"Peasant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the way they keep you safe?' asked the hostess, who meanwhile was attending to her in a way that, if the Lady Anne had known it, was like the tendance of her own nurse at home, instead of that of a rough peasant woman. ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... diplomatically gifted than I," said the Prince, "but there is a much stronger, much abler man than Cavour or I, and that man is President Kruger. He has no gigantic army behind him, no great empire to support him. He stands alone with a small peasant people, and is a match for us by mere force of genius. I spoke to him—he drove me into a corner." Kruger's great ability, as delineated by Bismarck, was indisputable, and a man with less of it might have been President and might have avoided the war, but only at a loss ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... they have no need; and other sane men actually go abroad and kill—by barbarous methods—foreign men of estimable character with whom they have no quarrel. This sport they call war and seem to enjoy it. But killing is killing; and a foreign peasant's life is surely worth more ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... of the Court played this pleader a trick by appointing him to defend at the Assizes a half-witted peasant accused of forgery. But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor man's acquittal by proving his innocence and showing that he had been a tool in the hands of the real culprits. Not only did his line of defence succeed, but it led to the arrest of two of the witnesses, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... greatest of all; for the meanest peasant has an advantage over the prince in the point on which we most desire to be free—that of the choice in his partner in life. He has none, but must submit to the wishes of his people, and trammelled by custom, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hand upon the window, the better to look in, and clenching the other, shook it at them, crying out, "Wait, ye accursed peasant boors, I, too, will judge ye for your sins!" But seeing her cousin, Jobst Bork, present, she screamed yet louder—"Eh! thou thick ploughman, hath the devil brought thee here too? Art thou not ashamed to accuse ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Modern German, the word for "sun" is feminine, and in mythology the orb of day often appears as a woman. The German peasant was wont to address the sun and the moon familiarly as "Frau Sonne" and "Herr Mond," and in a Russian folk-song a fair ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Connecticut, whose gentle waves, says the song, roll through many a fertile vale and sunny plain; now reflecting the lofty spires of the bustling city, and now the rural beauties of the humble hamlet; now echoing with the busy hum of commerce, and now with the cheerful song of the peasant. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... deeds they wrought for fellow men. The rags of yesterday are exchanged for purple robes as the centuries pass, while the crowns of today fade and crumble into forgetfulness. No man succeeds because he becomes a king or fails because he remains a peasant. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... are extant, and by imitations, such as Piers the Plowman's Crede (1394), and the Plowman's Tale, for a long time wrongly inserted in the Canterbury Tales. Piers became a kind of typical figure, like the French peasant, Jacques Bonhomme, and was {32} appealed to as such by the Protestant ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... impregnation at times takes place; it is reported by Dr. Trexel, of Kremsier, and is as follows: "On April 1, 1856, a newborn infant was brought to Dr. Trexel, that he might determine its sex. The father and mother were servants of a peasant. On an examination of the alleged father, he was found to have all the external characters of a male; the urethra, which was rather shorter than ordinary, but of large size, was imperforate; the scrotum was divided into two pouches, each containing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... life of the ordinary small farmer and peasant; but down by the fjords and on the beaten track of the foreign tourists the larger farmer has grasped the situation, and has discovered the value of having more than one string to his bow. So in summer he combines hotel-keeping ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... at her. He understood nothing. Granted that she knew the man, as no doubt she knew every peasant of the village, he still didn't understand the touch of agony in her ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... cottages could be called. It was but a small enclosure, and thick set with old monuments and humbler memorials, open books of iron on slender supports, their inscriptions dimmed by the rust of time, small stones set up by loving peasant hands, and one fresh grave covered with evergreen branches. Alma understood that on that grave she must place the wreath of white flowers that had lain in her lap, and there her father would lay the one beautiful fair lily he ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... to lose; here is a peasant's mantle—if you should be interrogated, you have only to show this paszura,* and mention my name. Your not knowing the language is of no consequence; my men are accustomed to see Hungarian gentlemen visit me ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... was a remarkable one. She sprang from a family of peasants, and was married at sixteen to a peasant; but she stood out in sharp relief against the mass of her peasant sisters. As a child, she had been spoilt by her father, who had been for twenty years the head of his commune, and who had made a good deal ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... position than his services, with a gold piece. His joy at receiving what was to him the income of three months was great, and never failed to reimburse me; in addition to which I took some pleasure in unbending, and learning from this simple peasant and loyal man, what the tax-payers were saying of me and my reforms—a duty I felt I owed to the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... been marching for a long time when our scouts spotted a peasant who was trying to hide. They hastened to capture him and bring him back. I questioned him. He came, it seemed, from four or five leagues away, and claimed that he had not seen any Austrian troops. I was sure he ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... wife and happy.—The last we heard of Electra was that she lived "unmated and alone" (1. 562, p. 31). But that was said when Pylades was regarded as practically a dead man. Electra was apparently betrothed to Pylades, but was not actually his wife.—There is no mention of the Peasant ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... author of the Fairy Tales, just as a distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature. Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a single modern mind. The Editor's business is to hunt for collections of these stories told by peasant or savage grandmothers in many climes, from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snows of the Polar regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... land by luxury betrayed, In Nature's simplest charms arrayed; But verging to decline, its splendors rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms, a garden and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... intelligence have their own attractions, which are wholly diverse from those of crudeness, coarseness, and simplicity. The surroundings which would bring happiness to the lover of art or the man of large mental endowment, would render miserable the peasant who still lacked the development to appreciate the elegancies of refinement; while the tidy cottage and plain comforts which might constitute the paradise of the humble and illiterate rustic, would be utterly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... adventurous foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... considered quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human society,—a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly devoted his life to its attainment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... witness the commencement exercises knew it all, and greeted him with a hearty welcome that recalled his early struggles and his hard-won success. It was Paolo's day of triumph. The class honors and the medal were his. The bust that had won both stood in the hall crowned with laurel—an Italian peasant woman, with sweet, gentle face, in which there lingered the memories of the patient eyes that had lulled the child to sleep in the old days in the alley. His teacher spoke to him, spoke of him, with pride in voice ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Two months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce, the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... peasant Deputy and a Polish representative were particularly impressive and well received. The Socialist leader's demand for peace called forth a smart rejoinder from a member of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as I think, from the facts of history, but the facts of tradition confirm the facts of history at all points. Thus I think it is important, if we can, to obtain independent testimony of the attitude of the surrounding people to the builders of London Bridge. We can do this by reference to the peasant beliefs concerning bridges, as, for instance, in Ireland, where on passing over a bridge they invariably pulled off their hats and prayed for the soul of the builder of the bridge,[27] and to the fact that the Romans themselves looked upon bridge-building ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... peasant woman, this maid, with good red color in her cheeks, but she wore a dress of heavy woolen material and a cardigan jacket over that. Her thick felt slippers pattered briskly over the stone floor as she went to a clothes-press, carved and beautifully ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... is not alone in scenery and architecture that we count England foreign. The constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull, neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, makes a startling contrast with our own long-legged, long-headed, thoughtful, Bible-quoting ploughman. A week or two in such a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotsman gasping. It seems incredible that within the boundaries of his own island a class should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in rusty black not unlike a Scotch peasant's best raiment as worn at funerals. He held a dripping umbrella; his boots were muddy, his trousers had their frayed ends turned up. He wore a hard, cruel red face, with keen grey eyes beneath penthouses where age had touched ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... already displayed their zeal; nor did the previous reverses of Alvinzi prevent them from once more crowding to his standard. Napoleon proclaimed that every Tyrolese caught in arms should be shot as a brigand. Alvinzi replied, that for every murdered peasant he would hang a French prisoner of war: Buonaparte rejoined, that the first execution of this threat would be instantly followed by the gibbeting of Alvinzi's own nephew, who was in his hands. These ferocious threats were laid aside, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... The peasant leaves his plough afield, The reaper leaves his hook, And from his hand the shepherd-boy. Lets fall the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in clearing away rubbish in obstructed streets. It is a very lively scene, as you can see in the picture. Men are digging zealously into the heaps of earth and rubbish, and filling baskets which the bare-footed peasant-girls carry to the cars at a little distance. A railroad has been built expressly to carry away the earth. The cars are drawn by mules. The girls prefer carrying their baskets on their heads. The men have to dig carefully, for there is no knowing when they may come across some rare ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... and proved to him if he only held true to the gospels of the Immoderate Left the earth would soon be covered with 'jolly little' pig-sties, built in the intervals of morris-dancing by 'the peasant' himself. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... peasant-boy one day heard the priest say in church that whosoever desired to enter into the kingdom of heaven must always go straight onward. So he set out, and walked continually straight onwards over hill and valley without ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... woman, described by Alibert (and quoted by Laycock, Nervous Diseases of Women, p. 28) the hips, thighs and legs were remarkably plump, while the chest and arms were completely emaciated. In a somewhat similar case described by Marc in his De la Folie a peasant woman, who from an early age had experienced sexual hyperaesthesia, so that she felt spasmodic voluptuous feelings at the sight of a man, and was thus the victim of solitary excesses and of spasmodic movements which she could ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... day down to the night of Saturday, August 5th, the police sought vainly for O'Brien. He slept in the peasant's hut on the mountain and he shared his scanty fare; a price which might well dazzle the senses of his poverty-stricken entertainers was on his head, and they knew it; over hill-side and valley swarmed the host of spies, detectives, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of the sons of the principal nobility to be instructed in these mysteries, and the other ceremonies of their religion. The origin of this act among the people of Tuscany, is related by Cicero in the following manner: "A peasant," says he, "ploughing in the field, his ploughshare running pretty deep in the earth, turned up a clod, from whence sprung a child, who taught him and the other Tuscans the art of divination." (Cicero, De Divinat. l. 2.) This fable, undoubtedly means no more, than that this child, said ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... me, slave!" said the soldier; and, setting spurs to his horse, he caused him make a demivolte across the path, raising at the same time the riding rod which he held in his hand, with a purpose of chastising what he considered as the insolence of the peasant. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Monasticism brought with it an extravagant view of the life of self-denial, but those who had to be instructed needed to have the lesson written plainly so that a child might read it. The rough warrior or the rough peasant was more likely to abstain from drunkenness, if he had learned to look up to men who ate and drank barely enough to enable them to live; and he was more likely to treat women with gentleness and honour, if he had learned to look up to some women who separated themselves from the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... saw an army upon the land, A navy upon the seas, Creeping along, a snail-like band, Or waiting the wayward breeze; When I saw the peasant faintly reel, With the toil which he faintly bore, As constant he turned at the tardy wheel, Or tugged at ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... is sown, like the use of tobacco, broadcast among the people. It is the birthright of the Far East, the talent it never hides. Throughout the length and breadth of the land, and from the highest prince to the humblest peasant, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... guarded, though still graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house, enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the passages huddled and obstructed with bric-a-brac, of the standing feuds between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... horse's head for home remarked a low dense cloud of dark dust cutting off slantwise a part of the view. He reined in on a knoll and peered. There were slender gleams of steel here and there in that cloud, and it contained moving forms which revealed themselves at last as a long line of peasant carts full of soldiers, moving slowly in double file under the ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... you who were saying that all actresses should be aged and homely. But it is not Mademoiselle Lenormand, it is not the peasant, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... have produced one curious effect, which no one anticipated. Of all levellers they are the greatest. Their superiority to all other modes of travelling crowds them with the peer as well as the peasant. Cabinets, and even queens, now abandon their easy, but lazy, equipages for the bird-like flight of iron and fire, and though the "special train" still sounds exclusive, the principle of commixture is already there, and all ranks will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... what God is, what man is, and what are man's relations to God and to his fellow-men; and was therefore able to establish a religion for men, as men, that needs no change for any age, or nation, or condition of life. He has sometimes been called a "Galilean peasant." The phrase sounds unpleasantly in the ears of those who adore him as their divine Lord and Master. Nevertheless it is in an important sense true. He was educated among the common people of Galilee, and had no special human training. It was an age of narrowness and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... consistent form; but it is a gross perversion of the truth, in Socinians, to declare that we believe in three gods; and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice affirm that we believe in three suns. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of christianity, would shrink back from a thing so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A Revelation that revealed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... we heard the babel of the washerwomen's voices as they gossiped and beat their clothes on the stones. A fisherman or two gave one a hint that idling was understood here, as elsewhere, as being a fine art for those who possess the talent of never being pressed for time. A peasant had brought his horse to the bank; the river, to both peasant and Percheron, was evidently considered as a personal possession—as are all rivers to those who live near them. There was a naturalness in all the life abroad in the fields that ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... standing as a special memorial of the defeat of the Danes at Loncarty. Another stone famous in the Hay annals, and conspicuously placed in front of the entrance to Slains Castle, is said to be the same on which the peasant general rested after his toilsome leadership in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... shape and shapelessness, most of them flattened; some of them, the greenhorn would swear, were fashioned by man into roughly embossed hearts, or shells, or polished discs like rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter "L," another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant's sabot. Some were almost black with iron stains, and some were set with "jewels" of quartz, but for the most part they were formless fragments of a ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... embattled wall of brick and rubble. Upon this gate sate, quite unmoved and apathetic, a tall ceorl, or labourer, while behind it was a gazing curious group of men of the same rank, clad in those blue tunics of which our peasant's smock is the successor, and leaning on scythes and flails. Sour and ominous were the looks they bent upon that Norman cavalcade. The men were at least as well clad as those of the same condition are now; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gendarme. He had seen twenty years of service in the colonies, from Nigeria and Senegal to the South Seas, and those twenty years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He knew discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish obedience which he rendered. In point of fact, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... it personally but not impersonally," she cried. "You feel it intellectually but not with your heart. You cannot see that a kindred soul lives in the Russian peasant and the German labourer, the British toiler and the French artificer. They are all pouring out their blood for the sake of their dream, a politician's dream. Freedom isn't won by wars. It must be won, if ever, by moral sacrifice and not ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... railway station. They now had but one thought: to get back as quickly as possible to Villa Beau-sejour, and fortunately for their dry-mouthed impatience their farmer friend was of the same mind. Along the Tervueren road they met numbers of peasant refugees in carts and on foot, driving cattle, geese or pigs towards the capital; urging on the tugging dogs with small carts and barrows loaded with personal effects, trade-goods, farm produce, or crying children. All of them had a distraught, haggard appearance and were constantly ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... throat, and finished only by a cuff at the wrist; but it is never so elegant, after all, as the style now so much in vogue. This season, the V shape from the breast has given place to the square front, introduced from the peasant costumes of France and Italy. It will be seen in fig. 1, which is intended to be worn with that style of corsage, and corresponds to it exactly. The chemisette is composed of alternate rows of narrow plaits and insertion, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke puzzled wrath. It was evident his slow moving peasant's mind was grappling with the bloody fact of a hell-ship. It was something new in his experience. He was trying to fathom it. Why were he and his mates thumped, when they willingly did their work? What for? "Nils iss goot boy," he said to us. "So hard he vork, ja." ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... allows himself to harbour sentiments of this sort, he is lost.[45] No one will ever win men who does not believe in them. The true minister must be able to see in the meanest man and woman a revelation of the whole of human nature; and in the peasant in the field, and even the infant in the cradle, connections which reach forth high as heaven and far as eternity. All that is greatest in king or kaiser exists in the poorest of his subjects; and the elements out of which the most delicate and even saintly womanhood is made exist ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Let us offer to hope a like reverence. If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheat piercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast, recovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughing and sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nation slowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds—under whatever guise of humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it! When we encounter it in legends, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Christians ascribed healing virtues to the vervain—found growing on Mount Calvary, and therefore possessing every sort of miraculous power, according to the logic of simple peasant folk—the Druids had counted it among their sacred plants. "When the dog-star arose from unsunned spots" the priests gathered it. Did not Shakespeare's witches learn some of their uncanny rites from ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Franco-Venizelist Mission, it benefited more severely from its influence. General Sarrail's patrols raided the villages, harrying the peasants and sparing not even the honour of their women. Anyone who knows the Greek peasant's fierce views on feminine chastity can imagine the indignation which such an outrage would have aroused in any case; but in this case their horror was deepened by the circumstance that the assailants sometimes were African semi-savages—the Senegalese whom France brought to Greece, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... motion seconded by a nobleman of great rank) was the occasion of a sentimental scene, I see no reason to doubt, but on the contrary, many reasons to believe, that some of these privileges had been used to the frightful oppression of the peasant, quite as near to the time of the Revolution as the doctor's narrative, which, you will remember, dates long before the Terror. And surely when the new philosophy was the talk of the salons and the slang of the hour, it is not ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Delebarre, a widow, whose only son had been from home since his tenth year, under the care of an uncle, who had offered to educate him, and fit him for a life of higher usefulness than that of a mere peasant. There was a gentleness about this woman, and something that marked her as superior to her class. Yet she was an humble villager, dependent upon the labor of her own hands, ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... of what two very different people have reported, both of whom knew more about it, I believe, than Herodotus. One of them speaks from his own experience, for he visited the country; the other from the testimony of a young peasant girl who came back from it for a month's visit to her friends. The former was a great Italian of noble family, who died more than five hundred years ago; the latter a Scotch shepherd who died not ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the man's asseveration; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Christian nation has any business to see one of its members in distress without helping him, though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him: help, of course—in nine cases out of ten—meaning guidance, much more than gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a peasant mother sees one of her careless children fall into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull him out; her second, to box his ears; her third, ordinarily, to lead him carefully a little way by the hand, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... fine sample of that army this morning at Llandudno. I attended a service there, and I think it was about the most thrilling religious service I have ever been privileged to attend. There were men there of every class, every position, every calling, every condition of life. The peasant had left his plow, the workman had left his lathe and his loom, the clerk had left his desk, the trader and the business man had left their counting houses, the shepherd had left his sunlit hills, and the miner the darkness of the earth, the rich proprietor had left his ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the officers had been more successful. A cart loaded with split wood (larch) had boldly passed the door of the douane. The man who drove it was a peasant, and altogether he appeared to be one driving a very common burthen to his own home. The cart, however, was stopped and the wood unloaded; while reloading, for nothing but wood was found, one stick attracted attention. It was muddy, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... retorted the captain, "and am bound to accommodate myself to them. I suppose this is the prince you spoke of," he added, turning to the towering youth already referred to, with the air of a man who had as little—or as much—regard for a prince as a peasant. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... lantern and went round to the stable to get a trap out. Driving through the dark country, seeing village lights shining out of the distant solitudes, was a thrilling adventure. A peasant came like a ghost out of the darkness; he stepped aside and called, "Good-night!" which the old farmer answered somewhat gruffly, while Fred answered in a ringing, cheery tone. Never had Esther spent so long and ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... life lived honourably and straightly in the sight of God. It shall profit us nothing to be famous, witty, wealthy, or admired, if we are mere stuffed figures of clay without the 'breath of God' as our animating life principle. The simple peasant, who has enough 'soul' in him to reverently watch the sunset across the hills, and think of God as the author of all that splendour, is higher in the spiritual scale than the learned scholar who is too occupied with himself and his own small matters to notice whether it is a sunset or a house ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... a varied collection, ranging from the academic to the radical. Here are two canvases by Arturo Noci, one of the leaders of the Italian Secession. Gallery 23 is given up mainly to sculpture. The most compelling thing is d'Orsi's realistic "Tired Peasant." With the exception of some of the small bronzes, the rest of the sculpture of the section is ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... consequent loss of fees at the Irish Bar. Yet now, in 1843, having ceased to attend his duty in Parliament, Mr. O'Connell could no longer claim in that senatorial character. Such a pretension would be too gross for the understanding even of a Connaught peasant. And in that there was a great loss. For the allegation of a Parliamentary warfare, under the vague idea of pushing forward good bills for Ireland, or retarding bad ones, had been a pleasant and easy labour to the parish priests. It ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... who are rich and fashionable. But he did not do this, probably concluding that with my awkward appearance I would not be a success with such people. When you are successful it is original to be a peasant—people find you clever; but before success comes to you it is a disgrace. He furnished me an apartment in a very respectable house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand. When I went into it I had debts to the amount of ten thousand francs behind me, the interest ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... bundled the glory of her hair into a blue rubber cap that made her look like a beautiful rosy French peasant. With no further speech she made a splendid dive, and ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the pros and cons of an argument in favor of a future life. Many of the highest intelligences since his day have been endeavoring to prove this satisfactorily without the aid of theological revelation. All mankind, from sage to peasant, from the most learned Brahmin on the banks of the Ganges to the untutored red Indian beside the Mississippi, has the question, "is there an existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to solve as one of the greatest mysteries. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... partly so. And in line with it, and in addition to it, prices are high because the working class is no longer thrifty. If our working class saved as the French peasant does, we would sell more in the world market ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... animals whenever he had a chance gave rise to some amusing incidents before our peasant neighbors knew that he "painted portraits of dumb beasts, as well as of Christians." Some farmers' wives, alarmed at the sight of odd pennies in the pockets of their offspring, accused them of pilfering, but on being told that the "gros sous" had been given them by ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... in Present; Work for both while yet the day Is our own! for Lord and Peasant, Long and bright as summer's day, Cometh, yet more sure, more pleasant, Cometh soon our Holiday; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... chapters comprise an effort to present this phase of unwritten Celtic literature, the material having been collected during a recent lengthy visit, in the course of which every county in the island was traversed from end to end, and constant association had with the peasant tenantry. As, however, in perusing a drama each reader for himself supplies stage-action, so, in the following pages, he is requested to imagine the charms of gesticulation and intonation, for no pen can do justice to a story told by Irish lips ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... shown to be unfounded, there is no improbability in supposing that Shakspere, finding that the question of witchcraft was, in consequence of events that had taken place not long before the time of the production of "Macbeth," absorbing the attention of all men, from king to peasant, should set himself to deal with such a popular subject, and, by the magic of his art, so raise it out of its degradation into the region of poetry, that men should wonder and say, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... of Modern London," Punch remarked that the existence of a villa seemed to be proof presumptive of that of a villain. This is etymologically true. An Old French vilain, "a villaine, slave, bondman, servile tenant" (Cotgrave), was a peasant attached to his lord's ville or domain, Lat. villa. For the degeneration in meaning we may compare Eng. boor and churl (p. 84), and Fr. manant, a clodhopper, lit. a dweller (see manor, p. 9). ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Lets, the Esthonians, who, though un-Aryan in language, have evidently learned much from their Aryan neighbors, the following prayer was heard,[251] addressed by an old peasant to their god Picker or Picken, the god of thunder and rain, as late as ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... have found no fitter emissary than this Gascon lad, with his simple forest training, his quick sympathy and keen intelligence, and his thorough knowledge of the details of peasant life, which in all countries possess many features ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... or two afterwards, Acton was seated before a table, and, in the intervals of gulping down hot coffee and swallowing food, told his tale. The peasant farmer and his wife listened open-eyed with astonishment. The farmer, from sheer amazement, dropped into ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... what difference will it make whether you were rich or poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not make whether you did what was right ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... in the forest belt consists of native nomad or hunting tribes, of which Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Tunguses, and Yakuts are the most numerous. Only along the rivers do we find Russian villages and peasant settlements, placed there for trading with the natives, for fishing, and at some places for washing gold. Not till we come to the middle of the country is the Russian population more numerous, here it spreads out in a broad belt over the whole of the immense ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... journey through scenes where stories of the Franco-German War crowded to his tongue, and when difficulties delayed the car he struck up wayside intimacies—once with an old non-commissioned officer now transformed into a Garde Champetre, anon with a peasant couple from whose cottage he begged hot water to make tea. In one such household, arriving with beard and moustache frozen white, he announced himself to the children of the family group as Father Christmas, and made good his claim with distribution ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... (ordinary) parishioners even understand the simple meaning of the Prayer-book, nay, of their well-known (as they think) Gospel miracles and parables? Who teaches in ordinary parishes the Christian use of the Psalms? Who puts simply before peasant and stone-cutter the Jew and his religion, and what he and it were intended to be, and the real error and sin and failure?—the true nature of prophecy, the progressive teaching of the Bible, never in any ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the throne of France. An ancient half-ruined chateau perches among dwarf olives and mimosa, orange and lemon groves. There is a vivid contrast between the prosperity of Jaume Deydier, a rich peasant-proprietor, and the grinding poverty of the proud and ancient family of de Ventadour, whose last scion, Bertrand, goes to seek fortune in Paris and there becomes affianced to a wealthy and beautiful heiress. Nicolette, the daughter of Jaume Deydier, whose ancestor had been a lackey in the service ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... companionable years, when they worked together. Close by hangs a picture of the "young Florentine," Robert Barrett Browning, now grown to manhood, an artist already famed. He has a refined face, as he sits in artist garb, before his easel, sketching in a peasant's house. The beloved poet who wrote at the little table, is endeared to all the world. Born in 1809, in the county of Durham, the daughter of wealthy parents, she passed her early years partly in the country in Herefordshire, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of old unremembered Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces With sudden hints of forgotten splendour— So on the lips of the peasant his language, His only now, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their fortunes and characters in the same truthful natural vein in which she commences it, an excellent, even an original, book might have been the result. As for Lilias and Ronald, they are mere romantic figments, with nothing of the genuine Scottish peasant about them; they do not even speak the Caledonian dialect; they palaver like a fine lady ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... moments Girasole came back and entered Minnie's room. He was followed by a woman who was dressed in the garb of an Italian peasant girl. Over her head she wore a hood to protect her from the night air, the limp folds of which hung over her face. Minnie looked carelessly at this woman ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... women too (forgive my folly!), From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze, And large black eyes that flash on you a volley Of rays that say a thousand things at once, To the high Dama's brow, more melancholy, But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance, Heart ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... wandered abroad together occasionally to investigate the land—Mac more for the pleasure of getting away from the hot dusty camp, and Mick for the prospects of raising more tolerable refreshment than luke-warm rusty water from ships' tanks. They wandered to far villages where the stolid Greek peasant life was not in the least disturbed by the activity in the harbour nor the distant rumble of Gallipoli guns—except that eggs and vegetables brought wonderful money. These villages were out of bounds and they found them empty of troops except for ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... been slowly emerging from medieval ways throughout the fifteenth century. With the beginning of the sixteenth the rate of emergence had greatly quickened. The soil-bound peasant who produced enough food for his family from his thirty acres was being gradually replaced by the well-to-do yeoman who tilled a hundred acres and upwards. Such holdings produced a substantial surplus for the market. This increased ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... find the cad— No reason seen why genius and conceit, The power to dazzle and the will to cheat, The love of daring and the love of gin, Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin. To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still, Despite your cradling in a tub for swill. Your peasant manners can't efface the mark Of light you drew across ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... encouraged to increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. When, by the Emancipation Act in 1829, the forty-shilling franchise was abolished, the peasant lost his political value. After the war, when the price of corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing, labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... wel vsurpe the grace, Voice, gate, and action of a Gentlewoman: I long to heare him call the drunkard husband, And how my men will stay themselues from laughter, When they do homage to this simple peasant, Ile in to counsell them: haply my presence May well abate the ouer-merrie spleene, Which otherwise would grow into extreames. Enter aloft the drunkard with attendants, some with apparel, Bason and Ewer, & ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... turning aside the knife.... After breakfast we took a walk through the unfashionable parts of the town: narrow streets, noisy and crowded, where open stores with bright-coloured scarfs and petticoats collected round them men in the peasant dress—short jackets, breeches, and gaiters partly open. These were picturesque, but the streets and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... weight of the enemy crushes down the hills and makes the planet tremble; agony and eternal night impend; and where the Austrian horses drink, the water fails. But his verses were full of good advice to the soldiers, to spare, in the progress of their great achievements, the poor peasant who is not their foe, to help his need, and to leave pillage to Croats and cowards. The advice was less palatable to Frederic's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... weary way from the beginning to the end of it. But the forest, even at its entrance, was very dark and gloomy indeed. Thick trees crossed each other overhead, and shut out the bright, cheerful daylight. He could hardly see his way along the narrow, tortuous paths, and the thorns which the peasant had spoken of ran into him continually, for they grew high as well as thick, and crossed the path in every direction. He began heartily to repent that he had quitted the palace of Prosperity, and wished himself back again ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... in Jerusalem, Ahaz, son of Jotham, had acted the coward and had slipped his neck under the Assyrian yoke. But down in the Shefelah, on the lower highlands, politics and political intrigues played little part in the lives of the humble peasant folk. ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... door and saw the figure of a woman standing there, she was at first surprised, for the dress struck her at once as not being that of a peasant. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... pause, though dreadful battles may be fought upon their shores—as Time will steadily march forward, though the fate of nations hang upon the conflict. The moments fly as swiftly, while a mighty king is breathing out his life, as if he were a lowly peasant; and the current flows as coldly on, while men are struggling in the eddies, as if each drowning wretch were but a floating weed. Time gives no warning of the hidden dangers on which haughty conquerors are rushing, as the perils of the waters ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... on some investigations with aid afforded by the Smithsonian Institution. Of course, when I took charge of the Nautical Almanac Office, he was speedily given employment on its work. His name was John Meier, a Swiss by birth, evidently from the peasant class, but who had nevertheless been a pupil of Professor Rudolph Wolf at Zurich. Emigrating to this country, he was, during the civil war, an engineer's mate or something of that grade in the navy. He was the most perfect example of a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... find the same odd mixture of articles apposite to present problems, and articles utterly out of date. The organisation of agriculture is a perennial, and Lady Verney's "Peasant Proprietorship in France" ("Contemporary," January, 1882), Mr. John Rae's "Co-operative Agriculture in Germany" ("Contemporary," March, 1882), and Professor Sedley Taylor's "Profit-Sharing in Agriculture" ("Nineteenth Century," October, 1882) ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... fortune, and that of all the domain of his fathers, nothing now remained to him but the old dismantled tower on the edge of the ravine, the garden, orchard, and meadow, with a few acres of unproductive land. These he ploughed himself, with two miserable cows; and was only distinguished from his peasant neighbors by the book which he carried to the field, and which he would sometimes hold in one hand, while the other directed the plough. For many weeks, however, he had not been seen to leave his wretched abode. It was supposed that he had started on one of those long journeys which ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they call "imagination" and "invention," the two commonest of qualities: an Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... watching, and he dimly understood that she was dying. Both men, indeed, felt a sort of superstitious awe of her, she was so changed, so unearthly. As for the story of the ghost, the old popular superstitions are almost dead in the Cumbrian mountains, and the shrewd north-country peasant is in many places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts to the Time Spirit as any 'bold bad' haunter of scientific associations could wish him to be. But in a few of the remoter valleys they still linger, though beneath the surface. Either ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ways the most vigorous and progressive part of a great empire. He represents patriotism stimulated by contact with cosmopolitan movements. Loving every local peculiarity, painting every class from the noble to the peasant, loving the old traditions, and yet sharing the great impulses of the day, Scott was able to interest the world at large. While the most faithful portrayer of the special national type, he has too much sense not to be well aware ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... of Millet's pictures, devoted as they are to the single theme of French peasant life, variety of subject can be obtained only by showing as many phases of that life as possible. Our illustrations therefore represent both men and women working separately in the tasks peculiar to each, and working together in the labors shared between them. ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... old towns, is the rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place, and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes, more free, open, and suggestive of a common lot than temple, square, or palace; for there pass and repass noble and peasant, regal equipage and humble caravan; children plead to stay, and veterans moralize there; the privileged beggar finds a standing-place for charity to bless; a shrine hallows or a sentry guards, history consecrates or Art glorifies, and trade, pleasure, or battle, perchance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... frequently on those sorrowful roadside cairns, surmounted by a wooden cross with an obliterated inscription and a shrivelled wreath, marking the spot where some peasant or mountaineer had been crushed by a land-slide or smothered in the merciless winter drift. As the carriage approached Cluses, the road crept along the lips of precipices and was literally overhung by the dizzy walls of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... noon that strangely-assorted pair, the sordid old man and the gentle child, set out in a peasant's waggon, which he had hired for a few pence, to ride across the meadows to Boston. The morning was very fair. In the night the mist had flown, and now the sun shone out warm and cheerful, giving the necessary brightness to the scene. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the little vessel was a round-faced, boyish-looking man, of an English rather than a Spanish type, with clear gray honest eyes and a winning expression of friendliness and rustic bonhomie, like that of an amiable, intelligent young peasant. He greeted us cordially, but with a slight trace of shy awkwardness, and invited us into the small, dark cabin, where we drank one another's health in a bottle of sweet, strong liqueur, and he told us the rather ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... one had new boots on; and one falling star after the other was seen in the sky. The Christmas-tree was lighted in the room; presents were there, and good-humor reigned. In the country the violin sounded in the room of the peasant; the newly-baked cakes were attacked; even the poorest child said, "It is really delightful ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the result, but in the conduct of the campaign, in heart and in courage, in skill and in genius. There is no reason in the world why it should not be admitted. But it was not the French generals, not even Dunois, who secured these victories. It was the young peasant woman, the dauntless Maid, who underneath the white mantle of her inspiration, miraculous indeed, but not so miraculous as this, had already developed the genius of a soldier, and who in her simplicity, thinking nothing but of her "voices" and the counsel they gave her, was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the chair, like a man holding fast because stranded, and then, just because his corn twinges, or it may be the gout, what execrations, and, dear me, to hear him talk of money, taking out his leather purse and grudging even the smallest silver coin, secretive and suspicious as an old peasant woman with all her lies. Strange paralysis and constriction—marvellous illumination. Serene over it all rides the great full brow, and sometimes asleep or in the quiet spaces of the night you might fancy that on a pillow of stone he ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan. He wore a huge leather apron, which reached to his left shoulder, and which a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, and all sorts of objects which were upheld by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... rejoiced in her work, and thought that there was no greater pleasure than the pleasure of weaving. But one day, as she sat before her loom at the door of her heavenly dwelling, she saw a handsome peasant lad pass by, leading an ox, and she fell in love with him. Her august father, divining her secret wish, gave her the youth for a husband. But the wedded lovers became too fond of each other, and neglected their duty to the god of the firmament; the sound of the shuttle ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... foreigners, the opera house must on those nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness. To these, that black swarm, slow and serried—coming, going, winding, turning, returning, mounting, descending, comparable only to ants on a pile of wood—is no more intelligible than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who has never heard ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... here is a Galilean peasant, in a borrowed upper room, within four-and-twenty hours of His ignominious death which might seem to blast all His work, who steps forward and says, 'I put away that ancient covenant which knits this nation to God. It is antiquated. I am the true offering and sacrifice, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into Highland huts, into Indian tepees, in short, into all lands, taking down with the utmost care, accuracy, and respect, the fairy-stories, myths, and legends of the people;—as repeated by old peasant-women, "the knitters in the sun," or by "gray-haired warriors, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... dear parents, endeavour to judge of one another, as God, at the last day, will judge of us all: and then the honest peasant will stand fairer in our esteem ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... aside to let the horses pass, and exchanged some words in an undertone with Conyngham's guide. Fine-looking brigands were these, with an armoury of knives peeping from their bright-coloured waistbands. The Andalusian peasant is for six days in the week calculated to inspire awe by his clothing and general appearance. Of a dark skin and hair, he usually submits his chin to the barber's office but once a week, and the timid traveller would do well to take the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... line Malines—Mons—Mezieres—Soissons—Verdun—Belfort, I immediately made off due South-West for a reason I may not give. I managed with the utmost difficulty to find someone to carry my kit, but at length persuaded an old peasant whom I found weeding (probably the last weeds he would ever dig) to act as my courier, and even then I had to resort to the vulgar strategy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... A Russian peasant, living in Semipalatinsk, has foretold that the war will end in August. The wildest excitement prevails not only in Semipalatinsk but ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Clare, the peasant boy; Bloomfield, the farmer's lad; Tannahill, the weaver; Allan Ramsay, the peruke-maker; Cooper, the shoemaker; and Critchley Prince, the factory-worker; but greater than these was Shakespeare,—though all were ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the lot of the weaver. The experiment I am conducting shows that there is a vast field for work in this direction. No well-wisher of India, no patriot dare look upon the impending destruction of the hand-loom weaver with equanimity. As Dr. Mann has stated, this industry used to supply the peasant with an additional source of livelihood and an insurance against famine. Every registrar who will nurse back to life this important and graceful industry will earn the gratitude of India. My humble effort consists firstly in making researches as to the possibilities ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... her mother; he had brought her to her present home when only five years old, after a long stay on the Continent. A strange woman, wearing the dress of a Sclavonic peasant, came with the child as nurse; but she had never learnt to speak English, and had ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... children. For them the best of the collections of foreign fairy tales are the German stories by the Grimms, the Tales from the Norse, by Sir G. W. Dasent, (which some foolish 'grown-ups' denounced as 'improper'), and Miss Frere's Indian stories. There are hundreds of collections of savage and peasant fairy tales, but, though many of these are most interesting, especially Bishop Callaway's Zulu stories (with the Zulu versions), these do not come in the way of parents and uncles, and therefore do not come in the way of children. It is my wish that children ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs—and shot at village sports—and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done nothing but smoke his German pipe and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... an old-fashioned place and it and its inhabitants were made the target for the jests and witticisms of the people of Judea. The word "Nazarene" was synonymous with "lout"; "boor"; "peasant"; etc., to the residents of the more fashionable regions. The very remoteness of the town served to separate it in spirit from the rest of the country. But this very remoteness played an important part in the early life of Jesus. Nazareth, by reason of its peculiar location, was on the line ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... know the family affairs very intimately," he went on thinking. "This is another extraordinary occurrence. Brian alive is nothing to the fact that Brian is the son of some Italian woman—a peasant-woman probably. Did Aunt Margaret suspect it? She always hated Brian; every one could see that. When she said once, 'He is not my son,' did she mean ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... standing just at Wych Hazel's shoulder, touching her head with a slight touch; in her face and voice the utmost soothing charm of tender tranquillity. She had been doubtless a Norwegian peasant woman, and had known little of what we call refining advantages in outward things; but love and peace and sympathy had made her wonderfully delicate and quick to divine the needs of those with whom she dealt. It was a hard little hand, but ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... a population of about four hundred human beings, who speak the Irish language, and retain among them a trace of that government by chiefs which in former times existed in Ireland. The present chief or king of Inniskea is an intelligent peasant, whose authority is universally acknowledged, and the settlement of all disputes is referred to his decision. Occasionally they have been visited by wandering schoolmasters, but so short and casual have such visits been, that there are not ten individuals who even know the letters of ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... possibility is converted into certainty by farther observation, when they remark that, upon an exact scrutiny, a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes, and proceeds from their mutual opposition. A peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say that it does not commonly go right: But an artist easily perceives that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels; but ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... (d. 1381), an English priest who took a prominent part in the peasant revolt in 1381. Little is known of his early years, but he lived probably at York and afterwards at Colchester. He gained considerable fame as a preacher by expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, but especially by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the remark I heard made yesterday by a poor and very old peasant woman as she stopped work for a moment in a field above Montretout to look at the Fort firing. She followed up this admirable summary of recent military operations by asking me whether it was not amazing that somebody could not "invent" a means to put a stop to this Civil War. I think the whole ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... turn of the highway. But although they searched eagerly and followed each path a mile or more of its length, no sign of life did they encounter—much less a sight of their missing uncle. The paths were wild and unfrequented, only on the Catania road itself a peasant now and then being found patiently trudging along or driving before him a donkey laden with panniers of oranges or lemons for the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... for every one to follow his own vocation to which he has been born, and which he has learned, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let the king know how to govern; for, this is also a business which must be learned, and with which no one should meddle who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fact, it may be said that this attempt to bind the workmen to a wage fixed by law was the very cause of the notion that strikes were illegal, which, indeed, was the English common law down to early in the last century. Moreover, when an English mediaeval peasant refused to labor for his three pence a day he might be sent to gaol by the nearest justice of the peace, as, perhaps, some employers would like to do to-day in our South, and which resulted—if not in slavery—in precisely that condition which we call "peonage." Economically speaking, the ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson |
