"Drudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit, contriving all with a cleverness that made the deficiencies of her household the more remarkable. Conny and Bee Strangeways were the best workers, having plenty of experience and resource, and being ready to do anything, however hard, dusty, or disagreeable; and to drudge contentedly, with plenty of chatter indeed, but quite as freely to a female as to a male companion; whereas Miss Moy had a knot of men constantly about her, and made a noise which was a sore trial to Cecil's heavy spirit all the first day, exclusive of the offence to her native fastidiousness. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twopence. Now, allowing that I work twelve hours in the day, at the rate of one penny per minute, I should earn 3 pounds per day, which, deducting Sundays, is 939 pounds a year. Put that against 40 pounds a year, as a drudge to a school, or confined to a desk, in a shop, or any other profession, and you see how lucrative mine is in proportion. Then I am under no control; not ordered here or there, like a general or admiral; not attacked in the House of Commons or Lords, like a prime minister; on the contrary, half ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... work is her very life, and her success in it means just as much to her as mine here at the mines does to me. But I can't see what particular ambition you'd be realizing in filling any of the positions you've applied for. You couldn't do more than drudge along and make a bare living at first. There'd be very little time and energy ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... this person, said that the dismal pictures drawn by social novelists of life among the very poor were true in fact, but wrong in perspective. Novelists described what their own feelings would be if they were condemned to live the life of the disinherited city drudge, rather than the actual feelings of the drudge himself. A man of education, accustomed to easy means, would suffer tortures unspeakable if he were made to live in a single room of a populous and squalid tenement, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's will. And then, if a boy does show talent in school, do they help him up in life? Not they; when he has just learnt enough to whet his appetite for more, they turn him adrift again, to sink and drudge—to do his duty, as they call it, in that state of life to which society and the devil have ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... busy in his occupation, a man of Hijjem came to his shop, and after looking at him earnestly for some moments, exclaimed, "Alas, that such a noble youth should be confined to drudge at so mean an employment!" "I thank you, father, for your compassion," replied Mazin, "but honest industry can never be disgraceful." "True," said the old man of Hijjem, "yet if Providence puts affluence and distinction in our way, should we refuse ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... meantime he had to task that poor drudge, his muse, for present exigencies. Ten pounds were demanded for his appointment-warrant. Other expenses pressed hard upon him. Fortunately, though as yet unknown to fame, his literary capability was known to "the trade," and the coinage of his brain passed current in Grub Street. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... exclaimed. "I draw the line at that! Ladybird ought not to allow it. We've no right to turn you into a domestic drudge." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and be humble; study to retrench; Discharge the lazy vermin of thy hall, Those pageants of thy folly: Reduce the glitt'ring trappings of thy wife To humble weeds, fit for thy little state: [ Going. Then to some suburb cottage both retire; Drudge to feed loathsome life; get brats and starve— Home, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... laundry and housework at a school of domestic economy. Properly conducted, the relations between employer and employee, "mistress" and "servant," are those of mutual aid. Such relations may be, and too often are, those of an inefficient little drudge for a "mistress" almost equally ignorant and inefficient. But when the employer is an intelligent woman with a sense of justice (I prefer a sense of justice to sentimental theories about sisterhood—people do not always treat their sisters justly) ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... a person or thing let out for promiscuous use, e.g., a horse, a whore, a literary drudge. Cf. "The hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... is politeness; dissipation, life; and levity, spirit. The miserable and contemptible drudge of every tawdry innovation in dress or ceremony, she incessantly mistakes extravagance for taste, and finery ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... right when she said that. And she is foolish with regard to her eldest son—no mother ought to be so partial. I am afraid Kester must feel it; all his interests are secondary to his brother's. It is hardly fair. And Mollie, too—the child seems a perfect drudge. No, my dear woman, I admire you more than I can say, and I know I shall very soon get fond of you; but ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her father sent her eldest brother to look for her, but he came back without finding her. The second brother was also sent, but with no better result. At last the father turned to his youngest son, who was the drudge of the house, and said: "Now, Ashpot, you go and see if you ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... do not expect him, let us say, suddenly to go into a monastery. We have lost the idea of repentance; especially in public things; that is why we cannot really get rid of our great national abuses of economic tyranny and aristocratic avarice. Progress in the modern sense is a very dismal drudge; and mostly consists of being moved on by the police. We move on because we are not allowed to move back. But the really ragged prophets, the real revolutionists who held high language in the palaces of kings, they did not confine themselves to saying, "Onward, Christian ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... and Nancy would have been turned out into the world to seek her fortune, for her mother was dead, and she had no other relatives. She did talk of trying to get into service, which meant becoming a drudge in a small tradesman's family, that she might help us with her wages; but she could not bring herself to leave Mary; and Tom, indeed, said she must stay to look after her. As father had had no funeral, his old friends wished to show all the respect in their power ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. And did we not also see the great changes in woman's condition, the marvelous transformation in her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... they price their liberty too high, because those who have money prefer to be independent and enjoy life, and those who have none prefer bravely wringing a living from the world to being a man's slave, a mere drudge, entirely engrossed in housekeeping, etc., etc.; and so on—pages of it! All this may possibly be true of a very small portion of the community, but the uncontrovertible fact remains that the principal reason for ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... spent—a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty. I emerged from that prison to enter a new one, in the shape of a West-end boarding- school, where I became the drudge and scape-goat of rich citizens' daughters, heiresses presumptive to the scrapings of tallow-chandlers and coal-merchants, linen-drapers and cheesemongers. For six years I endured my fate patiently, uncomplainingly. Not one ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the Master's feet. And troubles not herself with household cares. 'T is the old story. When a guest arrives She gives up all to be with him; while I Must be the drudge, make ready the guest-chamber, Prepare the food, set everything in order, And see that naught is wanting in the house. She shows her love by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, free from money anxieties—dearest, dearest Norie—I can't thank you enough. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... to the voice of the time! The multitude think for themselves, And weigh their condition each one; The drudge has a spirit sublime, And whether he hammers or delves, He reads when his labour is done; And learns, though he groan under poverty's ban, That freedom to Think, is ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... several hundred, and considering her defenseless position, the savages allowed her considerable liberty. From the first, however, she was made a slave and a drudge, and compelled to toil with the hardy squaws of their tribe, bearing their insults and sometimes even their blows. The hope and prospect of a speedy relief and deliverance enabled her to bear this without murmuring. She had not ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... never spoke again after the games in the Circus. He died soon afterward. Sahira, robbed of her freedom by the jealousy of a woman high in favor in the imperial court, who envied her beauty and the favor of the emperor, sank again into slavery, and as the years passed, became a drudge in ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge all my life." ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... not altogether the soulless drudge he appears. In the midst of his work, uncheered by summer sunshine, and clinging with numb toes to the tree-trunk some bitter cold day, he still finds some tender emotion within him to voice in a "wild, sweet song" that is positively enchanting at such a time. But ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... brought in 360 millions.[3224] By the same measure, an extraordinary counter-measure, the taxable party, especially the peasant-proprietor, the small farmer with nobody to protect him, diametrically opposite to the privileged class, the drudge of the monarchy, is relieved of three-fourths of his immemorial burden.[3225] At first, through the abolition of tithes and of feudal privileges, he gets back one-quarter of his net income, that quarter which he paid to the seignior ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... any poor man!" I cried out. "What have you to offer me? What can you do? Oh, yes, you can come and insult me, and talk to me of love—Love! The love that would make me a poor man's drudge!" ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... decided to teach, she must be content to accept juvenile pupils and a poor salary; if she became a companion, she must sacrifice all spirit of independence, and become a dutiful drudge, while she knew in her inmost heart that it would be wrong to take up nursing, since she felt no ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... archness and liveliness of manner, rendered her behaviour acceptable to all with whom she was called upon to associate. Notwithstanding her strict attention to all domestic affairs, she always appeared the clean well-dressed mistress of the house, never the sordid household drudge. When complimented on this occasion by Duncan Knock, who swore "that he thought the fairies must help her, since her house was always clean, and nobody ever saw anybody sweeping it," she modestly replied, "That much might be dune by timing ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... thought the horse the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more like an ornament than a live thing, an object of luxury rather than of utility. Was he really going to ride this horse for many hours? To do so seemed like making a drudge of some beautiful woman. The horse's quarters curved like a woman's, a woman's skin was hardly finer, nor were a woman's wrists and hands, though she cared for them ever so much, shaping them with files, and ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... poltroonery, my remark about 'begging' the most finicking absurdity, my failure to accept Ted's offer the most reckless and offensive stupidity. Evidently I was unworthy of any better lot than I had. I should live and die an 'inmate' and a drudge. I deserved nothing else. In short, I was a very despicable lad, had probably lost the only friend I should ever have, and, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the servant, and, in a sense, the creature of man, the drudge of kitchen and factory, the humble slave of the lamp, engaged in his most servile employment, appearing as a little point of flame, or perhaps a feeble spark, suddenly snaps his brittle chain, breaks from his prison, and leaps with destructive fury, as if from the very bosom of Hell, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and that friend a woman, a good household drudge, who loves you. That is the most precious sort of friendship, for the expense of it is all on the woman's side. The man need not contribute anything. If he's a rogue, she'll vow he's an angel; if he's a brute, she ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... attention throughout the country, was of Marie, a French girl, the daughter of a Breton stone mason, so old and poor that he was obliged to take her from her convent school at the age of twelve years. He sent her to Paris, where she became a little household drudge and