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More "Menial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who prefer a valet to a husband; who think that the more menial are his services in public, the more apparent is his devotion. It is a Roman-chariot-wheel idea, which degrades both the man and the woman in the eyes of the spectators. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the letter, "One horse in the span always does most of the pulling, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... contempt, however, they could ill have done without this cringing axeman. He did small menial services for his fellows, was ordered about at all times uncomplainingly, and bore the blame for everything that went ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... acts of malignity, his want of position, all left him little hope of escaping the confines of a prison. Fleeing to parts unknown, his absence relieved the neighbourhood of a responsibility. For a time, he roamed among farmers and drovers in the mountains of Tennessee; again he did menial labour, often forced to the direst necessity to live. One day, when nearly famished, he met a slave-driver, conducting his coffle towards the Mississippi, to whom he proffered his services. The coarse driver readily accepted them; they proceeded on together, and it was not long ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... khynraw" (yes, it is so, young ones). Sentences of fine are more often resorted to than other punishments nowadays, probably because very few of the Siems possess jails for the reception of criminals. The condemned one in a criminal case frequently serves his time by working for the Siem as a menial servant. The above description, which is based on the account given by the Rev. W. Lewis, with some modifications, may be taken as the usual form of procedure of the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... much taken up in nursing a sick woman, whose friendless position stirred Angelina's sense of duty, and she had her removed to Mrs. Frost's house. She and Sarah took upon themselves all the offices of nurse, even the most menial. They read to her, and tried to cheer her during the day, sat up with her at night, and in every way devoted themselves to the poor consumptive, until death came to her relief. Such a sacrifice to a sense of duty was all the more admirable, as ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... sanguinary conflict David Jenison had won more than his spurs; these volatile, impressionable people, in disdain for their own positions in life, were saying, "Blood will tell." Down to the lowliest menial the sentiment regarding him underwent a subtle but noticeable change. He was no longer the guileless outsider: he was exalted even among those who once ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... distinctions between them. Some of them, possessed of mere patches of land, lived a life little different from that of the peasants (p. 167). Still others entirely lost their land and became attached, even as menial servants, to the households of their richer neighbours. (Thus Gerwazy was a servant, though not quite a menial, of the Pantler.) The great land owners (or magnates), by gathering around them hordes ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... aspects of menial service with a practitioner of it who has been admitted to a certain implicit equality is a difficult and delicate matter for a girl brought up in Roberta Holland's school. Several times after the restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both the indirect ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post, and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook, wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menial occupations, they sew and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in all useful knowledge. From his arms next issued the Kshatriya, or warriors; from his breast, the seat of life, came the Vaisya, or producers—shepherds, farmers, merchants; from his foot, in sign of degradation, sprang the Sudra, or serviles, doomed to menial duties for the other classes—serfs, domestics, laborers, artisans. Take notice, further, that the law, so born with them, forbade a man of one caste becoming a member of another; the Brahman could not enter a lower order; if he violated ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... mean, vulgar, raffish, ignominious, undignified; moderate, reasonable, cheap; humble, lowly, obscure; feeble, faint, weak; subdued, grave, gentle; ignoble, groveling, abject, degraded, servile, menial, sordid, base. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... National Theatre. At his invitation, and just before the close of the evening's performances, I attempted to enter the stage door for his purpose of seeing him in his dressing-room, as he intended to sup with me and several friends. A half-drunken Irishman attached to the stage department in some menial capacity, stopped me and insolently ordered me out. I treated the Greek, of course, with the contempt which he merited, whereupon he called another overgrown bog-trotter to his assistance, and the twain forthwith ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... I. 96. Letter of Lauchou to the president of the Convention, Oct. 11, 1792: "The section of 1792 on its own authority decreed on the 5th of this month that all persons in a menial service could be allowed to vote in our primary assemblies... It would be well for the National Convention to convince the inhabitants of Paris that they alone do not constitute the entire republic. However absurd this idea may be, it is gaining ground every day."—Ibid., Letter ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... has a capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP and with per capita GDP 70% of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in menial jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by about 4.0% for the past two years, largely because of an investment boom and infrastructure upgrades ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a highly indignant scowl, and turning his frown once more upon this most impertinent menial, encountered a look of such comic familiarity, easy assurance, and droll indifference, as it would not be easy to match. The beau started, stared, again pulled himself to a still greater height—as if by the dignity of the attitude to set the other at fault—frowned more awfully, then looked bluster, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in all lowliness, endeavors to remove from thee and me the strain which His love dare not pass over. He never loses the print of the nail; He never forgets Calvary and the blood; He never spends one hour without stooping to do the most menial work of cleansing filthy souls. And it is because of this humility He sits on the Throne and wields the sceptre over hearts ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... achieve some good, these goods are dull and fleeting in proportion to their rudimentary character and their nearness to protoplasmic thrills. Where reason exists life cannot, indeed, be altogether slavish; for any operation, however menial and fragmentary, when it is accompanied by ideal representation of the ends pursued and by felt success in attaining them, becomes a sample and anagram of all freedom. Nevertheless to arrest attention on a means is really illiberal, though not so much by what such an interest contains ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... morning after breakfast. They will settle all disputes according to the best of their ability, and will plan the Principal Diversions for the week. These latter will be announced at the Council Meetings. Needless to say, the Chiefs will do no menial labor during the week of their Chiefhood. Is that a fair proposition all ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... plutocratic."[658] "The property question is the issue which is creating a new political cleavage in the State. Somewhat dimly at present, but with growing clearness of vision, the worker begins to see that he will remain a menial, outcast and forlorn, until he has made himself master of the machine he tends, and the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... question cousin Bessie about the necessity for dispensing with menial assistance. It was a delicate subject, but when Zita and Louis and Mr. Nyle went away, one morning after breakfast, I began to clear away the dishes ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... little newspaper editor from Phil's native town, the assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his little annual joke about the "first egg laid on our table," and who was the menial of every tradesman in the village and under bonds to him for frequent "puffs," except the undertaker, about whose employment he was recklessly facetious. In Washington he was an important man, correspondent, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... out of breath, less menial than most men's slaves, his head and shoulders upright and the hand that held a letter thrust well forward as if what he had to do were more important than the way ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... them, and deceive those only that believe in them. He professes most kindness commonly to those he least cares for, like an host that bids a man welcome when he is going away. He had rather be every man's menial servant than any one man's friend; for servants gain by their masters, and men ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... state, and that he lodged in them when the Emperor was at Yuen-min-yuen, we were precluded from further complaint. Had we refused those that were considered sufficient for a minister of state, the man might have thought that nothing less than the Emperor's own would have satisfied us. If the menial servants of his Britannic Majesty's Ministers were no better lodged than the ministers themselves of his Chinese Majesty, they would be apt to think themselves very ill used. We accepted them, however, such as they were, and caused them to be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... which the little family used, five or six in all; two or three stood vacant, and served as playgrounds for the children in bad weather. Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact that Mrs. Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight. Altogether it was a strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... share what I possess. My correspondence is very heavy. I am overwhelmed with letters from the provinces begging me to inquire into grievances and redress wrongs. Can you read and write well?" For from Harry's words he supposed that he had held some menial post in the household of the Marquis de ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... I have given up expecting to have servants do somethings as they ought to be done. Toast is one of the things. They are outside of the limitations of the menial mind.' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... their parents to meet the demand. Little hands never before devoted to menial services, shoveled snow, and babes gave kisses to earn a few pence toward this consummation. Some of these lambs my prayers had christened, but Christ will rechristen them with his own new name. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou perfected praise." The resident ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... one phase of Mongol character. We seldom hear among them of those domestic murders so frequent in Turkish history; pretenders to the throne were reduced to servitude, and generally made to perform menial offices, but seldom murdered. They illustrate another fact: favors conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... own fancy that painted this enjoyment of a sailor-boy's life. Will Manton did not find it so pleasant in reality. There was more menial drudgery to the poor cabin-boy on ship-board, than he had ever known in the carpenter's shop. He was sworn at, and thumped, and kicked, and driven from one thing to another, by the captain, and mates, and steward, and crew, ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... the annual "hired man." At present, there are no means of measuring the effect of this new element; but it cannot fail to depress the tone of farming society, and surround it with a new swarm of menial associations. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... experienced all the bitterness of slavery. She was set at work in the kitchen with the other slaves. It seemed that Mrs. Preston took especial delight in assigning to the naturally high-spirited and sensitive girl the most menial employments. Patiently trusting in God that He would send deliverance, she endeavored to perform, uncomplainingly, her allotted tasks. Wholly unaccustomed to such work, weary in body and sick at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Pernambuco and also the cotton districts of the north. In the provinces of the south of Brazil, contrary to conditions in the United States, they were employed on cattle ranches. In Minas Geraes they were utilized in the mines. In the cities they carried on all the manual and menial work. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Bunting did in his own house of a menial kind was the cleaning of the boots and shoes. He had already visualised early this very afternoon the little row with which he dealt each morning—first came his wife's strong, serviceable boots, then his own two pairs, a good deal patched and ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... told some stories of these fallen nobles. He informed him that in Naples their laundress was said to be the last scion of one of the most ancient families in the kingdom. She was a countess in her own right, but had to work at menial labor. Moreover, many had sunk down to the grade of peasantry, and lived in squalor on lands which were once ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... a Japanese dandy of the first water. I looked at him ruefully. To me starched collars are to be an unknown luxury for the next three months. His fine foreign clothes would enhance prices everywhere in the interior, and besides that, I should feel a perpetual difficulty in asking menial services from an exquisite. I was therefore quite relieved when his English broke down at ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... which approaches through the gloom? There arises a shriek, a heavy body falls, 'tis a lacquey who has seen and recognised The White Lady of the Grand Ducal House, that walks before the deaths of Princes. Burkard and Sauerbeck spurn the inanimate body of the menial witness. The white figure, bearing in her arms a sleeping child, glides to the tapestried wall, and vanishes through it, into the Chamber of the Crown Prince, a babe of fourteen days. She returns carrying another unconscious infant form, she places it in the hands of the ruffian Sauerbeck, she ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Ganges at the time, but shortly afterwards I went farther into the country, towards the north, attempting to penetrate a defile in the Himalayas. There the savages seized me and made me a slave. For years I have served in the most menial and degrading capacity; my tired back often bruised with their lashes, and only the stony ground on which to rest. At length I escaped on horseback, and succeeded in reaching the Mongolian steppes. There I have been wandering about, with various tribes, for two years; have tended ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... old, And principles they then held dear Were sacrificed for self, I fear. Another Stuart they receive, Who knew too well how to deceive; The most perfidious of his race, Corrupt in life, and void of grace, The menial of the Papacy; And yet content by oath to free Himself from Holy See's control, And covenant to save his soul By the Scotch Presbyterian mode, As to the crown this paved the road. But Cromwell brooked ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... be there—there was always one at least—and observed in suave accents, "Please, sir, can I have a paper?" Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would write upon it, "J. O. Jones (or A. B. Smith or C. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such a time". And, by presenting this to the menial who opened the door to you at your house, you went in rejoicing, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... and they went at it with a will. Tom was exempt from any menial labor on that morning. Warmly dressed, and placed close to the roaring fire, he watched his chums work, and thought what a splendid thing it was he had not been alone at ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... women among the ancient patriarchs, appears to have been but extremely indifferent. When Abraham entertained the angels, sent to denounce the destruction of Sodom, he seems to have treated his wife as a menial servant: "Make ready quickly," said he to her, "three measures of fine meal, knead it, and ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... man in uniform at the door of the flower shop, and this menial consulted some one within, who must have consulted a directory, judging from the time it took to obtain the correct address. With his eyes straight in front of him, as a chauffeur's eyes should always be, he then drove rapidly down ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Lord Julian sate on steed; Behind him, in a round, Stood knight and squire, and menial train; Against the leash the greyhounds strain; The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tallest fellow in the fifth form, but by no means the strongest. He was narrow across the chest, and shaky about the knees, though we youngsters held him too much in awe to take this into account at the time. To the big boys of the sixth form Bob was cringing and snivelling; nothing was too menial, so only as he could keep in their good graces. If he had known how, I dare say he would have blacked their boots or parted their hair; as it was, he laid himself out to fetch and carry, to go and come just as their lordships should direct; and their lordships, I have a notion, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... from 1618 to 1648, decimated the German population, and reduced still further the possibility of marriage for many. Forced out of trades, women had only the lowest, most menial forms of trade labor as resort, and their position was to all ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... our statesmen at Washington say it's wicked to hire the free American soldier to cook for you. It's too menial for his manhood." ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... In English schools the name fag is applied to a boy who does, under compulsion, menial work for a boy of a higher form. The fagging system used to be greatly abused, the boys of the higher classes treating their fags with the greatest cruelty; but the bad points of the custom have been ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... love her for his sake; They would not, and her heart forgave. Why should a woman stoop to take The poor endowment of a slave, And like a menial choose ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... when society belles, years before, now mistresses of their own palatial homes; some had come from under the old historic elms of Boston, and some from the hard-fought fields of Britain's Africa, and wearing the Victoria Cross. To them, white and black were the same, and no toil too hard or too menial. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... of here!" yelled the infuriated young man. He cast his eyes about for some missile to hurl at this insolent menial, and, spying a heavy glass pitcher upon a stand beside him, reached for it, whereat the steward retreated hastily ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... daughter of a man whose vices were well known, that her brother is of the worst repute, that she has led the life of an adventuress, is the widow of a deformed scribbler, and that she occupies a menial ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... decision she was sitting in the anteroom of a suite of theatrical offices in the Empire Theater building. The girl in attendance had, as usual, all the airs little people assume when they are in close, if menial, relations with a person who, being important to them, therefore fills their whole small horizon. She deigned to take in Susan's name and the letter. Susan seated herself at the long table and with the seeming of calmness that always veiled her in her hours of greatest agitation, turned over the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye, His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly; Now drops at once the pride of awful state, The golden canopy, the glitt'ring plate, The regal palace, the luxurious board, The liv'ried army, and the menial lord. With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd, He seeks the refuge of monastic rest. Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings, And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings. Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace repine, Shall Wolsey's wealth, with Wolsey's ...
— English Satires • Various
... we were united in the very hotel where I had so long served in a menial capacity. The social distinctions in such a place being small and my birth and breeding really placing me on a par with my employer and his family, I was given the parlor for this celebration and never, never, shall I forget its mean and bare look, even to my untutored ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... Russia, Martin Guerre of the CAUSES CELEBRES: it is a common story in the world, and needs no commentary now. POST-MORTEM Waldemar, it is said, was a Miller's Man, "of the name of Jakob Rehback;" who used to be about the real Waldemar in a menial capacity, and had some resemblance to him. He showed signets, recounted experiences, which had belonged to the real Waldemar. Many believed in his pretension, and took arms to assert it; the Reich being in much internal battle at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... the writer, as head of a helpless family, to undertake the entire work. The instruction of boyhood enabled him to cook, wash, starch, iron, wait on the sick, and do the necessary menial labor of the house in a measurably cleanly and quiet manner. This knowledge is in no way derogatory to the assumptive superiority of the male portion of humanity; a boy who knows how to sweep, to "tidy up," to make a bed, to wash dishes, to set a table, to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... grinding his teeth, and clenching his hands, at the startled menial, "dare to utter a syllable of suspicion against her, and I will trample the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chiefly known to us since the time of our taking occupation of Aden, whither many of them resort with their wives and families to carry on trade, or do the more menial services of porterage and donkey-driving. They are at once easily recognised by the overland traveller by their singular appearance and boisterous manner, as well as by their cheating and lying propensities, for which they are peculiarly notorious; indeed, success in fraud is more agreeable ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... indeed hurt at being put to menial employment, or whether he simply felt it an imposition to require him to carry a pile of boards and three sturdy lads in addition, it is impossible to say. At all events, ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... dark. Along the corridor on which his room was situated the snores of sleeping domestics exploded, growled and twittered in the air. Every menial on the list seemed to be snoring, some in one key, some in another, some defiantly, some plaintively; but the main fact was that they were all snoring somehow, thus intimating that, so far as this side of the house was concerned, the coast might be considered ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.' Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain from preaching, confine his studies to the Breviary, walk as a beggar to Rome, and there teach grammar to children, or perform menial offices. This was all Ignatius wanted. If he were the Christ of the Society, he well knew that Lainez was its S. Paul. He could not prevent him from being his successor, and he probably was well aware that Lainez would complete and supplement what he must leave unfinished in his life-work. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... thy prayer, cringe to each ruler of the day. I care for Jove less than nothing; let him do, let him lord it for this brief span, e'en as he list, for not long shall he rule over the gods. But no more, for I descry Jove's courier close at hand, the menial of the new monarch: beyond all [doubt] he has come to announce ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... housekeeper, a handsome young woman of the name of Hannah Montgomery, who had been his servant of all work. Her familiarity with her master, who, it appears, was a very fine looking, gentlemanly person, had rendered her very impatient of her former menial employments, and she soon became virtually the mistress of the house. Grace Marks was hired to wait upon her, and perform all the coarse drudgery that Hannah considered herself too fine a ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... perhaps as he after a fashion, and cursed the infernal custom that lays our pride so low. Infinitely nobler than he and yet an object of scorn to him and all his people, great and small; a discredited interloper who could not deceive the lowliest menial in her own household into regarding her as anything but an imitation. Her loveliness counted for naught. Her wit, her charm, her purity of heart counted for even less than that. She was a thing that had been bartered for and could be cast aside without loss—a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... harnessed together, taking a load of country produce to market! I hope, for the honor of the country, it was not emblematic of woman's condition there. But as we saw hundreds of them breaking stone along the road, and occupied at other laborious and not less menial labor, there is too much reason to fear that ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... the Italians seemed to preempt was the boot-blacking business. It may seem odd to dignify so menial an employment as a business but there is many a head of such an establishment who could show a fatter bank account than two-thirds of his clients. The next time you go into a little nook containing say fifteen chairs, figure out for yourself how many nickels ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... social equals. But the men who emigrated to Georgia had undertaken to support themselves and carry on a mission work, and Spangenberg, with his keen insight, grasped the idea that a common purpose warranted a community of service, the labor of all for the benefit of all, with every duty, no matter how menial, done as unto the Lord, whom they all, in varying degrees, acknowledged as their Master. Later, in Bethlehem, Pa., with a larger number of colonists, and wider interests to be subserved, Spangenberg again introduced the plan, and elaborated it into a more or ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... them up in Maam! Oh! I grow sick of them!" She began to walk faster, forgetting his company in the sudden remembrance of her troubles; and he strode awkwardly at her heels, not very dignified, like a menial overlooked. "They hang about the place like a menace," said she. "No wonder mother died! If she was like me she must have been heart-broken when father left her to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... this case, his master would only be asserting a sort of hereditary right attached to those of his class. But to be deceiving two ladies of distinction was really too much for the delicate feelings of the conscientious menial. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... practical operation there seemed to be some chance of success. Much, doubtless, was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping, but more to her rigid economy and untiring industry. The mistress of millions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds, and labored like a common menial. Visitors were attracted by this novel spectacle. The income of the house increased as their respect for the hostess lessened. No anecdote of her avarice was too extravagant for current belief. It was even alleged that ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... grew stronger and was allowed to sit up in bed, he realized, with a shock, what a fool's paradise he was living in. A few more days and he must go back to that dark, damp room in Chestnut Street. He must find work—and work, however menial, for which he had the strength. Eleanor would return to New York, and he would probably never see her again. During his illness she had been heavenly kind to him, but that was no reason for thinking she had changed her mind. She had given him his final answer there in New York, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and let her window-boxes run to seed; Street-urchins play in porticoes—no powdered menial there to heed; Now fainter grows the lumbering roll of luggage-cumbered omnibus: Bayswater's children all are off upon their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... young Frank sorrowed over him, till the harsh voice of Rooke summoned him to some menial duty. This discharged, he came running back; and sat on the bench beside his crushed benefactor without saying a word. At last he delivered this sapient speech: "I see. You want to get ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the year, he became dissatisfied with his employer because he was forced to perform "some menial services in the house."[10] He wished his employer to know that he was not a household servant, but an apprentice. Further difficulties arose, which terminated his apprenticeship in Middlebury. Returning to Brandon, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... order that one may live worthily he must first live, and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon mere life, upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that available for activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they also unfit for the latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile. The true life is possible only in the degree in which the physical necessities are had without effort and without attention. Hence slaves, artisans, and women are employed in furnishing the means of subsistence in ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... their nation. It was really an added pang to go, on their account, but the carriage was waiting at the door; the 'domestique' had already carried our baggage to the steam-tram station; the kindly menial train formed around us for an ultimate 'douceur', and we were off, after the 'portier' had shut us into our vehicle and touched his oft-touched cap for the last time, while the hotel facade dissembled its grief by architecturally smiling in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was proud, and went to his menial tasks with a new sense of the dignity of his family. He was called for on all sides, and appeared to be the only member of the household in perpetual request; but, though many liberties were taken with him personally, none were taken with his name, which was always given ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... you to come back?" he broke in. "No, I should be sorry to see you again in a menial position, you with your divine gifts of beauty and song. The idea of your getting a new place," he added with a fall into prose, "makes ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... drunken sot are not pleasant tidings to be poured into a mother's ear, or a sister's. And then, as they two had gone away equal, and as he, John Caldigate, had returned rich, whereas poor Dick was a wretched menial creature, he felt that his very presence in England would carry with it some reproach against himself. He had in truth been both loyal and generous to Dick; but still,—there was the truth. He had come back as a rich man to his own country, while Dick was a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... shall I return again to that shop from which I have just come? Certainly not; such splendid beauty shall not, please God, be turned to such base uses. What folly it would be that could lead me to shave the lathered beards of rustic peasants and perform such menial service! Is this body destined for such work? Certainly not. I will hide myself in some retired spot and there pass my life in tranquil repose." And having thus remained hidden for some months, one day he came out into the air, and issuing from his sheath, saw himself turned to the similitude ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... unused to polite society. He looked uneasy in his clothes, he was at a loss to know what to do with his hands, he shifted about from one foot to another as he spoke, and half rose and sat down again when anybody spoke to him. He seemed ready to do some menial service; he was obsequious, nervous, and grave by turns, laughing eagerly at every joke, listening with servility; and occasionally, imagining that people were laughing at him, he assumed a knowing air. His treatise weighed upon ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Sir Humphrey Davy, in answer to an inquiry that had been made of him respecting the number and series of his discoveries in chemistry, had gone through with the list, he added: "But the greatest of my discoveries is Michael Faraday." This Michael Faraday was a poor boy employed in the menial services of the laboratory where Davy made those wonderful discoveries by which he revolutionized the science of chemistry, and whose chemical genius he detected, elicited, and encouraged, until he finally took the place of his teacher and patron, and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... campaign into the national government, with an ominous degree of success. If they shall have their way, no Negro can fill any federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not menial. This is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed sentiment of the white South. The right to employment in the public service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... happy home to the place of "devil" in the printing office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to the utmost. His position was but little better than that of a menial, and not only was all the drudgery and disagreeable work put upon him, but he was made the sport of the workmen, some of whom used him even roughly. He bore it all good-naturedly, however, devoting himself to his trade with the determination ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... bear distinct evidence, all the more impressive because frequently only casual, that, from the earliest ages, the Africans had shared, in common with other less civilized peoples, the doom of having to furnish the menial and servile contingents of the more favoured sections of the human family. Now, dating from, say, five hundred years ago, which was long indeed after the disappearance of the old leading empires of the world, we have (save and except in the case of Arab incursionists ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... in a state bordering on frenzy. Incoherent expressions of rage burst from her lips: it is some time before she can sufficiently control herself to speak plainly. She has been doubly insulted—first, by a menial person in her employment; secondly, by her husband. Her maid, an Englishwoman, has declared that she will serve the Countess no longer. She will give up her wages, and return at once to England. Being asked her reason for this strange proceeding, she insolently hints that ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... of his own dawning greatness, Elmendorf refused to accept rebuff. Who was she to treat with scorn the man whose merest word now could move a million stalwarts! "You must pardon me, Miss Allison," he answered, with emphasis. "I am not here in the capacity of a menial in the household. The events of the past few days have conspired to make me a factor in affairs, with power and influence far exceeding that wielded by my late employer. Furthermore, I should see him, or rather he should seek to ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... hath demented you!" returned Brettone. "Angelo Villani is the favourite menial of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial household duties; and to this he added the practices of immoderate fasting, perpetual silence, downcast glances, veiled countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. In ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hope I cherished yet, that thou Living wouldst come hereafter to avenge Thy father's woes and mine. Where must I go? Since I am left of thee and of my sire Bereaved and lonely, and once more must be The drudge and menial of my bitterest foes, My father's murderers. Say, is it well? Nay, nevermore will I consort with these, But sinking here before the palace gate, Thus, friendless, I will wither out my life. Hereat if ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... and all their subsequent writers, show that they were subjected to those restrictions, which infallibly indicate their being regarded only as the property of men, to be disposed of according to their will. Hence they were bought and sold, made to perform the most menial offices, and exposed to all the miseries and degradation of concubinage. The daughters, even of persons of distinction, were married without any consultation of their wishes, to men whom, frequently, they had never seen, and at the early age of fourteen or fifteen; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... considered his men from every point of view of efficiency. They loved him. He was a warrior chief as they understood such to be; carefully he fostered their warrior pride; never were they ordered to work at menial offices, to fetch or to carry; only to drill and to fight; his punishments were ferocious, but he gave them liberty in pillage and rape. Eh! but the Eater-of-Men was a mighty chief! and of his name they ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... John was, next to Malachi, the best shot of the party. It was, therefore, very annoying to Percival that he should always be detained at home doing all the drudgery of the house, such as feeding the pigs, cleaning knives, and other menial work, while his younger brother was doing the duty of a man. To Percival's repeated entreaties, objections were constantly raised by his mother: they could not spare him, he was not accustomed to walk in snow-shoes. Mr Campbell observed that Percival ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... completely monopolized by the children of the moneyed middle class; nevertheless it is significant that there were new roads by which men might rise. No class has profited more by the evolution of ideas than has the intelligentsia. From a subordinate, semi-menial position, lawyers, physicians, educators and journalists, not to mention artists and writers, have become the leading, almost the ruling, body of our ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... common wife was undergoing at the victor's hands, the five Pandavs made grim threats, and raised such a protest that the blind uncle, interfering, sent them off to the forest with their wife for twelve years. He also decreed that, during the thirteenth, all must serve in some menial capacity, with the proviso that, if discovered by their cousins, they should never ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... times right. We must face the facts and steer by them, and not attempt to be guided by sentiment and emotions. So long as the sight of a black face instinctively suggests to us rags and ignorance, and servility and menial employments, just so long this prejudice of caste will endure, and no amount of individual genius, culture, or character will be able to brush the mildew of caste from any individual black man's brow. That lady may be a Florence Nightingale, but if I whisper, and whisper truly, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... go into service for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,—to procure means for their education, or to help members of their families who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial duties of some household where they are not known, and, having stooped—if stooping it is to be considered—to lowly offices, no born and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You must ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... point of policy it deserves to be remarked, that however it might strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll amongst the menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and property, it is chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute that baseness of servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable exception, the public characters ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... his wife home," said Sarah Gailey shortly, with a dignity and courage that increased as her distance from the appalling, the incredible Louisa. Hilda could see her pale face now. The eyebrows and chin were lifted in scorn of the vile menial, but ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... shall be grateful for any task, however menial, that permits me to meditate. I understand your point of view. By coming aboard your ship I have broken the law, I have committed a crime; but not a sin. Crime and sin, every ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... are so filled with prejudice that neither law nor religion restrains their bloody hands when the Negro refuses to get into what he calls "his place," which place is that of a menial; and often there seems no effort even to put the Negro in any particular place save the grave, as many of the lynchings and murders appear to be done either for the fun of shooting someone, or else with extermination in view. There is no attempt at a show of reason or right. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... be conceived that my life was a life of hardship. I was not only a "ship-boy on the high and giddy mast," but also in the cabin, where every menial office fell to my lot: yet if I was restless and discontented, I can safely say, it was not so much on account of this, as of my being precluded from all possibility of reading; as my master did not possess, nor do I recollect seeing during the whole time of my abode with him, a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... who would grief describe, might come and trace Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. To see her weep, joy every face forsook, And grief flung sables on each menial look. The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished spirit and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... no menial tasks. "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." The physical reacts on the spiritual and the spiritual on the physical, and, rightly understood, are one and the same thing. We live in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... up all kinds of weird and grotesque imagery. He found himself commiserating the girl's features as if they were high-toned captives held in degrading bondage by a spiteful little monster, that delighted to put them to low and menial uses. To one of his temperament such beauty as he had just witnessed, controlled by, and ministering to, some of the meanest and pettiest of human vices, was like Mary Magdalene when held in thraldom by ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... worse example of spiritual iniquity sat lolling on the Chesterfield in the parlour. Ignorance and simplicity and a menial imitativeness might be an excuse for Mrs. Tams; but not for Rachel, the mistress, the omniscient, the all-powerful, the giver of good, who could make and unmake with a nod. Rachel sitting gorgeous on the Chesterfield amid an enormous twilit welter ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... said, with a faint smile. Then seeing his burden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menial employment, she said hurriedly, "Let me carry something—do, please," and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of a menial—shut up and get out of here! You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted to-night. Do you think any servant girl would go for ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... tranquillity until the day when on his entry he found Mr. Hadley's sardonic face waiting for him. He liked Charles Hadley less than many men whom he more despised. Nobody in a position just better than menial can be expected to like the condescending mockery which was Mr. Hadley's metier. But Harry—it is one of his most noble qualities—bore being laughed at well enough. What most annoyed him was Mr. Hadley's parade of a surly, austere virtue. He did not doubt ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... discoursing on caste. You know that the Hindus are divided into the Brahmans, or the priestly caste, which is the highest; next the Kshatriyas, or the warrior and statesman caste; next the Vaishyas, or the herdsman and farmer caste; lastly, the Sudras, or the menial caste. Now, once upon a time the two youths Vasettha and Bharadvaja had a discussion as to what constitutes a Brahman. Thus, Vasettha and Bharadvaja went to the place where Bhagava was, and having approached him were well pleased with him; and having finished a pleasing and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... listening interminably, and his intelligent comments, was a favorite of old Ryan's. He greeted him with a growling welcome; and then, civilities being interchanged, called to the Chinaman for another glass. This menial, rubbing off the long mirrors that decorated the walls, would not obey the mandate till it had been roared at him by the wounded lion in a tone which made ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not even watching how he did, but quite occupied with another grog and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harmlessness. Pitiable as the loss was, Samson was better blind than seeing. The lust of the eye had led him astray, and the loss of his sight showed him his sin. Fetters of brass betrayed his jailers' dread of his possibly returning strength; and the menial task to which he was set was meant as a humiliation, in giving him woman's work to do, as if this were all for which the eclipsed hero was now fit. Generous enemies are merciful; the baser sort reveal their former terror ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... singular person. To use a favourite phrase of Napoleon, "he had missed his destiny." His parents had been country people of some substance, but misfortune falling upon misfortune had reduced them to poverty. Finally, the father had become insane; the mother had been glad to obtain a menial situation in the very asylum where her husband was confined; and there was nothing better to be done for the son than to apprentice him to a shoemaker. Some talk there was amongst the neighbours of raising a subscription to send him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... has been the Tyrant of Italy. The whole fate and fortunes of families depended on the will of a poor, ill-clad, ignoble-looking creature, who, though he sat at meals with the master, ate and talked like a menial. To this man was known everything—all that passed beneath the roof. Not alone was he aware of the difficulties, the debts, the embarrassments of the family, but to him were confided their feelings, their shortcomings, their sorrows, and it might be their shame. From him there ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... for the proper Choice and Treatment of Academy-Wives, Ushers, and other menial Servants: with the Reasons of ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... Henry Daggett retired behind his official barrier according to his wont, leaving the store in charge of Joe Whittle, the Deacon's son. It had been diligently pointed out to Joe by his thrifty parents that all rich men began life by sweeping out stores and other menial tasks, and for some time Joe had been working for Mr. Daggett with ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... do not disdain To dwell amongst the menial train, I have a silent place, and lone, That you and I may call our own, Where tumult never makes an entry— Susan, what business ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... nature, or justice, of the prejudice which prevails against the negro at the North. It is undeniable that there is such a prejudice. Accepting the undoubted fact, we see that it shuts nearly every avenue of honest industry against the man with a black skin, restricting him to the most menial offices; and that it is fostered in many ways by the conventions and usages of our society, so as practically to put him in a worse condition than his bonded brother at the South—always except as to his God-given right to his liberty and labor. Experience has shown that even this is not always ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... encyclopedic, in itself a living organism, it can speak only through the mouths of men, who often misrepresent it for their own partisan and prejudiced plans. It is strong and steadfast, though, and in time is always victorious over its menial opposition, for what is history but the past tense of truth, and it is justly said that veritas numquam perit, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... or teachers work together in the school, printing-office, dairy, kitchen, farm. The senior clergyman of the Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard like the rushing of a swollen stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the Hall. The lady starts up—a terrified menial rushes in—but ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... gentlemanly demeanor of James, who, always courteous, particularly to those whom he thought neglected, bowed politely, and made to her several remarks concerning the fineness of the day and the delightful view which Laurel Hill commanded of the surrounding country. She was no menial, he knew, and looking in her bright, black eyes he saw that she had far more mind than the dollish Nellie, who, as usual, was provoking J.C. to say all manner of ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... organization has made. So far as the colored man is concerned, you found him a slave; you have made him a free man. You found him a serf; you have made him a sovereign. You found him a dependent menial; you have made him a soldier. I therefore appeal to the members of this Convention, in the name of the history of the Republican party, and in behalf of justice and fair-play, to vote down this unjust, unfair, unwise and unnecessary proposition which ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... emptied her whole heart, and said, "Here am I deserted by the whole world, and yet I am a King's daughter, and a false waiting-maid has by force brought me to such a pass that I have been compelled to put off my royal apparel, and she has taken my place with my bridegroom, and I have to perform menial service as a goose-girl. If my mother did but know that, her ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... declar'd, 'he felt love's fullest power! Yes!' he declar'd, 'he had a paramour! But one, so perfect in all female grace, Those charms might scarcely win her handmaid's place; Those charms, were now one menial damsel near, Would lose ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... When they travel by railway, though they pay the same fare as other people, they are generally put in the luggage-van! He had himself, when on board of steam-boats, often been sent to the "pantry" to eat his food. Nor will the white people employ them but in the most menial offices; so that it is nearly impossible for them to rise to affluence and horse-and-gig respectability. The consequence is that they are deeply and justly disaffected towards the American people and the American laws. They clearly ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... hard to find any sphere of woman's activity in which she had not been leader. Believing that "the manifest intention of nature is the perfection of man," she faithfully did her part. In the laborious and the menial she served the colored poor, while she neglected no opportunity to open their spiritual vision. She fed, warmed, and clothed them; ministered to the sick; attended the dying; procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... And in what manner had he gathered that he was different from them? His nurse, it is true, was not a pleasant person, and had an injured and resentful bearing. In later years he realised that it had been the bearing of an irregularly paid menial, who rebelled against the fact that her place was not among people who were of distinction and high repute, and whose households bestowed a certain social status upon their servitors. She was a tall woman with a sour face and a bearing which conveyed a glum endurance of a position ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... three grades, Brahmans, or the priestly caste, from the mouth of Brahma; Kshatriyas, or the soldier caste, from the hands of Brahma; and Vaisyas, or the agricultural caste, from the feet of Brahma; while the latter are of one rank and are menial to the other, called Sudras, earth-born all; notwithstanding which distinction often members of the highest class sink socially to the lowest level, and members of the lowest rise ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gentle tolerance of his imperfections, loving endurance of cross looks, peevish gestures, cheerfulness under contempt and small injustices, endurance of affronts, patience with importunity, doing menial actions which our social position impels us to regard as beneath us; replying amiably to some one who has given us an undeserved and sharp reproof, falling down and then bearing good humouredly the being laughed at, accepting with gentleness the refusal of a kindness, receiving a favour ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... imposition of hands, and the like; but their derivation is traceable back of this point, to the source from which the specialized priestly class proper came to be distinguished from the sorcerer on the one hand and from the menial servant of a temporal master on the other hand. So far as regards both their derivation and their psychological content, these usages and the conceptions on which they rest belong to a stage in cultural development ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... monsieur votre frere, mademoiselle votre soeur; but Charles, as valet, should have said, madame la comtesse alone. The reader should note that from the first his speeches show a refinement which to Leonie seems a surprising presumption. The disguised noble is too courteous to act a menial part successfully.] ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... The menial train to threat, a sacred right remains, Which the illustrious spouse of heaven-favor'd lord Through many a year doth earn of prudent governance. Since that, now recognized, thy ancient place as queen, And mistress of the house, once more thou dost resume, The long-time loosen'd reins grasp ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... act as domestics to such of the inmates of the mansion as do not keep servants; making their beds, arranging their rooms, lighting their fires, and doing other menial offices, for which they receive a monthly stipend. They are also in confidential intercourse with the servants of the other inmates, and, having an eye on all the incomers and outgoers, are thus enabled, by hook and by crook, to learn the secrets and domestic history of every ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... said the Judge, "I am not accustomed to having those in your evident station of life address me with any such familiarity. You should be old enough to know that it is unseemly. You can not succeed, even in a menial occupation, unless you cultivate that respect which is due not only to your superiors, but to those who patronize the hotel, or any other undertaking in ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... in any kind of work from cleaning a stable up! The menial things are the evasions of work—tricks by which men are cheated out of ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... without hope, without spirit, without ambition. Laws were passed against them, one at Bordeaux as late as 1596,—many earlier; by these they were even denied the rights of citizens; they could not bear arms, nor engage in any trade save wood-working or menial occupations, nor marry out of their race; they were obliged to wear a scarlet badge on the shoulder, in the shape of a goose's foot; they were not to go barefoot in towns lest they contaminate the streets, and the penalty was branding with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... thyself, and go to the palace. I trust that they also will recognize thee." The emperor did as the confessor directed. The porter opened the gate, and made a low obeisance to him. "Dost thou know me?" said he. "Very well, my lord!" replied the menial; "but I marvel that I did not observe you go out." Entering the hall of his mansion, Jovinian was received by all with a profound reverence. The strange emperor was at that time in another apartment with the queen; and a certain knight going to him, said, "My lord, there ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... dressed his hair. Royal apparel agreed but ill with his condition after three days of sackcloth and ashes. As luck would have it, Esther had issued the command that the bathkeepers and barbers were not to ply their trades on that day, and there was nothing for Haman to do but perform the menial services Mordecai required. Haman tried to play upon the feelings of Mordecai. Fetching a deep sigh, he said: "The greatest in the king's realm is now acting as bathkeeper and barber!" Mordecai, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... porter racket hasn't a leg to stand on, for you see they've got a man and his family on the payroll, and he looks after the furnace in the winter, as well as does all the sweeping out and such menial tasks. But it might be possible that they could make room for you as my assistant. You see duties have kept piling up on me all the time, and I'm the hardest worked man in the institution just at the ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... others, under the orders of Sam, who seemed to be in charge, already feeling somewhat deeply the humiliation of my position, but nevertheless realizing the necessity of prompt obedience. The knowledge that I was now a slave, on a level with these others, compelled to perform menial labor under the very eyes of Dorothy Fairfax and that sneering Spaniard, cut my pride to the quick. In my trips back and forth I kept my eyes averted, never once venturing to glance toward them, until this work had been accomplished. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... who have given their lives to this work shine as brightly as any on the battle-field,—in some respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly and adequately written out and spread before the public will any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... warrant any expectation of a step so audacious. Little more than a year had elapsed since his own subjects in Rome itself rebelled against him, murdered his Prime Minister, and compelled him, in the disguise of a menial, to fly from Rome; nor was he restored except by the arms of the French, who besieged and took ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... north-west side of the island. "I do not know," he answered. "It might not be far-fetched to translate it as 'a ship's steward: a menial.'" ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... indeed, John was, next to Malachi, the best shot of the party. It was, therefore, very annoying to Percival that he should always be detained at home doing all the drudgery of the house, such as feeding the pigs, cleaning knives, and other menial work, while his younger brother was doing the duty of a man. To Percival's repeated entreaties, objections were constantly raised by his mother: they could not spare him, he was not accustomed to walk in snow-shoes. ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... avail yourself of his infatuation. The menial of Mrs. Blakely would be a worthy daughter, truly, of a house which has ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... impolicy was exhibited in the neglect of American claims to distinctions and offices. No cabinet seems ever to have thought of attaching the rising men of the colonies, by a fair and natural distribution of honours. Excepting a few trifling offices, scarcely more than menial, under the staff of the British governors, or commissions in the provincial militia, the promotion of an American was scarcely ever heard of. The result was natural,—the English blood was soaked in the American veins; the original spirit of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Harry smoked many pipes in tranquillity until the day when on his entry he found Mr. Hadley's sardonic face waiting for him. He liked Charles Hadley less than many men whom he more despised. Nobody in a position just better than menial can be expected to like the condescending mockery which was Mr. Hadley's metier. But Harry—it is one of his most noble qualities—bore being laughed at well enough. What most annoyed him was Mr. Hadley's parade of a surly, austere virtue. He did not doubt ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... again involves the previous meetings of the high-born lover and the menial heroine, transformed for the nonce by her dress into a dame of equal standing. In some of the variants these meetings are in church and not at a ball, royal or otherwise. But the Shoe Marriage Test involves a highly desirable parti ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... frail form, Whilst tremblingly he waited at the door; And feeble tho' he seemed, he feared not harm, For 'neath his cloak a trusty sword he bore. A menial came, and thus he spoke:—'Away! Old man, away! seek not to enter here: We feed none such as you: so hence! I say:— Perhaps across the street you'll ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Bedouins; and the Aeneze even give the Kerekein their girls in marriage. The sum paid to the father of the bride is generally between six and eighthundred piastres; young men without property are obliged to serve the father five or six years, as menial servants, in compensation for the price of the girl. The Kerekein do not treat their wives so affectionately as the Bedouins; if one of them falls sick, and her sickness is likely to prevent her for some time from taking care of the family affairs, the husband sends her back to her father's house, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... throw out any side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right—three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... above, or more out of keeping with one's best thoughts about God. Again, there is a story which is told, I think, of one of the first monasteries of the Benedictine order. One of the monks was a lay brother, who had many little menial tasks to fulfil; he was a well-meaning man, but extremely forgetful, and he was often forced to retire from some service in which he was taking part, because he had forgotten to put the vegetables on to boil, or omitted other duties ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her residence in Italy, where she gradually learned to neglect the caution which she had observed in England, till, after a year or two, reports arose of her intimacy with a servant whom she had raised from a menial situation to that of the chief officer of her household, and whom she admitted to a familiarity of intercourse which others besides her husband thought quite incompatible with innocence. He sent agents into Italy to inquire into the truth of those rumors; ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Oliver went up to Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and tuition, and very little for lodging; but they had to perform some menial services from which they have long been relieved. They swept the court: they carried up the dinner to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and poured out the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indicated the substitution. But the merchant could no more enter the room in which the prince was seated at this moment than the most abject menial ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... down the table along silver rails. The diner stopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared at a little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. That turn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls, which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong he found among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details that it was only as he was leaving the place that he remarked the huge advertisement dioramas that marched ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... thousands of dollars. This fact speaks volumes in praise of their industry and economy; for, be it remembered, they have had to accumulate this property in small sums, by shaving the beards, cleaning the boots and clothes, and being the servants of their white contemners, and in other menial employments. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York, and other places, there are several colored persons whose individual property is worth from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars;[T] and in all those cities, there are ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... class, she was to be a mother, to supervise this range of work, look after dependents, conserve social conditions and be the lady bountiful of her district. The second ideal was the woman of religion, who was to subdue her passions, observe set prayers and other religious exercises, and do the menial work of the convent. The third ideal was the lady of chivalry, who appeared after the tenth century. She was to be cared for and protected from work or anxiety; menials were to prepare her food, clothes and ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... exclaimed the old man; "you are the only being that ever confronted the fire-wizard without feeling terror—and for those who know not fear there is no danger. Instead of a menial, or a victim, I ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP and with per capita GDP at least 75% of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in menial jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by nearly 4.0% per year between 2003 and 2006, largely because of an investment boom and infrastructure upgrades for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Greece has not met the EU's Growth and Stability ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... our training ground for to-morrow. Let the woman realise this, and at least as many women as men will prefer privation with self-respect to comfort with contempt. Let us, then, in the name of our common nature, ask those who have her training in hand, to teach the woman to despise the man of menial soul and to loathe the luxury that is ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... all; it carries with it a consciousness of superiority, and inspires a superior bearing. These influences are more potent in the formation of female than male character. The mistress is relieved absolutely from all menial duties, and is served by those who are servants for life, and compulsorily so. She is only under the obligations of humanity in her conduct toward them. They must do her bidding. She is not afraid to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... revelation we simple plebeians, who had been all day heaping shawls and guide-books upon Count Giovanni, demanding menial offices from him, and treating him with good-natured slight, felt uncomfortable in his presence, and welcomed the appearance of our carriage with our driver, who, having started drunk from Bassano in the morning, had kept drunk all day at Valstagna, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... then paled. It was not so much on account of the menial position to which she was assigned, as the manner in which the change had been made known ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... blast, but dropped it hastily, it being answered almost simultaneously by an ancient menial left in charge. Their own servants were coming on by coach, and they were much comforted by perceiving that this provident person had prepared a substantial repast, combining supper and tea, in a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... menial in felt slippers and alpaca jacket, who seemed to pass the whole of his life flitting in and out of bedrooms like a rabbit in a warren, carried Gerald's trunk downstairs. She recognized the peculiar ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... until He find it. For even that is not shut out beyond the bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mystery of the Hereafter. Do you know Whittier's beautiful poem of the old monk who had spent his whole life in hard and menial work for the rescue and help of others? And when he is dying his confessor tells him work is over, "Thou shalt sit down and have endless prayers, and wear a golden crown for ever and ever in Heaven." "Ah," he says, "I'm a stupid old man. ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... of great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost to the nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing with them. The business grows so farcical that the English guardians become the laughing-stock of the most menial ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... a Negro minister who could hold services any time he chose, so long as he did not interfere with the work of the other slaves. He was not obliged to do hard menial labors and went about the plantation "all dressed up" in a frock coat and store-bought shoes. He was more than a little conscious of this and was held in awe by the others. He often visited neighboring plantations to hold his services. It was from this minister ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Varney acted as the Earl's chamberlain as well as his master of horse, though the latter was his proper office in that magnificent household, where knights and gentlemen of good descent were well contented to hold such menial situations, as nobles themselves held in that of the sovereign. The duties of each of these charges were familiar to Varney, who, sprung from an ancient but somewhat decayed family, was the Earl's page ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... made subservient to his own: By that have kings of old, deluded, All their own friends for his excluded. By that, his selfish schemes pursuing, He thrives upon the public ruin. Antiochus,[8] with hardy pace, Provoked the dangers of the chase; And, lost from all his menial train, Traversed the wood and pathless plain. 40 A cottage lodged the royal guest! The Parthian clown brought forth his best. The king, unknown, his feast enjoyed, And various chat the hours employed. From wine what sudden friendship springs! Frankly they talked of courts ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... first meeting, he must remember what she had suffered and that it is hard for the loser to yield. It should be his part to speak with humility and dwell but lightly on the past while he pictured a future, entirely free from menial service, in which she could live according to her station. All her years of poverty and disappointment and loneliness would be forgotten in this sudden rise to wealth; and to complete the picture, Blount, the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... we are ignorant what the vital spark may be, so in our great cosmical laws we can say in what their power resides, though we know not really what they are. Whether mind be but a sublimated form of matter, or, what amounts to the same thing, matter a menial kind of mind, or whether, which seems less likely, it be a something incomparable with substance, of one thing we are sure, the same laws of heredity govern both. In each a like chain of continuity leads from the present to the dim past, a connecting clue which we can follow backward ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... club very swiftly indeed, never to see it again, scarcely pausing to say farewell to those menial kings, and as I left the door a great window opened far up at the top of the house and a flash of lightning streamed from it and ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... found the child, and, with THAT ELEGANT BENEVOLENCE which has always distinguished the heiress of the throne of Paflagonia, gave the little outcast a SHELTER AND A HOME! Her parentage not being known, and her garb very humble, the foundling was educated in the Palace in a menial capacity, under the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in his inscrutable wisdom, to permit the Persian rebel, Esref, to drive his lawful sovereign, Tamasip, from his capital. The prince became a fugitive, and the mother of the prince, dressed in rags, was reduced to the wretched expedient of doing menial service in the streets of Ispahan for a livelihood. The glory of the Ottoman arms could not permit that a usurper should sit at his ease on the stolen throne, and thy triumphant host, led by the ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... Dolabella! Thou hast beheld me other than I am. Hast thou not seen my morning chambers filled With sceptered slaves, who waited to salute me? With eastern monarchs, who forgot the sun, To worship my uprising? menial kings Ran coursing up and down my palace-yard, Stood silent in my presence, watched my eyes, And, at my least command, all started out, Like ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... his knees to the Maid.[1216] It was even stated that he had asked to surrender to her as to the bravest lady in the world.[1217] But it is more likely that he would have surrendered to the lowest menial of the army rather than to a woman whom he held to be a witch possessed ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... not impertinent, nay, almost indecent, that the woman should come to her and interrogate her on such a subject? The inmost, most secret feelings of her heart had been ruthlessly inquired into and probed by a menial servant, who had asked questions of her, and made suggestions to her, as though her part in the affair had been of no consequence. "What are you, that you shouldn't let a gentleman like him have his own way?" Why was it not so much to her as to ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... an impatient glance, "is it nothing to be reduced to this paltry situation—to be caged in a miserable cottage—to be obliged to toil almost in the menial ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... plans that ultimately drove them from his kingdom. It was while here that the incident of the burned cakes occurred. The king was disguised as a peasant, and, living in a swineherd's cottage, performed various menial offices. The good wife left him in charge of some cakes that were baking, with instructions to turn them at the proper time. His mind wandered in thought and he forgot his trust. The good wife returned, found the cakes burning, and the guest dreaming by the fireside; ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... this season Ramazani's fast Through the long day its penance did maintain. But when the lingering twilight hour was past, Revel and feast assumed the rule again: Now all was bustle, and the menial train Prepared and spread the plenteous board within; The vacant gallery now seemed made in vain, But from the chambers came the mingling din, As page and slave anon were ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the major glad at heart; for he had changed his nether garments, and was now sure the news of what had so recently befallen him had not reached New York. There now came on board four flabby men, dreamy of countenance, and whose dilapidated garments bespoke them persons of menial occupations. But as neither St. Paul, nor Alexander the Great, nor Henry Ward Beecher, (who, I take it, is as great a man as either of them, and will leave more portraits of himself than both,) never dressed according to their "circumstances," so these four flabby men, the major thought, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... any celebrity in it. With wealth, if a man have but a common share of understanding, he is at once pronounced a wise man, and he is looked up to as a prodigy; when his own native talent alone would not more than fit him for a menial office. Look for instance at our neighbours; there is. Mr. Astley of Everly, who is surrounded by every comfort; he has at his command not only horses, servants, and carriages, but he has a numerous body of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... be true," he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this preacher, did behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn, eighteen hundred ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... of individual capacity and desire. Macaulay tells of the Dutch farmers who worked in the fields all day, and at night read the Georgics in the original. Scotch and American universities are largely attended by students who have had to engage in menial duties all the summer in order to gain funds for their high education during the winter. And every University Extension lecturer, highly trained specialist as he is, will testify how his work has continually ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... a family, it left him little room for luxuries. Consequently, he never had more than two servants, and at times only one. Upon this plea rose the scheme of the mother for employing these two young girls in menial offices of the household economy. One reason for that was, that she thus indulged her dislike for them, which she took no pains to conceal; and thus, also, she withdrew them from the notice of strangers. In this way, it happened that I saw them ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... these began to take to the road, knight-errantry vanished from the face of the earth. The varlets borrowed the grand idea of care-free itinerancy and debased it, as waiters borrow a gentleman's evening dress for their menial uniform, and drunken coachmen wear the same head-gear that a duke wears to a wedding! Why prove evolution by searching for a man with a tail? The performances of human nature must convince any thinking man that we have ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... about one, but to find the people of the trade who will assist in the gladdest way. One wants the right stripe in the morning and evening papers, but none the less happy are just the right merchant and just the right menial. Since all of life may be rounded into rhythm, shall we not even consult the harmonies in a grocer or an upholsterer? Personal power can be carried into every department. It is well to find where one's word has weight, then always say the word there. This is a part of the quest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of all classes, that domestic service has anything in it peculiarly mean, is a feeling than which there is none meaner. In the feudal ages, youthful nobles of the highest rank thought themselves honoured by officiating in what is now called a menial capacity, about the persons of superiors of both sexes, for whom they felt respect: and, as M. Comte observes, there are many families who can in no other way so usefully serve Humanity, as by ministering to the bodily wants of other ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... it deserves to be remarked, that however it might strengthen the personal influence of the sovereign to enroll amongst the menial servants of the crown gentlemen of influence and property, it is chiefly perhaps to this practice that we ought to impute that baseness of servility which infected, with scarcely one honorable exception, the public characters of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... were not uncommon; and Clement, though he had little faith in this form of contrition, received the services of the incognita as a matter of course. But presently she sighed deeply, and with her heartfelt sigh and her head bent low over her menial office, she seemed so bowed with penitence, that he pitied her, and said calmly but gently, "Can I aught for your soul's ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... are not apt to take up menial employs, and this one had already shown that he preferred idle musings and parasitic dependence to uncongenial labour. Whoever reads the second scene of the second act of "The Comedy of Errors," will see that Shakespeare, even at the beginning, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... humanity, whose care is to eke out this miserable existence by means of the occasional doles of those who know how faithful and good a child she has been to that decrepit creature; who thinks herself happy if she can be well enough, by hours of patient toil, to perform those menial services which they both require; whose talk is of the price of pounds of sugar, and ounces of tea, and yards of flannel; whose only intellectual resource is hearing five or six verses of the Bible read every day,—"my ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his substance, and not daring to make himself known for fear of his father, he fell into great want, and so into severe sickness. His companions having nothing wherewith to live, and not knowing any trade by which to gain their bread, did menial services fit for day-laborers, and sustained their lord with their earnings, he remaining hidden in a poor woman's ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... negroes, either young or old, but Senegals, called among themselves Diolaufs, because of all {363} the negroes I have known, these have the purest blood; they have more fidelity and a better understanding than the rest, and are consequently fitter for learning a trade, or for menial services. It is true they are not so strong as the others for the labours of the field, and for bearing the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom she vainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentions the poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtain some menial position in the household of one of her father's friends. Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of their blood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts to find some better way of providing for her. Their noble connections gave Fulvia ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... I have left the ranks, The plain unvarnished fact is That through those three rough years, and thanks To very frequent practice, I, who was once a nascent snob, Am master of the menial's job. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... twenty minutes after making this decision she was sitting in the anteroom of a suite of theatrical offices in the Empire Theater building. The girl in attendance had, as usual, all the airs little people assume when they are in close, if menial, relations with a person who, being important to them, therefore fills their whole small horizon. She deigned to take in Susan's name and the letter. Susan seated herself at the long table and with the seeming of calmness that always veiled her in her hours of greatest agitation, turned over the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... step-mother, however, determined to make the young culprit smart for his offences, and one day, when Mr. Newcome was absent, and Tommy refractory as usual, summoned the butler and footman to flog the young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's shins as to cause that menial to limp and suffer for many days after; and, seizing the decanter, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs. Newcome's head before he would submit to the punishment she desired administered. When Mr. Newcome returned, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... is unknown among strong men. The masterful hero is worshipped as he is worshipped by the readers of the 'Bow Bells Novelettes,' and for the same reason—a profound sense of personal weakness. That tendency to devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike whether for its menial tasks it employs serfs or emperors. Against all this the great clerical republican stands in everlasting protest, preferring his failure to his rival's success. The issue is still between him and Lorenzo, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... tastes and instincts the dirty furnace work had not been pleasant to him, and he had shrunk with inexpressible loathing from the swill cart and the other menial duties he had been obliged to perform for the sake of those he loved. How to get an education was the problem he was earnestly trying to solve, and lo! it was now solved for him. For a moment the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... think they will be proud, John, when their child's life depends on their accepting some aid from others? I don't think they will allow so false an emotion to sacrifice his little precious life. It seems to me, that were I in that mother's place, I would lick the dust off the most menial feet that ever ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... to this, that I, Athol Meldrum, of gentle birth and Highland breeding, must sue in vain to understudy a scullion in a third-rate hash joint. I am, indeed, fallen. What mad folly is this that sets me lower than a menial? Here I might be snug in the Northwest raising my own fat sheep. A letter home would bring me instant help. Yet what would it mean? To own defeat; to lose my self-esteem; to call myself a failure. No, I won't. Come what may, I will play ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... this jaunt. So, from sunrise until dusk, he worked with will, to gain the wished-for leave. Never before did buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted to his polishing. Never did menial tasks cease sooner to be drudgery, because of the good-will with which he worked. And when the day was done, so well had every duty been performed, right willingly the squire did grant him grace, and forthwith Ederyn ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... regiment of foot. He had held his commission more than three months without taking the sacrament. He was therefore liable to a penalty of five hundred pounds, which an informer might recover by action of debt. A menial servant was employed to bring a suit for this sum in the Court of King's Bench. Sir Edward did not dispute the facts alleged against him, but pleaded that he had letters patent authorising him to hold his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... get to loving), as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. Those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to show audacity in lust, casting ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... you do not disdain To dwell amongst the menial train, I have a silent place and lone, That you and I may call our own; Where tumult never makes an entry— Susan! what business have you in ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... always one at least—and observed in suave accents, "Please, sir, can I have a paper?" Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would write upon it, "J. O. Jones (or A. B. Smith or C. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such a time". And, by presenting this to the menial who opened the door to you at your house, you went in rejoicing, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... sate on steed; Behind him, in a round, Stood knight and squire, and menial train; Against the leash the greyhounds strain; The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poor to send him to school, but they placed him as foot-boy with the cure of the village, hoping that under that learned man he might pick up an education for himself. But the cure kept him so busily employed in grooming his mule and in other menial offices that the boy found no time for learning. While in his service, it happened that the celebrated lithotomist, Cotot, came to Laval to operate on one of the cure's ecclesiastical brethren. Pare was present at the operation, and was ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... some women who prefer a valet to a husband; who think that the more menial are his services in public, the more apparent is his devotion. It is a Roman-chariot-wheel idea, which degrades both the man and the woman in the eyes of the spectators. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the letter, "One horse in the span always does most ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... in this! Can we ever hope to be respected by our servants? Never. Here are our two women, and Pa's valet, and a footman, and a courier, and all sorts of dependents, and yet in the midst of these, we are to have one of ourselves rushing about with tumblers of cold water, like a menial! Why, a policeman,' said Miss Fanny, 'if a beggar had a fit in the street, could but go plunging about with tumblers, as this very Amy did in this very room before our very eyes ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... ill clad and worse shod, continued with the nurse in Messer Guasparrino's house for two years, patiently performing all kinds of menial offices. But Giannotto, being now sixteen years old, and of a spirit that consorted ill with servitude, brooked not the baseness of his lot, and dismissed himself from Messer Guasparrino's service by getting aboard a galley bound for Alexandria, and travelled far and wide, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... at her,—"you must admit, Dr. Staunton, that every lady nurse is not like that. If you have an infection case in your practice, send for me. I think I can prove to you that there are some ladies who are too truly women to think anything menial or beneath them." She colored as she spoke, ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... writ, not only deputies, etc., but even their menial servants, are allowed to lord it over us. What is this but to have the curse of Canaan with a witness on us? To be the servant of servants, the most despicable ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... performed by the women, not from any necessity of a slavish condition or an enforced obedience, but because, where the men and boys must be warriors and hunters, the women and girls felt that it was their place and their duty to perform such menial labor as, to their unenlightened nature, seemed hardly suitable to those who were ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... those in the dogstar, to discuss on immortal essences, to dispute with the disbeliever on gnomes—a paradox will be the darling of his bosom for a month, and a good chimera be his bedfellow by night and theme by day for a year. He is fickle, and casts off his menial mistress at an hour's notice—his mind never weds any of the strange, fantastic idealities, which he woos for a time so passionately—deep disgust succeeds to the strongest attachment for them—he is as great a rake among the wayward "rebusses of the brain" which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... information enough to prove that he was not an object for political suspicion. He seems to have been simply animated by servile zeal for the woman's interests; to have performed for her all the menial offices of a servant in private; and to have misled the neighbors by affected equality ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... twelve domestics, if not more. In the first place, every member of the family must have an attendant especially for his or her use; then there is a man-cook, a number of nursery-maids, and several coolies for the more menial duties, such as cleaning the rooms, carrying the wood and water, and so forth. In spite of this number of servants, the attendance is frequently very bad; for, if one or other of them happens to be out, and his services are required, his master must wait until he returns, as no ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... had no other duty at Cecil Place than to wait upon the young heiress or assist in her embroidery, was considered and treated more as a humble companion than a menial; and Lady Frances Cromwell talked just as freely to Mistress Cecil in her presence as if they were perfectly alone. Nor was such confidence ever abused by the gentle girl. She moved within her small circle like an attendant satellite upon a brilliant star—silent and submissive—yet ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... however, they could ill have done without this cringing axeman. He did small menial services for his fellows, was ordered about at all times uncomplainingly, and bore the blame for everything that went wrong in the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be grateful for any task, however menial, that permits me to meditate. I understand your point of view. By coming aboard your ship I have broken the law, I have committed a crime; but not a sin. Crime and sin, every theologian admits, are ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... bow down before my author's wonderful powers of imagination, for once more, in company with my wife, with a hireling to carry my sketching stool and materials, I walked a great distance in search of the jetty. Vain, vain! not a ghost of a jetty was to be seen. The menial could not enlighten us. At last we unearthed the "oldest inhabitant," who took us back to where a few sticks in the water alone marked where it stood "a many years ago." I tried to develop some of the powers of the late ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Hooper as more than a distasteful necessity—somebody must wait on him and do him menial service; he was not feared, indeed, for surely such a dog would not dare to be false, but cordially disliked. Beaumaroy won him from the beginning. Whom he conceived him to be Beaumaroy himself never knew, but he opened his heart to him unreservedly. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Even menial work is interesting if we regard it as a stepping-stone to something better. It must be done thoroughly, however, to justify this hope. Life is a struggle, a struggle in which many are vanquished and few survive. Only those few survive who fit most perfectly to their environment. If a man ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... CELEBRES: it is a common story in the world, and needs no commentary now. POST-MORTEM Waldemar, it is said, was a Miller's Man, "of the name of Jakob Rehback;" who used to be about the real Waldemar in a menial capacity, and had some resemblance to him. He showed signets, recounted experiences, which had belonged to the real Waldemar. Many believed in his pretension, and took arms to assert it; the Reich being in much internal battle at the time; poor Kaiser ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... the menial, "royal Pandu's righteous son, Lost his game and lost his reason, Empress, thou art ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... one-sided people of strong faith. She began to refuse the attentions of the servants, swept and tidied her own room, cleaned her own boots and brushed her own clothes. Her brother could not help looking with irritation and even hatred at her cold face when she went about her menial work. In that work, which was always performed with a certain solemnity, he saw something strained and false, he saw something both pharisaical and affected. And knowing he could not touch her by persuasion, he carped at her and teased ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was unheard of. Jacob Kent was making the fire, chopping wood, packing water—doing menial tasks for a guest! When Jim Cardegee left Dawson, it was with his head filled with the iniquities of this roadside Shylock; and all along the trail his numerous victims had added to the sum of his crimes. Now, Jim Cardegee, with the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... should like such weather as well as summer; but having Tom Purdie to do this office reconciles me to it. I cannot cleik with John, as old Mrs. Mure [of Caldwell] used to say. I mean, that an ordinary menial servant thus hooked to your side reminds me of the twin bodies mentioned by Pitscottie, being two trunks on the same waist and legs. One died before the other, and remained a dead burden on the back of its companion.[121] ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... a certain number of Indians among them to cultivate the soil. This system was afterward introduced in all the Spanish settlements, the Indians being everywhere seized upon and compelled to work in the mines, to till the plantations, to carry burdens and to perform all menial and laborious services. The stated tasks of the unhappy natives were often much beyond their abilities, and multitudes sank under the hardships to which they were subjected. Their spirit was broken, they became humble and degraded, and the race was rapidly wasting away. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... assisted Edward Henry to alight. Within the groined and echoing hall of the establishment a young boy sprang out and, with every circumstance of deference, took Edward Henry's hat and stick. Edward Henry then walked a few steps to a lift, and said "smoking-room" to another menial, who bowed humbly before him, and at the proper moment bowed him out of the lift. Edward Henry, crossing a marble floor, next entered an enormous marble apartment chiefly populated by easy-chairs and tables. He sat down to a table and fiercely rang a bell which reposed ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... gained to have made the lady stoop to love a menial. We should not be misled by such examples as John of Saintre and Cherubin. The serving-boy filled the lowest offices in the household. The footman proper did not then exist, while on the other hand, few, if any maidservants lived in military strongholds. Young hands did everything, and were not ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... negro at the North. It is undeniable that there is such a prejudice. Accepting the undoubted fact, we see that it shuts nearly every avenue of honest industry against the man with a black skin, restricting him to the most menial offices; and that it is fostered in many ways by the conventions and usages of our society, so as practically to put him in a worse condition than his bonded brother at the South—always except as to his God-given right to his liberty and labor. Experience has shown that even ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... At Romsey, Mother Margaret, in her black patched habit and up-turned sleeves, was washing out the convent refectory, and thereby, she fervently hoped, washing her sins out of existence—without a thought of the chivalrous love which would have set her high above all such menial labour, and would never have permitted even the winds of heaven to "visit her cheek too roughly." Did it never occur to her that she might have allowed the Redeemer of men to "make her salvation" for her, and yet have allowed herself to make her husband's ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young swells inquired for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... where political and economic power makes it formidable, does it overcome opposition. The negro's competition for jobs and homes will probably exacerbate relations. As the negroes increased in numbers they would not only seek menial and unskilled work, but also strive to enter skilled trades where they would meet with antagonism of white workers. Moreover, the negroes would be forced to seek homes in what are now regarded as "white" ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... midst of this population is a House of Refuge for the Destitute, established by charitable individuals for the relief of those who may be found in a state of absolute destitution of the necessaries of life. Here they are employed in menial services, lodged and fed until they can be sent to their friends, or employment found for them. We went over the building, a spacious structure, in the Canongate, of the plainest Puritan architecture, with wide low rooms, which, at the time of the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... in his eye there sat a lambent fire which bespoke the man, without roughness, and without ferocity. In one hand he bore a crystal goblet full of every potent enchantment, and which rendered him who drank for ever a slave to the most menial offices and the most wanton caprices of his seducer. In the other hand he held loosely, and as if it had been intended merely to give a completeness to his figure and a gracefulness to his step, that irresistible wand by which the majesty of man had often been degraded, and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... would almost say arrogant. In fact he would give one the impression that he was playing a role—the role of emperor—that he was, in one word, posing, even if it were only for the benefit of the menial who had interrupted us. But when the intruder had vanished, William would, like a flash, become his own charming self again. That is what made me exclaim just now, 'if only the kaiser would be true to himself!—be ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... or rather appearance, of the Strasbourgeois, it is such as to afford very considerable satisfaction. The manners and customs of the people are simple and sober. The women, even to the class of menial servants, go abroad with their hair brushed and platted in rather a tasteful manner, as we even sometimes observe in the best circles of our own country. The hair is dressed a la grecque, and the head is usually uncovered: contrary to the broad round hats, and depending queues, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... recommend him to the royal grace; That, exercised within a higher sphere, His virtues more conspicuous might appear. Thus by the general voice was Arcite praised, And by great Theseus to high favour raised; 600 Among his menial servants first enroll'd, And largely entertain'd with sums of gold: Besides what secretly from Thebes was sent, Of his own income, and his annual rent: This well employ'd, he purchased friends and fame, But cautiously conceal'd from whence it came. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... pride that apes humility. Is that the way you teach your flock to 'leave all, and follow me'?" I started up suddenly, saying to myself, "I will seek this man in his palace, and see whether I shall be kindly received and consoled, or be repulsed by a menial." ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... have given up expecting to have servants do somethings as they ought to be done. Toast is one of the things. They are outside of the limitations of the menial mind.' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Far worse punishments than menial work were prepared for them. On 3d July a decree of the Convention ordered that the Dauphin should be separated from his family and "placed in the most secure apartment of the Tower." As soon as he heard this decree pronounced, says ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Roque would most implicitly have approved of the practice, inasmuch as in this case, his master would only be asserting a sort of hereditary right attached to those of his class. But to be deceiving two ladies of distinction was really too much for the delicate feelings of the conscientious menial. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... substance. This is doubtless due to the fact that the preparation of food being such a commonplace matter, its important relations to health, mind, and body have been overlooked, and it has been regarded as a menial service which might be undertaken with little or no preparation, and without attention to matters other than those which relate to the pleasure of the eye and the palate. With taste only as a criterion, it is so easy to disguise the results of careless and improper ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... spent with cattle. Even during my four years' service in the Confederate army, the greater portion was spent with the commissary department, in charge of its beef supplies. I was wounded early in the second year of the war and disabled as a soldier, but rather than remain at home I accepted a menial position under a quartermaster. Those were strenuous times. During Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania we followed in the wake of the army with over a thousand cattle, and after Gettysburg we led the retreat with double that number. Near the close of the war ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... father, Roger Kemble, was manager, the great Mrs. Siddons has been seen, as a contemporary writer describes, "walking up and down both sides of a street in a provincial town, dressed in a red woollen cloak, such as was formerly worn by menial servants, and knocking at each door to deliver the playbill of her benefit." And to come to a later instance, the reader may bear in mind that before that ornament of Mr. Crummles's company, Miss Snevellici, took her benefit or "bespeak" at the Portsmouth Theatre, she, in company with Nicholas ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... ourselves in discriminating our terms, we shall use work as a general word for effort, physical or mental, to some purposive end; labor for hard, physical work; toil for wearying or exhaustive work; and drudgery for tedious, monotonous, or distasteful work, especially of a low or menial kind. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... what was right in his own eyes—and so they came to Atchison or Leavenworth and engaged to drive these freighting teams to Denver. Many of them were sons of rich fathers, well educated, and had never engaged in manual labor, much less in such menial work as this, and when these proud and high-spirited fellows felt what an ignoble life they had been reduced to, the reader may well believe they did not feel good-natured over it. And now, when these young gentlemen came to understand that they were to be associated ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... done, what a success upon the whole her life would have been. She who had begun her career as a cottage-girl, a small quarry-owner's daughter, had sunk so low as to the position of laundress, had engaged in various menial occupations, had made an unhappy marriage for love which had, however, in the long run, thanks to Jocelyn's management, much improved her position, was at last to see her daughter secure what she herself had just missed securing, and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... and her fellow-creatures, who will understand, even more thoroughly than most of us now can (most of us being still so ignorant), how deep a debt of gratitude is due to her who first opened for women so many paths of duty, and raised nursing from a menial employment to the dignity of an "Art of Charity"—to England's first great nurse, the wise, beloved, and far-seeing heroine of the Crimean war, the Lady ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... little family used, five or six in all; two or three stood vacant, and served as playgrounds for the children in bad weather. Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact that Mrs. Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight. Altogether it was a strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... measure of her rights was the grim edict of the common law holding her in guardianship prior to marriage, and upon marriage making her and all her possessions practically the property of her husband, while a cruel, unreasonable and vicious public opinion excluded her from all except menial and ill-paid service. One by one and year by year these barriers have given way, until in many States her property and personal rights enjoy the complete shelter of the law. Now more than half the occupations and employments ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... The beautiful woman beside him struck me as Eastern beyond all question. While I gazed intently he turned to her and proffered a request. She smiled acquiescence, and there was a flash of anticipated triumph in her eye as she beckoned to a menial and sent him forth with a message. A movement as of expectancy ran around the tables where the guests sat at meat. The attendants opened wide the portals and a young girl came forward. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... came to an end, and they worked out by the day in the farms and inns, doing the most menial work, eating what was left from the tables, sleeping on the ground and suffering from cold. Then as they became enfeebled by hard work no one would employ them any longer, and they were forced to beg along the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... certain rude foreign fellow, flax-pedler by trade, ["HECHELTRAGER," Hawker of flax-combs or HECKLES;—is oftenest a Slavonic Austrian (I am told).] by creed Papist or worse, said floutingly, 'The Archbishop ought to have flung you all into the river, you—!' Upon which a menial servant of the Duke's suddenly broke in upon him in the way of actuality, the whole crowd blazing into flame; and the pedler would certainly have got irreparable damage, had not the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... place, as there, There only, were his refuge; and declared In broken words, with sighs of deep regret, The mortal danger he had scarce repell'd. Fired with his tragic tale, the indignant crowd, To guard his steps, forthwith a menial band, Array'd beneath his eye for deeds of war, Decree. Oh! still too liberal of their trust, And oft betray'd by over-grateful love, 70 The generous people! Now behold him fenced By mercenary weapons, like a king, Forth issuing from the city-gate at eve To seek his rural mansion, and with ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... boast that Birney Holds not the tyrant's rod, Nor binds in chains and fetters, The image of his God; No vassal, at his bidding, Is doomed the lash to feel; No menial crouches near him, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... cases of necessity and urgent campaigns, he was simple and frugal, toiling with painstaking care in menial offices as much as the rest. He trudged beside the soldiers and ran beside them, not taking a bath nor changing his clothing, but helping them in every labor and choosing absolutely the same food as they had. Often he would send to distinguished ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... anything menial in any kind of work from cleaning a stable up! The menial things are the evasions of work—tricks by which men are cheated out ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... homage, make thy prayer, cringe to each ruler of the day. I care for Jove less than nothing; let him do, let him lord it for this brief span, e'en as he list, for not long shall he rule over the gods. But no more, for I descry Jove's courier close at hand, the menial of the new monarch: beyond all [doubt] he has come to announce to us ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... Chang-lung at once jumped into the water. In a moment he had returned with the shoe and was handing it to the old man, when the latter requested him to put it on his foot for him. This was asking him to do a most menial act, which most men would have scornfully resented; but Chang-lung, pitying the decrepit-looking old stranger, immediately knelt on the ground and carefully fastened the dripping shoe on to ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... remained attached to Eustace's service, while the trusty Englishman, John Ingram, performed the more menial offices. Time sped away at the court of Bordeaux; the gallant Du Guesclin was restored to liberty, after twice paying away his ransom for the deliverance of his less renowned brethren in captivity, and Enrique of Trastamare, returning to Castile, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proper angle, their bangles jingling, their right hands carried raised in a most affected manner. Their social ease was remarkable, especially in contrast with the awkwardness of the lower poverty-stricken or menial castes. The latter drew one side to let us pass, and stared. Our chiefs' sons, on the other hand, stepped springingly and beamingly forward; spat carefully in their hands (we did the same); shook hands all down the line: exchanged a long-drawn "moo-o-ga!" with each ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... an array of logs nicely notched and ready for our building operations on the morrow, and we were all tired, for after the buildings had been staked out we all fell in and helped with the logging—all but von Schoenvorts. He, being a Prussian and a gentleman, couldn't stoop to such menial labor in the presence of his men, and I didn't see fit to ask it of him, as the work was purely voluntary upon our part. He spent the afternoon shaping a swagger-stick from the branch of jarrah and talking with Miss La Rue, who had sufficiently unbent ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... an agency for almost every branch of employment not actually menial, from curates to lady's-maids, and the place of business was a large one. There were two entrances, and two distinct compartments, at the opposite ends of the building; but a broad, long counter ran the whole length of it, and a person at one end could see the applicants at the other as they stood ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... his hand with energy on the table, and darting a look of fiery indignation from his eye, "Sir, you were this night trepanned—yes, sir, vilely, shamefully trepanned—I repeat the expression—into the performance of a menial office—an office so degrading, so offensive, so unbecoming the rank, the station, and the habits of gentlemen, my very blood recoils when I only ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... essences, to dispute with the disbeliever on gnomes—a paradox will be the darling of his bosom for a month, and a good chimera be his bedfellow by night and theme by day for a year. He is fickle, and casts off his menial mistress at an hour's notice—his mind never weds any of the strange, fantastic idealities, which he woos for a time so passionately—deep disgust succeeds to the strongest attachment for them—he is as great a rake among the wayward "rebusses ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... uncle, with the bracketed note in red ink, "see Debbrook, Daybrook, Debbers, and Debs." Yes! this gaunt, half-crazy, overworked peasant, content to rake the dead leaves before the rolling chariots of the Beverdales, was her grandfather; that poorly clad girl in the cottage, and even the menial in the scullery of this very house that might be HERS, were her COUSINS! She burst into a laugh, and then refolded the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... are driven away by the heat; as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post, and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook, wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menial occupations, they sew and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... very firm idea of her own standing as a princess. Had she not earlier in the day impressed Maizie? And now, was this stranger, even though she were a queen, to demand menial service of one of royal blood? Suzanna thought not. So she said ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... good literary education in the high school at Muncie, Indiana, and was a young woman of taste and refinement. Could she marry a butler? To be near her hero, she herself had just now been willing to undertake a menial position. But she had then imagined him to be a person of importance. This stage in her cogitations led her to the reflection that her feelings were unworthy of her. Had her regard for Asbury Fuller been all due to the belief that he was a person of importance, merely the worship ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the fact that it put off the evil hour of lessons, partly that he imparted into the process a purely imaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading. In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on their way to school, who always envied him his superior menial occupation. To go to school, it was felt, was a common calamity of boyhood that called into play only the simplest forms of evasion, whereas to take down actual shutters in a bona fide store, and wield a real broom that raised a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... from Edinburgh, on the expedition to England, having the command of a troop of horse, not complete, in number about forty.[355] His military talents were well known, for he had distinguished himself in several campaigns in Flanders.[356] But, as he took into the field only his menial servants, no very important posts were entrusted to him; and his career appears not to have been signalized by any remarkable military exploits. In short, it may be truly said of him as of Dr. Donne by Izaak Walton, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... among whom we find scavengers, vermin-eaters, executioners, basket-makers, musicians, and professional burglars, probably represent the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the invading Aryans and condemned to menial and degrading occupations. Sir G. Grierson has thrown out the picturesque suggestion that they are the ancestors of the European gypsies and that Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... lunch. And twenty minutes after making this decision she was sitting in the anteroom of a suite of theatrical offices in the Empire Theater building. The girl in attendance had, as usual, all the airs little people assume when they are in close, if menial, relations with a person who, being important to them, therefore fills their whole small horizon. She deigned to take in Susan's name and the letter. Susan seated herself at the long table and with the seeming of calmness that always veiled her in her hours of greatest agitation, turned over ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... like such weather as well as summer; but having Tom Purdie to do this office reconciles me to it. I cannot cleik with John, as old Mrs. Mure [of Caldwell] used to say. I mean, that an ordinary menial servant thus hooked to your side reminds me of the twin bodies mentioned by Pitscottie, being two trunks on the same waist and legs. One died before the other, and remained a dead burden on the back of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... at the library door—and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he?—some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night—of the gathering together of the household—of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... happened to be there—there was always one at least—and observed in suave accents, "Please, sir, can I have a paper?" Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would write upon it, "J. O. Jones (or A. B. Smith or C. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such a time". And, by presenting this to the menial who opened the door to you at your house, you went in rejoicing, and all ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... fine are more often resorted to than other punishments nowadays, probably because very few of the Siems possess jails for the reception of criminals. The condemned one in a criminal case frequently serves his time by working for the Siem as a menial servant. The above description, which is based on the account given by the Rev. W. Lewis, with some modifications, may be taken as the usual form of ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... shut him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamber where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when we give our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work. ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... masters have refused to grant their serfs their freedom, who thus, though rolling in riches, remain with the chains of slavery round their necks, liable at any moment to be called back and compelled to do their lord's bidding, even in the most menial capacity. They have the general faults of slaves, being cringing, cunning, and delighting in falsehood; but they are intelligent, kind-hearted, and merry, and honest when property is entrusted to their ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... charms and her resistance increased.—I have caught myself in a raging fit, sometimes vowing I would have her, and, at others, jealous that, to secure herself from my attempts, she would throw herself into the arms of some menial or inferior, whom otherwise she would not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... them had warned Mr. Alcott of this ending to his experiment. But all were kindly as they saw the family take up life bravely in Concord again, with even fewer necessities and comforts than before. Both Mr. and Mrs. Alcott did whatever work they could find to do, thinking nothing too menial if it provided food and clothing for their family. Naturally the education of the children was rather fragmentary and insufficient, but it developed their own powers of thinking. Through the pages of their diaries in which they wrote regularly, and ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... exacting the performance of any menial or degrading task, as well as for hazing, was court-martial and possible dismissal, the yearling generally succeeded in getting the work done without giving orders or making demands, so the plebes could ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... the soul of the man whip through the livery of the menial like a knife, and Henry, stumbling forward with a working face, clasped that hand proudly in his strong white one: only he dropped on one knee to do it, as if to show that, though gentlemen might be pleased to show him kindness ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "cleared the decks for action," as he called it, which meant putting away the tea, butter, sugar, and bread in a cupboard, and folding up the table cloth. Poor George! he had no false pride to forbid such menial offices; he had not the brag about him which would have led another to stand on the staircase and howl "Gyp" till every one far and near should be made aware that he had had a meal which required clearing away. No; he was only a gamekeeper's ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... demanded a calm and skilful judgment, and in almost every instance, the decision was characterized by remarkable good sense and equity. In most of the colonies the men who are intrusted with local control, a few years since were either slaves in America, or employed in menial tasks which it was almost hopeless they could escape. Liberia, at present, may boast of several individuals, who, but for their caste, might adorn society; while they who have personally known Roberts, Lewis, Benedict, J. B. McGill, Teage, Benson of Grand Bassa, and Dr. McGill ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... stories illustrate one phase of Mongol character. We seldom hear among them of those domestic murders so frequent in Turkish history; pretenders to the throne were reduced to servitude, and generally made to perform menial offices, but seldom murdered. They illustrate another fact: favors conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... very strange dream. 'I was carried through the streets with the rapidity of lightning,' said she, 'and taken into a soldier's room, and I had to wait upon him like a servant, sweep his room, clean his boots, and do all kinds of menial work. It was only a dream, and yet I am just as tired as if I really had done everything.' 'The dream may have been true,' said the king. 'I will give you a piece of advice. Fill your pocket full of peas, and make a small hole in the pocket, and then if you are carried away again, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... playgrounds for the children in bad weather. Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact that Mrs. Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight. Altogether it was a strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... offered for his passage he did not know; he only remembered that he had been told "to make himself handy." This he had done cheerfully, if at times with the unskillfulness of a novice; but it was not a peculiar or a menial task in a company where all took part in manual labor, and where existence seemed to him to bear the charm of a prolonged picnic. Neither was he subjected to any difference of affection or treatment from Mrs. Silsbee, the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... and almost daily absence from home, she was exposed to constant intercourse with two handsome young men, both, it might be supposed, ambitious of pleasing her more than most parents would have deemed entirely prudent. Nor was Nurse Jamieson,—her menial situation, and her excessive partiality for her foster-son, considered,—altogether such a matron as could afford her protection. Gideon, however, knew that his daughter possessed, in its fullest extent, the upright and ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... police-call was sounded, and all the "plebes" were turned out to police the company streets. This new phase of West Point life— and its phases rapidly developed themselves—was a hard one indeed. The duties are menial, and very few discharge them without some show of displeasure, and often of temper. None are exempt. It is not hard work, and yet every one objects to doing it. The third and fourth classes, by regulations, are required to do the policing. When I was a plebe, the plebes did it all. Many ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... at the same date, had not studied deeply in college and hospital; nor had he taken any long course of instruction in foreign schools and universities. When he had decided to become a doctor, he had simply ridden with an old, established physician—ridden literally—in a half-menial, half-medical capacity. He had cared for the doctor's horse, swept the doctor's office, run the doctor's errands, pounded drugs, gathered herbs, and mixed plasters, until he was fitted to ride for himself. Then he had applied to the court and received ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... In Balaghat a Kumhar is put out of caste if a dead cat is found in his house. At the census of 1901 the Kumhar was ranked with the impure castes, but his status is not really so low. Sir D. Ibbetson said of him: "He is a true village menial; his social standing is very low, far below that of the Lohar and not much above the Chamar. His association with that impure beast, the donkey, the animal sacred to Sitala, the smallpox goddess, pollutes him and also his readiness to carry manure and sweepings." As already seen there ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... alike; the tone of her voice, though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, little more than a menial, felt for an exalted lady, his mistress: but it was worship. To catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on it before she had spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her; became the business of his life. Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, and never thought ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... connected take it into their heads to go into service for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,—to procure means for their education, or to help members of their families who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial duties of some household where they are not known, and, having stooped—if stooping it is to be considered—to lowly offices, no born and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... make the young culprit smart for his offences, and one day, when Mr. Newcome was absent, and Tommy refractory as usual, summoned the butler and footman to flog the young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's shins as to cause that menial to limp and suffer for many days after; and, seizing the decanter, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs. Newcome's head before he would submit to the punishment she desired administered. When Mr. Newcome ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... describe, might come and trace Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. To see her weep, joy every face forsook, And grief flung sables on each menial look. The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished spirit ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the reddened sod, The grief-bowed Legion kneel to God, In Palmer's name, and by his blood, They swell the battle-cry; We'll sheathe no more our dripping steel, 'Till tyrants Southern vengeance feel, And menial hordes as suppliants kneel, Or, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... there lived an earl Who had a charming niece: And never gave the timid girl A single moment's peace! Whatever low and menial task His fancy flitted through, He did not hesitate to ask That shrinking child to do. (I see with truly honest shame you Are blushing, and I do not blame you. A tale like this the feelings softens, And brings the ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... walked, a certain rude foreign fellow, flax-pedler by trade, ["HECHELTRAGER," Hawker of flax-combs or HECKLES;—is oftenest a Slavonic Austrian (I am told).] by creed Papist or worse, said floutingly, 'The Archbishop ought to have flung you all into the river, you—!' Upon which a menial servant of the Duke's suddenly broke in upon him in the way of actuality, the whole crowd blazing into flame; and the pedler would certainly have got irreparable damage, had not the Town-guard instantly hooked ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... without spirit, without ambition. Laws were passed against them, one at Bordeaux as late as 1596,—many earlier; by these they were even denied the rights of citizens; they could not bear arms, nor engage in any trade save wood-working or menial occupations, nor marry out of their race; they were obliged to wear a scarlet badge on the shoulder, in the shape of a goose's foot; they were not to go barefoot in towns lest they contaminate the streets, and the penalty was ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... him to his home in Gex, and then to Geneva. She entered a convent and worked as a menial so as to be near him. The Bishop made Father La Combe her official adviser, so as to lend ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... nearest lowlands. Even if he had moved down into the lowlands he could not hope to own land but would only have fallen once more into the unbearable state of his forbears in Ulster—that of tenant, or menial, with proprietors and bosses to harass his life. This peril alone was enough, aside from the lack of money, to make the highlander shrink from the society of the lowlands. The few who straggled down were glad enough to return ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... talent, but never that creative power which we call genius because it suggests the genii. "No man is a hero to his valet," says the adage. Carlyle assumes this to be the fault of the latter—due to sawdust or other cheap filling in the head of the menial. Yet, may not the valet be wiser in this matter than the world? The hero, the greatest genius, is not always aflame with celestial fire, impelled by that mysterious power which comes from "beyond the clouds"— may be, for most part, the commonest kind of clay, a creature ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and I resented the menial duty of sliding those heavy filecases down four flights of stairs; but at a time like this, I thought philosophically, a man has duties he cannot shirk; besides, Le ffacase was old, I could afford to humor him even if it ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... forfeited the favor of a rich father by marrying the woman of his choice, but never regrets the action. From the outset ill-fortune pursues him. He is willing to work, but work is hard to get. He accepts various employments, more or less menial, and through no fault of his, loses one after another. Nothing is stable except Mary's love and Dr. Sevier's friendship. Just before the war poverty compels him to send Mary to her mother in Milwaukee. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... this man had been his master's constant companion and friend; fighting in every battle, cleaving to King and Prince in spite of every opposing influence, carrying letters between father and son in the teeth of the enemy, humbling himself as a servant, and performing menial labours, in those latter days of bitterness and outrage, when all courtly surroundings ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... due remuneration of the faithful servant. This practice was carried to a great extent among the Romans; the owner of a skilful slave could make a greater profit by giving scope to the man's energies than by confining him forcibly to menial occupation. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... nether garments, and was now sure the news of what had so recently befallen him had not reached New York. There now came on board four flabby men, dreamy of countenance, and whose dilapidated garments bespoke them persons of menial occupations. But as neither St. Paul, nor Alexander the Great, nor Henry Ward Beecher, (who, I take it, is as great a man as either of them, and will leave more portraits of himself than both,) never dressed according to their "circumstances," so these four ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... that club very swiftly indeed, never to see it again, scarcely pausing to say farewell to those menial kings, and as I left the door a great window opened far up at the top of the house and a flash of lightning streamed from it ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labour adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labour to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the voice of either captain or mate would reach me from below, usually summoning me with an oath, and ordering me upon some other business, such as to mop out the cabin, swab the quarter-deck, black their boots, or perform some other menial act of service. In fact, I had begun to perceive that the drunken old skipper had no intention of teaching me anything of the seaman's craft, but had taken me aboard as a sort of slave-of-all-work, to be kicked about by everybody, but by himself in particular. That ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... 27th February, Guiol's daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning. The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children, overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the boy's governess; and intolerably cruel to Pincott, her attendant. Not venturing to attack her friend (for the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature, and only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself), she maltreated all these, and especially poor Pincott, who was menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according to the caprice of her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into the outer darkness to seek that which is lost until He find it. For even that is not shut out beyond the bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mystery of the Hereafter. Do you know Whittier's beautiful poem of the old monk who had spent his whole life in hard and menial work for the rescue and help of others? And when he is dying his confessor tells him work is over, "Thou shalt sit down and have endless prayers, and wear a golden crown for ever and ever in Heaven." "Ah," he says, "I'm a stupid old man. I'm dull at ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... of the want of paper at the Council-table the other day, which I have observed; Wooly being to have found it, and did, being called, tell the King to his face the reason of it; and Mr. Evelyn tells me several of the menial servants of the Court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the King's coming in. He tells me the King of France hath his mistresses, but laughs at the foolery of our King, that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... cot by the green hillside Hath more charms for me than thy halls of pride; If the roof be lowly, the moss rose there Rich fragrance sheds on the summer air; And the birds and insects, with joyous song, Are more welcome far than a menial throng." ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... course, obtained the requisite official sanction, so that there could not be anything actually against her family; but concerning the reception into their midst of this young person, who had formerly filled a "menial position," the ladies of the regiment felt ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... was a pleasure to do things for her, and she had no desire to do what somebody else seemed desirous to do for her. He unpacked her clothes and put them away. She was not proposing to go out again, so he got her slippers and took off her boots. It delighted him to perform menial offices. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with more dresses. There seemed no end to them, each more beautiful and costly than the other. The maid put them on the sofa; then, picking up the opera cloak, she laid it out on top of the dresses in the trunk. Even the humble colored menial was spellbound by the beauty of ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... night-caps that they might go to mass in silk and powder on a Sunday. After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom she vainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentions the poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtain some menial position in the household of one of her father's friends. Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of their blood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... friend like you, Mr. Thwaite;—none whom I love as I do you. And next to you is your son. For myself, there is nothing that I would not do for him or you;—no service, however menial, that I would not render you with my own hands. There is no limit to the gratitude which I owe you. But my girl is young, and if this burden of rank and wealth is to be hers,—it is proper that she do honour ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... a capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP and with per capita GDP at least 75% of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in menial jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by nearly 4.0% per year between 2003 and 2006, largely because of an investment boom and infrastructure upgrades for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Greece ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... own past was confined to vague and fanciful traditions. They were few in numbers, barbarous in condition, untamable in nature; they built no cities and practiced no industries: their women planted maize and performed all menial labors; their men hunted and fought. Before we came, they fought one another; our coming did not unite them against a common enemy; it only gave each of them one enemy the more. After an intercourse ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... "don't stop to play with his knife. No matter if it is cracked. So is he, for the matter of that. Go and tell your menial troop to remember to put a little beef in the soup, this noon. I am tired of sipping warm water and ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... entirely to the menial occupation of announcing, by a single dab, or a variation of raps, the desire of persons on the door-step to communicate with the occupants of the interior of a mansion. Modern genius has elevated it into a source of refined ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... they cannot exist except as slaves, but they can be trained to understand language and to do certain kinds of work. They are harmless and mild, making excellent servants, otherwise they would have perished ages ago. All menial work and most of the manual labor is done by the slave race. Formerly criminals were sterilized and reduced to unwilling slavery, but there have been no unwilling slaves in Kondal for ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... The scene is a vast one, and although Christ is on the Cross, life does not stop. To most of the people gathered there, what takes place is no more than a common execution. Many of them are attending to it as to a tedious duty. Others work away at some menial task more or less connected with the Crucifixion, as unconcerned as cobblers humming over their last. Most of the people in the huge canvas are represented, as no doubt they were in life, without much personal feeling about Christ. His own friends ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... was employed by her neighbors to help turn and put down carpets, cover furniture, etc. etc., light jobs requiring judgment and skill rather than strength, for which her friends, who never placed her in a menial capacity, gladly paid double the sum they would to any one else. She was also a capital nurse, and in this position rendered herself very valuable in many households, and for such services she was even more ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... enough of his mercantile experience to know that a master's eye makes a ready servant. Accordingly, with his tunic ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy slippers on his feet, a small wand in his hand, wherewith he now directed the gaze, and now corrected the back, of some duller menial, he went from chamber to chamber of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... prevails in Castile, in reference to the more humble occupations. A man of gentle blood may be a coachman, lacquey, scullion, or any other menial, without disparaging his nobility, which is said to sleep in the mean while. But he fixes on it an indelible stain, if he exercises any mechanical vocation. "Hence," says Capmany, "I have often seen a village in this province, in which the vagabonds, smugglers, and hangmen even, were natives, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... my companions; for no courtiers, male or female, were permitted to have the same honour. Each lady stood behind the person who had been intrusted to her charge, and waited upon him. My gallantry, as a Frenchman, was sorely wounded at the idea of my charming princess performing the duties of a menial, and I expressed my feelings to her in a low tone of voice. She shook her head, as if to rebuke me, and I said no more. When we had finished the banquet, his majesty ordered the water of the golden fountain to be produced, which it immediately was, by those in attendance, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... transported small eggs and larvae. Often, when a great mandibled soldier had hold of some insect, he would have five or six tiny workers surrounding him, each grasping any projecting part of the loot, as if they did not trust him in this menial capacity,—as an anxious mother would watch with doubtful confidence a big policeman wheeling her baby across a crowded street. These workers were often diminutive Marcelines, hindering rather than aiding in the progress. But in every phase of activity ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the Public" which they recently put forth, they explained, that, instead of taking the places of better men, as they are accused of doing, they considered that, in performing the menial work they did, they opened the way to higher and more lucrative employments for others; saying several times, in their simple, impressive way, "We lift ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... I have dreamed it; day and night I have fought for it. I have plotted and planned—I have plotted to save a minute. I have done menial work that I might have my brain free—all the languages that I know I have worked at at such times. I have calculated the cost of foods—I have lived on a third of the pittance I earned, that I might save two-thirds ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... must not sell her, or otherwise dispose of her services during the unexpired period of her servitude, because "he had dealt deceitfully with her." In case of betrothal to his son, as in the other, she was not to be reduced to her former rank as a menial, but to be treated in every respect as a daughter. Even when the affection of the man to whom she was betrothed waned, he was to yield to her all the rights and privileges which belonged to her as his wife; and, if any of these were ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... religious regularity, all the most esoteric examples of periodical literature in our language, from "The Iron-Trades Review" to "The Animals' Guardian." With one careless movement he destroyed the balanced perfection of a labour into which some menial had put his soul, and then dropped into a gigantic easy-chair near the fire, whose thin flames were just rising through the interstices of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the fair sex which was to form so important an element in the boys' later life. The "gentle damoiseau," confided at the age of seven or eight to the care of a knight whose reputation for prowess and courtesy ensured a good example, learned modesty and obedience in the performance of menial services, then considered honorable; in the court-yard of the castle he was instructed in horsemanship, and in the use of the lance, the bow, and the sword. In the dangers and hardships of the chase the principal occupation in time of peace,—he was inured ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... footgear. It is not possible for a Japanese to perform a lowlier act of obeisance towards another than to be the bearer of the latter's sandals. Yoshimitsu was in a position to dictate to the Emperor, yet he voluntarily performed a menial ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Marquesan, I gathered that his mind was set on fish-hooks; with three of which, and a brace of dollars, I thought he was not ill rewarded for passing his forenoons in our cockpit, eating, drinking, delivering his opinions, and pressing the ship's company into his menial service. For all that, he was a man of so high a bearing and so like an uncle of my own who should have gone mad and got tattooed, that I applied to him, when we were both on shore, to know if he were satisfied. "Mitai ehipe?" I asked. And he, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguish her), accompanied by a boy the image of herself, whom I knew to be her son. He was apparently older than the fair-haired children, who also passed to and fro, attired as servants, and generally employed in some menial work. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... as he is worshipped by the readers of the "Bow Bells Novelettes," and for the same reason—a profound sense of personal weakness. That tendency to devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike whether for its menial tasks it employs serfs or emperors. Against all this the great clerical republican stands in everlasting protest, preferring his failure to his rival's success. The issue is still between him and Lorenzo, between the responsibilities of liberty and the license of slavery, between ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... knave, though allowing for the menial, Nor overmuch the king, Jack, nor prodigally genial. Ashore on liberty he flashed in escapade, Vaulting over life in its levelness of grade, Like the dolphin off Africa in rainbow a-sweeping— Arch iridescent shot from ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... and, shouldering a hoe, sauntered toward the cornfield, and was soon hidden by a clump of young weeping-willows, the sunny green branches of which trailed to the darker verdure of the sward. Screened by the drooping foliage, the shirking menial cast his body on the grass to store ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... plasterer or bricklayer; whether bending beneath tool box of the carpenter or ensconced on the bench of the shoemaker, he has a moral strength, a consciousness of acquirement, giving him a dignity of manhood unpossessed by the menial and those engaged in unskilled labor. Let it never be forgotten that as high over in importance as the best interest of the race is to that of the individual, will be the uplifting influence of assiduously cultivating a desire to obtain trades. The crying ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... long dreary columns of invoice figures to add. Twice Captain Zelotes went out and then, just as Albert settled back for a rest and breathing spell, Issachar Price appeared, warned apparently by some sort of devilish intuition, and invented "checking up stock" and similar menial and tiresome tasks to keep him uncomfortable till the captain returned. The customers who came in asked questions concerning him and he was introduced to at least a dozen citizens of South Harniss, who observed "Sho!" and "I want ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... of that sort? Perhaps you will have heard the anecdote about one of our ambassadors to England. All ambassadors, save ours, wear on formal occasions a distinguishing uniform, just as our army and navy officers do; it is convenient, practical, and saves trouble. But we have declared it menial, or despotic, or un-American, or something equally silly, and hence our ambassadors must wear evening dress resembling closely the attire of those who are handing the supper or answering the door-bell. An Englishman saw Mr. Choate at some diplomatic ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the young girl's active brain, quickened by seclusion and fed by solitary books. She read with keen eyes the miserable secret of her father's strange guest in the poverty-stricken walls, in the mute evidences of menial handicraft performed in loneliness and privation, in this piteous adaptation of an accident to save the conscious shame of premeditated toil. She knew now why he had stammeringly refused to receive her father's offer to buy back the goods he had given him; ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... hurt at being put to menial employment, or whether he simply felt it an imposition to require him to carry a pile of boards and three sturdy lads in addition, it is impossible to say. At all events, he ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,—but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... bows, and the still humbler expressions of the Prussian Ambassador, the Marquis da Lucchesini, were hardly noticed; and the Saxon Ambassador, Count von Buneau, was addressed in a language that no well-bred master ever uses in speaking to a menial servant. He did not cast a look, or utter a word, that was not an insult to the audience and a disgrace to his rank. I never before saw him vent his rage and disappointment so indiscriminately. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fear or deference was gone, she had nothing left but scorn for these two despicable creatures, the fat harpy and her crapulent consort who had battened so long upon her misery, who had held her in bondage to the most menial tasks of their wretched restaurant while they filched and hoarded the money paid them for giving her the care and the advantages that ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... chivalry, began to be grossly varied from the original purposes of the institution. None was more remarkable than the change which took place in the breeding and occupation of pages. This peculiar species of menial originally consisted of youths of noble birth, who, that they might be trained to the exercise of arms, were early removed from their paternal homes, where too much indulgence might have been expected, to be placed in the family of some prince ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in Bela with a sneer, "you need not always remind me that my future wife—the bride of my lord the Count's own bailiff—does menial work for a village schoolmistress and a ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in bringing pets to the table. It may be necessary sometimes; but the true sportsman would always prefer to leave the unpleasant task of execution to menial hands, while he goes out into the wild country to capture his game by his own skill,—if he has good luck. I would rather run some risk in this enterprise (even as the young Tobias did, when the voracious pike sprang at him from the waters of the Tigris, and would have devoured him but for the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... overthrow of Rome, what can we not predict of the Christian civilization which, in the twentieth century of its existence, degrades its Christian women to labors fit only for the beasts of the field; harnessing them with dogs to do the most menial labors; which drags them below even this, holding their womanhood up to sale, putting both Church and State sanction upon their moral death; which, in some places, as in the city of Berlin, so far recognizes the sale of women's bodies for the vilest purposes as part of the Christian religion, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... as matters were, Dan and I could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one, should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning of all others, my brilliant literary career just commenced, the anomaly of the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... that she was a sweet and lovely girl, one in every way similar to Solveig the innocent, and he did not care to change it. He tried to remember Gila's conventional upbringing, and realize that she had no conception of a girl out of her own social circle other than as a menial to whom to condescend. The vision of her loveliness in rose and silver, with her prayer-book "in her 'kerchief" was still dimly forcing him to be at least polite and accept her letter of apology for her failure, as he could but ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about religion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being good all the week, can even be good ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... nearer to each other, the princes began to spin the web of their treason; and for this purpose a messenger was sent by them to Tarik, informing him how Roderic, who had been a mere menial and servant to their father, had, after his death, usurped the throne; that the princes had by no means relinquished their rights, and that they implored protection and security for themselves. They offered to desert, and pass over to Tarik with the troops ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... in Germany young ladies living in what we more luxurious British would consider something like poverty; cooking, waiting at table, and performing many a household office which would be here considered menial; and yet finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which is, unfortunately, too rare in ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... broken accents, indicating but little knowledge of the English language. From the manner in which the crew treated him, it was evident that he was an established favourite with them as well as the officers, for each appeared to treat him more as an equal than a menial. He laboured cheerfully at sailor's duty until the first sea broke over her, when, seeing that the caboose was in danger of being carried from the lashings, and swept to leeward in the mass of wreck, he ran for that all-important apartment, and ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... house. I was all alone with him, ready to render him every kind of service I was capable of, and to give him all the dutiful marks of a most sincere affection. I do not doubt but my assiduity was very agreeable to him. I performed the most menial offices unperceived by him taking the time for it when the servants were not at hand; as well to mortify myself as to pay due honor to what Jesus Christ said, that He came not to be ministered to, but to minister. When father made ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan, to a companion of her sex, that, 'he was the only gentleman who gave you an idea of how he would look when he was kissing you.' Juliana cherished that vision likewise. Young ladies are not supposed to do so, if menial maids are; but Juliana did cherish it, and it possessed her fancy. Bear in your recollection that she was not a healthy person. Diseased little heroines may be made attractive, and are now popular; but strip off ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to evince a new evolution in mental and moral process. The influence of riches was quite as marked upon him as upon so many of his white brothers and sisters, proving their essential kinship. To-day he began to sniff disdainfully at his menial tasks; and in the evening "Ole Dan Tucker" resounded from his fiddle with a rollicking abandon over which the cook groaned in despair, "Dat ar niggah's 'ligion drop off ob 'im like a yaller pig from de bush. 'Ligion dat's skeert inter us hain't no ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... got up a disturbance in the church. And then the church all went to pieces. Oh, what a church it was! And mother thinks he's such a nice man. I don't. Don't carry his carpet-bag again, Tite. Don't make a menial of yourself for anybody." After saying this she walked part of the way home with Tite, and then they parted with ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... housework any more than I do; he says the performance of menial duties crushes his spirit—but he makes such a fuss about things. You might think, to hear him talk, that getting up coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues, knives and brasses were the entire work of a household instead of being mere incidents in the daily routine. If ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... I feel for him," he answered. "I have reason to feel dislike. He ruined my prospects, he killed my companions, and he treated me with every indignity and cruelty he could devise while I remained on board his ship. He made me serve him as a menial—wait behind his chair, clean his shoes, arrange his cabin, and if I displeased him he ordered his men to flog me. Ay! I never told you that before, I was ashamed to do so. He well-nigh broke my spirit. Had I remained much longer with him he would have done ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... from sin and to find peace with God, led him at last to enter a cloister, and devote himself to a monastic life. Here he was required to perform the lowest drudgery, and to beg from house to house. He was at an age when respect and appreciation are most eagerly craved, and these menial offices were deeply mortifying to his natural feelings; but he patiently endured this humiliation, believing that it was necessary because ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... to that very numerous group of stories dealing with the success of the youngest child in the face of opposition, mistreatment, or lack of sympathy from others of his family. "John was Boots, of course, because he was the youngest"; which means that it was the rule to give the most menial tasks about the house to the youngest. But John had the saving trait of always "wondering" about things, which led him to find out what would always be hidden from his more stupid ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Hatty. Anything was preferable to the life she led, she said, pleading so hard that Hatty, after an interview with the old aunt—a purse-proud, vulgar woman, who seemed glad to be rid of her charge—consented to receive her, and Genevra became one of our family, an equal rather than a menial, whom Hatty treated with as much consideration as if she had been a sister. I wish I could tell you how beautiful Genevra Lambert was at that period of her life. I have her picture, which I will ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... that I should wait, and long, and hunger, for the love that you took only as your right. So I waited, and to-day I triumph in the thought that Deane Phelps' petted wife is a dependent upon my bounty, a menial in the house where I reign supreme, and which knows no law but my will. I have forgotten how to love, but each day (and I have conned the lesson well) I learn ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... of Russia, Martin Guerre of the CAUSES CELEBRES: it is a common story in the world, and needs no commentary now. POST-MORTEM Waldemar, it is said, was a Miller's Man, "of the name of Jakob Rehback;" who used to be about the real Waldemar in a menial capacity, and had some resemblance to him. He showed signets, recounted experiences, which had belonged to the real Waldemar. Many believed in his pretension, and took arms to assert it; the Reich being in much ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... accept rebuff. Who was she to treat with scorn the man whose merest word now could move a million stalwarts! "You must pardon me, Miss Allison," he answered, with emphasis. "I am not here in the capacity of a menial in the household. The events of the past few days have conspired to make me a factor in affairs, with power and influence far exceeding that wielded by my late employer. Furthermore, I should see him, or rather he should seek to see me, within the next few ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial household duties; and to this he added the practices of immoderate fasting, perpetual silence, downcast glances, veiled countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. In short, he advocated sleeping ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... please you, Madam," said I, "Sister Denise is thus distressed because she, being a De La Pole, is set to scrubbing and such like menial work." ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... secret 'scap'd Sir Lanval's tongue: 'Yes!' he declar'd, 'he felt love's fullest power! Yes!' he declar'd, 'he had a paramour! But one, so perfect in all female grace, Those charms might scarcely win her handmaid's place; Those charms, were now one menial damsel near, Would lose this little light, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... the whole matter; and Lady D——, having conversed for a little with Phebe, took such a liking to the girl that she proposed having her continually about her person, as a kind of superior waiting-maid, half menial and half companion, and to remove her from under our roof on the instant. Although this was an offer too good and too opportune to be negatived, yet we could not think of parting with our darling Phebe on so short a warning; and, after some remonstrances on both sides, it was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... time I was the ship's drudge. At everybody's beck and call, I was employed from morning till night in all kinds of menial offices. It was a hard life, and the treatment meted out to me was rough; but having got the better of my first rage and indignation, I resolved to make the best of my situation and to show no sullenness; besides I honestly wished ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... suddenly angry; why he resented the head waiter's blush as an impertinence and a liberty. After all, the fellow was a student and probably a gentleman; and if he chose to help himself through college by taking that menial role during the summer, rather than come upon the charity of his friends or the hard-earned savings of a poor old father, what had any one to say against it? Gaites had nothing to say against it; and yet ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... School masters and mistresses have quite as little suspicion that they have sowed the seed which sprung up in the youths who are dismissed from offices for defalcation, and the girls who leave menial service ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... his mother died and his father sacrificed his last remaining possessions for drink. He insulted and even attacked his son, bidding him leave his house, and the poor boy was compelled to render the most menial service to all. For ten long years this condition lasted, yet Ivan ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... home at night to a cheerless house and a solitary meal for which she had no appetite; getting up in the night to go to Grandma Fergus taken down suddenly with one of her attacks; helping Mrs. Smith out with her sewing and spring cleaning. Menial, monotonous tasks many of them. Not that she minded that, if they only got somewhere and gave her something from life besides the mere fighting ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... e'en my throne will be with age an altar-stone. When the time comes for me to cast off earthly robe, And enter—being Day—into the realms of light, The gods will say, we call Zizimi from his globe That we may have our brother nearer to our sight! Glory is but my menial, Pride my own chained slave, Humbly standing when Zizimi is in his seat. I scorn base man, and have sent thousands to the grave. They are but as a rushen carpet to my feet. Instead of human beings, eunuchs, blacks, or mutes, Be yours, oh, Sphinxes, with the glad names on your fronts! ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... hand with energy on the table, and darting a look of fiery indignation from his eye, "Sir, you were this night trepanned—yes, sir, vilely, shamefully trepanned—I repeat the expression—into the performance of a menial office—an office so degrading, so offensive, so unbecoming the rank, the station, and the habits of gentlemen, my very blood recoils when I only ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... young girl of a hospital unit say to a young medico of the outfit. "Did you ever see such a nose and brows in your life? And his hands——! You can never mistake hands. I would swear those hands had never done menial ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... ambition. Laws were passed against them, one at Bordeaux as late as 1596,—many earlier; by these they were even denied the rights of citizens; they could not bear arms, nor engage in any trade save wood-working or menial occupations, nor marry out of their race; they were obliged to wear a scarlet badge on the shoulder, in the shape of a goose's foot; they were not to go barefoot in towns lest they contaminate the streets, and the penalty was branding with a red-hot iron; ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... mistress of a menial—shut up and get out of here! You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted to-night. Do you think any ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... could find a thousand resources in France, which he could not hope to find in a half-civilized country; the condition of the Europeans being such in the colonies that never, in consideration of their dignity as whites, could they perform menial employment. Father Griffen was ignorant of the fact that the chevalier had exhausted the resources of France, and therefore had expatriated himself. Under certain circumstances, no one was more ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... fortunately there came a mightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life and example forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it from disgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... glance upon the custodian of this strange place, and saw a man who was evidently a gentleman, though very plainly and simply dressed, and employed at this moment in menial toil. He had a thin, worn face, and his eyes gleamed brightly under their heavy brows. He looked like one who had seen both trouble and suffering, and had grown somewhat reckless ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Reconstruction that, if the Negro would work, free labor would be better for the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that Negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is also evidence to show that they objected to domestic service and other menial work. ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... considered to speak it well, and perhaps you will allow me when I call to give you a lesson," said Harry, now thoroughly convinced that, at all events, the fisherman's daughter was not in a menial capacity ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... want that furniture cleaned; the brass has not been burnished for some time." He put some leather into their hands. The difficulty of the work was not so great, but it was evidently given to insult them on account of its menial character. Harry especially felt this. Still they had no resource but to obey, and scrubbed away with might and main. At last the ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... whose condition was servile or semi-servile—the Roman and German personal slaves, the Roman coloni and the German lidi—were concurrently absorbed by the feudal organisation, a few of them assuming a menial relation to the lords, but the greater part receiving land on terms which in those centuries were considered degrading. The tenures created during this era of universal infeudation were as various as the conditions which the tenants made ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial household duties; and to this he added the practices of immoderate fasting, perpetual silence, downcast glances, veiled countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. In short, he advocated sleeping all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Colonization. The Climate. The Land occupied. India Presents a Wide Field for European Agency. The Difference between Europeans and Natives. India never called "Home" by Europeans. Highly Educated Natives. Native Gentlemen. Natives in Subordinate and Menial Positions. The Position of Europeans changed. Advantages and Disadvantages. Improved Condition of European Society. The Effect on Europeans of Home Literature. Increased Effort for the Spiritual Good ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... At last, being stranded in our district, he had served as a footman, as a forester, as a kennelman, as a sexton, had married a cook who was a widow and rather a loose character, and had so hopelessly sunk into a menial position, and had grown so used to filth and dirt, that he even spoke of his privileged origin with a certain scepticism, as of some myth. At the time I am describing, he was hanging about without a job, calling himself a carrier and a huntsman, and his wife ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in two lines, that their appearance might be the more gallant and splendid. "My lord," said the king, "I have heard much of your hospitality, but the truth far exceeds the report. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen, whom I see on both sides of me, are no doubt your menial servants." The earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was too narrow for such magnificence. "They are most of them," subjoined he, "my retainers, who are come to do me service at this time, when they know I am honored with your ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... to be some chance of success. Much, doubtless, was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping, but more to her rigid economy and untiring industry. The mistress of millions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds, and labored like a common menial. Visitors were attracted by this novel spectacle. The income of the house increased as their respect for the hostess lessened. No anecdote of her avarice was too extravagant for current belief. It was even alleged that she had been ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... banquet were rapidly being made about the Palace by men servants. We saw no female servants, and we learned afterward that they did no menial work, except the serving of the meals, which was rather an ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the little family used, five or six in all; two or three stood vacant, and served as playgrounds for the children in bad weather. Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact that Mrs. Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and hilarity could be heard until long after midnight. Altogether it was a strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities even more striking might ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... male or female, were permitted to have the same honour. Each lady stood behind the person who had been intrusted to her charge, and waited upon him. My gallantry, as a Frenchman, was sorely wounded at the idea of my charming princess performing the duties of a menial, and I expressed my feelings to her in a low tone of voice. She shook her head, as if to rebuke me, and I said no more. When we had finished the banquet, his majesty ordered the water of the golden fountain to be produced, which it ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... some respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly and adequately written out and spread before the public will any idea be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... especially he seems to have much in common. While a child, he absented himself frequently from the narrow and noisy heder, and spent the day in the quiet of the neighboring woods. When he grew up, he accepted the menial position of a school usher. His office was to go from house to house, arouse the sleeping children, dress them, and bring them to heder. But the time soon came when humble and obscure Israel "revealed" himself to the world. Owing to his tact and knowledge of human nature, combined ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... had gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious respect which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms with the law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent on the humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of their ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... salutation of 'brother,' and the physician and divine be as one man; when the rich and the poor should know no distinction; the great and the small be equal in dominion, and the arrogant master and his menial slave should make a truce of friendship with each other, all following the same law of reason, all guided by the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... would answer the bell (bells seeming a prominent idea in his theory of the universe)—and so left me, wondering at the strange fact that free men, with free wills, do sell themselves, by the hundred thousand, to perform menial offices for other men, not for love, but for money; becoming, to define them strictly, bell-answering animals; and are honest, happy, contented, in such a life. A man-servant, a soldier, and a Jesuit, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... to despondency; and Belford beginning soon to rally a little, we united, and took turns in nursing and attending on our poor companion. At this time, having no servant, we performed for Mr. Ritchie the most menial offices. Two young men, brothers, whom we had treated with great kindness, and whom we had engaged to attend on us, so far from commiserating our forlorn condition, forsook us in our distress, and even carried off our little store of rice and cuscoussou; laughing at our complaints, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... may observe one placed upon a little eminence, and looking down upon a long row of labourers. He is the richest insect on this side the hillock, he has a walk of half a yard in length, and a quarter of an inch in breadth, he keeps a hundred menial servants, and has at least fifteen barley-corns in his granary. He is now chiding and beslaving the emmet that stands before him, and who, for all that we can discover, is as good ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... sure it ought not to be my permanent metier, though I do like to think I was born for better things, and comfort myself by remembering how mother used to say that a lady can always do everything better than a common person if she chooses to try, even menial work, because she puts her intelligence and love for daintiness into all she does. I unpacked my master's and mistress's things with the flashing speed of summer lightning and the neatness of a drill-sergeant. In a twinkling everything was in exactly the right place, and my conscience felt as if ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... prevalence of chivalry, began to be grossly varied from the original purposes of the institution. None was more remarkable than the change which took place in the breeding and occupation of pages. This peculiar species of menial originally consisted of youths of noble birth, who, that they might be trained to the exercise of arms, were early removed from their paternal homes, where too much indulgence might have been expected, to be placed in the family ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... unless the neighbours were looking; she had not thought of herself, except in the indomitable failing of her "false pride," since her marriage, which had taken place in her twentieth year. A clergyman's wife might do menial tasks in secret, and nobody minded, but they ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Gissing, "I shall be grateful for any task, however menial, that permits me to meditate. I understand your point of view. By coming aboard your ship I have broken the law, I have committed a crime; but not a sin. Crime and sin, every theologian admits, are ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the autumn of that red-letter year which brought a short respite of peace to war-ridden Europe—a fine, but rather tumultuous day round Scarthey—the light-keeper, having completed the morning's menial task in the light-turret (during a temporary absence of his factotum) sat, according to custom, at his ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... I care not what might happen. I would be willing to do menial labor to earn my bread. Yet it need not come to that. The lessons which Paolo taught me have been useful in more ways than one. I know that I at least need not ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... in the cheek, that they carry the mark of their shame all their days; some will have a green badge affixed to their arm, to wear until they have leave to cast it off, that all men may know they have been touched by the pollution; whilst others will be set to menial toil in the monasteries, and will perchance spend the rest of their lives there, sundered from their friends and their homes and all those whom ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... has a mixed capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for half of GDP and with per capita GDP 70% of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in menial jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of GDP. The economy has improved steadily with economic growth averaging 4% since 1997, exceeding EU growth by more than 1 percentage point. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... am gone. By the way, speaking of Huns—it was you, the neutral, who mentioned them,—does it strike you there are quite a few of them on the staff of this hotel? I hope they won't poison me. Look at the head waiter, look at half the waiters round, and see that blond-haired, blue-eyed menial. Do you think he saw his first ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the refuse, it was no more than natural, I suppose, (with a sneering laugh,) that I should wait, and long, and hunger, for the love that you took only as your right. So I waited, and to-day I triumph in the thought that Deane Phelps' petted wife is a dependent upon my bounty, a menial in the house where I reign supreme, and which knows no law but my will. I have forgotten how to love, but each day (and I have conned the lesson well) I learn better ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... out of the ground; had yelled himself hoarse and run himself lame in the redoubtable base-ball nine which was to make that town some day famous—the nine where they often played with seven "men" because the other two had to "bug" potatoes or do some other menial task and where the umpire frequently engaged in throwing lumps of dried mud at refractory ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... him in the Woman's Court. From a lateral chamber a priest, unfit for other than menial services because of a carbuncle on his lip, dropped the wood he was sorting for the altar and gazed curiously at the advancing throng, in which ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... gentleman!"—and she gazed upon him with a proud look of contempt, from which the attorney would fain have hid his head. Her surprise was equal to her indignation. Vernon had told her that Maxwell was to be the suppliant for her hand, and she could not see why his menial had ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... the other hand, had only the story of her own simple life to tell him. In it there were no big cities, no clever people, and, alas, no mother! And yet he thought he had never heard anything more beautiful. For every menial service which she had performed, she had rendered noble by love. Of the young lady and the Baron she had a thousand touching things to tell, in all the little haunts in and behind the castle garden she had had adventures to relate, and she had read in the books which she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... opinion, the Southern whites have carried their campaign into the national government, with an ominous degree of success. If they shall have their way, no Negro can fill any federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not menial. This is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed sentiment of the white South. The right to employment in the public service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled and fought. A vast army of men are employed in the administration ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles's power over her fate,—nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon some menial's irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to dissimulate; and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the morrow, the young men took leave of the maidens. Hildburg conscientiously finished her task, but Gudrun proudly flung the linen into the sea and returned to the palace empty-handed, saying that it did not become her to do any more menial labor, since she had been kissed by two kings. Gerlinda, hearing her confess that she had flung the linen into the sea, ordered her to be scourged; but when Gudrun turned upon her and proudly announced that she would take her revenge ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... not absorb the superior, yet, if every slave were set free to-day, imbruted through generations, it could not be on a basis of equality that we should meet, and they would be as inevitably sunk and lost as the detritus that a river washes into the sea. If the black stay here, it must be as a menial. In his own latitudes, where, after the third generation, the white man ceases to exist, he is the stronger; there the black man is king: let him betake himself to his realm. Abolition is impracticable, colonization feasible; on either is gunpowder wasted: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... With spur and bridle undefiled— 'T was but a day he had been caught; And snorting, with erected mane, And struggling fiercely, but in vain, In the full foam of wrath and dread To me the desert-born was led: They bound me on, that menial throng; Upon his back with many a thong; Then loosed him with a sudden lash— Away!—away!—and on we dash! Torrents less rapid ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... fortune, thanks to which you were brought up as a boy in the depths of indigence, in close attendance upon the school along with your father, pounding up the ink, sponging down the forms, sweeping the attendants' room,[n] occupying the position of a menial, not of a free-born boy! {259} Then, when you became a man, you used to read out the books[n] to your mother at her initiations, and help her in the rest of the hocus-pocus, by night dressing the ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... many wise and brave remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken the fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to nature by observation and experiment, and given themselves up to the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was the expression by which the Dodson mind represented to itself the position of teacher or governess; and Maggie's return to that menial condition, now circumstances offered her more eligible prospects, was likely to be a sore point with all her relatives, besides Lucy. Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... fences and sings and woos; the Lisbon priest, like his confessor one of Love's train, fares well on rabbits and sausages and good red wine, even as the portly pleasure-loving Lisbon canons; the country priest resembles a kite pouncing on chickens; the ambitious chaplain accepts the most menial tasks, compared with whom the sporting priest of Beira is at least pleasantly independent; and there are the luxurious hermit, the dissipated village priest who never prayed the hours, the inconstant monk who had been carrier and carpenter and now wishes ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labour adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labour to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons whose relations with each other would permit a more simple ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... not like housework any more than I do; he says the performance of menial duties crushes his spirit—but he makes such a fuss about things. You might think, to hear him talk, that getting up coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues, knives and brasses were the entire work of a household instead of being mere incidents in the daily ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... children that the four years at Stathern were, on the whole, the happiest in his life. He and his wife were in humble quarters, but they were their own masters, and they were quit of "the pampered menial" for ever. "My mother and he," the son writes, "could now ramble together at their ease amidst the rich woods of Belvoir without any of the painful feelings which had before chequered his enjoyment of the place: at home a garden afforded him healthful exercise and unfailing ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... were working at the station were English Quakers. They were splendid men. I have never known more heroic work than they did, and the cure was a splendid fellow. There was nothing too menial for him to do. He ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... heard the anecdote about one of our ambassadors to England. All ambassadors, save ours, wear on formal occasions a distinguishing uniform, just as our army and navy officers do; it is convenient, practical, and saves trouble. But we have declared it menial, or despotic, or un-American, or something equally silly, and hence our ambassadors must wear evening dress resembling closely the attire of those who are handing the supper or answering the door-bell. An Englishman saw Mr. Choate at some diplomatic function, standing about ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... or impossibilities, he keeps them to himself. Alas! this is an ideal, how antipodal sometimes to the real! I am thinking of the gigantic Sheikh Mahomed, with his terrible beard and womanly voice, who would convey my commands to a menial of lower degree and return in five minutes to detail the objections which that person had raised. Another type of Mahomedan Chupprassee, whom we see is to abhor, expresses his opinion of himself by letting half a yard of rag hang down from his turban behind. He calls himself a Syed and, perhaps, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... and to die far from the home of their infancy! What will become of thy old men and matrons when their gray hairs shall be no longer reverenced? What will become of thy maidens, so delicately reared and tenderly cherished, when reduced to hard and menial servitude? Behold thy once happy families scattered asunder, never again to be united—sons separated from their fathers, husbands from their wives, and tender children from their mothers: they will bewail each other in foreign ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... for him," he answered. "I have reason to feel dislike. He ruined my prospects, he killed my companions, and he treated me with every indignity and cruelty he could devise while I remained on board his ship. He made me serve him as a menial—wait behind his chair, clean his shoes, arrange his cabin, and if I displeased him he ordered his men to flog me. Ay! I never told you that before, I was ashamed to do so. He well-nigh broke my spirit. Had I remained much longer with him he ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... she procures small services to be done for us by many lame and halt of her acquaintance. Having bought my boat (I come, in time, to be willing to sell it again for half its cost to me), I require a menial to clean it now and then, and Giovanna first calls me a youthful Gobbo for the work,—a festive hunchback, a bright-hearted whistler of comic opera. Whether this blithe humor is not considered decent, I do not know, but though the Gobbo serves me faithfully, I find him one day ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... shown that regard for personal cleanliness and nicety of dress, which a wealthy and educated people have the means and the time for. Our people by the exigencies of their lot, have had to toil and toil in menial places, the places where drudgery was demanded and where contact with dust and filth was necessary to the accomplishment of their work. But even this can be remedied, and cleanliness and neatness can be made a part of the Negro's education until he can present, as thousands of his race ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... before this window for hours—I have waited till all is hushed in your house, till no one, not even a menial, need see the mother stealing to the bed of her child. Brother, by the memory of our own mother, I command you to let me look, for the last time, upon ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a proposition to make. I have a great desire to become an inmate of the White House. I have heard so much of Mr. Lincoln's goodness that I should like to be near him; and if I can enter the White House no other way, I am willing to go as a menial. My dear Mrs. Keckley, will you not recommend me to Mrs. Lincoln as a friend of yours out of employment, and ask her to take me as a chambermaid? If you will do this you shall be well rewarded. It may be worth several thousand ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret's history. She seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and knowledge of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial position at a philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady's character which made her ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... after three days of sackcloth and ashes. As luck would have it, Esther had issued the command that the bathkeepers and barbers were not to ply their trades on that day, and there was nothing for Haman to do but perform the menial services Mordecai required. Haman tried to play upon the feelings of Mordecai. Fetching a deep sigh, he said: "The greatest in the king's realm is now acting as bathkeeper and barber!" Mordecai, however, did not permit himself to be imposed ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... leaving it indefinite) I enjoyed the acquaintance of two Southern gentlemen,—gentlemen, however, of widely different kinds. One was a general, a lawyer, a rake, a drunkard, and white; the other was a body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together, the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's second year. "They had played marbles in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... job; housekeeper, personal maid, chauffeur, chaperon and secretary. It was with a rather mixed lot of emotions that John thought of delivering her over to be tied to Paula's chariot wheels like that. One of the two women who loved him serving the other in a capacity so nearly menial! The thought of it gave him an odd sort of thrill even while he shrank from it. Certainly, he would not have assented to it, had it not been so unmistakably what Mary herself wanted. Her reasons for wanting it he couldn't feel that he had ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to his experiment. But all were kindly as they saw the family take up life bravely in Concord again, with even fewer necessities and comforts than before. Both Mr. and Mrs. Alcott did whatever work they could find to do, thinking nothing too menial if it provided food and clothing for their family. Naturally the education of the children was rather fragmentary and insufficient, but it developed their own powers of thinking. Through the pages of their diaries in which they wrote ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... state. "You are not ignorant," says Harris, writing to William Eden, "that the great officers of the court are merely titular, and never allowed to have any authority annexed to their office. This is given to some menial servants, who are constantly about the king's person, and his treasurer was a Russian named Deiss, in whom his Majesty placed more confidence than he appears to have deserved; since for maladministration, or some equally notorious fault, his majesty a few days ago, dismissed him from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... its hacked counter, which projects into the street under a little penthouse-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. The upper half of the door was open, and, on my rapping at it, a young person in black made her appearance and admitted me: she was not a menial, but remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all cracked, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Choice and Treatment of Academy-Wives, Ushers, and other menial Servants: with the Reasons of making ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... Hastings, and declares he will not interfere in the business of the courts any more. Your Lordships will observe further that the complaint is not against the Nabob, but against the creatures and the menial servants of Munny Begum: and yet it is the Nabob he forbids to interfere in this business; of the others he takes no notice; and this is a strong proof of the corrupt dealings of Mr. Hastings with this woman. When the whole country was fallen ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... footmen in attendance at the Houses of Parliament used at this time to form themselves into a deliberative body, and usually debated the same points with their masters. It was jocularly said that several questions were lost by the Court party in the menial House of Lords which were carried triumphantly in the real assembly; which was at length explained by a discovery that the Scottish peers whose votes were sometimes decisive of a question had but few representatives in the convocation of lacqueys. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... strong light on the friendship, and real affection which existed among the three friends. He says that he will work day and night for Rhadagund, draw the water, tend the vines and the garden, cook, wash dishes, anything, rather than that she should do the heavy and menial work of the house. He begs the abbess Agnes to talk often of him with the sisters that he may feel more really that she is his mother. He sends gifts of flowers for their sanctuary, and baskets which he has plaited; ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... Awaken'd fair Nausicaa; she her dream 60 Remember'd wond'ring, and her parents sought Anxious to tell them. Them she found within. Beside the hearth her royal mother sat, Spinning soft fleeces with sea-purple dyed Among her menial maidens, but she met Her father, whom the Nobles of the land Had summon'd, issuing abroad to join The illustrious Chiefs in council. At his side She stood, and thus her filial suit preferr'd. Sir![23] wilt thou lend me of the royal wains 70 A sumpter-carriage? for I wish to bear My costly ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... not for the present let myself go." Meanwhile I returned to her first example—the one to which she had just previously referred—of the boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip. "If Quint—on your remonstrance at the time you speak of—was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another." Again her admission was so adequate that I continued: "And you forgave ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange gentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said laughing: "I haven't got any silver; you can keep this." And he threw down half a sovereign, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... scout took his turn at waiting on table. Patrol leader Matt Burton was in charge of the waiter squad this morning. He was the one exception who showed that it did not agree well with every scout to do these menial tasks. He considered them beneath his dignity and never would have condescended to them had there been a way of escape. Since there was not, he had made the best of a bad job, and as he was very bright and a natural leader ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... was not irreparable, but it was grave. True to their class, Byzantine officials indulged a taste for furniture, giving thereby an unintentional sting to their attack. Like the grandees of the Classical Renaissance, they degraded art, which is a religion, to upholstery, a menial trade. They patronised craftsmen who looked not into their hearts, but into the past—who from the court of the Kalif brought pretty patterns, and from classical antiquity elegant illusions, to do duty for significant design. They looked to Greece and Rome as did the men of the Renaissance, and, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... household Girls, and menial Boy, From room to room assiduous fly, And busy hands extend; Our numerous fires are quivering bright, And, rolling from their pointed ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the time, but shortly afterwards I went farther into the country, towards the north, attempting to penetrate a defile in the Himalayas. There the savages seized me and made me a slave. For years I have served in the most menial and degrading capacity; my tired back often bruised with their lashes, and only the stony ground on which to rest. At length I escaped on horseback, and succeeded in reaching the Mongolian steppes. There I have been wandering ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... if not more. In the first place, every member of the family must have an attendant especially for his or her use; then there is a man-cook, a number of nursery-maids, and several coolies for the more menial duties, such as cleaning the rooms, carrying the wood and water, and so forth. In spite of this number of servants, the attendance is frequently very bad; for, if one or other of them happens to be out, and his services are ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... other duty at Cecil Place than to wait upon the young heiress or assist in her embroidery, was considered and treated more as a humble companion than a menial; and Lady Frances Cromwell talked just as freely to Mistress Cecil in her presence as if they were perfectly alone. Nor was such confidence ever abused by the gentle girl. She moved within her small circle like an attendant satellite upon a brilliant ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But really, that is "un peu fort;" and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the Dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of work to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamber where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when we give our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... he said,—'Yudhishthira having been intoxicated with dice, Duryodhana, O Draupadi, hath won thee. Come now, therefore, to the abode of Dhritarashtra. I will take thee, O Yajnaseni, and put thee in some menial work.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of escaping the confines of a prison. Fleeing to parts unknown, his absence relieved the neighbourhood of a responsibility. For a time, he roamed among farmers and drovers in the mountains of Tennessee; again he did menial labour, often forced to the direst necessity to live. One day, when nearly famished, he met a slave-driver, conducting his coffle towards the Mississippi, to whom he proffered his services. The coarse driver readily accepted them; they proceeded ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... feeble and commonplace person named Ling who commands the bowmen had but recently been elevated to that distinguished position from a menial and degraded occupation (for which, indeed, his stunted intellect more aptly fitted him); and being in consequence very greatly puffed out in self-gratification, he became an easy prey to the cunning ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... himself and fetching a calf from thence and serving it up with his own hands, for the entertainment of his guests. Look at Sarah, that princess as her name signifies, baking cakes upon the hearth. If the servants they had were like Southern slaves, would they have performed such comparatively menial offices for themselves? Hear too the plaintive lamentation of Abraham when he feared he should have no son to bear his name down to posterity. "Behold thou hast given me no seed, &c, one born in my house is mine heir." From this it appears that one of his ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... accumulated which they might draw from, should the purse some day fail. And remembering how much the success of the extempore speaker depends upon the mood of the moment: remembering what little things, menial and physical, may mar and warp the intellectual machine for the moment: remembering how entirely successful extempore speaking founds on perfect confidence and presence of mind: remembering how as one grows older the nervous system may get shaken and even broken down: remembering ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the Jury, do you doubt what I say? Look at this Honorable Court,—at its Judges, its Attorney, at its Marshal, and its Marshal's Guard: they all hold their offices by petty serjeantry of menial service rendered to the Slave-Power. It would be an insult to any one of this august fraternity to hint that he had the faintest respect for the great Principles of American Liberty, or any love of justice for all men. I shall not be guilty of that "contempt of court." Gentlemen, I had expected ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... to genuine men of family, like our trio), they chose to remember, and to remind the world, that he was the son of a tenant farmer (a Macgregor, at that), that as a boy he had been willing to run errands and to deliver legs of mutton, and that for a time in his youth he had held the menial post of Janitor in ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... privileges of his post mercilessly. Haydn was a small, dark-complexioned, insignificant-looking youth, and Porpora, of course, snubbed him most contemptuously. But Haydn wanted instruction, and no one in the world could give it so well as the savage old maestro. So he performed all sorts of menial services for him, cleaned his shoes, powdered his wig, and ran all his errands. The result was that Porpora softened and consented to give his young admirer lessons—no great hardship, for young Haydn ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... dear, I have given up expecting to have servants do somethings as they ought to be done. Toast is one of the things. They are outside of the limitations of the menial mind.' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... these goods are dull and fleeting in proportion to their rudimentary character and their nearness to protoplasmic thrills. Where reason exists life cannot, indeed, be altogether slavish; for any operation, however menial and fragmentary, when it is accompanied by ideal representation of the ends pursued and by felt success in attaining them, becomes a sample and anagram of all freedom. Nevertheless to arrest attention on a means is really illiberal, though not so much by what such an interest contains as by ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... blood, with godlike titles graced, BACCHUS, or DIONUSUS; son of JOVE, Deem'd falsely, for from FOLLY'S ideot form He sprung, what time MADNESS, with furious hand, Seiz'd on the laughing female. At one birth She brought the brethren, menial here, above Reigning with sway supreme, and oft they hold High revels: mid the Monastery's gloom, The sacrifice is spread, when the grave voice Episcopal, proclaims approaching day Of visitation, or Churchwardens meet To save the wretched ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the first; it is based on the alleged natural inferiority of woman to man, and the transition is thus quickly made for her, from a semi-angelic state, to that of a menial, having no rights that men are bound to respect beyond what they choose to allow. In the scale of political power, therefore, one male voter, however ignorant or depraved, outweighs all the women in America! For, no matter how intelligent, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... much, as though they wished it to be distinctly understood that they had no connection whatever with the others, and would not on any account assist the low-born and hard-working forefingers and thumbs in such menial employment. Hopkins's nose appeared to be affected with something of the same spirit. Then Hopkins bowed—that is to say, he broke across suddenly at the middle, causing his stiff upper man to form an obtuse angle with his rigid legs for one ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... of form and face, With charm of wit and gentle grace, With modest raiment simply neat, And winning manners soft and sweet. The twice-born sages, whose delight Was Scripture's page and holy rite, Their calm and settled course pursued, Nor sought the menial multitude. In many a Scripture each was versed, And each the flame of worship nursed, And gave with lavish hand. Each paid to Heaven the offerings due, And none was godless or untrue In all that holy band. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... grove every morning after breakfast. They will settle all disputes according to the best of their ability, and will plan the Principal Diversions for the week. These latter will be announced at the Council Meetings. Needless to say, the Chiefs will do no menial labor during the week of their Chiefhood. Is that a fair proposition all the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... with one exception. They do not include domestic servants. Romans who could afford regular servants kept slaves. It 18 true that occasionally one of the poorer citizens, even a soldier on furlough, might perform some menial task connected with a household, such as hewing wood or carrying burdens; but such services were regarded as "servile." With this exception there is scarcely an occupation in which Roman citizens did not ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... ragged and grass grown; the chimneys, "those windpipes of good hospitality," as an old English poet calls them, giving no token of the cheerful fire within; the gardens running to waste, or, perchance, made a source of menial profit; the old family servants dismissed, and some rude bailiff, or country attorney, ruling paramount in the place. The surrounding cottagers, who have derived their support from the vicinage, deprived of this, pass into destitution and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... songs of chirping birds invite to rise. He leaves his lowly bed: his buskins meet Above his ankles; sandals sheathe his feet: He sets his trusty sword upon his side, And o'er his shoulder throws a panther's hide. Two menial dogs before their master press'd. Thus clad, and guarded thus, he seeks his kingly guest. Mindful of promis'd aid, he mends his pace, But meets Aeneas in the middle space. Young Pallas did his father's steps attend, And true Achates waited on his friend. They join their hands; a secret ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... our early literature displayed even by those whose studies in this field would seem to point them out for the work of rescuing these literary treasures from a fate as bad as that which befell those plays which perished at the hands of Warburton's "accursed menial." The present play has some remarkable features in it. It is taken from contemporary history (the only one as far as we know of that class in which Massinger was engaged). It was written almost immediately ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... let your menial handle your sword for you, I cannot hope for satisfaction. But though I am no great prophet, I can predict that both you and your cur shall yet feel the foot of my lackey on your necks. And, mademoiselle," he added, removing his look to the lady, "this ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... certainly was not unfavorably disposed to the Christians, was assassinated, and his office and rank, after a series of violent struggles, which lasted five years, fell to a man of humble origin, but great talents, named Fide-yosi. This person had in his youth served Nobanunga in the most menial capacity, but, owing partly to his remarkable abilities, and partly to the circumstances which threw the succession into so much confusion, he contrived to place himself, in the year 1587, at the head of the nation. He then married the Mikado's daughter, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... favourite phrase of Napoleon, "he had missed his destiny." His parents had been country people of some substance, but misfortune falling upon misfortune had reduced them to poverty. Finally, the father had become insane; the mother had been glad to obtain a menial situation in the very asylum where her husband was confined; and there was nothing better to be done for the son than to apprentice him to a shoemaker. Some talk there was amongst the neighbours of raising a subscription ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... deluded, All their own friends for his excluded. By that, his selfish schemes pursuing, He thrives upon the public ruin. Antiochus,[8] with hardy pace, Provoked the dangers of the chase; And, lost from all his menial train, Traversed the wood and pathless plain. 40 A cottage lodged the royal guest! The Parthian clown brought forth his best. The king, unknown, his feast enjoyed, And various chat the hours employed. From wine what sudden friendship springs! Frankly they talked ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... looks and his tones that the women fled quaking from the hall and left him to tend the fires. So there he stood in view of the whole company, to their eyes a poor outcast, intent on his menial task; but thoughts other than of the fires ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the young Earl. The children were left with their grandmother; they were to follow, in charge of Maude and Bertram, to Langley, where their mother intended to rejoin them. Maude continued to be bowerwoman to her mistress; but some of the more menial functions usually discharged by one who filled that office, were now given to a younger girl, who bore the name of ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
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