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Soldiering   /sˈoʊldʒərɪŋ/   Listen
Soldiering

noun
1.
Skills that are required for the life of soldier.  Synonym: soldiership.
2.
The evasion of work or duty.  Synonyms: goldbricking, goofing off, shirking, slacking.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Soldiering" Quotes from Famous Books



... his big son, remembering a certain letter from his commanding officer which had caused him and Norah to glow with pride; remembering, also, how the men on Billabong Station had worked under "Master Jim." But he knew that soldiering had always been a serious business to his boy. Personal danger had never entered into Jim's mind; but the danger of ignorant handling of his men had been a tremendous thing to him. Even without "mud, barbed-wire, and gas" Jim was never likely to enjoy war in the light-hearted way in which ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... afoot and coming here. York's citizens are turned to warriors; The learned professions go a-soldiering, And gentle hearts beat high for Canada! For, as you pass, on every hand you see, Through the neglected openings of each house— Through doorways, windows—our Canadian maids Strained by their parting lovers to their breasts; And ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... "Soldiering," he said, "is nine-tenths caution and one-tenth devilment. Yon glavering idiot has long ears to match his long tongue. And now, sir, let me greet you as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... There's no saying in this world what may not be. Only I never saw one. I'll tell you a story: you may apply it as you like. When I was on the Texan expedition, and raw to soldiering and camping, we had to sleep in low ground, and suffered terribly from a miasma. Deadly cold, it was, when it came; and the man who once got chilled through with it, just died. I was lying on the bare ground one night, and chilly enough ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... laugh any more. "By George! Tom Newcome," said he, "you're just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like you there'd be an end of both our trades; and there would be no fighting and no soldiering, no rogues, and no magistrates to catch them." The Colonel wondered at his friend's enthusiasm, who was not used to be complimentary; indeed what so usual with him as that simple act of gratitude and devotion about which his comrade spoke to him? To ask a blessing ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... little else than quantities of forest lands. The officers of the Voltigeurs were selected out of the same class, united with a number of English of similar stamp. De Salaberry himself was born in the little cottage manor-house of Beauport, near Quebec, on the 19th of Nov., 1778.[11] Taking to soldiering like a duck to water when very young, he enrolled as volunteer in the 44th. At sixteen, the Duke of Kent, who was then in Canada, and delighted in friendly acts towards the seigneurs, got him a commission in the 60th, with which regiment he left at once for the West Indian Isle of Dominica. There ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall

... Nashville, the citizens turned out en masse to receive us, and here again we were reminded of the good old times and the "gal we left behind us." Ah, it is worth soldiering to receive ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... gone over your head, and is now walking about as a major, with the order on his breast. It is enough to make one sick of soldiering. Who is he ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... calmness by Home, Salkeld, and Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour had come for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the breastwork at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their pride dashed by sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout northman, erstwhile a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a regiment ever true to its noble Celtic motto of Cuidichn Rhi. At Kooshab, in the short, but brilliant Persian ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... is the equivalent of hygiene for the individual. It is a national regimen for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol and the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all American boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the other side—that military training in so far as it is really conducted in ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... fellows, turbulent in camp and requiring a strong hand, but responding to kindness and justice, and ready to follow their officers to the death. The 9th, Colonel Stafford, was from North Louisiana. Planters or sons of planters, many of them men of fortune, soldiering was a hard task to which they only became reconciled by reflecting that it was "niddering" in gentlemen to assume voluntarily the discharge of duties and then shirk. The 8th, Colonel Kelly, was from the Attakapas—"Acadians," the race of which ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... if they took an interminable time to prepare and eat their simple meal; and afterward there could no longer be any doubt, from the way they loafed about, that they were soldiering, as a result of Hooliam's low-voiced encouragement. They grinned with childish impudence at the scowling moon-i-yas. At last Hooliam produced a pack of cards and a game of "jack-pot" was started on the shore. This constituted frank defiance; ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... the Allies were immensely struck by the discipline and equipment of the Japanese, close observers were still more attracted by the underlying soldier spirit which animates them. An inherent spirit of soldiering seems to possess every little Jap as a natural heritage. They seem to love fighting for fighting's sake. They appear to enjoy the whole thing like schoolboys do their games. They take their killing much more kindly than the others, and appear ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... such accomplishments are sufficiently common not to be paid at a very high rate; and besides I had had enough of garrison duty, even could I have got back my commission, which was not very likely. So I put soldiering out of the question; and yet, when I had done so, I was infernally puzzled to think of any thing better. I had no fancy to turn rook, and rove from place to place in search of pigeons—no uncommon resource with younger brothers of an idle turn and exhausted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... "If that's soldiering," the young farmer said solemnly, "the sooner I am back home again the better. But it don't seem to me altogether strange as they should fight so hard, because I should say they must look upon it as a comfort to be killed rather ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... finished the drapery of your picture, and the copy of it, and asked you whither and how they must be sent, I think I have done all the business of my letter; except telling you, that if you think of conveying them through Moreland, he is gone a soldiering. All the world is going the same road, except Mr. Muntz, who had rather be knocked on the head for fame, than paint for it. He goes to morrow to Kingston, to see the great drum pass by to Cobham, as women go to take a last look of their captains. The Duke of Marlborough, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... to hospital; but the shock and the anxiety preyed on his mind, and he has become, they fear, hopelessly insane—he is being sent to a sanatorium, but I fear there is very little chance of his recovery; he is wounded in the head as well as the foot. He is a wealthy man, devoted to soldiering, and he is just engaged to a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... closed by real winter. Cooper resigned the consulate at Lyons, which was given him solely "to avoid the appearance of going over to the enemy" while abroad. A carriage and two servitors were engaged. One of these, Caspar, had his soldiering under the first Napoleon, and many were the camp tales he had to tell in a way to please his employers. At the old town of Alstetten, with painted wooden houses at the foot of the Am Stoss, they arrived, more than ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... another automobile to take him back to Salisbury, where it was found that his collar bone and several ribs were broken. He was very cheerful and his only anxiety was lest his injuries might prevent him from going to the Front. As this book was published while I was still "soldiering" my lips were sealed as far as saying anything about my superior officers was concerned. All I dare say is that no braver, better, truer man than General ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... three months Tom was moved to another camp still nearer the south coast. He had a presentiment that the time was not far distant when he would have to cross the sea, and know in real earnest what soldiering was like. In a way he was glad of this; like all youths he longed for excitement, and wanted to come to close grips with the thing he had set out to do. On the other hand however, he could not help looking forward with ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... to her of late, but she felt convinced that she would have heard from Elisabeth had he volunteered. She was a little puzzled over his silence and inaction. He had seemed so keen last winter at Barrow, when together they had discussed this very subject of soldiering. Could it be that now, when the opportunity offered, Tim was—evading it? But the thought was dismissed almost as swiftly as it had arisen, and Sara blushed scarlet with shame that the bare suspicions should have ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... divine decree to turn the other cheek and indeed every portion of their corporate frame to the smiter, and that by so doing, in some mysterious way, they would attain to profound peace and felicity. Consequently he hated armies, especially as these involved taxation, and loathed the trade of soldiering, which he considered one ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... rifles, which commanded the plain below, trenches seamed the hillsides in all directions, and in those trenches lay concealed the picked marksmen of the veldt—men who, though they know but little of soldiering from a European point of view, yet had been familiar with the rifle from earliest boyhood; rough and uncouth in appearance, dressed in farmers' garb, still under those conditions, fighting under a general ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... that perversity of inanimate things which attends every large enterprise to retard in every possible manner, through bad weather, the non-arrival of needed materials, loss, breakage, accident, and the "soldiering" of the workmen, many hindrances had arisen, and while wonders had been accomplished much remained to be done. But what had tried Joyce almost beyond endurance was to find that her greatest opposition came from the people she was trying to benefit. Often ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... 'e was tired of soldiering, but wot upset 'im more than anything was always 'aving to be dressed the same and not being able to wear a collar and neck-tie. He said that if it wasn't for the sake of good old England, and the chance o' ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... replied. "I cannot tell you exactly how things may go in my country, but if there is a rising against the reigning house, a Sabatini will certainly be there. I have had some experience in soldiering, and I have a following. It is true that I am an exile, but I feel that my place is ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... are having a grand cotillion party on the green in front of my tent, and appear to have entirely forgotten the privations, hardships, and dangers of soldiering. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... what they are about—taking a charge, rush, or demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on occasion, whispering:—"They'll shout and carry on like this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em by the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... "Mungo's quite enough to keep his eye on Annapla," said he. "He has the heart and fancy to command a garrison; there's a drum forever beating in his head, a whistle aye fifing in his lug, and he will amuse you with his conceits of soldiering ancient and modern, a trade he thinks the more of because Heaven made him so unfit to become 'prentice to it. Good Mungo! There have been worse men; indeed what need I grudge admitting there have been few better? He has seen this place more bien than it is to-day in my father's time, and in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... soon; and it was not till after we were seated at table that he could control himself to speak. On his other side was Prince Paul's elderly dinner companion. On my other side was the new military attache who had taken the count's place in the Embassy, a man past the soldiering age; and as he had Madame Pavlova to talk to, for him I did not exist. Eagle and I could speak to each other as if we were alone together in a forest ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... laugh any more. "By George, Tom Newcome," said he, "you're just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like you there'd be an end of both our trades; there would be no fighting and no soldiering, no rogues and no magistrates to catch them." The Colonel wondered at his friend's enthusiasm, who was not used to be complimentary; indeed what so usual with him as that simple act of gratitude and devotion about which his comrade spoke to him? To ask a blessing for his boy ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... we were sent north to St. Eloi, after making a short advance in the vicinity of Messines. From St. Eloi we were ordered to Hill 60, taking part in the now historic battle there. After Hill 60, Ypres, where shrapnel and poison gas put an end to my soldiering days—I am ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... the son of an Irish landlord, living in England on a goodly allowance. He was a very fair specimen of the absentee. When obscurity belched him forth in the year Eighteen Hundred Eighty, he was a class D politician, who had evolved from soldiering through the ambitious efforts of his wife. He held a petty office in the Colonial Department, where the work was done by faithful clerks, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... the olden days.—"Things were freer then, more seemly, I assure you on my honour! But ever since the year one thousand and eight hundred" (why precisely from that year he did not explain), "this warring and this soldiering have come into fashion, my dear fellow. These military gentlemen have mounted upon their heads some sort of plumes made of cocks' tails, and made themselves like cocks; they have drawn their necks up tightly, very tightly ... they speak ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... "I think this soldiering life makes one restless, Master Rupert," Hugh said one day when the time was approaching for their start. "I feel a longing to be with the troop again, to be ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... that he was a German by birth, that he had been sent to England as a boy, to avoid the conscription, which Jews dislike, since in soldiering there is little profit. Here he had become a clerk in a house of South African merchants, and, as a consequence—having shown all the ability of his race—was despatched to take charge of a branch business in Cape Colony. What happened ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... him: one had the mortification to miss him; the bullet of the other struck him in the arm. There was talk of amputation at first, but the case was finally managed without. In Ferris's state of health it was quite the same an end of his soldiering. ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... conduct at the battle of Monmouth General Lee was court-martialled, and deprived of his command for one year. Before the year was out, however, he quarreled with Congress, and was expelled from the army altogether. So his soldiering days were done, and he retired to his farm in Virginia. He was still looked upon as a patriot, even if an incompetent soldier. But many years after his death some letters that he had written to Howe ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... the man himself had always relied upon his superior skill, and you were able to beat him at his own game. Well, I wish I could shoot as well. However, as I am not going to do any more soldiering, I don't know that it would be of much use to me; still I should like to be able to ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... are to hazard your life in battles and sieges. Oh, sir, that life is too dear to us, your children, to be risked so lightly. You have done your share of soldiering. Everybody that ever heard your name in England or in France knows it is the name of a brave captain—a leader of men. For our sakes, take your rest now, dear sir. I should not sleep in peace if I knew you were with Conde's army. I should dream of you wounded ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... on the young man, and after a pause he said: "Art is one thing and conduct is another. I trust Perilla to you but with no firmer assurance of her happiness than I have of Fabia's entrusted to me. Soldiering and proconsuling have their place, but so has the service of the Muses. While you are looking after taxes in Africa, we will make Rome a place to come back to from the ends of the earth. After all, to live is the object of life, and where can you live more richly, more exquisitely ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... coloured, and one of the remaining three was certainly not British, but, I should guess, Spanish-American. And it isn't only the undergraduates who have gone. All the dons of military age and quality have gone too, or are staying up not in caps and gowns, but in khaki; all the vigorous teachers are soldiering; there are no dons left except those who are unfit for service—and the clergy. Buildings, libraries, empty laboratories, empty lecture theatres, vestiges, refugees, neutrals, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... my lad, brilliant; but there is another side to soldiering besides the show. There! all this sounds as if I were trying to damp and discourage you, but I have had seven years' hard work out here in India, Vincent; perhaps, when you have been here as long, you may talk as ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... than the good feeling he had displayed, attracted attention. When at a critical moment the advance of a British brigade was delayed by the Habshiabadis' plundering in its front, the Commander-in-Chief, who had learnt his soldiering in the Peninsula, lost his temper and swore at Sadiq Ali—who understood his meaning, if not his words—and threatened to clear his men out of the way with grape. The insulted Nawab withdrew his troops at once, and was making the best of his way with them ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... as he looked after them, "methinks that's enough to take the taste for soldiering out of thy mouth, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be drilled in the routine of pitching and striking camp. All ranks should know something of field cookery. The main lessons of the manoeuvres, the writer says, are first, that subsidiary training in the business of soldiering is of enormous importance; and, second, that responsibility must be regularly distributed, and duties allotted, so that when the strain of war comes, the whole burden shall not crush the few devoted officers who have been eager to shoulder it in time of peace. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... poetry of soldiering, and Harry began to forget the miseries of life in a Camp of Instruction, and to believe that there was much to be enjoyed, even in the life of an ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... of the War of Independence, Don Pablo was a general of division, while Leon had reached the grade of a colonel. But as soon as the fighting was over, both resigned their military rank, as they were men who did not believe in soldiering as a mere profession. In fact, they regarded it as an unbecoming profession in time of peace, and in this view I quite ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... by his ways, had been a swell, something like Starlight. A good many young fellows that don't drop into fortunes when they come out here take to the police in Australia, and very good men they make. They like the half-soldiering kind of life, and if they stick steady at their work, and show pluck and gumption, they mostly get promoted. Goring was a real smart, dashing chap, a good rider for an Englishman; that is, he could set most horses, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... Betty, perhaps, is the least timid, and is foolish enough to let spurs and cock-feathers tinge her dreams all night long, beside thinking of them a dozen times next day. If she is from the old country, she has seen them all her life, and has many friends "as went a soldiering." The little boys are more of the Betty order, and always show him the greatest admiration and respect: as may be seen, any day, in the miniature evolutions to the public squares, which always display enthusiasm, if not the accuracy of strategical art. If there is but one private, you ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... for the sea, then went to fight in Ireland, and at the time of the Armada he was Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and responsible for the companies of tinners, who had turned to soldiering. He planned one expedition after another to the New World, and sent them out mainly at his own expense, giving careful instructions to those in charge to observe carefully any plants or produce of any kind that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... had intimate acquaintance with abuse of it in Western mining camps, had to sit and endure the spectacle of Tom's chief weakness, glass after glass of the fiery stuff descending into a stomach long since rendered insatiable by soldiering on peppery food in a climate that is no man's friend. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... conquer at least the southern part of the country. It was impossible to raise such a body among the scantily garrisoned forted villages of Kentucky. The pioneers, though warlike and fond of fighting, were primarily settlers; their soldiering came in as a purely secondary occupation. They were not a band of mere adventurers, living by the sword and bent on nothing but conquest. They were a group of hard-working, hard-fighting freemen, who had come in with their wives and children to possess the land. They were ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Shoes of April (HURST AND BLACKETT) Miss RACHEL SWETE MACNAMARA has got together quite a lot of people and situations that other novelists have used before. There is the fine young Irishman soldiering in India, the soulless actress who marries and leaves him, and the splendid Irish girl, his true mate, whom he weds in happy ignorance of his first partner's continued existence. But the hero has a maiden aunt, with a story of her own, and the heroine a terrific grandmother who are Miss MACNAMARA'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... at this time Sherman, who was now near Atlanta, wanted reinforcements. He was perfectly willing to take the raw troops then being raised in the North-west, saying that he could teach them more soldiering in one day among his troops than they would learn in a week in a camp of instruction. I therefore asked that all troops in camps of instruction in the North-west be sent to him. Sherman also wanted to be assured that no Eastern troops ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... heart received an ally in one Sergeant La Croix (not a bad name for a military aspirant). This sergeant was at the village waiting to march with the new recruits to the Rhine. Sergeant La Croix was a man who, by force of eloquence, could make soldiering appear the most delightful as well as glorious of human pursuits. His tongue fired the inexperienced soul with a love of arms, as do the drums and trumpets and tramp of soldiers, and their bayonets glittering in the sun. He would have ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... and better establishments had been indicated. Nearly all were in some way connected with government. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the machine shops, others in the arsenals and warehouses, and a goodly number engage in soldiering. The multitude of whisky shops induces the belief that the verb 'to soldier' is conjugated in all its moods and tenses. The best part of the town is along its front, where there is a wide and well made street ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... very few officers or men who have been at the front for any length of time who would not be secretly, if not openly, relieved and delighted if they "got a cushy one" and found themselves en route for "Blighty"; yet in many ways soldiering at the front is infinitely preferable to soldiering at home. One of the factors which count most heavily in favour of the front, is the extraordinary affection of officers for ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... the War, and myself having been released from the hands of the Hun, I spent a happy repatriation leave, and began to think about soldiering again. My orders were to rejoin my reserve unit in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to have seen ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... said he presently, "soldiering won't do. If you were to renounce this patronage and these favors, I suppose you would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying what you have already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you went soldiering! Besides, it's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... younger by two years than you, at Neville's Cross, under the Lord Mowbray. Later, I served under the Warden of Berwick, that very John Copeland of whom our friend spake, the same who held the King of Scots to ransom. Ma foi! it is rough soldiering, and a good school for one who would learn to ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... came there oftenest were quite as honest as they might be, but she wouldn't have it known that she had said so, for the world. Then there were some rambling allusions to a rejected sweetheart, who had threatened to go a soldiering—a final promise of knocking at the door early in the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the most valuable of commodities. More people are discharged for coming in late than for any other reason, not excepting (we believe this no exaggeration) "lay-offs" during dull seasons. Slipping out before the regular time and soldiering on the job fall into the same classification with tardiness. Such practices the employee too often looks upon as a smart way of getting around authority, blithely ignoring the fact which has so many ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... trade! I am not cut out for rat-run soldiering! I am willing to leave this house and hold my tongue, and to take this trooper with me and see that he holds his tongue. By nine tomorrow morning I will have satisfied myself that you are for and not against the Raj. And having satisfied ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... family. This came, I need hardly say, as a considerable surprise. The future was as rosy as the rosiest sunrise in any part of the world could be—a most desirable and charming wife, a life of contentment and pleasure. Who could ask for a better future? No more soldiering. On the contrary, a ready-made road to success, in whatever walk of life I chose to pursue. Some such thoughts—and many others—passed through my mind and I plucked up courage. Still, my heart was not in the affair, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... Europe, somewhat careless in dress, drill and discipline, perhaps, but a good shot, a tireless marcher, inured to every form of hardship, and invariably cheerful and uncomplaining. Perhaps it is his instinctive love of soldiering which makes him so reluctant to lay down the rifle and take up the hoe. He has fought three victorious wars in rapid succession and he has come to believe that his metier is fighting. In this he is tacitly encouraged by France, who sees in an armed and ready-to-fight-at-the-drop-of-the-hat ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... weeks of that time away from her in London. No one could doubt of his having kept his pledge, although his wife occupied herself with books and notions and subjects foreign to his taste—his understanding, too, he owned. And Redworth had approved of his retirement, had a contempt for soldiering. 'Quite as great as yours for civilians, I can tell you,' Sir Lukin said, dashing out of politics to the vexatious personal subject. Her unexpressed disdain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... British soldiering for Ledyard. He never returned to the marines. He betook himself to Hartford, where he wrote an account of Cook's voyage. Then he set himself to move heaven and earth for a ship to explore that unknown coast from New Spain to Alaska. This was ten years before Robert Gray of Boston had discovered ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... consequences which as usual she does not fail to exact with remorseless severity. There have always been born into the world and continue to be born boys and girls in fairly equal proportions, but with colonising and soldiering our men go away, leaving behind them a continually growing surplus of marriageable but unmarried spinsters, who cannot spin, and who are utterly unable to find themselves husbands. This is a wide field on the discussion of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... me, maker of the potent pilule: Although my days of soldiering are o'er, I'm fondly trusting that, when next I'm ill, you Come to my rescue as you came of yore; Meanwhile you'll understand that I, for one, Refuse to buy your wares and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... only swagger and boast of old exploits as a soldier, crying from time to time "Vive l'entente cordiale," and assuring the Englishmen that they could trust him to the death. It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering experience, had to take the lead. He posted the Highlanders in opposite watch-towers, placing Nevill in one which commanded the two rear walls of the bordj. The next step was the building of bonfires, one at each corner of the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... what you could call conscientious; took his duties seriously and knew more about the scientific side of his business than any of us. In a way, that was curious, because I imagine that he hadn't much natural aptitude for soldiering and while he was cool in action one felt he had to work himself up to it. Nobody doubted his pluck, but I've seen him looking rather white after a ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... my lord. Our men were all accustomed to border warfare; and had for the most part, before entering Percy's service, been often engaged in border forays; and had taken to soldiering after their own homes had been burnt, and their cattle driven off, by Scottish raiders. Therefore they were accustomed to fight each for himself, instead of in close order. Their horses, too, bred on the moors, are far ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... talked "soldiering" all the evening; and the next morning, when breakfast was nearly over, and Helen ran upstairs to inquire if they meant to lie on till dinner-time, they were still harping away on the same subject. The door was standing ajar, ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... creche for imbecile children? You bring in a crowd of men whose sole qualification in August 1914 to be considered soldiers was an intense and national love of games. You pit them against a machine perfect in technique, in which every part had been trained from earliest infancy in the trade of soldiering, and the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... Faith! soldiering grows tiresome, and besides, I had a job to settle over in this country. Aha, Chili! You're a good girl! Give us our dinner at once, we're hungry. You've no notion what an appetite one gets in the maquis. Who sent us this—was it Signorina ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... seen him; but he is quite young—not twenty-four yet—though he has been soldiering for the last eight years. He served under Wellington in Spain, fought all through the Chilian War, was Cochrane's right-hand man at the capture of Valdivia, and now he has come to help us. He has been shipwrecked, taken prisoner, wounded times ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... Grant." He spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again." ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... soldiering and mind your P's and Q's, Cut out going absent and ease up on the booze, Don't kick because, you're on fatigue, but mind what you are about, For the Summary Court will get you if you ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian

... toward me in a wave. Oh, Frances dear, there is something awful about brute force! I felt the ground shake, the noise of the shouting seemed to burst my ears, the faces in front of me were like those of angry demons. I'm ashamed that their toy soldiering was so real to them that it [the word frightened evidently crossed out] was too much for me, and I turned away and put ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... men were without sufficient blankets to keep them warm. Uniforms were scarce and army shoes fit for the work of drills and maneuvers even scarcer. Gradually, however, these deficiencies were supplied, recruits began to show amazing progress in the art of soldiering and little by little the great camp lost its motley appearance and became an efficient military organization in which rigid discipline and high efficiency prevailed. In six weeks Valcartier's 30,000 were ready, ready for England and the final polish which was to fit ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... ownership is gone now, dead as the dodo; what is left for the like (say) of Mr. Flurry Knox if he should begin to take himself seriously? You can easily make a soldier of him; we have all met him in trenches and observed his airy attitude in No Man's Land. But soldiering has generally meant expatriation. For my part, I hope some day to see this gentleman (or his like) play a useful part in some battalion of Irish territorials—some home service offshoot of the Connaught Rangers. But that is not enough. If those who, like Miss Somerville, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... Harry?" I says to Charker. "Yes, I think so! Dolls! Dolls! Not the sort of stuff for wear, that comes of poor private soldiering in the Royal Marines!" ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

... we've mixed the whole show up with our Odd Fellows and our I.O.G.T.'s and our Buffaloes, and our Burkes and our Debretts, not to mention Leagues and Athletic Clubs, till you can't tell t'other from which. You remember the young pup who used to look on soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country—the gun-poking, ferret-pettin', landed gentleman's offspring—the suckin' Facey Romford? Well, he generally joins a Foreign Service Corps when ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... twenty thousand men of all arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days, long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman of Sir Anthony, and so I have grown into the intimacy of many folks around. And, as they have been more than good to me, surely I must give them of my best in the way of sympathy and counsel. So ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... man who has won these honours in war detests soldiering with all his heart. He fought as a duty, and did his share with furious energy in the hope of so shortening the War. His hatred of the military profession is indeed equalled only by his love of stockbroking and by his natural ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various

... preserves the figure and energy of youth. The active open-air life of India keeps men fit for the saddle when in England they would only sit their club armchairs, and it is hard for any one who sees the wiry figure and brisk step of Lord Roberts to realise that he has spent forty-one years of soldiering in what used to be regarded as an unhealthy climate. He had carried into late life the habit of martial exercise, and a Russian traveller has left it on record that the sight which surprised him most in India was to see the veteran commander of the army ride forth with his spear ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... defence! It weakens, not defends; and oversea Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons This moment know it, and can scoff thereat. Our people know it too—those who can peer Behind the scenes of this poor painted show Called soldiering!—The Act has failed, must fail, As my right honourable friend well proved When speaking t'other night, whose silencing By his right honourable vis a vis Was of the genuine Governmental sort, And like ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... is Haines, who plays the best hand at bridge of any man in the club. He held a commission in a line regiment before he went on the Stock Exchange. That was thirty-five years ago, and it is not to be supposed that his knowledge of soldiering is up-to-date, but he is the only one of us who has any knowledge of soldiering at ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham

... excellently disposed towards us, and, after all, I should have thought his word would have had more weight in Tokio than the word of a young man who is new to diplomacy, and whose claims to distinction seem to rest rather upon his soldiering and the fact that he is a ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the army, and, after seven years of soldiering was discharged in 1859. When he had left the ranks he turned up at Bazoches-le-Doyen with a comrade, a joiner like himself; and he resumed his occupation with the latter's father, a master carpenter in the village. But his heart was no longer in his work, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... over this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day to use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the most reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no "soldiering" done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to business on the part ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wing of the picket, all exhibiting the most abundant good humor. Here, also, they found our chaplain, and Chaplain Osborn, of the Forty-third New York. It was evident, at a glance, that the reports of gay soldiering which had reached the right of the line were in no way exaggerated. The miller took the horses, and the party was ushered into the house, when the good lady and her merry daughters welcomed them heartily. The miller brought out his best wines and his biggest apples. The ladies were smiling, the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt. But there are others who can play it, for soldiering today asks for the average rather than the exception in human nature. It is like a big machine where the parts are standardized. You are fighting, not because you are short of a job, but because you want to help ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... distance is greater from the United States to the Philippines than from Spain—and every week the skill of a soldier in acquiring the lessons of the climate and the best methods of taking care of himself will become more useful, and the tendency will be to settle down to the business of soldiering, make the best of it and accept it as educational—an experience having in it the elements of enduring enjoyments. "The days when I was in Manila, away down in the south seas, but a little way from the island from ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... here very long yet; and you stayed at home when others started out to fight. Now that you've found that digging and not fighting is the order of the day, you're just suited. It's the line of soldiering you are cut out for. When fighting men and not ditch-diggers are wanted, you'll ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... Lincoln's soldiering lasted about three months. He was in no battle, but there was plenty of "roughing it," and occasionally real hardship, as when the men were obliged to go for three days without food. The volunteers had not enlisted for any definite length of time, and seeing no prospect of fighting, they soon ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... sheep and see that they are safe and have all things needful, and that the objects of their rearing be secured, so also must a general take care that his soldiers are safe and have their supplies, and attain the objects of their soldiering? Which last is that they may get the mastery of their enemies, and so add to their own good fortune and happiness; or tell me, what made him ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... reality. A man of exuberant vitality, whose personal delight in physical strife colors his statesmanship, and who is exhilarated by the memory of a skirmish or two in Cuba, may talk exultantly of "glory enough to go round," and preach soldiering as a splendid manifestation of the strenuous life. But the grim old warrior whose genius and resolution split the Confederacy like a wedge, General Sherman, in the very midst of his task wrote to a friend: "I confess without shame that I am sick and tired of the war. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... moves being without interest save to the combatants themselves, passed as they were in uncovering the cards on either side; and in learning, with more or less success, the forces for which they stood. This was an essential but scarcely stirring branch of tin-soldiering, and has been accordingly unreported as too tedious even for the columns of the Yallobally Record. When the veil had been somewhat lifted and the shadowy armies discerned with some precision, the historian takes his pen and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Strange creature as he was, there was attraction in him. Scuffling about on his low wheeled platform, he had drawn this group of rough lads to him and made himself their commander. They obeyed him; they listened to his stories and harangues about war and soldiering; they let him drill them and give them orders. Marco knew that, when he told his father about him, he would be interested. The boy wanted to ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to which his weary master replied, 'I don't care a damn whether I'm clean or whether I'm dirty.' In answer his man made the following cryptic remark: ''Tis no use talking like that, sorr. Lord Roberts says the war is over, and we'll begin soldiering now.' ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... them, Lawyer people,—showed much activity, and a talent for impromptu soldiering, in that kind. The Magnates of the Confederation, I was surprised to learn, had all quitted it, the instant it came to strokes: "You Lawyer people, with your priests and orthodox peasantries, you do the fighting part; ours is the consulting!" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... individually suggested to each one of that million of men whose eager faces were turned homeward, to become united in a veteran association, probably ninety-nine out of a hundred would have responded, "No; I've had all that I want of soldiering; no more for me." ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... try to make it clear to you. When I started soldiering, it was with the idea that I'd make it a life work. I had my dreams, even when I was a degraded outcast in the Legion. I pursued 'em. They were high dreams, too. They are right ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... Cowes and a market; wedging him in was a dandy blackleg, with jewelry and chains around his breast and neck—enough to hang him. There was myself and an old gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly, soldiering-iron-looking nose; by him was a circus rider whose breath was enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as cotton velvet! A cross old woman came next, and whose look would have given any reasonable man the double-breasted ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... with the soil. They form the core of the nation and the main part of the army. Nearly all own the land on which they live, and which they cultivate with their own hands or by hired labour. Roundly speaking, agriculture and soldiering are their sole occupations. No Afghan will pursue a handicraft or keep a shop, though the Ghilzai Povindahs engage largely in travelling trade and transport of goods. As a race the Afghans are very handsome and athletic, often with fair complexion and flowing beard, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fight their way out of the Union. Duelling is our high art; getting out of the Union is our low. And, too, we have, and make no small boast that we have, two or three buildings called "Halls." In these our own supper-eating men riot, our soldiers drill (soldiering is our presiding genius), and our mob-politicians waste their spleen against the North. Unlike Boston, towering all bright and vigorous in the atmosphere of freedom, we have no galleries of statuary; no conservatories of paintings; ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... evening of most agreeable conversation, to be more than ever pleased with the tone of his mind and tenor of his discourse. The unthinking rake of former days must have learned and reflected much during his period of adversity and soldiering, to convert himself into the intelligent, well-informed, and unaffected man he had now become. One thing that struck me in him, however, was an occasional absence of mind and proneness to reverie. If there was a short pause in the conversation, his ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... big guns; and then they wanted to know whether there were buff coats and steel caps for all as liked to come and drill. When I told 'em there was, lo and behold! they all found out that they wanted to do a bit of soldiering, ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... awaited the decision I thought of the steamship ticket in my pocket. I remembered that my boat was to sail on Friday. I thought of my plans for the future and anticipated the joy of an early home-coming. Set against this was the prospect of an indefinite period of soldiering among strangers. "Three years or the duration of the war" were the terms of the enlistment contract. I had visions of bloody engagements, of feverish nights in hospital, of endless years in a home for disabled soldiers. The conference was over, and the recruiting officer ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... am no longer a soldier. Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... returned. "I am glad he does," Dick went on. "This is no time for slack soldiering. Greg, I'll feel consoled for working eighteen hours a day if it results in making the Ninety-ninth the best infantry regiment of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock

... Charles XII of Sweden, a highly creditable fact of the kind to him. Fact indisputable: a cadet of Pfalz-Zweibrueck (Deux-Ponts), direct from Rupert, went to serve in Sweden in his soldier business; distinguished himself in soldiering; had a sister of the great Gustaf Adolf to wife; and from her a renowned son, Karl Gustaf (Christiana's cousin), who succeeded as King; who again had a grandson made in his own likeness, only still more of iron in his composition. Enough ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... places. The main difficulty was to get a place that looked clean enough to sit upon; for a dirtier palace I never saw, nor a more, beggarly. One cannot say whether the head governor had taken all his traps with him when he went a-soldiering; but if what we saw really was his establishment, it is likely enough that he had gone away to avoid exposing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various



Words linked to "Soldiering" :   acquirement, soldiership, shirking, attainment, dodging, acquisition, evasion, skill, accomplishment, soldier, goldbricking, slacking, escape, goofing off



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