"Lackey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wouldn't I make them know the difference between their Sovereign Lady and Sam the Lackey? If I had been in your place and that dastard Le Noir had said to me what he said to you, I do believe I should have stricken him dead with the lightning of my eyes! But what shall you ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the princess, while, wholly unembarrassed by the presence of the lackey, she played with the profuse dark locks of the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... palpable effort, she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirkyard, and then how was he to look? And there was no excuse. He had marked the tokens ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half an hour, and I strongly suspected him of having spent my two sous on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a common lackey. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... or fisherman takes with him his lackey to carry his game. If game is plentiful and the hunter successful, he would, otherwise, soon be compelled to discontinue his hunt from the burden of fish and game. But, freed from that care and burden, he can continue his hunt indefinitely. So, the borrower, even when he pays no interest, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... but the priest had passed already into the great hall of the palace and was speaking to a lackey there. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... appeared, who informed him that he was expected, and that he was to go up to the first story. The surgeon did as he was told, and opened the door of an anteroom all hung with white. Here he was met by an elegant lackey, dressed also in white, frizzed and powdered, with his white hair tied in a bag wig, carrying two torches in his hand, who requested the bewildered doctor to wipe his shoes. Besse replied that this was quite unnecessary, as he had only just stepped out of his sedan chair and was not ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... thirties. Another five years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a piano" will give way to remarks about "a graceful ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... began the attenuated lackey, and Ormiston's heart nearly jumped out of his mouth, "that she can't have anybody hanging about her house like its shadow; and she wants you to go away, and keep away, till the ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the essential thing is not quite that," observed an attendant lackey, a really clever writer, who wrote, indeed, far more intelligently than he thought. He was a professor of patriotism, and prior to being embalmed in the academy he had charge of the postgraduate work in atavism and superior ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... forgot everything but the toil of her fellow-spiders, and it was almost impossible to get her away from any piece she once became interested in. Madam, busy in telling who she was and asking questions, gave me little attention; so that I found myself more in the position of a lackey than a companion. I had regretted that her footman did not accompany us; but what need was there of a footman as long as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... wormed your sneaking way into my home? And thought you that Simon de Montfort would throw his daughter at the head of the first passing rogue? Who be ye, but a nameless rascal? For aught we know, some low born lackey. Get ye hence, and be only thankful that I do not aid you with the toe of my boot where it would ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I dodged safely under. I've always been afraid of ugliness. I'm such a toad myself, I hate all toads; And the camel is the ugliest toad of all, To my mind; and it's just my devil's luck I've come to this—to be a camel's lackey, To fetch and carry for original sin, For sure enough, the camel's old evil incarnate. Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil! No eye's more evil than a camel's eye. The elephant is quite a comely brute, Compared with Satan camel,—trunk and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him,—him there, that very cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow,—him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband! I would I were a man but for five ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a hundred eyes. When I passed through the streets there was a profound silence. Now and then an aristocratic carriage rolled past me almost noiselessly over the brick pavement, or I saw some stiff lackey standing at a door, or the fair head of some lady behind a curtain. As I walked close to the windows, I could see out of the corner of my eye my shabby travelling-clothes reflected clearly in the large panes of glass, and I repented not having brought ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... immediately at hand. My Lord Marlborough—the most talked of man in Europe, and some say, at this juncture, as powerful as half a dozen Kings—rose and handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so important—and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest general so serves him, the little potentate ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... old macaw and the long and slender kite, whose colours they, after their fashion, reproduced, with something, also indescribable, of the air and character of the birds. Not standing on ceremony, the old fellow held up his own glass first, which the white lackey filled from the flask, and then ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... unchurching her ignominiously, as fit only to deal with the Finite,—in other words, making her the lackey of mere Science,—they fancy they are doing famous service to Revelation. Very well,—we are ready to say,—having scourged Philosophy out of the temple, will you please, Gentlemen, to conduct us yourselves towards its hallowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assur'd destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him—this man who was Governor of Hispaniola—as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf—that if the terms he had made with the buccaneers were not confirmed there was no harm done. M. de Rivarol bullied and browbeat ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... what you boast of— Your happiness, peasant?" Exclaims an old lackey With legs weak and gouty. 240 "Treat me, little brothers, I'm happy, God sees it! For I was the chief serf Of Prince Peremeteff, A rich prince, and mighty, My wife, the most favoured By him, of the ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... live. Did I not watch her for a whole week at Saumur? 'Tis well we have not Aramon and the rest with us. The fewer there are the larger the shares. Can Malsain deal with the lackey?" ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... the Louvre, and consulted his friends upon the use he had best make of his share of the forty pistoles, Athos advised him to order a good repast at the Pomme-de-Pin, Porthos to engage a lackey, and Aramis to provide himself with ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lackey boyes, give the word as ye passe, look about to my guests there; score up at the Bar there; again, agen, my fine Mercuries; if youle live in the facultie, be rulde by instructions, you must be eyed like a Serjeant, an ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lackey carried the chocolate pot into the sacred presence; a second milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third presented the favored napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... us to the edge of road and covered all with dust. He waited until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do you know—but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap—who have been captain of ships!—to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low—to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and sunset, calm and storm, beg of ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... trip hup. The mud's no respecter h'of an H'english gentleman nor h'an American millionaire, don'cher know?" and the pompous Mr. Devonshire handed his hand-grip to Job, while he poked out his shoes for the gray-haired lackey to ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... sir," answered the servant, "a lackey of the Marquis of Argyle, and occasionally acting ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... themselves about the fire, which they found already lighted. The duchesse chose a Henry II. carved aim chair, one, she laughingly remarked, quite large enough to have held both the King and Diana. A lackey carrying the inevitable muff-dogs, their fans, and scent-bottles, had followed the ladies; he placed a hassock at the duchesse's feet, two beneath the slender feet of Madame de Kerman, and, after having been bidden to open one of the casements, since it was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... war; in serving you, and fulfilling the ideas which you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better fate than to be a humble lackey in that house." He had no sooner, however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public Opinion came back to him, and he added: "But are you really the general animus, or are you only the animus of Mayors, that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... us now, Who are in Love's hand? I do not think I'd care Though the vile world should with its lackey Slander Trample and tread upon my life; why should I? They say the common field-flowers of the field Have sweeter scent when they are trodden on Than when they bloom alone, and that some herbs Which have no perfume, on being bruised die ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... hand has fallen on the golden head, and here it rests as if he returned the caress. In the mean time a mischievous urchin, who may be the boy Baptist, holds the Magdalene's jar of ointment. He stands behind her like a small lackey, and sniffs curiously at ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... awaiting him. "Some day when you declare yourselves independent," he said somewhat abstractedly to the native lackey who opened the carriage-door for him, "remember that there were not lacking in Spain hearts that beat for you and struggled for ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of the black sleigh, a heavily built, elderly man, had picked himself out of a drift with the assistance of his lackey and was brushing the snow from his long fur cloak. A fur cap, pulled down over his eyes, hid his face, but his gestures were angry, and his ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... "You think, all, that my Lord did wickedly in divorcing of her, in order to wed the great heir of the Stanhopes. Well, it may be so: but, my word for it! he had leisure for repentance. I would not lightly have been my Lady Duchess her lackey, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities, "the cue thus given, everything favors it. If that rogue of a lackey quoted Shakspeare as much in the servants' hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must induce him to go into Bedlam for a month or two. The ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gentlemen of their position would have walked out for a duel with an Englishman in the party of so fantastic an appearance. They would have placed him at once as a person impossible and altogether out of their class. They would have told a lackey to kick this preposterous creation into the horse-pond. But since Paddy was a foreigner he was possessed of some curious license, and his grotesque ways could be explained fully in the simple phrase, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had noticed something ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... were there lodged, was to take up his station at the foot of the stairs leading to the apartments of ladies, whence Eustacie was to descend at about eleven o'clock, with her maid Veronique. Landry Osbert was to join them from the lackey's hall below, where he had a friend, and the connivance of the porter at the postern opening towards the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went on for a long while. The former non-commissioned officer and lackey of the vaudeville star, Bulke, came towing Rosa across the deck in the same way as he did his master. Both looked red and contented. Frederick asked what the prospects were for ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk, however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the factory and the kitchen, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is Rupert Holliday, sir," the lad said, as the stranger shook his hand warmly, and who, as the lackey approached with the ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... the sill of his window, looked down with interest to see what manner of travellers were these that went at so red-hot a pace. From the rumble a lackey swung himself to the rough cobbles of the yard. From within the inn came again landlady and chamberlain, and from the stable ostler and boy, obsequious all and of no interest to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... was thus engaged, the husband returned, and at once recognized in his wife's lackey the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Sergeant, I am a man of my word. It is true that I enticed a young gentleman here, at one time I was his lackey. Later on we became soldiers together. I was subsequently discharged because I was growing blind. I am speaking the truth, I was blind then. The young man had confidence in me, and one day, when he saw me in the street at Dukla, he implored ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... name of Du May was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing.[419] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420] his first story was generally credited. The rumor was current that in December, 1566, Charles received ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signal Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them. Give me the paper—quick! quick! Tear the fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow's heritor, Or stood a lackey ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... men went to the wars, and were slain at Naseby fight, they who were left found the Lodge more lonesome, and the old knight has been much deserted of his servants:—marry, it might be, that he has lacked silver of late to pay groom and lackey." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... frowned. "And I, sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... She passed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine's private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... had been taken off the job he'd spent years learning to do acceptably, to phoney a personal satisfaction for the son-in-law of one of the partners of the firm he worked for. It was humiliation to be considered merely a lackey who could be ordered to perform personal services for his boss, without regard to the damage to the work he was really responsible for. It was even more humiliating to know he had to do it because he couldn't afford ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the best wine in the house," exclaimed one of them, a bronzed and dried soldier in a maroon coat, waving his hand to his lackey, who responded and disappeared. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... proneness to adulation which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them bow as low to the rising Sun; they are as lavish of detraction as they were prurient with praise; and the protege and admirer of the editor of the ——- figures in Blackwood's train. The man is a lackey, and it is of little consequence whose livery ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... title-page the name (correctly spelt) of Queen Victoria's youngest son prefixed to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of certain four-footed fellow-critics and fellow-lodgers of his own ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... playing at a royal coronation—the first scene in a comic pantomime!—I have my gendarmes!—I have my guard royal!—I have my attorney general—that I do!" he continued enthusiastically. "Do you think that I would allow madame to go anywhere on foot unaccompanied by a lackey in livery? Is not that the best style? Not to count the pleasure she takes in saying to everybody, 'I have my people here.' It has always been a conservative principle of mine that my times of exercise should coincide with those of my wife, and for two years I have proved to her that ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... it brought up," said the king, ascending the staircase. On arriving at the anteroom, he himself ordered the lackey in waiting to have the carriage of the field- ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... both the negroes in the courtyard, and, in the passing thought he had given to them, had supposed them to be attendants of some foreign potentate from Barbary or Morocco. Cheditafa and Mok! The ragged, half-clad negroes of the sea-beach—a parson-butler of sublimated respectability, a liveried lackey of rainbow and gold! It required minutes to harmonize these presentments in the mind of ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... of Miss Brandon. As soon as she felt sure that her abominable tricks had set my head on fire, and that I had become an idiot, a madman, a stupid fool—on that very day she laughed in my face. Ah! I tell you, she played with me as if I had been a child, and then she sent me off as if I had been a lackey. And now I hate her mortally, as I loved her almost criminally. Therefore, if I can help you, in secret, without becoming known, you ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... his Marshal's baton, where agitation without object or resources is perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all sensible conversation; where no one utters a word, but to teach, never imagining ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mogyns is not descended from the giant Hogyn Mogyn; though half the other genealogies are equally false and foolish; yet the mottoes are good reading—some of them; and the book itself a sort of gold-laced and livened lackey to History, and in so far serviceable. But what good ever came out of, or went into, a betting-book? If I could be Caliph Omar for a week, I would pitch every one of those despicable manuscripts into the flames; from my Lord's, who is 'in' with Jack Snaffle's stable, and is over-reaching ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a type of those abbes? Take the Abbe Maury. Proud as a duke, insolent as a lackey, the son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the son of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... seemingly in a very complaisant mood. The men ascended to the top floor. Girard ushered his guests into a room which contained a full equipment for a game of draw. There were shaded lights, a polished table, and by touching a button he summoned a lackey to serve in attendance, and our seemingly half-boozed Oscar scanned the face of the lackey and perceived that indeed a very cunning game was being played. Cards, cigars, liquor, and all the paraphernalia were introduced, even ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... behind her. The moment the rival abbesses had passed through a strong young novice seized hold of madame d'Estrees and forced her to the ground, keeping her there until every one of her companions was on the outside. It was in vain that the lackey ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... less would he have done any service, and that cheerfully, which his own need or that of others might have required of him. The colors of a parrot, however, were not fit for a son of man, and hence his look of sympathy. His regard was met only by a glance of plain contempt, as the lackey, moved by the same spirit as his master, left him standing in the hall—to return presently, and show him into the library—a room of mahogany, red morocco, and yellow calf, where George sat. He rose, and ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... absent, as was also his wife. It was said that lately he was the hero of a love affair. M. de Joinville is prodigiously strong. I heard a big lackey behind me say: "I shouldn't care to receive a slap from him." While he was strolling to his rendezvous M. de Joinville thought he noticed that he was being followed. He turned back, went up to the fellow ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... in the goblets, the ruddy tone of the punch, the many fruits, the bright-colored granite and the ices, Vaudrey stopped, releasing the arm of the young girl but remaining beside her and passing her the sherbet which a lackey handed him ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... as all those in high office, and also the moneyed aristocracy; in fact, everybody of standing felt glad to attend the marriage feast of the house of Mortimer & Co. Just now the sounds of a quadrille commenced, and the various pairs began to arrange themselves for the occasion, when the lackey in attendance was pushed aside and a horse's head looked ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... you then. Look here, Sal. I've got hold of a cull or I shouldn't be in this lackey's coat. The fool's bursting with gold and he wants someone to help him to spend it. I'll be hanged if there's another woman in London like you for that fun. Now's your chance. He's sweet on a wench—a raw boarding school miss—he ran off with her an hour or so ago. The little fool thought ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... your Majesty's leave," I said, interposing quickly. "M. de Sillery may say too much or too little. Let a lackey take a message, bidding him go to the queen's closet, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Billingtons, worshipful Master Howland, lackey of the governor, and page-boy to his wife," demanded the voice that had interrupted Mistress Hopkins, and turning toward it, Howland confronted a short, square woman, not without a certain vulgar comeliness of her own, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... admirable because Boswell was contemptible. It was, he argued, only by virtue of being at once daft and drunken, selfish and silly, an eavesdropper and a talebearer, a kind of inspired Faddle, a combination of butt and lackey and snob, that Boswell contrived to achieve his wretched immortality. And in the same way Boswell's hero was after all but a sort of Grub Street Cyclops, respectable enough by his intelligence—(but even so ridiculous in comparison to gifted Whigs)—yet more or less despicable in ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... hire them—conducted in the same spirit, and in nearly the same forms, as that which simultaneously took place in the bazaar close by between extortionate traders and thrifty housewives. "Listen to me," a priest would say, as an ultimatum, to a lackey who was trying to beat down the price: "if you don't give me seventy-five kopeks without further ado, I'll take a bite of this roll, and that will be an end to it!" And that would have been an end to the bargaining, for, according to the rules of the Church, a ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... asked the way to the cabinet, and no one ventured to refuse. So he was passed from lackey to lackey, until he reached the antechamber. "Here," said the servant that had accompanied him, "here your highness will find a ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... said he. "And less than I deserve—a man of my estate. Oh, ho! Groom and lackey! Those are epithets to be washed out ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... served, and his excellency set me on his right hand in a position of equal honour to his own. We were sixteen in company, and behind every chair stood a magnificent lackey in the ambassador's livery. In the course of conversation I got an opportunity of telling the ambassador that he was still spoken of at Venice ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... another for our naval service, we may not have one for our diplomatic service. It has, indeed, been asserted by sundry orators dear to the galleries, as well as by various "funny-column" men, that such a uniform is that of a lackey; but this assertion loses force when one reflects on the solemn fact that "plain evening dress," which these partizans of Jeffersonian simplicity laud and magnify, and which is the only alternative to a uniform, is worn by table-waiters the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... promenade, which might in Autumn, prove injurious to a young girl's health. She brought the Somovar, and with her cup of tea was going to relate one of her interminable stories, when a carriage with the imperial escutcheon stopped before the door. A lackey, wearing the imperial livery, entered and announced that her Majesty deigned to order to her presence the daughter ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... let them know that I wait their pleasure," said the Prince. "If my uncle desires to have the credit of shutting the father's apartment against the son, it will gratify him to know that I am attending in the outer hall like a lackey." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... repeating the last phrases. One couple after the other stop dancing and follow the Guests in silence. For some time a single couple remain circling on the floor, but they too join the others at last. The musicians, however, continue to play, making the same desperate effort. The lackey turns out the electric lights, leaving only one light in the farthest chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in Gray is sharply visible. The flame ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... this youth, who was always dreaming of the love of princesses, was to accept with just thankfulness the position of lackey or footboy in the household of a widow. With Madame de Vercellis he passed three months, and at the end of that time she died. His stay here was marked by an incident that has filled many pages with stormful discussion. When Madame de Vercellis died, a piece of old ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Oh, Master Olof! Why, first you sit at the door playing lackey, and then you drop the mask and step forth as the Lord Himself! And I took you to be a proud man. (He picks up his cloak and ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... Drusus was still alive and well. He could be warned. The plot could be thwarted. Pratinas and Ahenobarbus were not yet beyond the reach of retribution. He—Agias—was no longer to be a mere foot-boy and lackey; he was to match his keen Greek wits in subtle intrigue against foemen worthy of his steel. He would save Drusus's life, would save Cornelia's happiness. If he succeeded, who knew but that his owner ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... refuse. We may make ourselves asses, and then every body will ride us; but, if we would be respected, we must be our own masters, and not let others saddle us as they think fit. If we try to please every body, we shall be like a toad under a harrow, and never have peace; and, if we play lackey to all our neighbors, whether good or bad, we shall be thanked by no one, for we shall soon do as much harm as good. He that makes himself a sheep will find that the wolves are not all dead. He who lies on the ground ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of the democratic simplicity of the idea, the Duchess seemed impressed and listened attentively to Mr. Morris, who was about to explain more at length the advantages of such a career for the young prince, when the conversation was interrupted by the lackey at the door announcing the arrival of Madame la ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... did not go to the college, but was probably dispersed." De Bury, like Cobham, was a heavy debtor, and as he lay dying his servants stole all his moveable goods and left him naked on his bed save for an undershirt which a lackey had thrown over him.[2] His executors, as we know, were glad to resell to St. Albans Abbey the books he had bought ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... head and went softly through the second anteroom to the hall. Again, all was empty and silent; neither page, nor sentry, nor lackey to be seen. She knew not why, but a feeling of desolation came over her. She had bidden adieu to the etiquette due to her rank, but this, she thought, was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a dream last night, and you were the only one among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an appointment, anyway—some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or something of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... observed in advertisements of the Queen Quality Shoe. He recalled the womanly dignity of the figure descending the shallow steps, the arch accost of the soft eyes, the dimple in the round check. She had been sent to sue him, the invader, to soften him with blandishments. He had kept her waiting like a lackey, then had sought cynically to discover how far her devotion to her country's safety would carry her. And when her pitiful little basket of tricks had been emptied, her little traps sprung, he had sent her back to her husband with a message that crushed her woman's pride and ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... let us leave him; for the truth of it is that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak, clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at Trinity Hall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that was Satan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the way of Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, that far-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matter in him." I quote ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Count resolved to quit the island; and did so, making his way as best he could to Stamford, in Ireland, where he obtained a menial's place in the service of a knight, retainer to one of the earls of that Country, and so abode there a long while, doing all the irksome and wearisome drudgery of a lackey ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... carry it with me?' I cried in scorn. 'Do you think that when I came here, alone, and not with fifty dragoons at my back, I carried the Cardinal's seal in my pocket for the first lackey to find. But you shall have it. Where ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... splendid picture of that magnificent court and the conditions which eventually brought about the revolution. The precarious position of every member of that court from La Pompadour down to the meanest lackey, whose very lives were in constant danger from the whims of the weak but self-indulgent king, is made very real by the author."—Globe-Democrat, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... of the household, which seemed to accept the establishing of the new guest without the faintest surprise, consisted, beside Anne, of the man-servant Auguste, a young, knowing-looking southern Frenchman, with a clean-shaven, lackey's face, the old Spanish cook Isabel, a colossal, unwieldly, hippopotamus-like person with a red nose, watery, bloodshot eyes, and a strident voice, and Don Pablo, who seemed to be a mixture of servant, major-domo, and the confidential attendant of the old plays. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... visited Paris several years ago, relates an anecdote or two showing how intelligent some French servants are. She was walking along the Quai Voltaire, followed by her French lackey, when he suddenly came to her side and, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision, Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants Begin to cast a beam on th'outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... declared; and his manner might well have become the dress of Buckingham. "Lord Strings is not your lackey this season." ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... consist of one long adobe house. The beach was low and sandy, and we were wet somewhat in wading through a light surf to get on shore. We had on board a Mr. Baylis, who we afterward learned came down with Capt. Lackey on a big speculation which was to capture all the wild goats they could on Catalina Island, and take them to San Francisco ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... tell you that neither," replied the lackey, "for I have not once seen her face during all the journey, though I have often heard her groan and utter ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... it, eh? Well, I don't think I shall be your lackey this cold afternoon. I'd rather sit here and keep ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... glittered. What flowers! What lights! Each guest found his place without difficulty. As soon as he had read his name on the glazed card, a grand lackey in silk stockings pushed gently behind him a luxurious chair embroidered with a count's coronet. Fourteen at the table, not more: four young women in full toilets, and ten men belonging to the aristocracy of blood or of merit, who had put on that evening all their orders in honor of a foreign ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... The lackey stood astounded at my answer, as though he had not heard aright. Then he retired with less assurance than he had come, and John Paul sprang to his feet and laid his hands upon my shoulders, as was his wont when affected. He reproached ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all one, such reverence is due to their estates."[339] He instances Stanyhurst's renderings, "Aeneas was fain to trudge out of Troy" and "what moved Juno to tug so great a captain as Aeneas," and declares that the term trudge is "better to be spoken of a beggar, or of a rogue, or of a lackey," and that the word tug "spoken in this case is so undecent as none other could have been devised, and took his first original from the cart." A similar objection to the employment of a "plain" style in telling the Troy story was made, it will be ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... in a sort a barbarian, the backwoodsman would seem to America what Alexander was to Asia—captain in the vanguard of conquering civilization. Whatever the nation's growing opulence or power, does it not lackey his heels? Pathfinder, provider of security to those who come after him, for himself he asks nothing but hardship. Worthy to be compared with Moses in the Exodus, or the Emperor Julian in Gaul, who on foot, and bare-browed, at the head of covered or mounted ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the disguised serving-men, he politely requested them to follow him; coupling the invitation with an assurance that his master had desired him to watch for the arrival of five great nobles who were about to consult his art. Lavallee, the lackey of M. de Bassompierre, assuming an air of importance, expressed both for himself and his companions their sense of this attention; and then, somewhat startled by the coincidence, for as such they simply considered it, the whole party followed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... other sullen in blue; and after them were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who these seeming ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... shared equally with Count Bruhl, Count Sulkovsky, and Count Hennicke, whilst playing cards, a piece of gold was given to the king, upon which was represented the crown of Poland, resting upon the shoulders of three men, with the following inscription: "There are three of us, two pages and one lackey!" The King of Poland was as much enraged by this satirical piece of gold as was the King of Spain by his satirical note. But Count Bruhl succeeded in turning the king's anger upon the two other shoulder-bearers of his crown. Counts Sulkovsky and Hennicke fell into disgrace, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach |
