"Plodding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Esther North floated across the snowy fields to the hill where the children of Glendour were coasting. Her brother Daniel, plodding up the trampled path beside the glairy track with half a dozen other boys, dragging the bob-sled on which his little sister Ruth was seated, heard the call with vague sentiments of dislike and rebellion. His twelve ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... I made my way by this path, and erelong, stood upon one of the little rustic bridges spanning the ravine, and connecting with a similar flight of ascending stairs upon the other side. There I paused, and well I might. It were a dull, plodding creature indeed, who would not be spellbound by such a scene! On either hand were the sloping wooded sides of the ravine whose depths were shrouded in the mysterious whiteness of the fog; above me, a short distance in front, was the arch of the broad, picturesque bridge with which the driveway ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... have little significance, I believe, as clews to the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... thing to be done, however, was to get a definite idea of whereabouts they were; it was obviously useless to continue plodding on, they knew not whither; besides, it was frightfully fatiguing and painful work, this marching through the forest, and George felt that it would be a positive advantage even to deviate somewhat from their direct course, if by so doing they could earlier gain ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... out of the perpetual holidays of infancy and into the treadmill of schooling that begins with b, a, ba and sometimes never ends. Side by side, the two small youngsters entered the low doorway of the primary school; side by side, a few years later, a pair of lanky striplings, they were plodding through their intermediate studies which seemed to them unending. Catie was eagerly looking towards the final pages of her geography and grammar, for beyond them lay the entrance to another perpetual holiday, this time of budding maturity. Scott's eyes were also on the finish, but for ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; but it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a month, adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies. And furthermore, the hack-work keeps me in touch with things literary and gives me time to try ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... an ever-living commonplace, considered to be inaccurate: the donnish historian may, by his plodding want of imagination, give us only the strict facts. The lively writer, perhaps, in the desire to round out a character of a man concerning whom little is known or to perfect the rhythm of a paragraph, will consult his convenient fancy rather than the difficult document. In academic circles, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the same purple promise over the budded woods; the same sharpness in the bustling wind. Since then, Nature has gone through all her plodding processes, and now it is all to do over again. A sense of fatigue at the infinite repetitions of life comes over me. If Nature would but make a little variation! If the seasons would but change their places a little, and the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... were in the quiet street; here an Alpine soldier strolling with his sweetheart, there an old cure on his way to his little stone chapel, yonder a peasant in blouse and sabots plodding doggedly along about some detail of belated work that never ends for such as he. A few lanterns set in iron cages projected over ancient doorways, lighting the street but dimly where it lay partly in deep shadow, partly illuminated by ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... opportunities equal, we should no more equalise the result for the sake of which the opportunities were demanded than we should give every cab-horse in London a chance of winning the Derby by allowing it on Derby Day to go plodding over the course at Epsom. On the contrary, by inducing all to contemplate the same kind of success, we should be multiplying the sense of failure and dooming the majority to a gratuitous discontent with positions in which ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... but the most hardened old soldier there is something "creepy" in plodding along over a narrow path in a rather dense forest, not knowing at what moment a lurking enemy may pour in a volley that will bowl over half of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... you naught compensateth me * The near, the far, two cases only here I see: I yearn for you at every hour and tide as yearns * For water-place wayfarer plodding wearily. With you abide my hearing, heart and eyen-sight * And (sweeter than the honeycomb) your memory. Then, O my Grief when fared afar your retinue * And bore that ship away ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... current not particularly strong, our greatest obstacle being the low-hanging branches which swept against us. Much of my time was expended in holding these back from contact with Eloise's face, our horses sedately plodding along behind their leaders. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... frequently stole me from myself in Norway. We often passed over large unenclosed tracts, not graced with trees, or at least very sparingly enlivened by them, and the half-formed roads seemed to demand the landmarks, set up in the waste, to prevent the traveller from straying far out of his way, and plodding ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be good-sized boys and girls—big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our elders, and also to feel as stirred up over ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... as men would have me grow, By ordered plodding to a life complete; Climbing the path with slow and heavy beat Of tedious footsteps from the world below. I cannot like a visible circle flow Until by measured compass I can meet The place I started from with weary feet. That proudly point the obvious path they go. Ah no,—mine ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the route I am crossing it - is a land of mountains and elevated plateaus, and the inhabitants I should call the "ranchers of the Orient," in their general appearance and demeanor bearing the same relation to the plodding corn-hoer and scythe-swinger of the Morava Valley as the Niobrara cow-boy does to the Nebraska homesteader. On the mountains are encountered herds of goats in charge of men who reck little for civilization, and the upland plains are dotted over with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... certainly have gone in first. For he was one of those aggravating batsmen who keep a steady bat at everything, who never aspire to a slog, never walk out to a slow, never step back to a yorker, are never too soon for a lob, or too late for a shooter—in fact, who play the safe plodding game in the ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... in color pattern with the description of the poisonous snakes, nevertheless had no poison-fangs that even after the most minute examination we could discover. Miller and one of the dogs caught a sariema, a big, long-legged, bustard-like bird, in rather a curious way. We were on the march, plodding along through as heavy a tropic downpour as it was our ill fortune to encounter. The sariema, evidently as drenched and uncomfortable as we were, was hiding under a bush to avoid the pelting rain. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... seeing the whole force turned out after a weary march. But of course the Boers are in their element at this kind of game. A hundred of them wish to drive away some stock; they leave a dozen to snipe from a ridge, while we send Tommy plodding round for miles on a flanking movement (for you must keep him out of range); and when the cattle have been driven far enough away, Mr. Boer jumps on his horse and is off also, while we ruefully "occupy" ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... of the 24th to find six inches of snow on the ground and the storm still raging, with the temperature down to 28. Soon after we began plodding through the snow on a pea-soup breakfast, George left us to hunt geese. The night before he had told Hubbard he would kill a goose in the morning, if he were permitted to go on with a rifle. He had heard the geese flying, and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently along at the appointed task until ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... the 23rd of December, the same night in which Kate Foster received so mysteriously the little Bible which was dropped with the ring into her parlour, that four men were plodding along in the darkness over a field-way which led to the wooden bridge just mentioned. They were dressed in their ordinary mill or foundry working-clothes, and seemed, from their stealthy walk and ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... therefore, prepared to welcome and treat with all kindness their exiled co-religionist, as he himself, twenty-five years after, feelingly narrates.[296] After being refitted at Malmoe, the vessel proceeded on her voyage to France, where Alesius left, and plodding his way along the northern coast, visited Belgium, where he would meet with friendly Scots at Bruges, and probably also at Antwerp. He then passed up the Rhine to Cologne, where, as already suggested, he was favourably received by the Archbishop, Hermann von Wied, who afterwards became a ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive shell. It sets its teeth and is a very stern, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Davout and Lannes and Ney were still faithful and efficient; Augereau in action was utterly uncertain, in morals pompous and wrong-headed; Murat knew where and how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhoewden, and his chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... would just be one long picnic, while the four children thought it fine fun to "sit on mother's featherbed and go riding," as they said. So they started off for California. A long, long ride these emigrants had before them; a weary trip, plodding along day after day with the patient oxen walking slowly and the burning sun or pelting rain beating down on the wagon cover. There was a train of other wagons with them, some pulled by horses but more by yoked oxen, and the men walked beside the animals and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... unromantic guidance of the railway: he will find, after a little experience, that the homes of true romance are discovered for him by the locomotive; that solitudes and recesses which he would never find after years of plodding in sandal shoon are silently opened to him by the engineer; and that Timon now, seeking the profoundest cave in the fissures of the earth, reaches it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... has been much caricatured, satirized, and abused, but the soldier had no more faithful or indispensable servant than this same patient, plodding, hard-pulling, long-eared fellow of the roomy voice and nimble heels. The "boys" told a story which may illustrate the mule's education. A "tenderfoot" driver had gotten his team stalled in a mud hole, and by no amount of persuasion could ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... rather than being showmen. Actually, most adventure can be on the monotonous side, nine-tenths of the time. When a Stanley goes to find a Livingston, he doesn't spend twenty-four hours a day killing rogue elephants or fighting off tribesman; most of the time he's plodding along in the swamps, getting bitten by mosquitoes, or through the bush getting bitten by tsetse flies. So, as a people, we turned it over to the movies, and Telly, where they can ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... have failed to see in him an honest man. He was powerfully built, over the middle height, but not tall. He spoke very fair old-fashioned English, with the Yorkshire tone and turn. His walk was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as powerful. On his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... course, I mean artist—not mere artisan. It was certainly not surprising to hear that Maurice Hewlett found "Jurgen" exasperating. So, too, there is exasperation in Richard Strauss for plodding music-masters. Hewlett is simply a British Civil Servant turned author, which is not unsuggestive of an American Congressman turned philosopher. He has a pretty eye for color, and all the gusto that goes with beefiness, but ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... out the direction, and, gathering up their things, the cadets hurried off to where he had pointed. There, sure enough, was a man plodding along with a bundle over his shoulder. He was a short, thick-set man, and wore a heavy mustache curled up at ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... was a stout one, Sandy could easily have gnawed his way through it if he had not been too frightened to try. And there he stayed, while all the time old Ebenezer kept plodding along toward ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... useful appendage to a party containing his kinswoman, from whom he, of course, saw no reason to be separated. To Edith herself, the delay was far from being disagreable. It promised a gay and cheerful gallop through the forest, instead of the dull, plodding, funeral-like march to which she had been day after day monotonously accustomed. She assented, therefore, to the arrangement, and, like her kinsman, beheld, in the fresh light of sun-rise, without a sigh, without even a single foreboding of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... story, hasn't it? This summer, I mean. A beautiful story! In the beginning you came to the office—to prison, you said. And I was plodding along, trying to make myself believe that I liked bookkeeping. A pair of lame ducks we were, with broken wings. I'm a little sorry for us yet—aren't you? But now we— Do you think it would hurt you if I raised the shades? It's such a glorious morning ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... was a man of lively imagination. Had he been an ordinary, prosaic and plodding individual, he would have stayed at home combing wool as did his prosaic and plodding ancestors for several generations. At the age of fourteen he went to sea and soon developed an active curiosity about regions then unknown but believed to exist. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... ago, I determined to devote myself to the study of Arabic, and not to rest till I could speak and write it like an educated native. This rash resolve, however, was made in ignorance of the sublime difficulties of this language, and after plodding at it with great vigour for a year, and acquiring some facility in speaking it, and the ability to read a sentence so as to sometimes get a faint glimpse into the meaning hidden behind the hieroglyphs which the Arabs call ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... pretty certain his adventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had certainly nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing to see him at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which I must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding with a sort of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his fancy—an expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could carry. He had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... through endless hot marches The trail of a plodding desire: Now with night he has lost the fierce fever of getting, Adrowse by his dull-embered fire. Immeasurable silences compass him over, His body grows one with the streams Of sands that slide and whisper around him; The stars draw his soul: ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... my hand, and sped away to his own quarters higher up. Then came a sound which made me open my door to listen. Dear little Emily! She had burst out of her own room in her dressing-gown, and flung herself upon her brother as he was plodding wearily upstairs in the dark, clinging round his neck sobbing, 'Dear, dear Clarry! I can't bear it! I don't care. You're my own dear brother, and they are all ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... longlife.'' For while the Chinese may have little love for country, they have an intense devotion to their own customs. For nearly 5,000 years, while other empires have risen, flourished and fallen, they have lived apart, sufficient unto themselves, cherishing their own ideals, plodding along their well-worn paths, ignorant of or indifferent to the progress of the Western world, mechanically memorizing dead classics, and standing still comparatively amid the tremendous onrush of modern civilization. I say comparatively still, for if we carefully study Chinese history, we shall find ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit." Never have we joined in the senseless clamor which condemned the only tax whereto we became voluntary contributors, the only resource which gave the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling, the only alembic which in these plodding days sublimized our imaginations, and filled them with more delicious dreams than ever flitted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... study and imagination are frequently upbraided by the industrious and plodding sons of care, with passing too great a part of their life in a state of inaction. But these defiers of sleep seem not to remember that though it must be granted them that they are crawling about before the break of day, it can seldom be said that they are perfectly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... getting away and seeing something. Still, if you really want me to stay, I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Soon they were plodding on by starlight, and by midnight had reached, unmolested, a road that seemed to lead due north. They went around all villages, and learned to consider dogs a nuisance in so doing. At first they were unduly nervous. Faint moonlight played strange games with their fancies. Once a tree-trunk held them ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... boot. I grumbled at Berne over the want of soft curves in the Swiss temperament; but the children of the tangled Tessin are cast in the Italian mould. My friend had as many quips and cranks as a Neapolitan; we walked together for an hour under the chestnuts, while the coach was plodding up from Bellinzona, and he never stopped singing till we reached a little wine-house where he got his mouth full of bread and cheese. I looked into his open door, a la Sterne, and saw the young woman sitting rigid and grim, staring over his ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... on the porch of the hotel, so the enemy was not to be sought that way. I set off full speed for the other corner, fifty yards away, half suspecting an ambush. But at the turn I stopped. The rain-soaked street was empty for a block before me. Far down the next block a plodding figure under an umbrella bent to the gusts of the wind and tried to ward off the driving spray of the storm. But Darby Meeker had disappeared as though the earth had ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... manufactured the usual piece of intellectual mediocrity. He was stuffed with the regulation measure of facts, scraped through the customary examination, and was despatched, much against his will, to the universities of Jena and Zuerich. When I last saw him he was a plodding lawyer of the conventional type, doing his duties in a listless manner, with very indifferent success, and quite broken down in spirit. The Gymnasium, the university, and the parental obstinacy had done their work very effectually. They had succeeded in reducing him to the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Padre," "Good-night, Don Pepe," the Gobernador would go off, holding up his sabre against his side, his body bent forward, with a long, plodding stride in the dark. The jocularity proper to an innocent card game for a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that hung from his neck provoked instantly ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... I came around the corner after leaving my competitor Richards in the bank, there came plodding along the old man. Luckily he went down about a block to hitch his horse. I met him as he was coming back and carried him up to my room in the hotel. I laid my proposition before him ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... opinions—generally with tolerable good reason—it happened in this case that love lit the girl's mind to good purpose. She'd laugh with her father sometimes, that Sam hadn't no dazzling sense of fun himself, and it entertained her a lot to see Sam plodding in his mind after her nimble-witted father and trying in vain to see a joke. But what delighted her most was Sam's own dark forebodings about Mr. Green's manner of life, and his high-minded hopes ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... rung sharply, and, on Polly entering, Rhoda called her to the window and showed her two female figures plodding down the street. "Look," said she. "Those are the only women I envy. Sisters of Charity. Run you after them, and take a good look at those beastly ugly caps: then come and tell me how ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea with a pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her depths, as if she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a thudding rhythm in her progress and the regular beat of her propeller, heard afar in the night with an august and plodding sound as of the march of an inevitable future. But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul. Whether she ran with her ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... that moment loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened him. This was the consul's theory and if he had been a bookmaker at a race of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds against the plodding sheriff from Chatham ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... runneth by but One Grand Power Of which I am in truth a part, An Atom though I be. All things that are, are best— This much Truth I know, Though why things are I can't explain, My Vision still is dim. All answers will be given out When time shall be no more, And so I keep a-plodding on, And on and on my way; My face is to the Light, My heart doth sing for Joy; I strive to do the best I can each day In Act and Thought and Word; I know not just the plan of things that are But back of all is Truth, And Truth I seek; I ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... give an additional flavour to his style, since they present few difficulties to the modern reader, and yet sound like echoes from the earlier periods of the language. Generally he is content to follow his author with almost plodding fidelity, but occasionally he makes additions which are eminently characteristic. His author having remarked:—"Il nest an Jour Duy nulle chose qui tant grieue Rome ne ytalie come fait le college Des notaires publiques Car ilz ne sont mie en accort ensemble"—Caxton ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... wind his suspicions grow stronger. He settles down to a long chase. In the darkness, we'll say, he loses his man, but when it gets lighter he picks up the trail again. The tracks lead south, across the line into Mexico. Still he keeps plodding on. The man in front sees him behind and gets scared because he can't shake him off. Very likely he thinks it is you on his track. Anyhow, while the child is asleep he waits in ambush, and when Henderson rides up he shoots him down. Then ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... the travellers were plodding onward, Ketch walked for a time at the head of Aunt Amanda's mule. Aunt Amanda leaned forward and said ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... imagination and of a marvellous memory for facts, names and faces. Over him men went "insane in pairs," either devotedly admiring or completely distrusting him. Cleveland was almost devoid of personal charm except to his most intimate associates. He was brusque and tactless, unimaginative, plodding, commonplace in his tastes and in the elements of his character. Men threw their hats in the air and cheered themselves hoarse at the name of Blaine; to Cleveland's courage, earnestness and honesty, they gave a tribute of admiration. When the campaign was at fever heat, Blaine ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... direct eye-and-hand examination of our patients than the doctor of a century ago, we can tell three to five times as much. Signs that he could interpret only by the slow and painful method of two-thirds of a lifetime of plodding experience, or by occasional flashes of half-inspired insight, we are now able to interpret absolutely upon a physiological—yes, a chemical—basis from the revelations of the microscope, the test-tube, and the culture medium. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... stroke of luck on the voyage across the North Sea this time. Our packet was plodding peacefully along on a hazy, grey forenoon, about half-way to the Tyne, when the faint silhouettes of a brace of destroyers were descried racing athwart our course a good many miles ahead. We were watching them disappear far away on ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... and carry you down with it!... Rafael, my dear boy, don't be foolish. I am all right to have as a friend; but it's too late for me to be anything more ... even if I were to love you. We are of a different breed. I have been studying you, and I see that you are a sensible, honest, plodding sort of fellow. Whereas I—I belong to the butterflies, to the opposite of all you are. I am a conscript under the banner of Bohemia, and I cannot desert the colors. Each of us on his own road then. You'll easily find a woman to make you happy.... The sillier she is, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... walked out of the office, and the sheriff was given his mount. The Indians swung the pack-horses into line, and the men settled themselves in their saddles as they began the long, plodding journey to the blue hills in the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... on the gate, watched Mr. Osborn go plodding away toward Vine-Pits and the Cross Roads. This pastor, who had succeeded old Melling a few years ago, was a short, bearded man of sixty, and he lived in lodgings on the outskirts of Rodchurch. Evidently he was not going home to dinner. Perhaps ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... They were plodding down the dazzling road, one on either side of the dusty bicycle under the open sky when ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... he who first spoke about it. Not at that time, but after sunset, when the dusk had fallen upon us, and found us still plodding southward with tired horses; a link outwardly like other links in the long chain of riders, toiling onwards. Then he said suddenly, "Do you know whither we ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Americans watched the slim, bent old figure plodding homeward. After looking the ground over critically, they stole forward on ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... had been plodding among musty law books and threading legal intricacies, with occasional interruptions, caused by fits of impatience and disgust at the detail and tedium of study, until he had at length fought his way through and placed himself in the front rank of his profession. His brilliant achievement in the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... by a marvellous address that belonged to him, always managed to escape, or at most to receive only some grave admonition from the academic authorities. Johns advised with him, (giving as serious advice then as he could give now,) and added from time to time such assistance in his studies as a plodding man can always lend to one of quick brain, who makes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... his child. That innocent delight he took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school to hear the finest boy. Her knowledge with her fancy grew; She hourly press'd for something new; Ideas came into her mind So fast, his lessons lagg'd behind; She reason'd, without plodding long, Nor ever gave her judgment wrong. But now a sudden change was wrought; She minds no longer what he taught. Cadenus was amazed to find Such marks of a distracted mind: For, though she seem'd to listen more To all ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution—a certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Gaylord, but as I did not respond very freely to their bantering, they finally fell silent with only an occasional imprecation as someone stubbed his toe or caught his clothing on a brier. After a half hour or so of plodding we came to a clear path through the woods and in a few minutes reached the mouth of ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... great as it appeared to be, did not in reality reach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the Greek which he had heard in the Church when he re-entered his home. [353] In Roumania, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... table with food secured by his own hands direct from nature should feel a strong incentive to do his best. The coarse, unvaried diet, common to many farmers' homes, is the result of stolid minds and plodding ways. A better manhood and womanhood will be developed when we act upon the truth that varied and healthful sustenance improves blood and brain, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... honourable exile, in quality of an ambassador-extraordinary to the court of France; and Trumball, his friend and creature, was dismissed from the office of secretary, which the king conferred upon Vernon, a plodding man of business who had acted as under-secretary to the duke of Shrewsbury. This nobleman rivalled the earl of Sunderland in his credit at the council-board, and was supported by Somers, lord chancellor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Giant," who had been a rival for the hand of the fascinating Mary Todd, was also Lincoln's chief opponent in politics. Douglas was small and brilliant; used to society ways, he seemed always to keep ahead of his tall, uncouth, plodding competitor. After going to Congress, Mr. Lincoln was encouraged to aspire even higher, so, ten years later, he became a candidate for the Senate. Slavery was then the burning question, and Douglas seemed naturally ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... little hills and it was a strange relief to leave the dead level of the plains: on each side the land was barren and desolate, and in the distance were dark mountains. The sky had clouded over, and the evening was grey and very cold; the solitude was awful. At last I overtook a pedlar plodding along by his donkey, the panniers filled to overflowing with china and glass, which he was taking to sell in Ecija. He wished to talk, but he was going too slowly, and I left him. I had hills to climb now, and at the top of each expected to see the town, but every time was ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... a question which we had not been bright enough to ask. We had been plodding on with the vague idea that it was a delightful book. Certainly the subject was agreeable. The writer was taking us on a ramble through the less frequented parts of Italy. He had a fine descriptive power, and made us see the quiet hill towns, the old walls, ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the cow at last allowed herself to be led away, but when she had been plodding along for a little distance, he slowly followed. He pressed the Jews' money in his hand ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... luxuries and indulgences which were never heard of when I was a boy. Why, my father was a common carpenter, and here you are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many hundreds a year, while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in my Uncle Fairlie's counting house. What should I not have done if I had had one half of your advantages? You should become dukes or found new empires in undiscovered countries, and even then I doubt whether you would have done proportionately so much as I have done. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... you will remain as blind about your plodding old husband who couldn't make a fortune ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... when we first performed it. We met a number of farmers returning to their homes from a kind of fair that is annually held in the little metropolis; and as I watched the long caravan-like line of pack-horses and horsemen, wearily plodding over the stony waste in single file, I found it less difficult to believe that these remote islanders should be descended from Oriental forefathers. In fact, one is constantly reminded of the East in Iceland. From the earliest ages the Icelanders have been a people dwelling in tents. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the nymphs of Corot, or the laveuses bending at the margin of the lake, the plowman homeward plodding o'er the lea, the shepherd on the distant moor, the woodsman in the forest, the farmer among his fields. We associate our vision of the scene with theirs. When as mere dots they are discerned, the vastness of their surroundings is realized at their expense and the exclamation ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... anywhere, excepting an occasional peasant plodding along a muddy road, sheltering himself under the characteristic flat and bony umbrella of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... hearts, we pushed on at extra speed toward our night's lodging at Mount Morris. The oak-trees gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road. Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... friendly hand on his collar, he sprang in pursuit of his departing deity,—the loved Master who was leaving him alone and desolate among all these strange scenes and noises. The Master, plodding, sullen and heavy-hearted, toward the gangway, was aware of a cold nose thrust into his ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... hansom whirled you by the Bell and Horns at Brompton, and there he was striding, as with seven-league boots, seemingly in the direction of North-end, Fulham. The Metropolitan Railway sent you forth at Lisson-grove, and you met him plodding speedily towards the Yorkshire Stingo. He was to be met rapidly skirting the grim brick wall of the prison in Coldbath-fields, or trudging along the Seven Sisters-road at Holloway, or bearing, under a steady press of sail, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... seen exploring the country, in carts, on foot, taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all the inns and alehouses for miles around, stopping people on the road with his questions, looking into the very ditches almost; first in the greatest excitement, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, growing slower and slower; and he could not even tell you plainly how his son looked. The sailor was supposed to be one of two that had left a timber ship, and to have been seen dangling ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... by the lights that he saw it at length and guessed he was near the end of his journey. It took some plodding then to reach it. Then a few inquiries brought him where he ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... regardless of winter's snows and winds to hear me expound my views, I can assure you that had it been necessary to come on snow shoes to prevent your loyalty to me from being in vain, I should have made the attempt, and perhaps like the youth who cried 'Excelsior,' might last have been seen plodding through the shades of night into your Alpine fastness, still striving ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... that great reform which Wesley and Whitefield introduced to the English people. They taught moral doctrines which we all accept in common, but they did not teach them after the cold and barren way of the plodding, mechanical instructor. They thundered them into the opening ears of thousands who had never been roused to moral sentiment before. They inspired the souls of poor and commonplace creatures with all the zealot's fire and all the martyr's ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... man. "Luck often comes when one isn't looking for it!" And in an instant he had leaped on the horse, and headed him for the castle of fortune. The little horse started at a fine pace, and in a very few minutes they overtook the other traveller, plodding along ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... church, and she didn't want him to be behind Nancy Rogers and Jerry Ware, and all the village boys and girls. So he said the answers after her and she explained them, which she certainly did very brightly and very well, and on week-days Angel taught him the earlier ones, in her gentle, plodding way, till he knew them by heart. He had done what his Aunt Betty required of him by the time Angel had taken two more turns, and was having his reward in the story which he called godpapa and the acorn. It was his favourite ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... inspection, even from a distance. He strode slowly along, looking intently at each house. None of them seemed to him to hold the object of his search. As his steps carried him farther and farther into the beautiful avenue he began to smile to himself and his plodding spirit wavered. After all, thought he, no one but a silly ass would attempt to find a person in a great city after the fashion he was pursuing. He was deciding to board a tramcar and return to the hotel when, at some distance ahead, he saw a young lady run hurriedly ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... questions—the convictions, the fanaticisms, of the vast silver nations—and enormous multitudes of the people of Asia, touching the silver standard—and the possible progress of labor, as a guiding as well as plodding ability increases incessantly in interest, and must grow in inheritance. As the conditions of progressive civilization are developed our interests cannot be wholly dissevered from those of the Asiatics. We would be unwise to contemplate the situation of to-day as one that ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... a brilliant genius, And thou a plodding brain; On thee I think with pleasure, On him with doubt and pain." ("You see, good Ned," says Thomas "What he thought about ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that my father was sober and industrious by habit; but habit is not uniform. There were intervals when his plodding and tame spirit gave place to the malice and fury of a demon. Liquors were not sought by him; but he could not withstand entreaty, and a potion that produced no effect upon others ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... he had chosen to be maintained by his father, some employment besides that of book-making was an imperative necessity. The alternative of that which was offered—the one his father would have chosen—was that of a plodding jurist in a country where forensic pleading was unknown, and where the lawyer's profession offered no scope for any of the higher talents with which Goethe was endowed. On the whole, it was a happy chance that called him to the little capital ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... not sexless. Though she hadn't the dancing-girl's oblivious delight in pleasure, though her energetic common sense and willingness to serve had turned into a durable plodding, Una was alive, normal, desirous of love, as the flower-faced girl grind of the college so often is not, to the vast confusion of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields. The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom, made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was, added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the effect that it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... front of him, he paused. He went a little distance up the hedge on both sides and held up his light, but did not detect the cowering boys, and at last giving up the search in despair, went slowly home. They heard him plodding back over the field, and it was not until the sound of his footsteps had died away, that Eric cautiously broke cover, and looked over the hedge. He saw the man's light gradually getting more distant, and said, "All right now, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... violence. He let Captain Hahn preach his German gospel of system on earth and organization to man, and walked beside him in silence, with pensive eyes fixed ahead, where the prisoner and his escort moved in a plodding ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... as you see in the picture, the three little children seated high up in the wain, and the farmer and the dame plodding ahead. ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... the mesa to the east. Here, as if in glee over their escape from city confines, they redoubled in fury and tore down to earth—and enveloped Felipe Montoya, a young and good-looking Mexican, and his team of scrawny horses plodding in a lumber rigging, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... cup was missing, and he guessed at once that his saintly friend had taken it. In great heat he hastened after the guest, and while passing Crowza Downs he pocketed a few large stones for future use. Presently he saw St. Just plodding along in the distance, and shouted after him. St. Just was too deeply absorbed in religious meditation to notice the cries. Finding shouts were useless, Keverne began to throw his stones, and these proved more effectual. St. Just dropped the chalice and hurried away home. Keverne had ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... times of Kublai Khan. There are Mohammedan mosques, with Chinese muezzins in blue turbans on feast days; Manchu palaces with vermillion-red pillars and archways and green and gold ceilings. There are unending lines of camels plodding slowly in from the Western deserts laden with all manner of merchandise; there are curious palanquins slung between two mules and escorted by sword-armed men that have journeyed all the way from Shansi and Kansu, which are a thousand miles away; a Mongol ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the guide (who was a real Indian) walking barefoot before, Mr. Adams, Mr. Grigsby and Charley riding in single file after, the two pack bullocks plodding behind, and another Indian, to drive them, trudging at the rear ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... solely. He was not "a thinking machine"; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Plodding on, he shortly made the Line that marked the victor's goal; Paused, and found he'd won, and laid the Flattering unction to his soul. Then in fashion grandiose, Like an after-dinner speaker, Touched his flipper to his nose, ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... firelight, should come the dreams and thoughts that set us free from sordidness, that teach our minds versatility and sympathy, that create for us hobbies and avocations of worth, that rest and refresh us. If we must be ocean liners all day, plodding between known and monotonous ports, at least we may be tramp ships at night, cargoed with strange stuffs and trafficking for ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... night— A mist of melancholy in the air— And the capricious beams of Dian's light Gave something mystic to the scene most fair. I gave my cousin Dante's divine "Inferno," Imploring her to read il primo canto. "Lo giorno s'andava," she drawled; but, tired of plodding, Directly fell asleep, and pretty soon—was nodding!! "Cousin, sweet cousin," cried I out, "awake! I long for sympathy—compassion on me take: They say yon stars are worlds—dost think 'tis so?" "Really, my—dear (a yawn), I—don't exactly know." "Cousin," ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the "House of the Seven Gables." We of the outside world who know our Concord only by hearsay cannot realize that "The Wayside" and the "Old Manse" and "Sleepy Hollow" are verities,—verities which the plodding language of prose tails to compass, unless the pen is wielded ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... back stop maybe (anyway, that's what Bert said) because the water only beat against it and then went tumbling back into the creek bed and down toward the Hudson. It was down that way that it overflowed mostly and flooded the fields we had been plodding through. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... covetous man. He had a passion for money-making and he had availed himself of all the opportunities which the country afforded. He had about as much property as his friend. He began to think he had been plodding along in a very slow, unsatisfactory manner. He would make careful inquiries and perhaps Temple would put him in the way of doubling his money. Upon the whole, therefore, he was very glad to see Mr. Temple, and introduced ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... related that one of the tunnel men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of "Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to mould your brilliant life to my plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts. "But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you—and—you're drifting away ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... came sooner than they anticipated. The ponies were plodding forward with their loads, when, before either of the riders suspected it, they were on the edge of another growth of timber, which promised the ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... easily understand that there were frequent quarrels when two vehicles met half-way. Sometimes one of the opponents would be a puffing engine, and if it happened to be dragging a load of coal, back it had to go until the siding was reached, that the plodding horse might pass. To us such a state of things is hard to imagine, but the railway and it possibilities were not thoroughly understood at first. Even George Stephenson did not think it would be very ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... did not look on the fame and fortune brought to him by his book as his chief reward. It had been his desire to be helpful to the plodding, discouraged men and boys. As he expressed it himself: "It seemed to me that the most important results in daily life are to be obtained, not through the exercise of extraordinary powers, but through the energetic use of simple means, and ordinary qualities, with which all ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the villages we passed by a primitive flour-mill moved by a small stream playing upon a horizontal wheel beneath the floor; or, more primitive still, by a blindfolded donkey plodding ceaselessly around in his circular path. In the streets we frequently encountered boys and old men gathering manure for their winter fuel; and now and then a cripple or invalid would accost us as "Hakim" ("Doctor"), for the medical work of the missionaries has given these simple-minded ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... and I are plodding onward in good health, and in a fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite the happiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little old red farm-house ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... daybreak George Jones and I were scouring the country in the vicinity of Tule Lake. After having ridden some little distance we ran upon the trail of six Indians, who as we supposed had passed the evening before, and were evidently plodding along in the direction of Lost river. This was without doubt the trail of four bucks and two squaws. After we had followed this trail a few miles we found where they had stopped, built a fire, caught, cooked and ate some fish. We knew they were not many miles ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... brought me round again to the window that was no window, the rumble of wheels, the plodding of a horse's hoofs. Beyond the low arch—or was it a pent?—shone a star or two, and against their pale radiance a shadow loomed—the shadow of the Princess, still seated, still patient, still with her hands in her lap. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... may think of the cosmic process generally, the human part of that process does not encourage a theological interpretation. Man is working out his own destiny, and doing it ill. We see him, like some pedlar plodding along a country road under his burdens, carrying through whole centuries institutions and ideas and follies that he will eventually shed. When he drops them, there is no more element of miracle or revelation ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... the other about the tame herds of the field. In the morning he would follow the young hunter to the distant lick, and, having acquitted himself in the chase, with his wonted address, he would hasten back to the fort, leaving his companion to follow at that plodding pace peculiar to two-footed animals, and so irksome to dogs, to accommodate themselves to which they must needs trot out, on a magnified scale, the ground plan of a straggling worm fence, with wide digression to right ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... dark lane, and left him and went away. After a while up came a Nazarene,[FN503] the Sultan's broker who, much bemused with liquor, was purposing for the Hammam bath as his drunkenness whispered in his ear, "Verily the call to matins[FN504] is nigh." He came plodding along and staggering about till he drew near the Hunchback and squatted down to make water[FN505] over against him; when he happened to glance around and saw a man standing against the wall. Now some person had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... half smothered her in dust when he perceived that the little woman in black, under a black parasol, was actually Diane. To his indignant queries as to why she should be plodding her way on foot, with this scorching sun overhead, her replies were cheerful and uncomplaining. A series of small accidents in the stable—such had constantly happened at her own little chateau in the Oise—having made it inadvisable to take the horses out, one of the men had ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune and interest, was accomplishing reputation. Assheton was the son of a worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a stipend of L32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her husband a small ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and should be readily granted, that patient plodding is less piquant than the by-play of inertia and revolt. The spirit of Nietsche is doubtless even now yawning mightily at such tedious moralizing; fresh proof of the "dull, gloomy seriousness," the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to go too fast. In his Forest, Mr. Stewart White gives us some lessons in bushmanship. 'As long as you restrain yourself,' he says, 'to a certain leisurely plodding, you get along without extraordinary effort; but even a slight increase of speed drags fiercely at your feet. One good step is worth six stumbling steps; go only fast enough to assure that good one. An expert woods-walker is never in a hurry.' I was chatting ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... silence, for Breezy eagerly joined his stable companion, and in a short time they were up to, and then passed Jack with his plodding oxen, which were drawing a rough sledge, something similar to that which a farmer at home uses for the conveyance of a ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... the knowledge of the value of the load Saxe would gladly have freed himself of the burden by letting it fall on the stones. But these were the crystals of which Dale was in search, and as he saw that his companion was patiently plodding on and making his way over the sharp, rough masses of stone with which the ravine was floored, he bent to his task patiently, though it seemed as though they would never reach the spot ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... of patient plodding; two, three. Raf, led by the hand, helped over rocks and obstacles which were only dark blurs to his watering eyes, raged inwardly and sometimes outwardly, against the slowness of their advance, his own helplessness. His ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Both silent, laborious, plodding, plotting functionaries, thriftily gathering riches; skilled in routine and adepts at intrigue; steady self-seekers, and faithful to office in which their lives had passed, they might be relied on at any emergency to take part against their master, if ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Wall Street was a perfect Eldorado, and seemed to take pains to drop occasional suggestions as to how an investment shrewdly made by one with his favored point of observation often secured in a day a larger return than a year of plodding business. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... did not, I walked on in the direction of Colombes, vaguely ruminating upon Pompeii, Palmyra, fish dinners at Greenwich, and the mutability of human things. I had hardly left Asnieres, however, and was plodding along a path, when I was recalled to the realities of life by half-a-dozen Mobiles springing up from behind a low wall, and calling upon me to stop, while they enforced their order by pointing their muskets at my head. I stood still, and they surrounded me. I explained ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... hardly be needed. He had just torn his finger upon a thorn. Seeing the blood rise, it occurred that one is never without a bit of red. At the base of the bank he turned his eyes upward. The Chinese was plodding up the stairs, the woman holding his ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his saddle and galloped away. A few minutes later the whole column was plodding on silently toward its bloody goal. To a civilian, unaccustomed to scenes of war, the tranquillity of these men would have seemed very wonderful. Many of the soldiers were still munching the hard bread and raw pork of their meagre breakfasts, or drinking the cold coffee with which they had ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... garden a pleasant excursion, And into a lily or hollyhock dodging With quiet assurance he takes up his lodging. With a snug little fortune invested in honey, Young Bumble Bee lives like a prince, on his money, And, scorning some plodding relations of his, he Leaves hard labor ...
— The Nursery, August 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... and the Rangers and Indians were on snowshoes. The regulars followed us, plodding along heavily through the snow. We reached Halfway Brook that night, and the next day got over to Lake George. We waited till it was dark and then marched down the lake to the First Narrows, which we reached about two ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... to his decision then, with just that nod of the head. And she, forlorn, was glad he had cast this temptation aside. That he was plodding now sturdily along his highway. She flushed with shame at the thought of him, ubiquitous among those egotists at Ravinia, enlisting their interest, reminding Paula ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school to hear the finest boy. Her knowledge with her fancy grew, She hourly pressed for something new; Ideas came into her mind So fact, his lessons lagged behind; She reasoned, without plodding long, Nor ever gave her judgment wrong. But now a sudden change was wrought, She minds no longer what he taught. Cadenus was amazed to find Such marks of a distracted mind; For though she seemed to listen more To all he spoke, than e'er before. He found her thoughts would ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... that they were "thrown off" on the spur of the moment a few hours before. Some of the names appended to them astonished me. Grave, practical business men, sage financiers, fierce speculators, and plodding traders, never before suspected of poetry, or even correct prose, were among the contributors. It seemed as if most of the able-bodied inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in the habit at some ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... won across and was plodding up to solid roadway once more and there safe, for the moment at least, he ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... make each other hear; so drove the snow and wind through the trees, and into their very faces and ears. They plodded on. It was plodding; the snow lay thick enough now to make their footing uneasy, and grew deeper every moment; their shoes were full; their feet and ankles were wet; and their steps began to drag heavily over the ground. Ellen clung as close to Alice's cloak as their hurried travelling would permit; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... had been counted too soon, and there was to be no hatching. Colin grew uneasy, and began to sniff up wind. I was maybe a quarter of a mile from the glen foot, plodding through the long grass of the hollow, when the behaviour of the dog made me stop and listen. In that still air sounds carry far, and I seemed to hear the noise of feet brushing through cover. The noise came both from north ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... every inn they passed and, lavishly provided with small coins by Vocco, had provisioned themselves abundantly. These supplies they handed over to their fellows when they took up the litter. All the way back the spare carriers, plodding behind, munched their provender and conversed in undertones. The bearers, necessarily ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... ready to move at once; which was now a difficult order to execute, on account of many things, especially the shelter tents;—for they were as rigid as sheet-iron and yet had to be rolled up and strapped on the knapsacks. Nevertheless it was not long before the regiment was in motion; and after plodding off for a mile to the left, a line of battle was formed, vedettes sent out, trees felled and breastworks built, and at dinner-time the men were allowed to build fires and cook breakfast. Then, after standing until almost night in the snow, which had now turned to sleet, ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... rank scarcely cared to fill. Under these circumstances the choice fell upon Lord Robartes, who had rendered some good service in Cornwall, and who had the reputation of more than respectable abilities, of careful and plodding industry, and of an integrity which was at least above the moderate average standard of Charles's Court. But he had defects of character which were apparent to a judge so acute as the Chancellor, and these soon made themselves plain. Clarendon gives expression to them with all the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... have been written Munnins, and nn changed into gg for the sake of euphony. Should this conjecture, for it is nothing else, be well founded, one of the most poetical ideas in the whole range of mythology would, in this plodding, practical, spilling-jenny age of ours, have thus undergone a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... soon came up with the advance. As he passed the men on foot a sudden swirl of snow came in larger flakes from the leaden skies. Before him were a dozen horsemen, riding slowly. The air was now filled with the great white flakes; the men ahead, in their caped overcoats, with their hats drawn low, plodding on tired horses between the hills, all seen vaguely through the snow veil, had a sudden wintry, desolate, and far-away seeming. He said to himself that they were ghosts from fifty years back, ghosts of the Grand Army in the grasp of General January. He made what haste he could and came up with ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to fire the Lombards' houses: Oh power, what art thou in a madman's eyes! Thou makest the plodding idiot bloody-wise. ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... plodding hoofs! O creaking wheels, O tinkling pots and pans, had I but possessed the wisdom to understand your oft-repeated message, how much of doubt, of grief and pain ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... feebly in his hands and sat shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said all ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... had picked me up was nothing but a tramp, plodding along with a general cargo from London to Dundee, and its accommodation was as rough as its skipper was homely. But it was a veritable palace of delight and luxury to me after that terrible night, and I was soon hard and fast asleep in the skipper's own bunk—and was still asleep when he laid ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher |
