"Labourer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said a little informing devil. "Here is a pretty woman when trimmed out, who was sent up to the world, to hunt subjects for you by means of their hearts; and to whom did she offer herself, but to a hard-working labourer coming home late from his occupation, who instead of enjoying himself with her, went upon his knees to pray against the Devil and his angels: at another time, she went to a sick man." "Ha!" said Lucifer, "cast her to that lost useless wench, who loved of yore Einion ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever job is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of starvation for himself, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... kinsman and able helper in the work of bringing Boehme into English thought, holds the same fundamental ideas as his co-labourer, though he has his own peculiar style and his own unique way of uttering himself. The stress of his emphasis is always on first-hand experience—what he calls "an effectual, living, essential knowledge and real spiritual being of it in one's own soul";[24] and the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... were covered—it was the eighth of July—with standing crops of rye, pease, and oats. In one of them, a field of pease, tradition tells us that the Duke dropped a gold snuff-box. It was picked up some time afterwards by a labourer, who carried it to Mrs. Uvedale of Horton, probably the proprietress of the field, and received in reward fifteen pounds, which was said to be half its value. On his capture, the Duke was first taken to the house of Anthony Etterick, Esq., a magistrate who resided at Holt, which adjoins Horton. ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... labouring man said, "It will not be lucky for you to kill the child; and it will be of no use to you to carry him away, for it is my son, and not Einar's." And on his word they let the boy remain, and went away. When Einar came home he gave the labourer money to the value of two ore of gold, and thanked him for his clever invention, and promised him his constant friendship. So says Eirik Odson, who first wrote down this relation; and he heard himself Einar Paulson telling ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... paid, to defray his expenses on the road; for as the insolence of these knights was vast, so was their rapacity enormous; they had been so long accustomed to have crowns and half-crowns rained upon them by their admirers and flatterers, that they would look at a shilling, for which many an honest labourer was happy to toil for ten hours under a broiling sun, with the utmost contempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it into the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was given them, as would occasionally happen—for how could they receive from those who had nothing? and nobody was ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... subject must be contributory to forming their spirits for their future existence? Leaving out of consideration who are the elect, and who not, which God only knows, can we think that the patience of the labourer and artisan, the endurance of the seafaring man, and the devotedness of the soldier, who at the call of duty, and in spite of the promptings of self-preservation, exposes himself to almost certain death on the field of battle, have no relation to their future destiny? ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... came—and came from that strange quarter the mighty ocean, from Chancery Lane so distant! "Might as well," said a burly labourer (or, for all I know, burly receiver of unemployment dole)—"might as well be sardines ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... watcher in the tower which is set above each village would spy me and cry: "Here is a masterless man," and then the people that were within would rush out with intent to spoil me of my weapons, and afterwards to appoint me as a labourer. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... travelled as one of their retinue. He first disclosed himself to the elector of Brandenburgh in Prussia, and afterwards to king William, with whom he conferred in private at Utrecht. He engaged himself as a common labourer with a ship-carpenter in Holland, whom he served for some months with wonderful patience and assiduity. He afterwards visited England, where he amused himself chiefly with the same kind of occupation. From thence he set out for Vienna, where ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... an hour forward, so it was really only four o'clock. The sun had not risen yet, though it was quite light already. The air felt deliciously fresh, birds were singing, and cattle lowing. Here and there a cottage door opened, and a labourer came out, who looked at them with speculative curiosity as they passed by. They were soon through the village and along the road that led in the direction of the Manor. On either side lay pastures ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the walls were green and the benches were green, and Oh's wife was green and his children were green—in fact, everything there was green. And Oh had water-nixies for serving-maids, and they were all as green as rue. "Sit down now!" said Oh to his new labourer, "and have a bit of something to eat." The nixies then brought him some food, and that also was green, and he ate of it. "And now," said Oh, "take my labourer into the courtyard that he may chop wood and draw water." So they ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... us how, in spite of his efforts to steal my dear parent, Don Vicente had succeeded in selling her to a brutal slave-trader, who contemplated employing her as a common labourer at a coffee plantation, and how, being aware of this, my lover determined to save her from such ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Prinsep was deciphering the mysterious Buddhist inscriptions, which are scattered over Hindustan and Western India, and when Csoma de Koeroes was unrolling the Buddhist records of Thibet, and Hodgson those of Nepaul, a fellow labourer of kindred genius was successfully exploring the Pali manuscripts of Ceylon, and developing results not less remarkable nor less conducive to the illustration of the early history of Southern Asia. Mr. Turnour, a civil officer of the Ceylon service[2], was then ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Shakspere, labourer, and Agnes, his wife, were legatees under the will of Alice Langham, ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... pie we found there; and directly we had finished, we set out forthwith in the direction of Mannering's home. As soon as we arrived opposite the house, Forrest paused and gave a low whistle. It was answered immediately by a man dressed as a labourer, who made his appearance from behind the hedge opposite ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... coalesce into nations, schools appear. This first and most universal function of the school is to initiate a smaller or greater proportion of the population into the ampler world, the more efficient methods, of the reading and writing man. And with the disappearance of the slave and the mere labourer from the modern conception of what is necessary in the state, there has now come about an extension of this initiation to the whole of our English-speaking population. And in addition to reading and writing the vernacular, there is also almost universally in schools instruction in counting, and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a girl with headaches, a youth with inflamed eyes, and a farm-labourer incapacitated by varicose veins. In each case Coue stated that autosuggestion should bring complete relief. Then it was the turn of a business man who complained of nervousness, lack of self-confidence and ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... figures. Evidences of the prosperity of the country are around us on every side for those to see that have eyes to see—a higher standard of dress in every class of the community; better built and better furnished houses for artisan and labourer, as well as for millionaire; new public buildings, new libraries, new hospitals; improved paving, improved water-supply, improved drainage; more newspapers, more theatres, more lavish entertainments; in a word, a higher standard of comfort or of luxury in every ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... his friend's words as he tramped back through the snow with his sack of provender on his back, for the life they were leading was that of the lowest type of labourer, the accommodation miserable, and ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... ladies who attacked a labourer, under the form of cats, and were wounded by him. They were found bleeding ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Mr. Granville Sharp. This gentleman is to be distinguished from those who preceded him by this particular, that, whereas these were only writers, he was both a writer and an actor in the cause. In fact, he was the first labourer in it in England. By the words "actor" and "labourer," I mean that he determined upon a plan of action in behalf of the oppressed Africans, to the accomplishment of which he devoted a considerable portion of his time, talents, and substance. What Mr. Sharp has ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Blatherwick, occupying the ground floor; the junior partner, Mr. Gustavus Blatherwick, the second flat of the house. Scully made no secret of his profession or residence: he was an attorney, and proud of it; he was the grandson of a labourer, and thanked God for it; he had made his fortune by his own honest labour, and why should he be ashamed ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little thing which under altered circumstances appears a liberty but is not so intended and Goodness knows there was no favour in half-a-crown a-day to such a needle as herself but quite the other way and as to anything lowering in it far from it the labourer is worthy of his hire and I am sure I only wish he got it oftener and more animal food and less rheumatism in the back and legs ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... it,—whenever we will give her scope for her actions, freedom for her intelligence, and trust for her instincts. But for the present many of us still prefer to play savage,—the complete savage in low life,—the civilized savage in high. The complete savage is found in the dockyard labourer, who makes a woman bear his children and then kicks her to death,—the savage in high life is the man who equally kills the mother of his children, but in another way, namely, by neglect and infidelity, while he treats his numerous mistresses just as the Turk treats the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... increase with the increase of employment and with the facilities which are provided by the modern system of labour for the establishment of independent households. At present, any able-bodied unskilled labourer earns, as soon as he has arrived at man's estate, as large an amount of wages as he will earn at any subsequent time; and having no connection with his employer beyond the receiving the due amount of weekly money from him, and thinking himself as well able to marry as he is likely ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... village lives a labourer, Francisco Lozano, who presented a highly curious physiological phenomenon. This man has suckled a child with his own milk. The mother having fallen sick, the father, to quiet the infant, took it into his bed, and pressed it to his bosom. Lozano, then thirty-two ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... human life in any country may be estimated by the average wage, which determines the standard of comfort and how far a man is restricted to the bare necessities of bodily life. Again, judged by that standard, life is probably in no civilised country at a lower estimate than in India, where the labourer spends over 90 per. cent of his income upon the bare necessities for the sustenance of ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... with a thin weary face which was rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the heinous crime of old age, and therefore "on the tramp" looking out for a job. He wore a soft slouched felt hat, very much out of shape and weather-stained,—and when he had been seated for a few minutes in a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... rose from nearly the lowest ranks. The second son of James Cook, a Yorkshire labourer, and Grace his wife, he was born on the edge of the Cleveland Hills on February 27th, 1728, in the little village of Marton, which lies about four miles south-south-east of Middlesborough, and five miles west of the well-known hill and landmark, Roseberry Topping. Eight years ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the gas had been removed, and air had been pumped into it instead of gas so that men could work inside, and the holder had risen about fifty feet. Two men were working inside the holder, one a foreman, and the other a labourer named Case, the latter in a diver's helmet. They were standing on a plank floating on the water. Fresh air was being pumped down to Case, who, so long as he kept on the helmet, ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... George," grumbled Morgan to me. "I could have leathered the young imp into shape, and made a labourer of him in time; but if your father likes to waste his money it is ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... the penalty of extermination. The poor cotter suffered sorely under the famine, and under the pestilence which followed the famine; but he, as a class, has risen from his bed of suffering a better man. He is thriving as a labourer either in his own country or in some newer—for him better—land to which he has emigrated. He, even in Ireland, can now get eight and nine shillings a-week easier and with more constancy than he could get four some fifteen years since. But the other man ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... were three masons and a mason's labourer. The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving directions as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footway allowed, stood ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... her bidding. Winnington already in his place, with a labourer beside him, and two more in the seat behind ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fishing-towns have introduced nets and oars at such services, but to bring in the actual fish seems peculiar to this place. The fish has always been a sacred symbol in Christian art, and it represents to fisher-folk what the fruits of the earth do to the field labourer. Both these little twin ports—Isaac and Gaverne—are entirely charming, and much to be commended to all who would know unspoiled Cornwall. Nestling within their tiny coves, they have a varied background of interesting country, pleasant little ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... sentence of Mr. Billing's speech was indecently nude. The remainder of it was offensively bald. There was once an elderly and cantankerous farm labourer who complained that he could not hear the curate when he preached. He was on the next occasion set in the forefront of the congregation and the curate spoke directly into his ear. The old man was unable to say that he did not hear, but he maintained an aggrieved attitude. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... of bad authors eke out their existence entirely by the foolishness of the public, which only will read what has just been printed. I refer to journalists, who have been appropriately so-called. In other words, it would be "day labourer." ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... were I a bricklayer's labourer," exclaimed Bob, "exchange situations with this unfortunate literary hack—this poor devil of mental toil and precarious result, who depends for scanty subsistence on the caprice of his more fortunate ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... authorities, there were half a dozen llamas, four of which were harnessed to a couple of vehicles somewhat resembling hammocks suspended from long poles, these being intended for the accommodation of the Englishmen, while the other two were loaded with food for the expedition, each labourer carrying his own tools. Each llama had its own driver; the expedition therefore consisted of thirty-eight people, all told, including the two white men. Its route lay along the eastern side of the lake; and it covered a distance of twenty-five miles ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... lay between the pillars exhibited a most gloomy appearance. I could not help enquiring here after the imaginary inhabitant, the creation of the labourer's fancy, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Su, by name, was a native of Ta Ju Chou. Although only a labourer, he was nevertheless in easy circumstances at home. When he on this occasion saw his son-in-law come to him in such distress, he forthwith felt at heart considerable displeasure. Fortunately Shih-yin ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the farmer and the labourer was exactly paralleled by the alienation which gradually crept in between the manufacturer and the workers. The growth of the factory system was indeed so rapid that only the keenest foresight could have provided against these evils. The same may be ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... in 1889 was a great refreshment bodily, mental, and spiritual, to the overwrought labourer. The voyage itself, enforcing rest from all ordinary avocations, by removing Mr. Gilmour from the depressing surroundings amid which he had spent so much of the last three years, began the restorative process. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... those who desire to buy and to sell labour. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it, and the farmer may be ruined. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... the mountains. If Bernadette had been suppressed none of those things would have existed, the extraordinary story would have relapsed into nothingness, old unknown Lourdes would still have been plunged in the sleep of ages at the foot of its castle. Bernadette was the sole labourer and creatress; and yet this room, whence she had set out on the day she beheld the Virgin, this cradle, indeed, of the miracle and of all the marvellous fortune of the town, was disdained, left a prey to vermin, good only for a lumber-room, where onions ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... taken for granted that country parsons smoked. Smoking was universal among their male parishioners from the squire to the labourer (when he could afford it), so that it was only natural that the parson, with little to do, and in those days not too much inclination to do it, should be as fond of his pipe as the rest of the world around him. In a World of 1756 there is an account of a country gentleman entertaining ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... so obscure was his birth, that it has not been discovered that he was christened at all; while the fact of his new birth by the Holy Ghost is known over the whole world to the vast extent that his writings have been circulated. He entered this world in a labourer's cottage of the humblest class, at the village of Elstow, about a mile from Bedford.[3] His pedigree is thus narrated by himself:—'My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... me mad," Ross Fletcher's voice suddenly clove the murmur, "is the things we have to do. I was breaking rock on a trail all day to-day. Think of that! Day labourer's work! State prison work!" ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... in the power of any man, any good labourer who has attained the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life, without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England? Where is there such a man who cannot trace to this cause a very considerable part of all the mortifications and sufferings of his life? ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... a spiritual being; for, on the discovery of several of the gases by the earlier experimenters, they were not only regarded as of a spiritual nature, but actually received the name under which they pass to this day, gheist or gas, from a belief that they were ghosts. If a labourer descended into a well and was suffocated, as if struck dead by some invisible hand; if a lamp lowered down burnt for a few moments with a lurid flame, and was then extinguished; if, in a coal mine, when the unwary workman exposed a light, on a sudden the place was filled with flashing flames ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, gives statistics with reference to the earnings of agricultural labourers throughout the three kingdoms. It concludes that on an average a labourer in England obtains 18s. 3d. a week, in Wales 17s. 3d., in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland 10s. 11d. It may be noted that in no English county is the average lower than 14s. 6d., while in Ireland in seven counties it is less than 10s., Mayo being the lowest with an average wage of 8s. 9d. The ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Lloyd George, instead of getting five thousand pounds a year for his services as prime minister, receive any more than a common labourer?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and also the boxes of "trade" goods to be exhibited to the natives as specimens of the rest of the goods on board, or perhaps some will be immediately handed over as an "advance" to any native willing to recruit as a labourer in Queensland or elsewhere for three years, at the magnificent wage of six pounds per annum, generally paid in rubbishing articles, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... situation of social life. One of the most proud, numerous, and fierce bodies of nobility and gentry ever known in the world, arranged only in the foremost rank of free and generous citizens. Not one man incurred loss, or suffered degradation. All, from the king to the day-labourer, were improved in their condition. Everything was kept in its place and order; but in that place and order everything was betterd. To add to this happy wonder (this unheard-of conjunction of wisdom and fortune), not one drop of blood was spilled; no treachery; no outrage; no system of slander ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... more in the weekday to such an inn or sollar[4] where I lay my corn, I will have it, and give you ( ) pence or more in every bushel for six weeks' day of payment than another will." Thus the bodgers bear away all, so that the poor artificer and labourer cannot make his provision in the markets, sith they will hardly nowadays sell by the bushel, nor break their measure; and so much the rather for that the buyer will look (as they say) for so much over measure in the bushel as the bodger will do in a quarter. Nay, the poor man cannot oft get ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... need all hands to make use of the sunshine to-day. "Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." It will be a healthy change of work for thee, lad; and I find best rest in change of work.' So off I went, a willing labourer, following Phillis's lead; it was the primitive distinction of rank; the boy who frightened the sparrows off the fruit was the last in our rear. We did not leave off till the red sun was gone down ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a flower, which for beauty and perfume was surpassed by the abundant roses of the garden,—a nosegay of which might be purchased for a penny,—was priced at a sum which would have provided an industrious labourer and his family with food, and clothes, and lodging for six years! Should chickweed and groundsel ever come into fashion, the wealthy would, no doubt, vie with each other in adorning their gardens with them, and paying the most extravagant ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... thereby exerted should guide all future trains to a desired destination, and it further took steps to design and compose locomotives of sufficient power, and to start them at a prearranged time. It "employs" mechanical stress, as a capitalist employs a labourer, not doing anything itself, but directing the operations. It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics alone, that is to say, no mechanical analysis can be complete and all-embracing, though the whole procedure is fully subject ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Horns a fellow-labourer in the same hempen walk of life. Crib offers to buy a little Spanish of Horns. "My dear Crib," says Horns, "it is impossible; I can't sell; for I have just received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down to nothing. I am a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... at its best toward an extreme conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every peasant and labourer, the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of inevitable troubles that conduces much to the calm and contentment of ordinary life. A man overwhelmed by misfortunes rails neither against God nor against his neighbours, but regards his troubles as ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... past a labourer's cottage, he heard a goose cackle, and saw a white down lying on the doorstep. There, at last, was the goosey-gander! He had been on the wrong track before. He thought no more of housemaids and men, who were hounding him, but climbed up the steps—and into the hallway. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... to bring scandal upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against whom he may have conceived an antipathy.... Men of very small incomes have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of our souls, and show us the things which belong to our peace and the path of life, that we may see that, though all man's inventions and plans come to an end, yet Thy commandment is exceedingly broad—broad enough for rich and poor, for scholar, tradesman, and labourer, for our prosperity in this life and our salvation in the ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... ground for some time, aching in every bone, and repeating in a weak voice some lines out of his favourite romance of the 'Marquis of Mantua,' when a labourer from his own village came by and went to see if the man stretched on his back across the road was ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... have seen him in Manchuria, is capable of destroying the present type of worker of the white races. He will drive him off the face of the earth. The Socialists, who preach equality to the labourer, are far from thinking what would be the practical result of carrying out their theories. Is it, then, the destiny of the white races to disappear in the long run? In my humble opinion this destiny depends upon one single factor: Shall we or shall we not have ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... leading peoples of the Continent at all corresponding.[52] A Scotchman or an Englishman of low rank is anxious on a Sunday to dress in a style which may mislead the casual observer into the belief that perhaps he is a gentleman: whereas it is notorious that the Parisian artisan or labourer of the lower class is proud of connecting himself conspicuously with his own order, and ostentatiously acknowledging it, by adopting its usual costume. It is his way of expressing an esprit de corps. The same thing is true very extensively ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... request—to be allowed to 'break bread'. It was only by the use of strong leading questions that he could be induced to mention Christ as the ground of his trust at all. I recollect an elderly agricultural labourer being closeted for a long time with my Father, who came out at last, in a sort of dazed condition, and replied to our inquiries,—with a shrug of his shoulders as he said it,—'I was obliged to put the Name and Blood and Work of Jesus into ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... was departing, a young man came riding up in a cart. He saw the old man, and drew near to minister to his wounds. On being asked who he was, he said his father was a labourer, and added that he was used to the labours of a peasant. Starkad praised his origin, and pronounced that his calling was also most worthy of honour; for, he said, such men sought a livelihood by honourable ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... rest, and I will not depart from it in the least; so when they bring me my fodder, I will refuse it and feign sickness and swell out my belly.' The ass shook his head and said, 'Beware of doing that I' 'Why?' asked the ox, and the ass answered, 'Know that I heard our master say to the labourer, "If the ox do not rise and eat his fodder today, send for the butcher to slaughter him, and give his flesh to the poor and make a rug of his skin." And I fear for thee on account of this. So take my advice, ere ill-hap betide thee, and when they bring thee the fodder, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... one suspected him to be Hubert Throckmorton, least of all the simple country maiden, daughter of the farmer, in her neat print dress and heavy braid of golden hair that hung from beneath her sunbonnet. She knew him to be only a man among men, a simple farm labourer, and Hubert Throckmorton, wearied by the adulation of his feminine public, was instantly charmed by her coy acceptance of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... many self-deceptions—affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... questions," she said, "but I'm quite sure that, before you came here, you were in a very different position from any labourer's." She had noticed a refinement in his speech and manner, and also the shapeliness of his hands, which the Fairy had been considerate or forgetful enough to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... her strength, nor lacked 95 AEolian visitations; but the harp Was soon defrauded, and the banded host Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds, And lastly utter silence! "Be it so; Why think of any thing but present good?" [H] 100 So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed Mild influence; nor left in me one wish Again to bend the Sabbath of that time To a servile yoke. What need of many words? 105 A pleasant loitering journey, through ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... from a humble origin, have risen to an honourable position, Captain James Cook is especially worthy of record. His parents were of the peasant class—his father having commenced life as a farm-labourer, and his mother being a cottager's daughter. Probably, however, they were both superior to others of the same station, as the husband, in process of time, became farm-bailiff to his employer—a Mr Thomas Skottowe. This was about ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... thou wast indeed, In sport thy tools thou didst not use; Nor, helping hind's or fisher's need, The labourer's hire, too ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Teignmouth, where, shortly after his arrival, "Ebenezer" chapel was reopened. It was here also that Mr. Muller became acquainted with Mr. Henry Craik, who was for so many years not only his friend, but fellow labourer. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... many-windowed gallery within, that Julius March now discovered Richard Calmady. He had returned, across the park, from one of the quaint brick-and-timber cottages just without the last park gate, at the end of Sandyfield Church-lane. A labourer's wife was dying, painfully enough, of cancer, and he had administered the Blessed Sacrament to her, there, in her humble bedchamber. The august promises and adorable consolations of that mysterious rite remained very sensibly present to him on his homeward way. His spirit was uplifted ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... thoroughly authoritarian basis, the kingly power supreme and tending towards arbitrary despotism, and below the king the social hierarchy extending from the great territorial lord to the day-labourer. There is one point gained as compared to earlier forms of society. The base of the pyramid is a class which at least enjoys personal freedom. Serfdom has virtually disappeared in England, and in the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... curiously organised English musical cliques, he at once lost all reasonable prospect or hope of meeting with the recognition due to his talent. He resigned himself to making his way through the dreary wastes of English musical life solely by giving lessons like a day-labourer, being too proud to pay the smallest attentions to the ruling critics, who had fallen on him immediately as a pupil of Liszt. He was really an excellent musician, and in addition a distinguished pianist. He immediately approached me with ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... add, with truth, that this labour, being carried on under the ordinary relations of employer and employed, would be free from the difficulties of superintendence, and the demoralizing effects which "charity works" are apt to produce in the labourer. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... presented to them a world of thought and life in which they had no inheritance. But the Yorkshire dialect verse which circulated through the dales in chap-book or Christmas almanac was welcomed everywhere. Two memories come before my mind as I write. One is that of a North Riding farm labourer who knew by heart many of the dialect poems of the Eskdale poet, John Castillo, and was in the habit of reciting them to himself as he followed the plough. The other is that of a blind girl in a West Riding village who ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... "The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A mechanic of some sort himself when he was young; then he took to writing for the Socialistic Press. I came ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... jaw deep in the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived: the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... imperfectly developed, the expense of applying the means necessary to their development is so enormous, as to leave but small profit to the speculator. Labour is always dear in new countries, where there is so large an outlet afforded to the labourer to escape from the toils of servitude, and become himself an occupant or an owner of the soil. All that he gains by the exchange is an ideal independence; which is, unhappily, but too attractive to the uneasy spirit of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... greatly outdid his master, giving the false money he had made so perfect a similitude to the specie for which he made it that it was impossible to distinguish it by the eye. But thinking it much more hazardous to attempt putting off in the country than it would be in London, and his fellow labourer being of the same opinion, they first went to work and coined a considerable sum according to their method, and they came up to dispose of it, as Johnson ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... And then the stubble by the roots was heaped, To satisfy the lordly devil's claim, Who thought the seed and root were just the same, And that the ear and stalk were useless parts, Which nothing made if carried to the marts: The labourer his produce housed with care; The other to the market brought his ware, Where ridicule and laughter he received; 'Twas nothing worth, which much ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... and rising from her chair to walk hurriedly up and down the floor. "It isn't worth it, but I'm bound to it—I can't get away. I'm bound to the wheel. Do you think if I could help myself—if I could be different—that I would turn into a mere bond-slave to my body? Why, a day labourer has rest, but I haven't. There's not a moment when I'm not doing something for my beauty, or planning effects, or undergoing a treatment. I never sleep as I want to, nor bathe as I want to, nor even eat what I like. It's all somebody's system for preserving something about ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... not without analogies among the spoil from the Piltdown gravels), it might turn out that even the equivalent of knife and fork was not wanting to the Early Pleistocene supper-party, or, at any rate, that the human hand was already advanced from the status of labourer to the more dignified position of superintendent of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... George, who couldn't hunt, and wouldn't dance, and didn't care for mountains, could enquire with some zeal how much wages a peasant might earn, and what he would do with it when earned. It interested him to learn that whereas an English labourer will certainly eat and drink his wages from week to week,—so that he could not be trusted to pay any sum half-yearly,—an Irish peasant, though he be half starving, will save his money for the rent. And Mary, at his instance, also cared for these things. It ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 1556 the Pope and Henry II. of France give orders to the parliament of Turin to repress these heretical movements. They send out two of their body, who visit the valley of San Martino, and publish an edict threatening all who refuse obedience to its commands. They summoned before them a labourer, and asked him why he had taken his child for baptism to the temple at Angrogna? He replied, "Because baptism was there administered according to the institution of Jesus Christ." The same man, on being commanded to have ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... opened, a flight of stairs led to a long slit of a loft which, Nash later declared, did not answer to Elizabeth's description, especially as there was hay, and, before Chitty, Elizabeth had mentioned none. There was a filthy kind of bed, on which now slept a labourer and his wife, Fortune and Judith Natus. Nash kept talking about the hay, and one Adamson rode to meet Elizabeth, and came back saying that she said there was hay. By Adamson's account he only asked her, 'What kind of place was it?' and she said, 'A wild ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... beloved Republic has made him "the peer of any man." It has not made any other man his peer. He is separated far more widely by his wealth from the workmen, whom he patronises, than the meanest day-labourer in England from the dukes to whom he is supposed to bend the knee; and if Mr Carnegie's be the fine flower of American Liberty, we need hardly regret that ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... a group of three women and two children in the road, busy clearing out a labourer's cottage. They had got hold of a little hand truck, and were piling it up with unclean-looking bundles and shabby furniture. They were all too assiduously engaged to talk ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... out all their skill on this slough. More cartloads than you could count of the best material for filling up a slough have been shot into it, and yet you would never know that so much as a single labourer had emptied his barrow here. True, excellent stepping-stones have been laid across the slough by skilful engineers, but they are always so slippery with the scum and slime of the slough, that it is only ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... It is precarious because it is not self-conscious: because it has not been reached by the intelligent understanding of an artist, but springs from the instinctive taste of primitive people. I have seen an Oxfordshire labourer work himself beautifully a handle for his hoe, in the true spirit of a savage and an artist, admiring and envying all the time the lifeless machine-made article hanging, out of his reach, in the village shop. The savage gift is precarious because it is unconscious. Once let ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... returned with decision. "Girdlestone and Co. are not an insurance office. The labourer is worthy of his hire, but when his work in this world is over, his family must fall back upon what has been saved by his industry and thrift. It would be a dangerous precedent for us to allow pensions ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prince always disguises himself when danger becomes very great. So Alfred disguised himself as a farm labourer, and went to live with a farmer, who used to make him feed the beasts and help about the farm, and had no idea that this labourer was the great ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... monuments bearing on the greatest events and the most critical epochs in the progress of the empire. The time thus saved to investigators is great and priceless. In no other department of knowledge can the intellectual labourer more forcibly apply the Latin proverb which warns him that his work is indefinite, but his life brief. In the ordinary sciences the philosopher may and often does content himself with the well-rounded and professedly completed system of the day. But no one can grapple ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Minota and her Malaita cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... shrewd-looking labourer, in a short round frock, high buskins, an old wide-awake, short curly hair, and a very large nose, stood in front of the dairy door, mixing a mess of warm milk ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Poet taking in the sea, or the woods, or the starry-night, the poet who might be just sharing the sunshine with the salamander, is as much a labourer as the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... were not overlooked. Several men, whom we shall come across afterwards in the history of Luther, belonged to this circle;—for instance, John Jager, known as Crotus Eubianus, the friend of Ulrich Hutten, and George Spalatin (properly Burkhard), the trusted fellow-labourer of the Reformer. Both had already been three years at the university when Luther entered it. Three years after his arrival, came Eoban Hess, the most brilliant, talented, and amiable of the young ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... prices, of the importing merchant. The waste, also, made by the convicts in their meat, &c. is a serious consideration: the head and entrails of animals slaughtered for their use, and which an English labourer would be glad of, are thrown away as only fit for the dogs; nothing but the body and legs are deemed sufficiently good for these dainty characters. Taking all expenses into consideration, I think that from 25l. to 30l. per ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... been reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed because he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very angry, indeed, and ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... you, I should have gone without dinner many a day; but for you, I should most likely have had to chuck painting altogether, and turn clerk or dock-labourer. But let me stay in your debt a little longer, old man. I can't put off my marriage any longer, and just at first I shall want all the money I can lay my ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home, said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he did accordingly. Soon after this the ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... were a mere theory of political economy, and disputable like some other branches of a science not yet matured. It is the great conquest of modern civilization; it is the indispensable condition to the full development of the activity and enterprise of man. The liberation of the artisan and the labourer, is the signal triumph of modern over ancient times whether we regard classic or Gothic antiquity. Viewing things on a large scale, it may be considered as a late triumph; and, without depreciating its value, we may easily admit that there remains much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... taken the various tints of all the objects and materials he had handled or rubbed against in his life's work—wood, mossy trees, grass, clay, bricks, stone, rusty iron, and dozens more. He wore the field-labourer's thick boots; his ancient rusty felt hat had long lost its original shape; and finally, to complete the portrait, a short black clay pipe was never out of his lips—never, at all events, when I saw him, which was ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... if he had known how, conveniently and safely, to do it?" "That is very true," returned Bagshot, "but did not I execute the scheme, did not I run the whole risque? Should not I have suffered the whole punishment if I had been taken, and is not the labourer worthy of his hire?" "Doubtless," says Jonathan, "he is so, and your hire I shall not refuse you, which is all that the labourer is entitled to or ever enjoys. I remember when I was at school to have heard some verses which for the excellence of their doctrine made an impression on me, purporting ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... his hand, almost dashing against his face, and as he passed on tried to hinder him, uttering all the while piercing cries. At last he stopped at a hole to which she kept flying, and found a rat in the act of carrying off one of her nestlings. The labourer was able to kill the enemy by a blow of his stick as it darted across the lane, and the small mother, after hovering with a different and triumphant note over the poor little dead bird, went ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... watch the crowd as it passes. Here is a water-carrier, whose terra-cotta water-jars are slung from a bamboo carried on his shoulder, another man bears on his head a tray upon which a charcoal fire is cooking a strong-smelling "tit-bit" some hungry labourer will presently enjoy. Again, a Chinaman, perhaps wearing black skull-cap and loose jacket and trousers, endeavours to tempt you to purchase the fans or sunshades he is hawking. Huge baskets of coco-nuts or vegetables, gaudily printed calicoes and haberdashery, cheap ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... and women, there is nothing that we require more than to have what we have, to possess what is ours, to make our own what has been bestowed. You sometimes hear of some beggar, or private soldier, or farm labourer, who has come all at once into an estate that was his, years before he knew anything about it. There is such a boundless wealth belonging by right, and by the Giver's gift, to every Christian soul; and yet, here are we, many of us, like the paupers who sometimes turn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... hamlet, field, and farm, The labourer wiped his brow and staid his arm; 'Twas news to him of more importance far Than change of empires or the yells of war; It breathed a hope which nothing could destroy, Poor widows rose, and clapp'd their hands for joy, Glad voices rang at every cottage door, "Good old Sir Ambrose goes to town ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... Farmer Joliffe's home had touched him, but perhaps he was only thinking of his own loss, for he went on: "Ay, many's the time she would give a poor fellow an ounce of baccy, and many's the pound of tea she sent to a labourer's cottage. If she bought herself fine clothes, she'd give away the old ones; my missis has a fur tippet yet that her mother got from Sophy Joliffe. She was free with her money, whatever else she mid have been. There ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... speech, e.g. scholard, gownd, garding, etc. I say "uneducated," but many such forms have been adapted by the language, e.g. sound, Fr. son, and we have the name Kitching for kitchen. The usual additions are -d, -t, or -g after n, e.g. Simmonds, Simon, Hammond, Hammant, Fr. Hamon, Hind, a farm labourer, of which the older form is Hine (Chapter XVII), Collings for Collins, Jennings, Fr. Jeannin, dim. of Jean, Aveling from the female name Avelina or Evelyn. Neill is for Neil, Nigel. We have epithetic -b in Plumb, the man who lived by the plum-tree and epithetic -p in Crump ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... complaisantly helped to all I hate, Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave, Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve; I curse such lavish cost and little skill, And swear no day was ever past so ill. Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; Health to himself, and to his infants bread The labourer bears; what his hard heart denies His charitable vanity supplies. Another age shall see the golden ear Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land. ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... father was a farm-labourer, with a large family. He was what is called a cottar in Scotland, which name implies that of the large farm upon which he worked for yearly wages he had a little bit of land to cultivate for his own use. His wife's mother was Grannie Gregson. She was so old that ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... me wander at the shut of eve, When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes: The world and all its busy follies leave, And talk of wisdom ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ill or to die. A man tolerably well off can at least get his wife some help when she is laid up, and when she is near her end can remain with her to take her last kiss and blessing. Not so the bricklayer's labourer. If his wife is in bed, he must depend upon charity for medicine and attendance. And although he knows he will never see her again, he is forced away to the job on which he is employed; for if he does not go he will lose it, and must apply to the parish ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... to the effect, though he was not sagacious enough to trace it to its cause. "En le royaume d'Angleterre," says he, "toutes gens, laboureurs et marchands, ont appris de vivre en paix, et a mener leurs marchandises paisiblement, et les laboureurs labourer." In the fifteenth century, though England was convulsed by the struggle between the two branches of the royal family, the physical and moral condition of the people continued to improve. Villenage almost wholly disappeared. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The labourer put them in his pocket, smiled his thanks, and walked some little distance off; and Helen watched him examine his new pipe, and then fill it with tobacco and ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various |