nurse-maid, working from six in the morning until eight at night, and for three years sending her wages, which were about a franc a day, directly to her parents in the Breton village. One afternoon, as she was buying a bottle of milk at a tiny ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... go stark mad were it not for us quiet, easy-going people, who have time for a good dinner and a snack between meals. You've got a genius that's like a windmill in a trade wind, always in motion; you are worth more money than I shall ever have, but you are the greatest drudge in the studio building, and work as ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... criticize your mother's methods. I can't drudge about the house and take charge of the Social Clubs and Welfare Work ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose. Think'st thou, my wit shall keep the packhorse way, That every dudgeon low invention goes? Since sonnets thus in bundles are imprest, And every drudge doth dull our satiate ear, Think'st thou my love shall in those rags be drest That every dowdy, every trull doth wear? Up to my pitch no common judgment flies; I scorn all ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... efficient in individual pursuits—when his activity is play, when he works, or when he is a drudge? ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in the building of my house beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of trouble and work to keep clean and orderly. It will be no spick and span and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy of drudge. I live in California where the days are warm. I'd prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) than be compelled to spend those three hours in keeping the house spick and span. Therefore ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility, nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would not care about marriage, if even ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... to the highest motive, how appropriate that woman, whose labor, wealth and brain have cemented the stones in every monument that man has reared to himself; that woman, the oppressed, woman, the hater of wars, the faithful, quiet drudge of the centuries, watching while others slept, working while others plundered and murdered; woman, who has died in prison and on the scaffold for liberty, should here and now have her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... free, and I can call it my own—hame's hame, let it be never so hamely. I ken well enough, he could never abide me, and when he has his ends he'll e'en use me as he did before. I'm sure I shall be treated like a poor drudge—I shall be set to tend the bairns, darn the hose, and mend the linen. Then there's no living with that old carline, his mother; she rails at Jack, and Jack's an honester man than any of her kin: I shall be plagued with her spells ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an admirer of the young lady, but had never received the least encouragement from her. It made him angry to see his father's drudge walking on equal terms with his own favorite, and his coarse nature prompted him to insult ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... now I can admire and think of how Aunt Jenny, the prim maiden lady, gave up all her own old ways to set to and work and drudge for us all, living in a wagon and then in a tent, and smiling pleasantly at the trees we planted, and bringing us lunch where we were working away, dragging down stones for the house which progressed so slowly, though father's ideas ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... The hotel drudge stood still and looked after the couple with wondering eyes. The judge's wife dropped something as she walked. Jane hurried after her and picked it up. It was a glove. The girl pressed it to her lips again and again, hurried along for a few steps to return ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... Ishmael did allow it, for he thought that he could trust this old drudge, and told her to act as a spy upon Rachel, and report to him all that she said or did. Very soon Rachel found this out and warned her against obeying him, since if she did so it would come to her knowledge, and then great evil would fall on one who betrayed ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... sufferings of the obscure. If the successful adventurer, Lesable, and the handsome Maze are the objects of his veiled irony, he maintains, or feels a sorrowful, though somewhat disdainful tenderness, for poor old Savon, the old copying clerk of the Ministry of Marine, who is the drudge of the office and whose colleagues laugh at him because his wife deceived ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his benefit of clergy, and to hold him no better than other people. Perhaps he is not, perhaps he is not so good, half the time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you must pay for him, by not trying to make a drudge of him while he is all his lifetime struggling with the chills and heats of his artistic ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... meant to be either an unthinking drudge, or the merely pretty ornament of man's leisure. She exists for herself, as well as for others; and the serious and responsible duties she is called upon to perform in life, require the cultivated head ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... and their defect; but in the case of Charles, a man of exceptional beauty and sweetness, both of face and disposition, the family fault had quite grown to be a virtue, and we find him in consequence the drudge and milk-cow of his relatives. Born in 1766, Charles served at sea in his youth, and smelt both salt-water and powder. The Jenkins had inclined hitherto, as far as I can make out, to the land service. Stephen's son had been a soldier; William (fourth of Stowting) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waited in the dusk to hear the sound of her footfall; no half-impudent but half-bashful glances had ever been thrown after her as she went through the village on her business. To be a homely, household thing, useful indeed in this world, and with high hopes for the future,—but still to be a drudge; that had been her destiny. There was never a woman to whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that her mind could produce. Fate had made her plain, and no man had loved her. The same chance had made Carry pretty,—the belle of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... pounds a week if you wished to. What do you suppose the phantom lover will say if he knows that his money hasn't helped you, and that you're going to make a drudge of yourself?" ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... You know quite well that you have a far better head than most of the men you are working with, and you let them make a regular drudge and Johannes factotum of you. Intellectually you are as far ahead of Grassini and Galli as if they were schoolboys; yet you sit correcting their ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... cruelty may abound. How many of the dark spots on our community has the single zeal of the Earl of Shaftesbury forced upon the public mind, of which we were utterly ignorant, though living in the midst of them. The degraded female drudge in a coal-pit, the agonized infant in a chimney, and the death-wrought child in a factory—each and all bear testimony to how much of suffering may exist while surrounded by those whose lives are spent in Christian charity. And so it is in every community, Slave States included. Christian ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... you I dessay you'll get through with it," said Mrs Greenways graciously, and so the matter was settled. Lilac was dairymaid! No longer a little household drudge, called hither and thither to do everyone's work, but an important person with a business and position of her own. What an honour it was! There was only one drawback—there was no mother to rejoice with her, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... servants, only a few days ago, looked on as the stable drudge, who was to perform all the dirty work, while they, attired in smart liveries, and receiving triple the wages given to him, were far more ornamental than useful in the establishment of their employer. They offered him money as a reward for his spirited ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other articles of clothing of the commonest description, completed the history. A prison, and the sentence—banishment or the gallows. What would the man have given then, to be once again the contented humble drudge of his boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of heartfelt forgiveness ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wonder, Calmly o'erleaps, and snaps asunder All reverend ties that be! The soldier carries in his sword The primal right by bridge or ford To pass. Shall kingly Caesar fall And kiss the ground—the Senate's thrall And boastful Pompey's drudge? Forthwith, with one bold plunge, is pass'd The fateful flood—"the DIE is CAST; Let Fortune ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... say, "the obstinacy of people who drudge at their pictures. A fellow who hangs month after month over one piece of canvass is, in my opinion, an artisan, not an artist. Such a one has no genius, for genius creates boldly, rapidly. Now this portrait, for instance," he would say, "I painted in two days, this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... hives with wax and honey fill, In vain whole summer days employed, Their stores are sold, their race destroyed. What tribute from the goose is paid! Does not her wing all science aid! Does it not lovers' hearts explain, And drudge to raise the merchant's gain? 40 What now rewards this general use? He takes the quills, and eats the goose. Man then avoid, detest his ways; So safety shall prolong your days. When services are thus acquitted, Be sure we ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... about all day, and at night, hungry and weary, entered a jeweler's shop in the Palais Royal, kept by an old woman, to whom he appealed for employment—vainly at first. Finally, however, she consented to engage him as a drudge and errand boy, allowed him to sleep in an armoire over the door, and gave him four pounds of bread a week in lieu of wages. Four pounds of bread a week! The allowance appeared munificent, and he accepted the offer with gratitude. A brief experience ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... to have become the representatives of the people; and, by a talent for intrigue, and a coarse facility of phrase-making, (for he has no pretensions to eloquence,) prevailed on the mob to elect him. His local knowledge, active disposition, and subservient industry, render him an useful kind of drudge to any prevailing party, and, since the overthrow of the Brissotines, he has been entrusted with the government of this and some of the neighbouring departments. He professes himself a zealous republican, and an apostle of the doctrine of universal equality, yet unites in his person all the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... house that is spotless at the price of the family's peace or of the housekeeper's best self, is the worst sort of an investment. You, the woman, are of vastly more importance than your surroundings. If you feel yourself becoming a mere drudge, if your family is growing away from you mentally, if your nerves are weakening under a fetish of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... a mechanical drudge, And SALLY—a something much worse. Through cowslip-pied meadows to merrily trudge Won't fill a maid's heart, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... feminine beauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliant physically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, had been and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a line of escape to the Pleasure City and its splendours and delights, and at last to the Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against such inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. In the young cities of Graham's former ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... claimed the right to work in 1848, national and municipal workshops were organized, and workmen were sent to drudge there at the rate of 1s. 8d. a day! When they asked the "Organization of Labour," the reply was: "Patience, friends, the Government will see to it; meantime here is your 1s. 8d. Rest now, brave toiler, after your life-long struggle for food!" And in the meantime ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Hear'st thou, Anippe, how thy drudge doth talk? And how my slave, her mistress, menaceth? Both for their sauciness shall be employ'd To dress the common soldiers' meat and drink; For we will scorn they should ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... injure the soul; or could I in other ways buy bread for our household. So dearly do I prize this new-found faith, that for its sake, were it to be retained in no other way, would I relinquish it, and sink into the deeper poverty that would then be ours, or drudge at some ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... But this task of his, to cast the sunshine of pathos and of genial mirth over the humblest, dullest, and most uninviting of our fellow-creatures, was a great social mission to which his whole genius was devoted. No waif and stray was so repulsive, no drudge was so mean, no criminal was so atrocious, but what Charles Dickens could feel for him some ray of sympathy, or extract some pathetic mirth out of his abject state. And Dickens does not look on the mean and the vile as do Balzac ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... "Do you think life at Feldwick was any more bearable to me than to you and Cissy, because I wasn't always mooning about on the hills or reading poetry? You never took the trouble to find out. You looked upon me as a drudge because I did the work which was my duty. You were mine, and I wanted you. When you stole away I hated you. I have tried to hunt you down because I hated you. You have escaped me now, but I shall hate you always. Remember it, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... employment of his choice, it was to him the perpetual source of a generous and sublime felicity. ALMORAN also was equally diligent, but from another motive: he was actuated, not by love of the public, but by jealousy of his brother; he performed his task as the drudge of necessity, with reluctance and ill will; so that to him it produced pain and ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... wearing second-hand clothes; I have slept in second-class surroundings; my life has resembled life about as much as the naked trees in the Fall resemble those in June. I have existed after a fashion and learned that if I skimp and drudge and save for twenty years I can then begin to do the things I wish to do. But not before,—not before without compromise. And I 've had enough of the will o' the wisp Future, enough of the shadowy ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... personified to him the Cinderella of the continents, the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper. He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when she had conquered ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... under difficulties will always make his way in the world, while one who repines and kicks against his fate only makes it harder for him. I have no doubt that if, instead of taking matters coolly when you found yourself on board the privateer you had fretted and grumbled, you would have been made a drudge and kicked and cuffed by everyone on board. You would not have had a chance of landing at that island or of being chosen to make the signal when they went away, and you would now be leading the life of a dog on board ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... worthy of the high caste Hindu's wife. Better death on the pyre than a future like that of a pariah dog. For a wife who preferred to live after her husband was gone was a social outcast, permitted not to wed again, to exist only as a drudge, a menial, the scum and contempt of all who had known her ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... She knew when the cherry and plum trees were in blossom just as she knew it was April. The beautiful sounds and changes in nature reminded her that it was time to do certain kinds of work, and with her, work was alpha and omega. As her mother had before her, she was inclined to be a house drudge rather than a housewife. Thrift, neatness, order, marked the limits of her endeavor, and she accomplished her tasks with the awkward, brisk directness learned in her mother's kitchen. Only mind, imagination, and refinement can embroider the homely details of life. Alida would learn ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the thought that his reproach was unjust; she was willing to do what was fitting, and he ought not to expect her to be an absolute nursery-maid. Women must keep up the tone of their own minds, and she might be being useful to the world as well as to her own family. If he wanted a mere household drudge, why had he not looked elsewhere? Up went her queenly head, as she believed her powers were meant for other things; but her heart gave a painful throb at the recollection that poverty had been her voluntary choice, and had seemed perfect ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... note, for there would be such ample opportunity nowadays for the display of its peculiar functions. Why, for instance, should modern novel-writers turn the patient adjective into an overworked little drudge, and compel it to do thrice the labor that it can effectually perform? Fifty years ago it led a life of respected ease, and was only called on when it could be of some real use to the author; now it knows no respite from its ever-increasing tasks, and too often bears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... eat. And when we solicitously inquire beforehand what we should do or how we should employ ourselves if we had not such care and business to take up our time, this is as if Danaus's daughters should trouble their heads to know what they should do if they had no sieves to fill with water. We drudge and toil for necessaries, for want of better and nobler occupation. As slaves then who have gained their freedom do now and then those drudgeries and discharge those servile employments and offices for their own benefit which they undertook heretofore for their masters' advantage, so ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... there's an end of it," he returned irritably, chewing hard on a chip he had picked up from the ground; "and what's more, I shan't go till I see the use. It's killing me by inches. I tell you I'm not strong enough to stand a life like this. Drudge, drudge, drudge; there's nothing else except the little ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... to service—her deficiency in the knowledge of a mere drudge, or her lost character, pursued her wherever she went—at length, becoming wholly destitute, she gladly accepted a place where the latter misfortune was not of the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedily include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except with her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that," jeers Brisbille, "you've said all there is to say. Why, you damned snob, you're only a poor drudge, like all us chaps, but haven't you just got ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... sooty spirit from Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor,... into the infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy sow (scrofa stercorata),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-colored asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy swineherd (porcarie pedicose),... lowest of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... suffice, for of such details as these are all my days made up. Indeed, my dear, I am but a mere drudge with few ideas beyond babies and housekeeping. As for thoughts, reflections, and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of criminals, brother of slaves, Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant, With sudra face and worn brow—black, but in the depths of my heart proud as any; Lifted, now and always, against whoever, scorning, assumes to rule me; Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... mortal man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate: That like an emmet thou must ever moil Is a sad sentence of an ancient date; And, certes, there is for it reason great, For though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come an heavier bale— Loose life, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... was but the creature of man's caprice, the drudge or ornament of his home, mistress of neither her body nor her mind. But as the world advanced and matter was made more subject unto mind—as divine Reason wrested the scepter from brute Force—woman began to assume her proper place ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... minister to him who serves a slave; Be sure you fasten on promotion's scale, Even if you seize some footman by the tail: 70 The ascent is easy, and the prospect clear, From the smirch'd scullion to the embroider'd peer. The ambitious drudge preferr'd, postilion rides, Advanced again, the chair benighted guides; Here doom'd, if Nature strung his sinewy frame, The slave, perhaps, of some insatiate dame; But if, exempted from the Herculean toil, A fairer field awaits him, rich with spoil, There shall he shine, with ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... O, sir, I did not look so low.—To conclude: this drudge or diviner laid claim to me; called me Dromio; swore I was assured to her; told me what privy marks I had about me, as the mark of my shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I, amazed, ran from her as a witch: and, I think, if my ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... another; you have no friends in common now. Richard lives in a mansion, while you live in a hovel; Richard's wife is a fine "lady" in silks and satins, attended by flunkeys, while your wife is a poor, sickly, anaemic, overworked drudge. You still live in the same city, yet not in the same world. You would not know how to act in Richard's home, before all the servants; you would be embarrassed if you sat down at his dinner table. Your children would be awkward and shy in the presence ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... should have, but by and by his covetous wife and most cursed queane made me a mill Asse, and (beating me with a cudgill full of knots) would wring bread for her selfe and her husband out of my skinne. Yet was she not contented to weary me and make me a drudge with carriage and grinding of her owne corne, but I was hired of her neighbours to beare their sackes likewise, howbeit shee would not give me such meate as I should have, nor sufficient to sustaine my life withall, for the barly which I ground for mine owne ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... was the girl starved, no longer was she made to drudge till the thought of another day was a despair and a terror. And seeing that she was a good girl, Mrs. Dunbar respected her scruples. Indeed, she was very kind, and Esther soon learnt to like her, and, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... hath a cottage poor you see: The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night; The daily drudge from cares can quiet be: Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight; And I was born to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Society sits smirking foolishly on the top of a smouldering volcano,—and the chief Symbols of greatness among us, Religion, Poesy, Art, are burning as feebly as tapers in the catacombs, . . the Church resembles a drudge, who, tired of routine, is gradually sinking into laziness and inertia, . . and the Press! ... ye gods! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their drab trousers, which they wear like men well used to working dresses, who are easy in no others. It would be hard to keep your model republics going, without the countrymen and countrywomen of those two labourers. For who else would dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic work, and make canals and roads, and execute great lines of Internal Improvement! Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled too, to find out what they seek. Let us go down, and help them, for the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which admits of honest ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... among his accustomed smells behind the store, and pondered sadly on the caprice of the fate which had made Viggo a high-nosed, handsome gentleman, and him—Marcus Henning—an under-grown, homely, and unrefined drudge. But in spite of his failure to answer this question, there was joy within him at the thought that he had saved this handsome face of Viggo's from disfigurement, and—who could know?—perhaps would earn a claim upon ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... met knew him, and all, when they saw his round, red face, smiled unconsciously. At the corner of the High Street a pale-faced little drudge of a girl passed us, saying as she slipped by ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... and superstition. Her gods are gods of fear. She believes in witchcraft, is afraid of a world full of evil spirits. Under a pagan religion her place is next to the mere animals. She goes with her husband to the hunt, not as a companion, but as the drudge, the human pack-horse; she prepares the food, and her husband devours it regardless of her needs; he may boast of his "old woman" as being "nina mimi heca" (swift or good to work) for that is the only accomplishment ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... to stand it," cried Wodehouse; "if a fellow's to be driven mad, and insulted, and have his money won from him, and made game of—not to say tossed about as I've been among 'em, and made a drudge of, and set to do the dirty work," said the unfortunate subordinate, with a touch of pathos in his hoarse voice;—"I don't mean to say I've been what I ought; but, by Jove! to be put upon as I've been, and knocked about; ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... throughout the centuries, gross injustice, and has laboured under a thousand disabilities. But it does not follow from this, as those not familiar with Hindu lives are too apt to conclude, that woman is therefore a nonentity and a mere helpless drudge in the family. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... usual leave of the household, with a kind word, as was his wont, even to the meanest drudge; and then he went back to his lady's bower for that last, and to him saddest farewell ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... He traced a ruined monument. Mould, moss, and shades had overgrown The sculpture of the crumbling stone; Yet ere he passed, with much ado, He guessed and spelled out, Sci-pi-o. "Enough," he cried; "I'll drudge no more In ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... could do Arcite's bidding at any time. But Arcite hurried on to the courtyard gate. There he waited till the master of the servants who waited on Emelia came out. Then he said to him, "Take me, I pray thee, into thy service. Drudge I will and draw water, yea, and in all thou dost ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... answer, and what right has he to come betwixt her and me? If old Moncada had done a grandfather's duty, and made suitable settlements on me, this plan of marrying the sweet girl, and settling here in her native place, might have done well enough. But to live the life of the poor drudge her father—to be at the command and call of every boor for twenty miles round!—why, the labours of a higgler, who travels scores of miles to barter pins, ribbons, snuff and tobacco, against the housewife's private stock of eggs, mort-skins, and tallow, is more profitable, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of the enslaving charm of its vastness, stripped of its beauty, of its mystery and ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... horror. I have said that Mrs. Carlyle had to scrub the floors, and as she scrubbed them Carlyle would look on smoking—drawing in from tobacco pleasant comfortableness and easy dreams—while his poor drudge panted and sighed over the hard work, which she had never done before. Do you not feel that you would like to break the pipe in his mouth, and shake him off the chair, and pitch him on to the floor, to take a share of the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... itself a fruit of man's apostasy from God. And as Brahmanism set its stamp of approval upon distinctions of caste and fixed them for centuries, so it was with woman's position and influence. She was condemned to inferiority. She became a mere instrument of man's pleasure, or a mere drudge in his household. She never sat with him at his meals, but ate what was left after he had been served; she never walked by his side, but always followed behind, when she was not shut up in the zenana at home. One of the best signs of a new ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... liberty to follow his own opinions: Mr. Darford died, and his fortune and manufactory were equally divided between his two nephews. "Now," said Charles, "I am no longer chained to the oar. I will leave you, William, to do as you please, and drudge on, day after day, in the manufactory, since that is your taste: for my part, I have no genius for business. I shall take my pleasure; and all I have to do is to pay some poor devil for ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... lovers. Once it was a shell that listened tremulously upon Olympus, and caught the accents of the Gods; now it is a phonograph catching every word that falleth from the mouths of the board of guardians. Once a muse, now a servile drudge 'twixt man ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the old houses which he delighted to haunt, and in the night sedulously employed himself in discharging any laborious task which he thought might be acceptable to the family to whose service he had devoted himself. But the Brownie does not drudge from the hope of recompense. On the contrary, so delicate is his attachment that the offer of reward, but particularly of food, infallibly occasions his disappearance for ever. It is told of a Brownie, who haunted a ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... it became during and after the Crusades, yet the same amount of valor and devotion to woman was expected from the knight. The spirit of Christianity, operating upon Teutonic virtue, which has raised the woman from the drudge of man to be the ornament of society, created a chivalric courtesy long before the cry of "Deus vult!" rang from Italy to England. Gilbert de Hers, born and bred in the courtly circle of Suabia, though his ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... found so willing a tool, so cheap a drudge. Valentine was ready to do anything or everything for Charlotte's stepfather, since his relations with that gentleman enabled him to spend so much of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... longing to ask her what she meant, and yet shrinking from taking what he felt might be a liberty, for there was something about the girl that kept him from speaking freely. Dressed like a peasant as she was, he instinctively felt that here was no ordinary farmer's drudge. She had uttered nothing beyond commonplaces, but the look in her eyes, the tremor of her lips suggested romance ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... lighter tasks, which pride demands? Some feel the scorn that poverty attends, Or pine in meek dependance on their friends; Some patient ply the needle day by day, Poor half-paid seamsters, wasting life away; Some drudge in menial, dirty, ceaseless toil, Bear market loads, or grovelling weed the soil; Some walk abroad, a nuisance where they go, And snatch from infamy the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to take in the beauty and artistic character of the place, and to realize the appalling drudgery that stamped it a workshop, when the author, who had dashed into his garden for a moment's recreation, came to the window, and furnished contrast No. 3. For he looked neither like a poet nor a drudge, but a great fat country farmer. He was rather tall, very portly, smallish head, commonplace features mild brown eye not very bright, short beard, and wore a suit of tweed all one color. Such looked the writer of romances founded ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... steps and entered the hall. Miss Thompson was standing at her door, chatting with a sailor. A sudden change had taken place in her. She was no longer the cowed drudge of the last days. She was dressed in all her finery, in her white dress, with the high shiny boots over which her fat legs bulged in their cotton stockings; her hair was elaborately arranged; and she wore that enormous hat covered ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... though he colored them with humor; for example in defining 'oats' as 'a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' Jesting at himself he defined 'lexicographer' as 'a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.' Nevertheless the work, though not creative literature, was a great and necessary one, and Johnson did it, on the whole, decidedly well. The 'Dictionary,' in successive enlargements, ultimately, though not until after ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... with the crushed and sickly air, timid and sullen, thin and pale, and pitiably clad in her wretched, countrified gowns. Bewildered, overwhelmed, so to speak, by this hourly torture, she became their drudge. They made sport of her ignorance, they deceived her and abused her credulity by absurd fables, they overburdened her with fatiguing tasks, they assailed her with incessant, pitiless ridicule, which well-nigh drove her benumbed intellect ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... And yet, hundreds have commenced thus, and have succeeded. Can you hesitate, when the future is all bright before you, and the thousand and one obstacles have been overcome? If you do, you are not fit to be a grape-grower. Go toil and drudge for so many cents per day, in some factory, and end life as you have begun it. God's free air, the cultivation of one of His noblest gifts, destined to "make glad the heart in this rugged world of ours," is not for you. I may pity you, but I cannot sympathize with nor assist you, except by ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... even as we endow schools of science and technology to enable us to conquer nature, and to become strong and rich and comfortable; but there were no schools for women, whose intellects were disdained, and who were valued only as servants or animals,—either to drudge, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... of the Creator and the relief of man's estate." It is doubtless most honourable for a man to labour to elevate himself, and to better his condition in society, but this is not to be done at the sacrifice of himself. To make the mind the mere drudge of the body, is putting it to a very servile use; and to go about whining and bemoaning our pitiful lot because we fail in achieving that success in life which, after all, depends rather upon habits of industry and attention to business details ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... brings in such dainty banquets, such brave pageants in the earth or in the air; there is none other that knows so well the spells 'to make this place Paradise.' But, for all that, he is the merest tool,—the veriest drudge and slave. The magician's collar is always on his neck; in his airiest sweeps he takes his chain with him. Caliban himself is not more sternly watched and tutored; and all the gorgeous masque has its predetermined order, its severe economy of grace; through all the slightest minutiae of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... gallop beyond ear shot of their elder brother, while riding to and from school, and at night when alone in their bedroom, Joe and Jim pictured to each other the grand future which they thought every city offered to them, comparing it favorably with the drudge of the life of monotonous toil that would be theirs at the section reservation. They repeated the stories of success they had read in the newspapers, the magazines and even in their school books, which ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... too, who, with the help of the Chinaman, cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked drudge, fiery and energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her son rise in life and enter a profession. The chance had come at last when the father died, corroded with alcohol, collapsing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance. My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge—and a very unprofitable drudge too. Such was my condition when, one morning, a telegram reached me from my mother to say—"Father is very ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... thou batter'd broomstick! take ye This old seedy coat, and wear it— Ah, thou household drudge, I'll make ye Do my bidding; ay, and fear it. Stand on legs, old tramper! Here's a head—I've stuck it— Now be off—hey, scamper With the water-bucket! Bubble, bubble; Fast and faster! Hear your master, Hear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... beatitude for the poor and lowly. Human despair, under their dispensation, knew no alleviation but a plunge from light and life into the underworld, —rather than be monarch of which, the shade of Achilles avers, in the "Odusseia," that it would prefer to be the hireling and drudge of some poor earthly peasant. Elysium was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... yields Or wealth or honor save to silvered heads? I know that path to fame and fortune leads Through thorns and brambles over ragged rocks; But can I follow in the common path Trod by the millions, never to lift my head Above the busy hordes that delve and drudge For bare existence in this bitter world— And be a mite, a midge, a worthless worm, No more distinguished from the common mass Than one poor polyp in the coral isle Is marked amid the myriads teeming there? Yet 'tis not for myself. For you, Pauline, Far up the slippery ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to play the game as she must play it for some time to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of environment? At best, she could only get away from Charlie's camp and begin along new lines that might perhaps be little better, that must inevitably lie among strangers in a ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... new profession with a perfect hatred, I made no progress in it; and was consequently little regarded in the family, of which I sunk by degrees into the common drudge: this did not much disquiet me, for my spirits were now humbled. I did not, however, quite resign the hope of one day succeeding to Mr. Hugh Smerdon, and therefore secretly prosecuted my favourite study at every ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... critics, do they know what it is to love? Ho! Ho! Easy! The vocation of a lover is to go, to come, to listen, to watch, to hold his tongue, to talk, to stick in a corner, to make himself big, to make himself little, to agree, to play music, to drudge, to go to the devil wherever he may be, to count the gray peas in the dovecote, to find flowers under the snow, to say paternosters to the moon, to pat the cat and pat the dog, to salute the friends, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac |
