"Plodding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... that time; and the ministers of the day might, with some men, have justified the attempt to destroy such enemies upon the score of STATE POLICY; but their attempt upon poor HARDY, who was a simple, inoffensive, harmless, plodding shoemaker, possessing neither talent, influence, nor the smallest power to do them any harm whatever, this was a proof of the vindictive and bloody intentions of the men in office; and it caused a great sensation throughout the country, and the verdicts of the jury ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... and a responsible driver having been secured for the morrow, Peggy returned to the cottage highly elated over her success, and lent her aid to the disheartened cooks. When Joe drove the plodding team up to the cottage on the following morning, the array of baskets on the porch promised satisfaction for the appetites of double the number awaiting his coming. Lucy Haines sat in the hammock beside Peggy, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... my life itself have come to centre in you. It was the thought that it was for you that kept me going when I have been so tired doing two men's work that I could scarcely drag one foot after the other. It made me take risks I might otherwise never have dared to take. It kept me plodding on when one failure after another smashed me in the face so fast that I could not see for ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... a little before midnight the Duke, his brother Cesare, his cousin Monreale, and a numerous attendance, his own retinue and those of the two cardinals. Thus they rode back to Rome, the Borgias very gay, the man in the mask plodding along beside them. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... distinguished deportment, could make a speech, indeed had even some odds and ends of thought, and had caught the necessary gloss of modern liberalism. What worried her, however, was that he was not very open to new ideas, and after the long, everlasting plodding for a career, was unmistakably beginning to feel the need of repose. She tried to infect him with her own ambition, and he suddenly began making a toy church: the pastor came out to preach the sermon, the congregation listened with their hands before ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... last question. Women were made to be cared for, at whatever cost, but not to be taken into confidence as to ways and means. Still I had entered into a bond with this woman. I breathed hard. I had always been restive under any bond, though by nature plodding enough when it was removed. I was aware that I was but sullen company while I rolled this ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... vocal daming on the part of a very good Christian. The men were tired, but they were marched and countermarched, and halted and started, and placed and unplaced, until it was fair to conclude that someone was drunk. At last the person directing the column got his bearings and we proceeded. We were plodding along a road in which there was on the right hand side a ditch about two feet deep. Having been up and awake all of the night before, I was fearfully sleepy and hardly able to drag myself along. All at once I went into this ditch, and struck full length. In its bottom there was about two ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... gorge below, all the way to Pierrefitte, added its share of beauty, and the graceful white heath growing up its sides loaded the air with a sweet scent. The wide expanse of the Argeles valley, with the busy farmers ploughing, sowing, or cutting the heavy clover crop; the lazy oxen ever patiently plodding beneath their heavy burdens; the Chateau de Beaucens—where the orchids grow—perched up on the hillside; the surrounding peaks throwing off their snowy garb; and the beautiful young leaves and tints, everywhere mingling with the brightness of the flowers blooming on the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... indignant protest, "do you mean to say that it is some idea about Good that brings order into a man's life? All I can say is that, for my part, I never once think, from one year's end to another, of anything so abstract and remote. I simply go on, day after day, plodding the appointed round, without reflexion, without reason, simply because I have to. There's order in my life, heaven knows! but it has nothing to do with ideas about Good. And altogether," he ejaculated, in a kind of passion, "it's a preposterous thing to tell me that I believe in Good, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... tone of gray discouragement; intensifying the loneliness; giving to the winds of desolation a voice. Well the great antagonist knew she could not thus stop these men, but so, little by little, she ground them down, wore away the excess of their vitality, reduced them to grim plodding, so that at the moment she would hold them weakened to her purposes. They made no sign, for they were of the great men of the earth, but they bent to the familiar touch of many ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... handsome young Irishman, bred a Catholic, who under the influence of Moncure D. Conway had come out as a Unitarian and left his Washington home for a radical environment in the North. He was brilliant and witty with small capacity or taste for persistent plodding, but forever hitting effectively on the spur of the moment. He was as chivalrous as a palladin and went to his early grave light-hearted, as part of the day's work which must not be shirked. I have his image ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... was for Greek and Latin, but Mr. Hayes had recommended her to take up modern languages as well, and she was steadily plodding through the French and German, for which she had not so strong a liking as for her beloved classics. Prissie was a very eager learner, and she was busy now looking over her notes of the last lecture and standing ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... said. "But you have felt as I feel about getting away and seeing something. Still, if you really want me to stay, I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little part in them ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Plodding on, he shortly made the Line that marked the victor's goal; Paused, and found he'd won, and laid the Flattering unction to his soul. Then in fashion grandiose, Like an after-dinner speaker, Touched his flipper to his nose, And remarked, ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... steps were heard plodding down the hill, and old Silas, the shepherd from Bishop's Farm, ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... boy's father had been his friend. But it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead pictures in his studio which kept him from "whistling" very often. However, on this June morning, plodding along between blossoming fields, climbing wooded hills, and clattering through dusky covered bridges, he was not thinking of his pictures; so, naturally enough, he whistled; a very different whistling from that which Maurice, lying in the grass beside his wife of fifty-four minutes, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... she gives— Blind to the pomp of which she is possest— Unconscious of the spiritual Power that lives Around, and rules her—by our bliss unblest— Dull to the Art that colours or creates, Like the dead timepiece, Godless NATURE creeps Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... inches. The irrigated land in Bannu is heavily manured and is often double-cropped. Wheat accounts for nearly half of the whole crops of the district. The Marwats are a frank manly race of good physique. The Bannuchis are hard-working, but centuries of plodding toil on a wet soil has spoiled their bodily development, and had its share in imparting to their character qualities the reverse of admirable. The Deputy Commissioner has also political charge of some 17,884 tribesmen living ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... would make farther progress toward the setting sun. The individual who had determined to start for the new, but delusive, western mountainous El Dorado, must perforce make his wearisome journey by slowly plodding ox-teams, pack-mules, or the lumbering stage-coach. Such means of travel had just been inaugurated by Mr. W. H. Russell (then the senior partner of the firm of Russell, Majors, & Waddell) and a Mr. John S. Jones of Missouri, who conceived the idea of putting on a line of coaches between ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... have 'em yet! But without you, my lord, We have to make slow plodding do the deeds That sprung by inspiration ere you fell; And on ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... driving along back of the advance lines. On the road before us was a company of territorial infantry who had been eight days in the trenches and were now to have two days of repose at the rear. Plodding along the same road was a refugee mother and several little children in a donkey cart; behind the cart, attached by a rope, trundled a baby buggy with the youngest child inside. The buggy suddenly struck a rut in the road and overturned, spilling the baby into the mud. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... learn something from all I chanced on in my wandering; even this poor creature on his doorstep made me the wiser by one little thing. How was it he could mistake me for a woman; the woman Ingeborg he had called by name? I must have walked up too quietly. I had forgotten the plodding cart-horse gait; my shoes were too light. I had lived too luxuriously these years past; I must work my way ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... As he was plodding back to the witch's castle, Wilhelm drew his talisman from his bosom and gazed tenderly upon it. It had never looked so bright and shining. The moon beams danced upon its smooth face and kissed it. Wilhelm was ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... (Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p. 36.) not unreasonably. These peaked stone-towers are Raincy; towers of wicked d'Orleans. All slumbers save the multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great North-East sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn: from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute the coming ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... under the impression that it lies in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of "Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... bosom. How he worried through the morning meal and the prayer at the family altar, he never knew, and he escaped with inexpressible relief to the stable and the field to take up the duties of his daily life. He found it plodding work, for the old inspirations to endeavor had utterly vanished. He who had hitherto found toil a beatitude now moved behind the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... and so suddenly ceased to be the special instrument in the hands of the Spirit, kept plod, plod, plodding on, with no bitterness of heart. For twenty years he had no share in the development of Gentile Christianity, of which he had sowed the first seed, but had to do much less conspicuous work. He toiled away there in Caesarea patient, persevering, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... utterances of the lips, by which some theme, doctrine, or topic is proclaimed aloud and exultingly before and in the presence of others. It is the divinity in man rising to God. It is the better and higher nature of man springing forward and leaping heavenward. It is the soul plodding the deep blue sea upon its fiery pinions in search after God, its Maker, "who giveth songs in the night." ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... by an ever-living commonplace, considered to be inaccurate: the donnish historian may, by his plodding want of imagination, give us only the strict facts. The lively writer, perhaps, in the desire to round out a character of a man concerning whom little is known or to perfect the rhythm of a paragraph, will consult his convenient fancy rather than the difficult document. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... to become deserted for the night. Little groups of men and women from the theaters waited at the corners for street cars. A peanut and candy peddler pushed his cart wearily along the street, close to the curb, plodding his way home. The proprietor of an open front fruit stand struggled with the folding iron fence pulled across the entrance to his store for protection of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Ahead of me, plodding along the pike under the moonlight, were Bunch and his cadaverous captor, the former bowed in sorrow or anger, probably both, and the latter with head erect, ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... of the office, and the sheriff was given his mount. The Indians swung the pack-horses into line, and the men settled themselves in their saddles as they began the long, plodding journey to the blue hills in the heart ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... along up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be good-sized boys and girls—big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our elders, and also to feel as stirred up over the occasional news from these red fields as they did. I remember ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... resourceful, and rescues Lorna and himself from numberless difficulties by his native shrewdness. And his love is a poem, an idyl that crowns him a shepherd king in his own green pastures. Nothing that he does in his plodding, sturdy way wearies us. His size, his strength, his good farming, the way he digs his sheep out of the snow, entertain us as well as his rescue of Lorna from ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... as an Encyclopedia of Knowledge for the successive generations of men. Its writers may anticipate the thought of ages by profound intuitions, pregnant imaginations, visions of the seer, as Plato does. Genius often outstrips the plodding feet of generations. But genius must not put on the airs of omniscience. It must submit its claims to trial by jury. They are to stand, if stand they shall, not because they are in Genesis or the Republic, but because they ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... need ere I myself can be. Sometimes, when the eternal tide ebbs low, A moment weary of my life I grow— Weary of my existence' self, I mean, Not of its plodding, not its wind and snow Then to thy knee trusting I turn, and lean: Thou will'st I live, and I ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... on the morning of the 24th to find six inches of snow on the ground and the storm still raging, with the temperature down to 28. Soon after we began plodding through the snow on a pea-soup breakfast, George left us to hunt geese. The night before he had told Hubbard he would kill a goose in the morning, if he were permitted to go on with a rifle. He had heard the geese flying, and believed ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... violets and lovely ferns, rocks round which danced the columbines like rosy elves, or the trees where birds built, squirrels chattered and woodchucks burrowed, that Thorny was seized with a desire to go and see these beauties for himself. So Jack was saddled and went, plodding, scrambling and wandering into all manner of pleasant places, always bringing home a stronger, browner rider ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... bedraggled in the first rains, homeless and hopeless. The scientific Lacy, who lately spent most of his time as a bar-room oracle in the settlement, was away, and from our dripping canvas we could see Captain Jim returning from a visit to him, slowly plodding along the trail ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... from the fighting, rollicking Irish crew of the hamlet,—set them apart, so to speak, to act upon each other. Carrol, with one of his sons, worked in a saw-mill, and the other boys, as they grew old enough, easily found jobbing, being known as honest, plodding fellows. The little drama of their lives bade fair to be quiet, and the characters wrought out of it commonplace enough, had not Death thrust his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... followed night, and still found them plodding laboriously through the weary waste of snow, or encamping under the trees of the forest. The two friends went through all the varied stages of experience which are included in what is called "becoming used to the work," which ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... he said, "Those who have been acquainted with my character from my youth up, will give me credit for sincerity when I say, that it never entered into my head to blazon forth any acquisition of my own. All that I have accomplished, or expect, or hope to accomplish, has been, and will be, by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap,—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... Peter or bottle-green hat for Vic—what did it matter if neither of them ever again owned a hat, if Helen May must stay here in the city and face the doom that had been pronounced upon her? What did anything matter, if Babe died and left him plodding along alone? Vic did not occur to him consolingly. Vic was a responsibility; a comfort he was not. Like many men, Peter could not seem to understand his son half as well as he understood his daughter. He could not see why Vic should frivol away his time; ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the wheels. At the Neuilly bridge a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas had joined the eight waggons of carrots and turnips coming down from Nanterre; and the horses, left to themselves, had continued plodding along with lowered heads, at a regular though lazy pace, which the ascent of the slope now slackened. The sleeping waggoners, wrapped in woollen cloaks, striped black and grey, and grasping the reins slackly in their closed hands, were stretched at full length on their stomachs atop ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... heavens swimming in mist through which the sun peered shiftily, the tall pines wavering through the fog, the preoccupied mules marching single file, the foggy bell-note of the gentle dingue in its swinging basket, and Dorothy, limp kilts dripping with dew, plodding through the white dusk. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... through life even as there are two roses. The one is a rough road and weary, and on it happiness seldom treads. It is a plodding road, flat and long; and there you walk with stale and barren people, through a stale and barren land, until you come to an ending yet more stale and more barren than are road or people. That is the road of the White Rose. But the Road of the Red Rose! That's different! On ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... The reader is requested to bear these names in mind; Galvani and Volta. They have a unique claim upon us. With others that will follow, they have descended to all posterity in the immortal nomenclature of the science of electricity. It is through the accidental discovery of the plodding demonstrator of anatomy in a medical college, a man who died at last in poverty and in ignorance of the meaning of his own work, that we have now the vast web of telegraph and telephone wires that hangs above the paths of men ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... other look, Then different studies choose; The Dean sits plodding on a book; Pope walks, and courts ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... travellers were plodding onward, Ketch walked for a time at the head of Aunt Amanda's mule. Aunt Amanda leaned forward and ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... highway. A highway is for all: for kings and commoners; for the nobleman daintily picking his way, and the beggar painfully plodding with bare feet. And Jesus is for every man. "Whosoever will, let him come"; let him step out and walk; let him commit himself to Him who comes to our doors that He may conduct ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... enjoys the pleasures of hope. He knows something, too, about "hope deferred;" also can tell of hope disappointed; has his wits sharpened, and, generally, is a smart fellow. The tut-worker knows nothing of this, his pay being safe and regular, though small. Many quiet-going, plodding men prefer and stick ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... fortnight, and were no more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes, and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared 40,000 pounds by his speculations. [Coxe's Walpole, Correspondence between Mr. Secretary Craggs and Earl Stanhope.] The Duke of Bridgewater started ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... and then the left. This gives a rhythm to the uphill work, which also seems to minimize effort. Anyone who has experienced the irritation caused by his Skis being constantly touched by the runner behind while plodding uphill will learn to spare ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... to start on his mysterious errand—and he gloried in the mystery—Mary was "minding" bread in the kitchen and "chuncking" wood in the stove with a lavish hand. The Sisters were at prayer in the tiny chapel which had been evolved from a small west room; and old Aunt Becky Adams was plodding down the rugged trail from Thunder Peak. Meredith Thornton, too, was nearing her destination and The ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... been much caricatured, satirized, and abused, but the soldier had no more faithful or indispensable servant than this same patient, plodding, hard-pulling, long-eared fellow of the roomy voice and nimble heels. The "boys" told a story which may illustrate the mule's education. A "tenderfoot" driver had gotten his team stalled in a mud hole, and by no amount of persuasion could he get them to ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... a big battle on, that much was certain; but the uproar was so distributed that one could hardly tell whether it was in front or behind. However, the transport was steadily advancing—horse-wagons, mule-wagons, motor-wagons, all plodding patiently, paying no heed to the shell-bursts. And then Jimmie took a look behind, and saw that infernal red-headed Orangeman! He imagined a raucous voice, shouting: "C'mon here! Whatcher waitin' fer?" Jimmie bounced on to his machine and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... had a double meaning, Mr Drummond thought that a cask had surged, when coming out of the lighter, and struck them down. He desired old Tom to be more careful, and walked away, while we proceeded to unload the lighter. The new clerk was a very heavy, simple young man, plodding and attentive certainly, but he had no other merit; he was sent into the lighter to rake the marks and numbers of the casks as they were hoisted up, and soon became a butt to young Tom, who gave him the wrong marks and numbers of all the casks, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the milk-cart altogether, and was plodding on, simply because there seemed to be nothing better to do with himself. He presently came opposite a low, conical hill which he recognized as "Mt. Washington,"—a hill whose elevation above sea-level was said to be precisely that of New England's loftiest peak. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... before he commenced writing clavier sonatas, had made acquaintance with those of Paradies and of Alberti. These early Italian influences should be noted, for one is apt to think rather of the young composer as plodding through Fux's "Gradus" and playing Emanuel Bach's sonatas on his "little worm-eaten clavier." During his last years Haydn told his friend Griesinger that he had diligently studied Emanuel Bach, and ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... looked from the window. An old negro muffled in a threadbare overcoat was plodding up the walk, his eyes scanning the house with ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... each other; and when they were alone Taffy stood an inch or two higher in self-conceit than when Honoria happened to be by. But he took more pains with his stories if she was listening. As for her lessons, Honoria got through them by honest plodding. She never quite saw the use of them, but she liked Mr. Raymond. She learnt more steadily than either of ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... birds are very highly organized creatures,—next to man, they say. We, with our weary feet plodding always on the earth, our heavy arms pinioned close to our sides!—look at this live creature, with thinnest wing cutting the fine air! We, slow in word, slow in thought!—look at this quivering flame, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Soon the track became soft and sticky. She sank ankle deep in mire. Then gradually the morass grew deeper and she was in mud and water up to her knees. Later she was plodding ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... "This plodding team seems fitting in such a peculiar place," remarked one of the quartet in our sled. "Although it is not rapid transit, it is comfortable. But look, there is a more luxurious mode of traveling." As he spoke he pointed to two Portuguese bearing suspended on a pole ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... nose at his poor brother Bill, Who was always content to be plodding up hill; Hard work he disliked, he despised peace and quiet, So he spent all his time and ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... study and imagination are frequently upbraided by the industrious and plodding sons of care, with passing too great a part of their life in a state of inaction. But these defiers of sleep seem not to remember that though it must be granted them that they are crawling about before the break of day, it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the above remarks concerning the South American species, we looked carefully for the workers, in this instance, and failed to discover above half a dozen wingless ants above ground, and these were plodding about, very indifferent, as it appeared to us, to the fate or welfare of their winged brothers. And on digging down a few inches, we could find but comparatively few individuals in the nest, and could detect no movements on their parts that referred to the exodus of winged ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... plodding on their winding way Through orange bowers, and jasmine, and so forth: (Of which I might have a good deal to say, There being no such profusion in the North Of oriental plants, et cetera, But that of late your scribblers think it worth Their while to rear whole hotbeds in their works, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... character. She interests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for he certainly has no idea of offering marriage, he gains her affection, neither meaning, in any definite way, to do anything good nor anything bad with it. There is another man who loves Lizzie, a schoolmaster, who, in his dull, plodding way, has made the best of his intellect, and risen in life. He naturally, and we may say properly, for no good can come of them, resents Wrayburn's attentions, as does the girl's brother. Wrayburn uses the superior ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... out the direction, and, gathering up their things, the cadets hurried off to where he had pointed. There, sure enough, was a man plodding along with a bundle over his shoulder. He was a short, thick-set man, and wore a heavy mustache curled ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... and but for the knowledge of the value of the load Saxe would gladly have freed himself of the burden by letting it fall on the stones. But these were the crystals of which Dale was in search, and as he saw that his companion was patiently plodding on and making his way over the sharp, rough masses of stone with which the ravine was floored, he bent to his task patiently, though it seemed as though they would never reach the spot ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went, he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went, he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and, choosing a street at random, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... other in the falsest notions imaginable. They represent romantic love as the great important business of human life, and describe all the other concerns of it as too low and paltry to merit the attention of such elevated beings, and fit only to employ the daughters of the plodding vulgar. In these letters, family affairs are misrepresented, family secrets divulged, and family misfortunes aggravated. They are filled with vows of eternal amity, and protestations of never-ending love. But interjections and quotations are the principal ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... felt as if we had already arrived somewhere. I little knew what lay beyond. While I was plodding along in this blissfully ignorant state of mind, communing with a pipe, the path, which had frisked in and out for some time among the boulders, suddenly took it into its head to scale a cliff on the left. It did this, as it seemed to me, without provocation, after ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... not have been possible for him to have moved a portion of his advance up by train as far as Black Creek, was a question that was prevalent at the time. But Col. Peacocke was not apparently taking any chances. He appears to have been overly cautious, and was disposed to adopt the old-time method of plodding along the beaten trail. Here again he made a mistake in taking "the longest way around" to reach Stevensville, while the intense heat and dust began to tell on his troops, which compelled him to halt at New Germany about 11 o'clock. Before reaching there he was informed of the disaster at Ridgeway ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... he reached her. He clamoured wheezily for information as to the whereabouts of the prince. Pollyooly told him, indifferently enough, that he had gone to the village. The baron sought the village at his best, but curious, toddling rush. In the middle of it he met his young charge plodding along with an air of perfect content. In his hand ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... the cosmic process generally, the human part of that process does not encourage a theological interpretation. Man is working out his own destiny, and doing it ill. We see him, like some pedlar plodding along a country road under his burdens, carrying through whole centuries institutions and ideas and follies that he will eventually shed. When he drops them, there is no more element of miracle or revelation in his action than when he discovers the use of steam ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... one of 'em married for as long as ten years that didn't in her secret heart have a sort of contempt for her life partner as being a stuffy, plodding truck horse? Of course they keep a certain dull respect for him as a provider, but they can't see him as dashing and romantic any more; he ain't daring and adventurous. All he ever does is go down and open ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... most to receive only some grave admonition from the academic authorities. Johns advised with him, (giving as serious advice then as he could give now,) and added from time to time such assistance in his studies as a plodding man can always lend to one of quick brain, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... plea of headache or any trifle, and in youth he had escaped business in like manner. His father had tried him a few times in his office, but was soon glad to fall in with his wife's opinion, that her son "had too much spirit and refinement for plodding humdrum business, that he was a born gentleman and suited only to elegant leisure," and as his gentleman son only did mischief downtown, the poor over-worked father was glad to have him out of the way, for he with difficulty made both ends meet, as it was. Hoping he would do better ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... And into a lily or hollyhock dodging With quiet assurance he takes up his lodging. With a snug little fortune invested in honey, Young Bumble Bee lives like a prince, on his money, And, scorning some plodding relations of his, he Leaves hard labor to them,—his ...
— The Nursery, August 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... plodding, middle-class Americans. They stuck where they were born, accepted their duties as they came, earned a respectable living and died without having money enough left to make a will worth while. They were all privates in the ranks. But they ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... and the name, it is true, of glorious sway; but I can boast but of the worst and most impotent part of it, the title only; but the busy, absolute, mischievous politician finds no room in my soul, my humour, or constitution; and plodding restless power I have made so little the business of my gayer and more careless youth, that I have even lost my right of rule, my share of empire amongst them. That little power (whose unregarded loss I never bemoaned till it rendered me incapable of serving Philander) I have ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... man was still stubborn. He was feeling discontented with his environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of conventions, out into the world of art—or else of barbarism—he didn't ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... these advantages, his own genius for languages, his unconquerable plodding directed by a divine motive, his colleagues' co-operation, the encouragement of learned societies and the public, and the number of pundits and moonshees increased by the College of Fort William, would have ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... agony, breathless, errant, flush'd wearily, cometh on Taborine behind him, Attis, thoro' leafy glooms a guide, As a restive heifer yields not to the cumbrous onerous yoke. Thither his the votaress eunuchs with an emulous alacrity. Now faintly sickly plodding to the goddess's holy shrine, 35 They took the rest which easeth long toil, nor ate withal. Slow sleep descends on eyelids ready drowsily to decline, In a soft repose departeth the devout spirit-agony. When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient Scann'd lustrous air, the rude ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "Laisser faire." The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... refuses to be satisfied with evolution, and demands a ruddier presentation of the sum of man's experience. Sometimes the mood is brought about by laughter at the humorous side of life, as when, abstracting ourselves from earth, we imagine people plodding on foot, or seated in ships and speedy trains, with the planet all the while whirling in the opposite direction, so that, for all their hurry, they travel back-foremost through the universe of space. Sometimes it comes by the spirit of delight, and sometimes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mounted," continued the Baroness serenely, "and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however, we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... and fertile valley, Tracing all its winding ways, Plodding on with dogged patience Through a score of weary days, Camping in the lonely timber, Sleeping on the scorching plain, Bearing heat and thirst and hunger, Sore fatigue and wind and rain— Halting only when the telltale Mark was missing in the track; Only when he called a greeting, ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... hour the click of the hedge-shears drew nearer, but the girl did not notice this. In another half hour James himself came into view, intent upon his monotonous task. Gradually the motionless form of the girl and the plodding figure of the gardener drew together, until he stood but two yards distant. Then he paused, looked toward the arbor, and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the Greek which he had heard in the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... night's lodging at Mount Morris. The oak-trees gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road. Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... into honourable exile, in quality of an ambassador-extraordinary to the court of France; and Trumball, his friend and creature, was dismissed from the office of secretary, which the king conferred upon Vernon, a plodding man of business who had acted as under-secretary to the duke of Shrewsbury. This nobleman rivalled the earl of Sunderland in his credit at the council-board, and was supported by Somers, lord chancellor of England, by Russel ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 20, 1915, Lane went to San Francisco and formally opened the Panama Pacific Exposition, as the personal representative of the President. He spoke on "That slender, dauntless, plodding, modest figure, the American pioneer, ... whose long journey ... beside the oxen ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... college days were over. Dudley was sent to the university of the State; Tom Bassett and Bernard Battle soon followed, and Nicholas, still plodding and still hopeful, was left ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white man. As a rule, these were better dressed, the white girls wearing sun-bonnets of portentous size, whose cavernous depths would make a search for ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... to such a place, for it holds for me the wonder of the untoward; as will a strolling Italian plodding past my house at night with his big, silent bear; or the spectacle of the huge, faded red ice-wagon, with powerful horses and rattling chains and tongs, and giants in blue denim atop the crystal; or the strange, copper world that dissolves in the fluid of certain ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... oscillated. There was jolt and jar, and I heard what I knew as a matter of course to be the grind of wheels on axles and the grate and clash of iron tyres against rock and sand. And there came to me the jaded voices of men, in curse and snarl of slow-plodding, jaded animals. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... there were only three or four of them left they would not attack in the open. In that event he must watch for ambuscade, and dread the night. He looked down at Celie, buried in her furry coat and hood and plodding along courageously at his side with her hand in his. This was not a time in which to question him, and she was obeying his guidance with the faith of a child. It was tremendous, he thought—the most wonderful moment that had ever entered into his life. It is this dependence, this ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... Traddles. 'I began, by means of his assistance, to copy law writings. That didn't answer very well; and then I began to state cases for them, and make abstracts, and that sort of work. For I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to enter myself as a law student; and that ran away with all that was left of the fifty pounds. Yawler recommended me to one or two other offices, however—Mr. Waterbrook's for ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in the meantime, were plodding along on their ponies on their way to the hunting grounds, which lay some ten miles to the northward of their camp. They found rough traveling. Instead of following the ridges, they were now moving at right angles to them, which carried the boys over mountains, down ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... pack-saddles and drove the burros back toward Laguna. Halfway across the mesa he met Pete, who told him what had happened. Montoya said nothing. Pete had hoped that his master would rave and threaten all sorts of vengeance. But the old man simply nodded, and plodding along back of the burros, finally entered Laguna and strode up to the store. All sorts of stories were afloat, stories which Montoya discounted liberally, because he knew Pete. The owner of the dog claimed damages. Montoya, smiling inwardly, referred ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... wall, perforated and worn by people and carriages, was cleft by several windows with grilles on a level with the ground. The lower story of the palace was worn, lacerated, and dusty, like feet which had been plodding for centuries. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the helpless creatures of the brush was a tiny little pony-rider, back of the army, mounted on a plodding horse that was all but hidden by its load of furry game. He was riding double, this odd little bit of a youngster, with a sturdy Indian boy who was on in front. That such a timid little dot of manhood ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... tract by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka on the "Encephalic Anatomy of the Races." I judged that my opinion was desired by the university, and I was greatly pleased with this attention and wrote and said I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night I put my plodding and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and took hold of the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to finish my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were few, and the ground cultivated only in small portions near the water, consequently there was not that sort of variety which leaves distinct separate remembrances, but one impression of solitude and greatness. While the Highlander and I were plodding on together side by side, interspersing long silences with now and then a question or a remark, looking down to the lake he espied two small rocky islands, and pointing to them, said to me, 'It will be gay {225a} and dangerous sailing there in stormy weather when the water is high.' ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the rim of the basin, disappeared, and then came plodding back through the heat. Johnny had laughed all that while; laughed until his sides were sore; until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... dinner with a new settler, and about two o'clock that afternoon we overtook a fellow who was plodding along the road. His name was B——, he said, and he pointed out to us his broad fields and herds. He had been overseeing some feeders he had, and his horse had escaped, so he was walking home, as it was only a couple of miles. He talked a great deal in that two-mile ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... were brown, winter earth and winter air despite the brightness of the sunshine. A blue stream rippled by, pine and cedar made silhouettes against a tranquil sky, and crows were cawing in a stubble-field. Cary rode slowly, plodding on with a thoughtful brow. The few whom he met greeted him respectfully, and he answered them readily enough, then pursued his way, again in a brown study. The Fontenoy gates were reached at last, and he was about to bend from his saddle and lift the heavy ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and, button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough, after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding but vigorous step. The shorter of the two turned pale, but tried to put on an air of dignified indifference. Soon the official ran in under their lee, passed alongside with slackened pace, and clarioned into the novelist's ear: "Monsieur de ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far that, though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... because the first-mentioned list contains articles that give off very offensive odors while being applied, so that the more fastidious are loath to use them. What may not be very offensive to the plodding florist would be highly so to the more refined, or when the general public comes more into contact with the crops while being so applied. In almost all of the cases where the ingredients mentioned are used they are diluted with a large quantity of water, except in the case of the droppings of the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... most adventure can be on the monotonous side, nine-tenths of the time. When a Stanley goes to find a Livingston, he doesn't spend twenty-four hours a day killing rogue elephants or fighting off tribesman; most of the time he's plodding along in the swamps, getting bitten by mosquitoes, or through the bush getting bitten by tsetse flies. So, as a people, we turned it over to the movies, and Telly, where ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and the softness of coming night, a horse loomed along the green stretch, came plodding up to stop and stand before her, a brown horse, with the stirrups of his saddle hung on the pommel, his rein tied short up—Captain, the good, common friend of ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... fatherhood in its sweet nobleness; and Gwynplaine, disfigured and deserted—a little lad set ashore upon a night of hurricane and snow, who, finding in his wanderings a babe on her dead mother's breast, rescues this bit of winter storm-drift, plodding on through untracked snows, freezing, but no more thinking to drop his burden than the mother thought to desert it—Gwynplaine is a hero for whose deed an epic is fitting. Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, found, after long years, holding in his skeleton arms a bit of woman's ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... many scenes of which she was the ornament; in which she was the brightest little star that ever shone, to shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding man like me must be to one of her quick spirit? Did I consider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved her, when everybody must who knew her? Never. I took advantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition; and I married her. I wish I never ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... trotting donkeys or swinging camels who pass us with difficulty. Camels everywhere, indeed, on dyke or in meadow; even the clouds are shaped like camels who have gone to heaven and turned to mother o' pearl. There are horses, too; not little sand stallions like ours, but ordinary, plodding animals whose hoofs know only Fayoum dust or mud. Our desert creature, however, does not spurn them. On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... like; and though he was perfectly well again, some of the spring had ebbed from his muscles during his week's rest. This day, too, the first of November, had been exhausting. They had walked since daybreak, after a wretched night in a barn, plodding almost in silence, mile after mile, against a wet south-west wind, over a discouraging kind of high-road that dipped and rose and dipped again, and never seemed to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... seemed a very probable contingency, and she was beginning to weary of plodding over the boggy land, alternately slapped by outstanding branches or—when a little puff of wind raced overhead—drenched by a shower of garnered raindrops from some tree which seemed to shake itself in the breeze just as a dog ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... his value? For what, in all the manifold activities of the world, is he fit? And if the answer be not satisfactory, if the product be only a sort of learned mummy, the system will be condemned. Are there not thousands of lads today plodding away at the ancient classics, and who, at the first possible moment, will cast them into space, never to reopen them? Think of the wasted time that that implies; not all wasted, perhaps, for something may be gained in power of application; but entirely wasted ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... plays touched upon in the last four paragraphs are in intention realistic. They aim, that is to say, at a literal and sober representation of life. In the other class of plays, which seek their effect, not in plodding probability, but in delightful improbability, the long arm of coincidence has its legitimate functions. Yet even here it is not quite unfettered. One of the most agreeable coincidences in fiction, I take it, is the simultaneous arrival in Bagdad, from different quarters of the globe, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... that Frands—that was his name—had been in the society's care five months and over. They had found him drifting in the streets, and, knowing whither that drift set, had taken him in charge and sent him to one of their lodging-houses, where he had been since, doing chores and plodding about in his dull way. That was where I had met him. Now they had decided that he should go to Florida, if he would, but first they would like to find out something about him. They had never been able to, beyond the fact that he was from Denmark. He had put his finger ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... for the road was blocked with artillery and infantry and other ambulances, but the driver found a lane between guns and caissons and through the dusty blue columns plodding forward toward the firing line; and at last a white hospital tent glimmered under the trees, and the slow mule team turned into a leafy lane and halted in the rear of a line of ambulances which were all busily ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... looked eagerly in every direction. And finally she spied Madame Tortoise plodding along towards the school, with the lunch for ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... neither lend nor give anything to one another They have yet touched nothing of that which is mine They must be very hard to please, if they are not contented Things that engage us elsewhere and separate us from ourselves This decay of nature which renders him useless, burdensome This plodding occupation of bookes is as painfull as any other Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures Though I be engaged to one forme, I do not tie the world unto it Title of barbarism to everything ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the genial physician and the Izaak Walton of the Catskills. Mr. and Mrs. Wendall are "plodding toward home" with a resignation that is ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... imbecile—or worse than imbecile. Early called into public notice, probably before their moral habits are formed, they are extolled for some play of fancy or of wit, as Bacon calls it, some juggler's trick of the intellect; they immediately take an aversion to plodding labour, they feel raised above their situation; possessed by the notion that genius exempts them not only from labour, but from vulgar rules of prudence, they soon disgrace themselves by their conduct, are deserted by their patrons, and sink ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... low, after which, I am glad to remember, I made the first advance. Earlier in the day I had arranged some likely articles on a side-table: my watch and chain, my bunch of keys, and two war-medals for plodding merit, and with a glance at these (as something to fall back upon), I stepped forward doggedly, looking (I fear now) a little like a professor of legerdemain. David was sitting up, and he immediately fixed his eyes ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... taught to read, write, and sew; she is as carefully looked after as if the world wished to steal her; she wears shoes and stockings and an embroidered kerchief and a hooded cloak; and she never steps outside the door alone. You meet her, pale and demure, plodding along to mass with her mother. The sisters will marry laborers and fishermen; Mariquinha will marry a small shop-keeper or the mate of a vessel, or else die single. It is not very pleasant for the poor girl in the mean time; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... was merely base deception on the part of the atmosphere, for it was quite a long way, while now, at night, it was not to be seen at all. It was on the tip of John Willows' tongue several times to ask Drinkwater if he were sure, but he reflected what would be the use? For the man was plodding steadily on, and the tiny rays of his lantern fell on the rough grass and stones. Evidently he knew quite well what he was about, for there was a certainty in his ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... object appeared now dark, now light in colour, but became gradually more distinct. It came always crawling steadily on. Presently an occasional side-blown puff of dust added a certain heraldry, and thus finally the white-topped wagon and its plodding team came fully into view, crawling ever persistently from the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... sleeping in snow and rain, and by day paddling, poling, and wading,—never a new face among the grumbling soldiers or the stolid prisoners,—after this, Quebec stood for luxury and the pleasant demoralization of good living. He liked the noise of passing feet, the hail of goodwill from door to door, the plodding shopkeepers and artisans, the comfortable ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn-door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He started back, plodding slowly, for he was tired with the frequent climbing of the mountain throughout the day. The others, thinking of the supper awaiting them, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... crops. In this hedge, on each side of us, were gateways so close together that when, as occasionally happened, people passed through one, we were forced to crawl up to the other to avoid detection. We had done so again when, without warning, a drover came plodding up behind his sheep. We had no time in which to go back up the hedge. The sheep crowded from the rear and overflowed at the narrow gateway into the hedge where we lay and so ran over our bodies. We remained quiet, thinking he would pass on; ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... of miles in each direction was the wilderness, wherein man had always been obliged to fend for himself. And, as ever, the wilderness had its own wild deeds. Flatboats were halted and robbed; caravans of travelers were attacked; lonely wayfarers plodding on horseback were waylaid and murdered. In short, the story of that early day shows our first frontiersman no ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... thick upon the wide road between rolling fields of ripened grain, rose in little spirals from beneath the heavy feet of the plodding farm-horses drawing the empty hay-wagon, and had scarcely settled again upon the browning goldenrod and fuzzy milkweed which bordered the rail fences on either side when Ebb Fischel's itinerant butcher-jitney rattled past. Ebb Fischel's eyes were usually as sharp as ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... thereon looke. For when would you my Lord, or you, or you, Haue found the ground of studies excellence, Without the beauty of a womans face; From womens eyes this doctrine I deriue, They are the Ground, the Bookes, the Achadems, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. Why, vniuersall plodding poysons vp The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long during action tyres The sinnowy vigour of the trauailer. Now for not looking on a womans face, You haue in that forsworne the vse of eyes: And studie too, the causer ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the bee's o'erflowing cells; The Pyramids; all things that shall endure; The books on books wherein all wisdom dwells, Are wrought with plodding patience, slow and sure. Yours the time-tempered fashioning that spells Of chaos, order, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... procession was again plodding, Indian file, through the still, dew-fragrant, midnight woods. The little raccoon, its heart now beating quietly, nestled in secure contentment under the young schoolmaster's arm, untroubled even by the solemn and deep-toned menace of a horned-owl's cry from the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... are off down to Buea. At 10.15 it pours as it can here; by 10.17 we are all in our normal condition of bedraggled saturation, and plodding down carefully and cheerfully among the rocks and roots of the forest, following the path we have beaten and cut for ourselves on our way up. It is dangerously slippery, particularly that part of it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... classroom wall, amid the dull, drab maps—a glorious sight with its oaken frame and its rich-coloured design in silk. Life moved to a chivalrous music, lessons went more easily, in presence of its proud pomp: 'twas like marching to a band instead of painfully plodding. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... absorbed Jim until late afternoon; absorbed him and cheered him. About five o'clock he started off to call on Pen, and tell her about the Secretary's letter. He found her plodding up the road toward the tent house with a pile of ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... veracious, of his doings at wine-parties; and proved, to the satisfaction of admiring freshmen, that he thought of nothing but his horse and his boating. He could do without study more than any other man could do with it; and as for that plodding Balliol hero, he might look to be beaten out of the field ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... 1,000 cubic feet may certainly be done to still greater advantage in many towns where the price is lower. Mr. Booer has entered upon his work in a proper spirit. He has begun at the beginning, with the necessities of the baker; and has gone plodding on quietly, until he has achieved a noteworthy success. It may be hoped he will receive the reward which his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... by almost attributing her brother's death to Jesus' absence. But even in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought—'What if, after all, he were to bring him to life again!' O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her half-born prayer, says, 'Thy brother shall ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... labelling themselves workingmen, to talk about political means and practical ends exclusive to themselves? Who among us has the single right to claim for himself, and the likes of him, the divine title of a workingman? We are all workingmen, the earnest plodding scholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort which his learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poor collier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about, and want maybe staring him in the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... secret joy In school to hear the finest boy. Her knowledge with her fancy grew, She hourly pressed for something new; Ideas came into her mind So fact, his lessons lagged behind; She reasoned, without plodding long, Nor ever gave her judgment wrong. But now a sudden change was wrought, She minds no longer what he taught. Cadenus was amazed to find Such marks of a distracted mind; For though she seemed to listen more To all he spoke, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of light, he retraced without difficulty, through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he had followed on his arrival with the King-at-Arms and the Usher of the Black Rod. He saw no one, except here and there some old lord with tardy steps, plodding along heavily ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... matters were growing a little strained. Martin Holt undoubtedly suspected something of the matter betwixt him and Cherry, and as plainly disapproved. He looked upon Cherry as promised to her cousin Jacob, and doubtless he thought the steady, plodding, slow-witted son of the house of Dyson a far safer husband for his feather-brained youngest than handsome Cuthbert Trevlyn, with his gentler birth, his quick and keen intelligence, and his versatile, inquiring mind, which was always inclining him to meddle in matters ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green |
