tried to gag him, but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no one answered him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put to it to have his drudgery done, when the Priests must leave their pulpits to turn informers against poor prisoners." The Justice obtained a list of the names of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and, taking it for granted that all were still present, issued warrants for the collection of fines by levies upon ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... pictures I've seen since I've been here discourages me. I used to think I was quite an artist, but I see now that if I ever do anything really worth while, I'll have to begin all over again and go into a drudgery drawing class." ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery and broken hopes. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... fortify'd no less Than all the island, with four seas; Exacts the tribute of her dower, in ready insolence and power; 600 And makes him pass away to have And hold, to her, himself, her slave, More wretched than an ancient villain, Condemn'd to drudgery and tilling; While all he does upon the by, 605 She is not bound to justify, Nor at her proper cost and charge Maintain the feats he does at large. Such hideous sots were those obedient Old vassals ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... attraction, that he conceived the idea of working out in a separate production, the detached epoch rendered so remarkable by the rebellion of Pugatcheff. Finding that he had already performed the most serious portion of the drudgery of collecting materials for his principal historical enterprise, he drew, with a wonderfully rapid and lively pencil, the vigorous sketch of the events of that extraordinary conspiracy, and has left us a work which, whatever be its imperfections and slightness, viewed as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to say. If I'm not a good talker, I'm at least an excellent listener, and that was all my new friend wanted. And so he went on talking, quite indifferent as to any answers of mine; and, as I always prefer the ease of listening to the drudgery of talking, we were both ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... making, for the laboring poor. You can't know this, or else I'd tell you, Miss Brooke, what you would be doing! You would be working heart and soul to lighten his burdens and relieve him of the incessant drudgery that interferes with his higher work, instead of sitting here day after day reading yellow-backed novels in ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... alchemy of art the representation of that which is without interest becomes interesting. And it happens on this wise. Life is humdrum only in so far as it is meaningless; men can endure any amount drudgery and monotony provided that it lead somewhere, that they perceive its relation to a larger unity which is the total of life. As part of a whole which can be apprehended, immediately it acquires purpose and becomes significant. It is the sense of meaning in life which gives color and warmth to the ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... been many parts to this: her revolt from the mere physical drudgery of her life, from giving so much of her strength to the dull, unsavory, material things. This summer, a thousand times in a thousand ways, there had been brought home to her by Vincent, by Eugenia, the fact that there were ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the first victim. She was too ladylike in her deportment, too quiet and silent in her ways. She was ousted from her low rocker and favorite window, deprived of her needle, which had in some sort become a life-companion, and made to do all sorts of drudgery; no settled work, but hurried from that, this, and the other; never knowing what was coming next—the hardest ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... effects of the introduction of machinery into industry is that instead of liberating the human powers and initiative of workers from mechanical drudgery, it has often tended to devitalize and warp these forces ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... cross street that Luclarion lived in, between two great thoroughfares crowded with life and business, bustle, drudgery, idleness, and vice. You will not find the name I give it,—although you may find one that will remind you of it,—in any directory or on any city map. But you can find the places without the names; and if you go down there with the like errands in your heart, you will ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and fell in love with the East, until it began to consume me. History, like the air we breathe, must be in motion to keep us uncorrupt: otherwise its ancient homes are infectious. My passion for the sun and his baked people lasted awhile, the drudgery of the habit of voluntary exile some time longer, and then, quite unawares, I was seized with a thirst for England, so violent that I abandoned a correspondence of several months, lying for me both at Damascus ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... weak, purposeless, a soul who had made a failure of life, with no power to alter it. If she might but slip out of the world entirely; it was all turned to ashes. How small and mean her ambitions all seemed now. She had given years of drudgery and this was the result: made her ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... two—she is Miss Sophia; and those elderly women who cluster round for a greeting, they are her old scholars. Those black eyes are Hoglah's; that neat woman is Judy! Yes, she has lived among them, and worked among them all her life, never forgetting that "no good work can be done without drudgery." She has her Girls' Friendly Society class still in her own little house, though she has dropped most of her regular out-of-door work of late years. For the vicar—there is a vicar now—and his daughters teach constantly in the schools. The children ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who doesn't want to do anything that he doesn't want to do. Then, too, there are certain allurements and distractions in school life which are a hindrance to our joy in an intellectual task. And there is the very natural disinclination to the drudgery involved in all hard labour. No work that is worth while is without drudgery. Lack of encouragement from older people is one serious difficulty some girls have to meet. There is a type of older person who is sure that using the mind will ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... his happy home to the place of "devil" in the printing office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to the utmost. His position was but little better than that of a menial, and not only was all the drudgery and disagreeable work put upon him, but he was made the sport of the workmen, some of whom used him even roughly. He bore it all good-naturedly, however, devoting himself to his trade with the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... always a disposition to the heroic note. "I'm tired," I said, "of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may as well starve one's body out of a place as to starve one's soul ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of Mary! The sword has now a heart—and thine the glory! So now; but, in the days of which we are writing, for captivity there was drudgery on walls, and in the streets and mines, and the galleys both of war and commerce were insatiable. When Druilius won the first sea-fight for his country, Romans plied the oars, and the glory was to the rower not less than the marine. These benches which now we are trying to see as they were testified ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... vicinity, how many of us have been educated in colleges, and advanced into different branches of business; or taken into mercantile houses, manufacturing establishments, &c.? Are we not even prohibited from some of the common labor and drudgery of the streets, such as cartmen, porters, &c.? It is a strange theory to us, how these gentlemen can promise to honor and respect us in Africa, when they are using every effort to exclude us from all rights and ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... sadly ill-treated by their husbands or friends, in addition to the dreadful life of drudgery, and privation, and hardship they always have to undergo; they are frequently beaten about the head, with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences. No one takes the part of the weak or the injured, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... skill of the mechanic rather than the vision of the artist. In surveying the finished product of art as it appears in a painting by a Turner or a Cezanne, we may forget the "dust and ointment of the calling," but it is none the less there. The drudgery of art, the practicing of scales. the mixing of colors, the rehearsing of plays, are, as it were, the necessary preliminary industry ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... that dropped from the lips of the East End society section. There was something about her brown eyes and her straight, sensible nose that reassured them so that few suspected the mischievous in her. For she was mischievous. If she had not been I think she could not have stood the drudgery, and the heartbreaks, and the struggle, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... vigilance as you can." "Sir," said I, "it will be a great instruction to me in my behaviour if you please to give me some account of your late employments, and what hardships or satisfactions you have had in them, that I may govern myself accordingly." He answered, "To give you an example of the drudgery we go through, I will entertain you only with my three last stations. I was on the first of April last put to mortify a great beauty, with whom I was a week; from her I went to a common swearer, and have been last with a gamester. When I first came ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... drawing their own ideas or the ideas of others, and then to embody them in permanent and useful construction; so that at least they may have the start and impetus toward something better than a life of blind mechanical drudgery. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... joining their fortune with hers, in preference to remaining with Waally any longer. Freedom possesses a charm for which no other advantage can compensate, and those two old sea-dogs, who had worked like horses all their lives, in their original calling, preferred returning to the ancient drudgery rather than live with Waally, in the rude abundance of savage chiefs. The escape was easily enough made, as soon, as it was dark, Brown and Wattles being on shore most of the time, under the pretence that it was necessary, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... where'er you will, Experience teaches the same lesson still. Mark how the world, full nine times out of ten, To abject drudgery dooms its married men: A slave at first, before the knot is tied, But soon a mere appendage to the bride; A cover, next, to shield her arts from blame; At home ill-tempered, but abroad quite tame; In fact, her servant; though, in name, her lord; Alive, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... when she came out her brain was a sluggish and unresponsive as one might expect. Well aware of her shortcomings, she made light of them, insisting laughingly that she was the dunce of the family and Virginia its genius. She would do the drudgery of housekeeping while ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the drudgery to which he had been sentenced as a result of his fight with Otto for possession of the tiny packet concealed in the Cossack uniform. Forgotten were the multiplicity of duties incident to his service as a member of ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to sell them, although the proceeds would have enabled him to pursue his studies with ease and comfort. He rather sought and obtained a tutorship, and for two years he devoted to law and letters only the time he could rescue from its drudgery. In a letter, written in April, 1839, replying to the request of a relative who offered to purchase his slave Sallie, subject to the provisions of his father's will, which manumitted her if she would go to Liberia, he said: "But if she is under my control." (he did not know that she ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... had helped Bessie to support the tragedy of his death, nor had she Bessie's engrossing preoccupations with herself, her looks, her fancies, her love affairs. Bernard at George Boult's little branch shop in the country town of Ingleby, chained body and soul to the heavy drudgery of uncongenial occupation, thought of his father only with rage and resentment. Franky, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... night, week in, week out, year after year, they were prisoners at all save certain stated times when they were taken abroad for a walk under charge of the matrons. In return for a scant education in the rudimentary branches, and a very generous tuition in the drudgery of the kitchen, the laundry, and the sewing-room, they received in all these years only their board and clothes and a certain nominal protection against the vices and corruptions of the street and the gutter from which they ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... United States we often see daisies in cultivation but they are nowhere native. The child is at her seventh birthday and has learned her multiplication table, the "sevens". Nowadays in our schools the children do not have the drudgery of committing the long tables to memory as their grand-parents did. Our little friend thinks that as she has lived seven years that makes her "seven times one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the universe, that temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God's likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your terrible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being, and give yourself to God, and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. Wherever souls ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... productive of disagreeable consequences. Already I begin to feel their effects. Heavy and painful oppressions of the head and other disagreeable sensations often trouble me. I am determined therefore to employ some person who shall ease me of the drudgery of this business. At any rate, if the whole of it is thereby suspended, I am determined to use exercise. My private affairs also require infinitely more attention than I have given or can give them under present ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... had remained up. Fortunately, his elder children were indifferent to this, and indeed rather preferred it; it was a tradition that Hope had expressed the wish, when a child, that her father might lose his property, so that she could become a teacher. As for Harry, he infinitely preferred the drudgery of a law office to that of a gentleman of leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned out, when she was left a widow, that she had secured for herself and Emilia whatever property remained, so that she suffered only the delightful ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... collected all the valuables from the wreck, made a new mast, set up a rude capstan to draw the boat ashore, and cut a little dock for her at low water, and clayed it in the full heat of the sun; and, having accomplished this drudgery, he got at last to his labor of love; he opened a quantity of pearl oysters, fed Tommy and the duck with them, and began the great work of lining the cavern with them. The said cavern was somewhat ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the sordid drudgery of facsimile representations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and not be as poetry and music are, elevated into its own proper sphere of invention and visionary conception? No, it shall not be ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... barely interrupted by a few hours of attendance at the academic classes. From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his studies. It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that the drudgery of the classes was less irksome to him than to the other pupils; but not even the pedantic methods then prevailing, or the distractions of his new life, could dull the flush of his first encounter with the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the traffic; and that a late member of the Kentucky Senate (Col. Wall) not only carried on the same business, a few years ago, but accompanied his droves in person down the Mississippi. Not as the driver, for that would be vulgar drudgery, beneath a gentleman, but as a nabob ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... head about it, without you, Mr. Anthony, put him up to it, to show off your superior powers of drudgery. But mark me, Tony, if you dare to say one word about it, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... remarked, although in the middle ranks of life, was very much below the middle ranks in financial prosperity, and had therefore to perform much household drudgery. ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Cree boys doing the drudgery, but Annette besought ham so sweetly with her eyes to let "the little scouts" do it, that he desisted. His glance, as he followed every movement of the maiden, had as much of mute adoration, reverent and tender, as ever has been seen in the eyes of a man. How little he had known ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 'tis a little kind of venture that we make, in doing this Don's drudgery for him; for the whole nation of them is generally so pocky, that 'tis no longer a disease, but ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... there is always a blank page opposite the one on which I am writing. After correcting the manuscript, it is put in typewriting and again revised. There are also two revisions of the proof. While I do not shirk the tasks which approach closely to drudgery, especially since my eyesight is not so good as it was, I also obtain expert assistance. I find that when a page has become very familiar and I am rather tired of it, my mind wanders from the close, fixed attention essential to the best use ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... toil of the world without, and the coarse pleasures of the club or the tavern? Is it better that a woman, whom choice or necessity has deprived of every probability of governing a home of her own, should struggle against the chances and temptations of city life, or the constant drudgery of spinsterhood in the country; or that she should find the stupefying protection of a convent? These questions have seldom been answered entirely on their own merits. They have presented themselves ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... No. 11 Ordnance Terrace the little Charles Dickens lived from 1817 to 1821, and at No. 18 St. Mary's Place from 1821 to 1823, the financial troubles, which eventually drove the family into the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Charles himself into the sordid drudgery of the blacking-shop by Hungerford Stairs, having already enforced a migration to a cheaper and meaner house. In Clover Street (then Clover Lane) the little Dickens went to a school kept by a Mr. William Giles, who years afterwards sent to him, when ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... supposed goodness, are, in their eyes, titles to the kingdom, and infallible signs of charity. And then they foolishly deplore their own state as far removed from that perfection, because forsooth their minds are uncultured, their faith simple, and their time taken up with the drudgery ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... have added to the repression of their natural desires the bitterness of knowing that in their chosen walk of life they were failures. The results as far as work goes might not be so bad if the passions, as in men, were occasionally gratified. It is the constant drudgery combined with the disappointment and finding that art alone does not satisfy which is so paralyzing. Besides, sexual gratification is always followed by exaltation of the mental faculties, with, in my experience, no depressing reaction such ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the writer does his best. Books destined to form future thinkers take too much time to write, and when written come, in general, too slowly into notice and repute, to be relied on for subsistence. Those who have to support themselves by their pen must depend on literary drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the multitude; and can employ in the pursuits of their own choice, only such time as they can spare from those of necessity; which is generally less than the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... write. This is the story: I live alone, and my servants become, as they are in France, and ought, I think, always to be, really and truly part of my family. A most sensible young woman, my own maid, who waits upon me and walks out with me, (we have another to do the drudgery of our cottage,) has a little fatherless boy who is the pet of the house. I wonder whether you saw him during the glimpse we had of you! He is a fair-haired child of six years old, singularly quick in intellect, and as bright in mind and heart and temper as a fountain in the sun. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and had been accustomed from my earliest youth to order and comfort; and now I frequently knew not where I should lay my head, or find a little money to buy the commonest necessaries. I performed household drudgery, and endured cold and hunger; I worked secretly for money, and gave lessons in drawing and music; and yet, in spite of all my exertions, there were many days when I could hardly put anything but dry bread before my poor children ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... brought into the foot-hills and down upon the margins of the valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it, if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as to become available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and lessen the human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency of the human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary manufactures under the guidance and initiative of the home, where there may be room to breathe and for children to come up to manhood ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... a small remuneration, would probably be very glad to do it after his ordinary working hours. Even an enthusiast cannot but consider digging as the most laborious of all gardening work, and will take especial care to shirk it whenever possible. In fact, real garden drudgery of all kinds is better done by a labourer, no matter how simple and easy such work may superficially appear to our young folk. Good work, as we all know, can only be done by an ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Belgians, our kind A.D.V.S. ordered him to be shot. He was one of the best friends I had in the war, and I am glad he entered the horses' heaven as a soldier, without the humiliation of a purgatory in some civilian drudgery. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... an end of his story he charmed her into sleep, for Ariel was at hand, and he had work for him to do. Ariel, who longed for his complete freedom, grumbled to be kept in drudgery, but on being threateningly reminded of all the sufferings he had undergone when Sycorax ruled in the land, and of the debt of gratitude he owed to the master who had made those sufferings to end, he ceased to complain, and promised faithfully to ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How I should like to be an officer, a gallant naval officer, to lead on my men through fire and smoke to victory!' And then the little fellow would wave his hand, while the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... their portent to the initiated eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his daydream. What there is of squalor, and drudgery, and carking care in his life melts into a brief oblivion, and he is a man in the presence of his God with the holy stillness of Nature brooding over him. With lengthening shadows comes labour and a re-awaking. The air is once more full of all sweet sounds, from the fine whistle of the kite, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... position upon a metropolitan newspaper; not that he knew anything about news paper work, or had the least idea of journalism; he knew he was not fitted for the technicalities of the subordinate departments, but he could write leaders with perfect ease, he was sure. The drudgery of the newspaper office was too distaste ful, and besides it would be beneath the dignity of a graduate and a successful magazine writer. He wanted to begin at ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... what shall we say then of Josse Boutmy, who lived ninety-nine years and raised twelve children, spending the greater part of his life with his faithful spouse in one long struggle against poverty, one eternal drudgery for the pence necessary to educate his family? Shall we not say that he was as truly influenced by music as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... perhaps as handsome as their masters, and not subjected to especial ignominy or hardship. These slaves, of whom there were at least one hundred thousand adult males, relieved the twenty-five thousand freemen of nearly all the severe drudgery of life; and the result was an amount of leisure perhaps never since known on an equal ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... worse. One cannot tell what he did, or where he went, or how he lived. Near Salisbury Square some squalid garret sheltered him. He tried to shun the common gaze and hide his very whereabouts. He turned to translating, chance criticisms, and any drudgery that came his way, and all to little purpose. He lived in wretchedness and obscurity, bearing the weight of an increasing poverty, until at last the very hope ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... satirical article upon the title of that newspaper, likens the writers to caterpillars and grubs, etc., 'deriving their origin from Egyptian locusts;' and, in another article, accuses them of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two lying in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... power, strong enough to fill a cathedral, but altogether undisciplined. She was fond of music, and the organist at the church offered to teach her with his own daughters, if she would sing with them on Sundays; but she could not get through the drudgery of the exercises, and advanced only so far as to be able to take her proper part in a hymn. Here, however, she was almost useless, from incapability of proper subordination, the sopranos, tenors, and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... all quite willing that women should join their societies and churches to do the drudgery; to work up the enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members of their various organizations; to beg money ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... reason of absorbing toil, and it is part of the enlightenment of our age that our understandings are being opened to the workingman's need of a little leisure wherein to look about him and clear his vision of the dust of the workshop. We know that there is a drudgery which is inhuman, let it but encompass the whole life, with only heavy sleep between task and task. We know that those who are so bound can have no freedom to be men, that their very spirits are in bondage. It is part of our philanthropy—it should be part ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... walk to Mr. Ferguson's office. There, week after week, he toiled with dull industry. He could not believe that his drudgery would last: something—death perhaps—must come to break the monotony of that slowly unwinding chain of days, which was like a grotesquely dreary dream. To have flung himself heart and soul into his work not only demanded an effort of which he felt himself incapable, but it seemed to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... running about his house. Really, to satisfy the passions and sensuality of these Africans, women should be like the houris of Paradise, and never grow old. Those that accompanied us were, of course, regarded as mistresses, but were required also to do nearly all the drudgery of the caravan. Their masters must have sold much prettier ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... stated, in conclusion, that Burns is original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a large share of humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim horror. He declared that it killed his father, and was pursuing him to the grave. He rose above the drudgery of a farmer's toil, and he found no other work which would sustain him; and yet this needy poet stands to-day among the most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... The drudgery of the Cuckoo's Nest was far behind her now, and the bare little room under the eaves. Henceforth this was to be her home. She remembered the day in the church when her godmother's invitation to the house party reached her, ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... occupies his whole time; for Mr Lee is absent, being at Berlin, where I first broke the ice last autumn,[1] and the age of Dr Franklin in some measure hinders him from taking so active a part in the drudgery of business as his great zeal and abilities would otherwise enable him to execute. He is the master to whom we children in politics all look up for counsel, and whose name is everywhere a passport, to be well received. As I trouble you therefore with forwarding some letters ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... scene, and while he enjoys himself there he may forget the evils of the present moment. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation—something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... endless possibility of life on earth. She wanted her sons to be freer, to achieve a new plane of living. The peasant's life was a slave's life, she said, railing against the poverty and the drudgery. And it was quite true, Paolo and Giovanni worked twelve and fourteen hours a day at heavy laborious work that would have broken an Englishman. And there was nothing at the end of it. Yet Paolo was even happy so. This ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... sisters are both of that gentle class of semi-invalids whose presence in our civilization enables us to support the rudeness of the general health. They employ aesthetically the beautiful alleviations with which science has rescued domestic drudgery from so much of the primal curse; it is a pleasure to see them work; it is made so graceful, so charming, that you can ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is not so foolish as to put its able men into the administration. It confides an unfledged scion to some head-clerk, or gives him in charge of a directory who initiates him into what Bilboquet, that profound philosopher, called the high comedy of government; he is spared all the horrors of drudgery and is finally appointed to some important office. The rich supernumerary never alarms the other clerks; they know he does not endanger their interests, for he seeks only the highest posts in the administration. About the ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... such a life;—a continued miracle from the age of thirty or thirty-five, after which he built himself up anew, by living as well in cold water as in hot, and luxuriating in cold baths, and working hard,—harder, perhaps, on the whole, at downright drudgery, than any other man of his age, like Rousseau in copying music, as a relief from writing poetry,—yet when death happens we are all taken by surprise, just as if we thought God had overlooked his aged servant, or made him an exception to the great, inflexible law ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to Poetry: this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the Painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has the Art to claim kindred with Poetry but by its power over the imagination? To this power the Painter of genius directs him; in this sense he studies Nature, and often arrives at his end, even by ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... it's most kind of you. I'm sure Jean should be very grateful to you. You're a kind of fairy godmother to this little Cinderella. Only Jean must remember that it isn't very nice to come back to drudgery after an hour or two at the ball," and ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's voice and manner all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me—and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... undoubtedly, in profiting by the merely verbal corrections of friendship; and their own productions have the charm of simplicity and genuineness of narrative, which, it is certain, the ability acquired by mere drudgery in composition is by no means adequate ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is unwilling, therefore, to ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... gave way, To bring his selfish schemes in play. The swarm forgot the common toil, To share the gleanings of his spoil. 'While vulgar souls of narrow parts, Waste life in low mechanic arts, Let us,' says he, 'to genius born, The drudgery of our fathers scorn. 60 The wasp and drone, you must agree, Live with more elegance than we. Like gentlemen they sport and play; No business interrupts the day; Their hours to luxury they give, And nobly on their neighbours live.' ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville |
