"Navvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more for us, Reddy. Drag him out, and now we'll settle this navvy's job. It's one man less in the fo'c'sle mess, and dead men tell no tales; and now we'll have to do the work a bit short-handed; but we can clean it up between us now, and no more ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... take the trouble even to make itself clear to the objects of its wrath. One can compare the poem to nothing in heaven or earth, except to the somewhat humorous, more or less benevolent, and most incomprehensible catalogues of curses and oaths which may be heard from an intoxicated navvy. This is the kind of thing, and it ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... and soon chose two active subordinates. These were a navvy, named Burt, and Williams, a young Welshman, who had disappeared from home behind a cloud of forged cheques, and having changed his name had made a fresh start in life to the south of the equator. These three worked day and night buying in ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... curtain back and looked out. He waited till a stranger in the street had passed the window, to let the curtain fall into its place again. Then his round eyes rolled to the large white lettering on the window above his head, and then strayed to the next table, at which sat only a navvy with beer and cheese, and a young girl with red hair and a glass of milk. Then (seeing his friend put away the pocket-book), he ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... he does not notice my reluctance. At an adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name. Sometimes he falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets plastered with the damp earth. He continually murmurs to himself ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... shirt is befrilled and embroidered, and his studs are the largest diamonds; not even financiers in England wear such important stones. He wears a low collar without a necktie, but ties a silk handkerchief round his neck like an English navvy; an Eton jacket, fitting very tightly, brown, black, or grey, with elaborate frogs and much braiding; the trousers, skin-tight above, loosen below, and show off the lower extremities when, like the heroes ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Beitunia to support the left of the 52nd Division's attack on El Jib, but the enemy was too strong to permit of the yeomanry proceeding more than two miles east of Foka. The roadmakers had done an enormous amount of navvy work on the track between Foka and Tahta. They had laboured without cessation, breaking up rock, levering out boulders with crowbars, and doing a sort of rough-and-ready levelling, and by the night of the 24th the track was reported passable for ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... in history where there is such constant reference to merely physical attributes as in the case of Mr. Webster. His general appearance and his eyes are the first and last things alluded to in every contemporary description. Every one is familiar with the story of the English navvy who pointed at Mr. Webster in the streets of Liverpool and said, "There goes a king." Sidney Smith exclaimed when he saw him, "Good heavens, he is a small cathedral by himself." Carlyle, no lover of ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... is a very sad case; she has seven children, not one of them old enough to work for himself; and she is dying, poor creature, of consumption. Her husband is a navvy, and he is at work at Lewes; I believe he is pretty steady, and sends the greater part of his wages to his wife, but there are too many mouths to feed to allow of comforts; his old blind mother lives with them. I believe the neighbours are ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... undertaken; that the building of railways will come to an end, and that the Irish peasants who have devoted themselves to railway work will go to England and try to find employment there. Once a railway navvy, always a railway navvy, is a well-known ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in Norfolk jacket, pigskin puttees, and all the rest of the fashionable get-up out of a bandbox, sneering at me covered with filth and grease to the eyebrows and looking like a navvy. And, the rollers now white from the lime, I'd just seen what was wrong. The rollers were not in plumb. One side crushed the cane well, but the other side was too open. I shoved my fingers in on that side. The big, toothed cogs on the rollers did ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... on the other ride of Hector] Never fear: there's no question of his becoming a navvy, Mrs Malone. [To Hector] There's really no difficulty about capital to start with. Treat me as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... were the navvy!" said Ivan. "I didn't know that, but I at once made up my mind it was dangerous to meddle with Fairfield if he was watched. I gave him the slip, went back to Mr. Grell, and typed out a note to you. You ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... stout man, a navvy, who said he had been one of the biggest drunkards in London, having briefly spoken, was followed by one known as 'Jemmy the butcher,' who keeps a stall in the Whitechapel Road. Some one had cruelly robbed him, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of Trinity, glory of the Cambridge gymnasium, and "5" in the University eight. They were not shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific strength of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... said Hornby, rising slowly to his feet, "I'd have let them send me if I'd have known what I was in for, do you? Not much. Up at five in the morning and working about the place like a navvy till your back feels as if it 'ud break, and then back again in the afternoon. And the same thing day after day. What was the good of sending me to Harrow and Oxford if that's what I've got to do all ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... not a bard who is careful at all about keeping his singing robes about him. He can doff them and work like a 'navvy' when he sees reason. He is very fond of coming out with good, sober, solid prose, in the heart of his poetry. He can rave upon occasion as well as another. Spontaneities of all kinds have scope and verge enough in his plot; but he ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... navvy wandered about from one public work to another—apparently belonging to no country and having no home. He usually wore a white felt hat with the brim turned up, a velveteen or jean square-tailed coat, a scarlet plush waistcoat with little black spots, and a bright-coloured ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... enjoying a moment of lugubrious idleness, may be sitting an old countrywoman with steady eyes in a lean, dusty-black dress and an old poke-bonnet; by her side, some gin-faced creature of the town, all blousy and draggled; a hollow-eyed foreigner, far gone in consumption; a bronzed young navvy, asleep, with his muddy boots jutting straight out; a bearded, dreary being, chin on chest; and more consumptives, and more vagabonds, and more people dead-tired, speechless, and staring before them from that crescent-shaped ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... least, as many hands as there were afterwards babies born upon it. Twelfth or thirteenth hand, a vagabond, botched bedstead, type of all the furniture in Ginx's rooms, and in numberless houses through the vast city. Its dimensions were 4 feet 6 inches by 6 feet. When Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs. Ginx, who was, you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it, there was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were forced to find resting-places for all the children, it not seldom happened that at least one infant ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... of bootlaces for a penny, we were only occasionally charged more than threepence. Other things were in proportion, and Essex to-day has quite a lot of nice new shops, unknown before the advent of the First Sportsman's Battalion. It is pleasing to remember that a Navvy Battalion followed us! ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... saw Emett coming through the woods leading and dragging the Indian. I felt sorry for the Navvy, for I felt that his fear was not so much physical as spiritual. And it seemed no wonder to me that the Navvy should hang back from this sacrilegious treatment of his god. A natural wisdom, which I had in common with all human beings who consider self ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... country was already overrun with floods; the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent advertised; but "the unemployed" preferred the resources of charity and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the market. The same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains to pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind South Clifton, attacking his ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible down with it. No, Mr. Coventry, your story is a good one, and well told; don't let us defile it with the comments of a skeptical ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... prepared] preparedness, readiness, ripeness, mellowness; maturity; un impromptu fait a loisir[Fr]. [Preparer] preparer, trainer; pioneer, trailblazer; avant- courrier[Fr], avant-coureur[Fr]; voortrekker[Afrikaans]; sappers and miners, pavior[obs3], navvy[obs3]; packer, stevedore; warming pan. V. prepare; get ready, make ready; make preparations, settle preliminaries, get up, sound the note of preparation. set in order, put in order &c. (arrange) 60; forecast &c. (plan) 626 prepare the ground, plow the ground, dress ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Englishman—for perhaps you are not aware there is a very poor chance for Oxford next year; their best men have left, and they have to lick a lot of raw recruits into shape. Well, what was I saying?—when Cedric has taken his beating and cooled down a bit, he will settle to work like a navvy." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Navvy, you've sure got bad manners," said Lake, shaking the mustang's bridle. He spoke as if he were chiding a refractory little boy. "Didn't I break you better'n that? What's this gentleman goin' to think of you? Tryin' to bite my ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stone sawer; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up faggots, tended goats on a mountain, and all for a few pence, for he only obtained two or three days work occasionally, by offering himself at a shamefully low price, in order to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I ever saw in my life, Archie. He looked as strong as a navvy; and his shoulders reminded me of one of those men one sees in brewers' drays. And his face was so red, and his hair, too,—that dreadfully red color, you know, that no one admires; and his hands, and even ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... The track is so tidy that there are white quartz stones arranged along each side of the yellow quartz ballast, and where there is sand ballast it is patted down as neatly as a pie crust. R. says it is difficult to prevent the native navvy making geometric designs with the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... short in the skirt as that of the prints of the Bavarian broom girls. She had white cotton stockings, and a pair of black leather boots, with leather buttons, and, for a lady, prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so often admired in Punch. I must add that the hands with which she assisted her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... as a militant hates a cabinet minister. He probably dines on the left ear of a South-African millionaire every evening before exercise at the barricades.... I say, look over there; there's a real artist going across the green. You can tell he's a real artist because he's dressed like a navvy and—" ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... behind," he apologized. "Had to post over. I told Walters at the George to keep me the black mare. Instead, he let that waterworks chief navvy fellow have her. The horse he gave me would ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... it was to come. For in time the lowest navvy was threatened with death by misadventure, unless he come up time enough to avoid the water. The small pump the job had been making shift with was obliged to acknowledge itself beaten, and to make way for one with two handles, each with room for two pumpers; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the family, but I believe I've got the best share of the brains. Beatrice would be proud of me if I took my degree. I must make something of this essay if I 'burn the midnight'. Miss Roscoe will expect me to turn up trumps. I'll toil like a navvy!" ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... than he could bear. "The two years that followed were crammed with poverty and privation; there was almost constant sickness in the home, and I could get no work except occasional jobs of manual labour, at which any drayman or navvy could have beaten me easily, by reason of superior strength. I left Bristol and went to Cardiff, hoping that I might lose my want of a character in the crowd. But it was of no use. 'Give a dog a bad name and hang him', is one of the truest proverbs ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... publicity. The wisdom of human experience and of sagacious tolerance informing his books for the young, provokes the question whether these books are not more apposite to the tastes of experienced age than to the fancies of callow youth. The navvy may rejoice in 'Life on the Mississippi'. Youth and age may share without jealousy the abounding fun and primitive naturalness of 'Huckleberry Finn'. True lovers of adventure may revel in the masterly ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... the front of the engine, to which several lengths of hose, each forty feet long, had been attached. Baxmore and Corney were at the extreme end, screwing on the "branch" or nozzle by which the stream of water is directed, and Dale was tumbling a half-drunk and riotous navvy head-over-heels into the crowd, in order to convince him that his services to pump were not wanted—a sufficient number having been procured. A couple of policemen walked this navvy quietly from the scene, as ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... made up my mind to escape somehow. The colonel seems a good sort of fellow, and even the prisoners speak well of him. Then it is a comfort to hear that all that talk about the quicksilver mines was a lie, and the work is going to be no worse than a gold-digger would have in California or a navvy at home. There is no great hardship about that, at any rate for a time. If it was not for the thought of how horribly anxious they must be at home about me, I should not mind. It will be something to talk about all one's life. The first ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty |
