"Lackey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... every step. In a little, they became certainty. Up a shallow and winding stair, along a long and broad corridor, hung with rich tapestries, the polished parquet glistening faintly in the dim light, through splendid suites of gilded apartments with old pictures and splendid furniture... here a lackey with powdered hair yawning on a landing, there a sentry in field-grey immobile before a door...I ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the consuming canker of the mind, The discord that disorders sweet heart's tune, The abortive bastard of a coward mind, The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death, Bearing the letters which contain our end; The busy advocate that sells his breath Denouncing worst to him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... Oh! wouldn't I make them know the difference between their Sovereign Lady and Sam the Lackey? If I had been in your place and that dastard Le Noir had said to me what he said to you, I do believe I should have stricken him dead with the lightning of my eyes! But what shall you do, my ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... your thirties. Another five years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a piano" will give way ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... kicked. If Austria feels no shame in letting the Holy Roman Empire become the petty province of an Unholy Barbarian Empire, if such high historic symbols no longer affect her, we can only tell her, in as ugly a picture as possible, that she is a lackey ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... that the lackey who had but lately returned from Guildford, whilst sitting over the kitchen fire with his cup of mead, had complained of sudden and violent pains, had vomited and fallen down upon the floor in a fit; whereat every person present ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... over my toilet, and without waiting for my hair to be dressed I proceeded to the bishop's palace, and making a great deal of noise I almost compelled the servants to take me to his room. A lackey who was at the door informed me that his lordship was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and forty maitres d'hotel, ninety ladies of honor to the queen, in the sixteenth century! There were also an usher of the kitchen, a courier de vin (who took the charge of carrying provisions for the king when he went to the chase), a sutler of court, a conductor of the sumpter- horse, a lackey of the chariot, a captain of the mules, an overseer of roasts, a chair-bearer, a palmer (to provide ananches for Easter), a valet of the firewood, a paillassier of the Scotch guard, a yeoman of the mouth, and a hundred more for whose offices we have ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... flyest me as ill fortune;— Care the consuming canker of the mind! The discord that disorders sweet hearts' tune! Th' abortive bastard of a coward mind! The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death, Bearing the letters which contain our end! The busy advocate that sells his breath, Denouncing worst to him, is most his friend! O dear, this care no interest holds in me; But holy care, the guardian ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... throwing out his arms, the child's left hand has fallen on the golden head, and here it rests as if he returned the caress. In the mean time a mischievous urchin, who may be the boy Baptist, holds the Magdalene's jar of ointment. He stands behind her like a small lackey, and sniffs curiously at the contents of ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... The lackey opened a door which gave access to a magnificent reception-room, sparsely furnished with pieces of the best Louis XIV period. Mirrors reflected the canvases of famous painters, family pictures of immense artistic value, and still more valuable ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... hollow bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka,... he remembered she had been born when he was still a lackey in the service of the owner of Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as a lackey he had not noticed how his girl had grown up. That long period during which she was being shaped into a graceful creature, with a little flaxen head and dreamy eyes as big as kopeck-pieces passed unnoticed by ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... him than, addressing Concini and the disguised serving-men, he politely requested them to follow him; coupling the invitation with an assurance that his master had desired him to watch for the arrival of five great nobles who were about to consult his art. Lavallee, the lackey of M. de Bassompierre, assuming an air of importance, expressed both for himself and his companions their sense of this attention; and then, somewhat startled by the coincidence, for as such they simply considered it, the whole party followed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... several days I waited upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet, about which I had read in ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... almost famished. None remember me, or think I am Clarin, clarion rather, And that if that clarion sounded, All the Court would know what passes. For there are two things, to wit, A brass clarion and a lackey, That are bad at keeping secrets; And it so may chance, if haply I am forced to break my silence, They of me may sing this passage: "Never, when the day is near, Does clarion sound ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... her head and went softly through the second anteroom to the hall. Again, all was empty and silent; neither page, nor sentry, nor lackey to be seen. She knew not why, but a feeling of desolation came over her. She had bidden adieu to the etiquette due to her rank, but this, she thought, was carrying the point ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... He had been taken off the job he'd spent years learning to do acceptably, to phoney a personal satisfaction for the son-in-law of one of the partners of the firm he worked for. It was humiliation to be considered merely a lackey who could be ordered to perform personal services for his boss, without regard to the damage to the work he was really responsible for. It was even more humiliating to know he had to do it because he couldn't afford ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of standing felt glad to attend the marriage feast of the house of Mortimer & Co. Just now the sounds of a quadrille commenced, and the various pairs began to arrange themselves for the occasion, when the lackey in attendance was pushed aside and a horse's head looked inquisitively into ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... was to be seen, not an advertisement on the walls, not a stain nor a straw could be found, if one had a hundred eyes. When I passed through the streets there was a profound silence. Now and then an aristocratic carriage rolled past me almost noiselessly over the brick pavement, or I saw some stiff lackey standing at a door, or the fair head of some lady behind a curtain. As I walked close to the windows, I could see out of the corner of my eye my shabby travelling-clothes reflected clearly in the large panes of glass, and I repented not having brought my ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... fat would be in the fire in no time. I wonder you don't show him that respect—it wouldn't hurt you one morsel, I guess.' Says he, quite miffy like, 'Don't he know the way to court as well as I do? If I thought he didn't, I'd send one of my niggers to show him the road. I wonder who was his lackey last year, that he wants me to be his'n this time. It don't convene to one of our free and enlightened citizens, to tag arter any man, that's a fact; it's too English and too foreign for our glorious institutions. He's bound by law to be there at ten o'clock, and ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his purpose of paying his rent. Ae ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... done. He was ignominiously dismissed like a lackey caught pilfering. But there was black wrath in his heart as he picked himself up, and turning to the others, he bowed ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... your offspring under my heart, and nourish it with my blood—give birth to your child and take your name! Hear, you, what are you called, what is your family name? But I'm sure you have none. I should be "Mrs. Gate-Keeper," perhaps, or "Madame Dumpheap." You dog with my collar on, you lackey with my father's hallmark on your buttons. I play rival to my cook—oh—oh—oh! You believe that I am cowardly and want to run away. No, now I shall stay. The thunder may roll. My father will return—and find his desk ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... element; she forgot everything but the toil of her fellow-spiders, and it was almost impossible to get her away from any piece she once became interested in. Madam, busy in telling who she was and asking questions, gave me little attention; so that I found myself more in the position of a lackey than a companion. I had regretted that her footman did not accompany us; but what need was there of a footman as long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to have seen old and unsentimental gamblers, who told me that this game was particularly pleasing because you did not see from whom you were winning, as is the case in other games; a lackey brought, not money, but chips; each man lost a little stake, and his disappointment was not visible . . . It is the same with roulette, which is everywhere prohibited, and not ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... had a horror of the whole genus "lackey," and he could not even pass the soberly clad "gentlemen" of the Princess without a quivering of the muscles and a clenching of the fists. He found himself much more comfortable at the adjoining Green Dragon Inn, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... did me a good turn, for, while my first report was rendered, from a sense of duty, I am making this one with a sense of relief—a somewhat scandalous admission. Of course a really good footman would keep his mouth shut. But then I am but an indifferent lackey. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... repeating the last phrases. One couple after the other stop dancing and follow the Guests in silence. For some time a single couple remain circling on the floor, but they too join the others at last. The musicians, however, continue to play, making the same desperate effort. The lackey turns out the electric lights, leaving only one light in the farthest chandelier. The figures of the musicians are vaguely seen in the dim light, swaying to and fro with their instruments. The outline of Someone in Gray is sharply visible. The flame of the candle flickers, illuminating ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he waved ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... already a red disk on Gervais's shirt showed where his cousin's sword had been and would soon go again, and deeper. I had forgotten my bruise in my interest and delight, when, of a sudden, one whom we all had ignored took a hand in the game. Gervais's lackey started forward and knocked up Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and Gervais slashed his arm from wrist ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... from slumber. The Marquise was rich, her niece a wealthy heiress, much of both their fortunes not dependent upon French finance, and a golden harvest fell upon the simple mountaineers and cattle tenders. Every available room was at the disposal of master or lackey, and the sleepy square was alive with men and women who had intrigued and danced at Versailles, who had played pastoral games with Marie Antoinette at the Trianon, whose names were famous. Idlers were many ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... unchurching her ignominiously, as fit only to deal with the Finite,—in other words, making her the lackey of mere Science,—they fancy they are doing famous service to Revelation. Very well,—we are ready to say,—having scourged Philosophy out of the temple, will you please, Gentlemen, to conduct us yourselves towards its hallowed shrine? If Philosophy cannot yield ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... horse to one of the farm-boys, and went into the kitchen and asked if Miss Fountain lived there. This question threw him into the hands of Jenny, who invited him to follow her, and, unlike your powdered and noiseless lackey, pounded the door with her fist, kicked it open with her foot, and announced him with that thunderbolt of language which fell so inopportunely on ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... ruin of his servant. He had to keep up the appearance of an ambassador on the salary of a clerk. 'This is the second winter,' he writes to his brother in 1810, 'that I have gone through without a pelisse, which is exactly like going without a shirt at Cagliari. When I come from court a very sorry lackey throws a common cloak over my shoulders.' The climate suited him better than he had expected; and in one letter he vows that he was the only living being in Russia who had passed two winters without fur boots and a fur hat. It was considered indispensable that he should keep a couple of servants; ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... only admirable because Boswell was contemptible. It was, he argued, only by virtue of being at once daft and drunken, selfish and silly, an eavesdropper and a talebearer, a kind of inspired Faddle, a combination of butt and lackey and snob, that Boswell contrived to achieve his wretched immortality. And in the same way Boswell's hero was after all but a sort of Grub Street Cyclops, respectable enough by his intelligence—(but even so ridiculous in comparison to gifted Whigs)—yet ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... startled question. "It is the signal Fouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them. Give me the paper—quick! quick! Tear the fastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Decoud changed his pose and spoke in a more animated tone. "Has your worship neglected to read the last number of the Porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On the general policy it continues to call Montero a gran' bestia, and stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a combination of lackey and spy. What could be more effective? In local affairs it urges the Provincial Government to enlist bodily into the national army the band of Hernandez the Robber—who is apparently the protege of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... generation is coming, straight from the heart of the people, and you will know nothing of it, neither you nor the Verhovenskys, father or son; nor I, for I'm a snob too—I, the son of your serf and lackey, Pashka.... Listen. Attain to God by work; it all lies in that; or disappear like rotten mildew. Attain to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation —everything. He spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed. We were more than charmed—we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We never even asked him his price. This man—our lackey, our servant, our unquestioning slave though he was—was still a gentleman—we could see that—while of the other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his pocketbook a snowy little card ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as she entered the room. Her excitement was so extreme that she spoke aloud, forgetting that the door was open, and that the lackey in the ante-room could hear all she said. Luckily Hortebise did not lose his presence of mind, and, with the ease of a leading actor repairing the error of a ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... how it happened," he informed Hiram, "how I ever let myself be pull-hauled as much as I've been. Why, I haven't had time allowed me to stop and consider what a fool and lackey I was lettin' 'em make of me. When I left the sea I came ashore with a hankerin' for rest, comfort, and garden sass of my own raisin', and I've been beatin' into a head wind of hoorah-ste-boy ever since. From now ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance. Yes, I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him, seduce him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to despise me, at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my lackey and my slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall no more go down,' and 'there shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination in the judgment of a man who did not understand ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... new stab at womanhood, to result in deeper degradation to her than she has ever known before.'... Sometimes I exclaim in agony, 'Can nothing raise the self-respect of women?' I despise the Republican party for the political serfdom we suffer today, under the heel of every foreign lord and lackey who treads our soil. If all of you have turned to such idols, I will ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... out into the street, I believe, but she was bundled bag and baggage on board a steamer for London. Did I tell you these people lived in Hamburg? Well yes—sent to the docks late on a rainy winter evening in charge of some sneering lackey or other who behaved to her insolently and left her on deck burning with indignation, her hair half down, shaking with excitement and, truth to say, scared as near as possible into hysterics. If it had not been for the stewardess who, without asking questions, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... grille, now closed, he had many times passed through, leaning back in his coupe. He pictured himself entering there, where he would never again return except as a place-seeker like those eternal beggars who blocked its antechambers. He still heard the cry of the lackey when the coachman crushed the sand of the courtyard under the wheels of the carriage: "Monsieur le Ministre's carriage!"—He went upstairs, the lackeys saluted him, the coupe ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... even took pains to indicate in what sort of toilet ladies were expected to appear. The gown must come up high about the neck and might be of any colour desired, or of black silk if the wearer was in mourning. Jewelry was not forbidden. A lackey in red livery would usher the strangers into the audience-chamber. Their petition must be carried in the hand. In the throne-room—where ladies were permitted to gaze to their hearts' content on the splendid display of Japanese porcelain—the major-domo would marshal the company in a double file, ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... why, if we have a uniform for our military service and another for our naval service, we may not have one for our diplomatic service. It has, indeed, been asserted by sundry orators dear to the galleries, as well as by various "funny-column" men, that such a uniform is that of a lackey; but this assertion loses force when one reflects on the solemn fact that "plain evening dress," which these partizans of Jeffersonian simplicity laud and magnify, and which is the only alternative to a uniform, is worn by table-waiters the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... broke into a violent rage, and determined to drive him from her door, as she would have driven a lackey. A copious flow of tears produced a soothing effect upon her. It was better to keep it all to herself, and say ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... their prey, so these lower parasites (distinct from the other well-born, more aristocratic genus of smell-feast) prowled vigilantly without the castle walls and beyond the limits of the royal pleasure grounds, finding occasional employment from lackey, valet or equerry, who, imitating their betters, amused themselves betimes with some low buffoon or vulgar clown and rewarded him for his gross stories and antics with a crust ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... came the soft drone of a high-powered motor; then the car itself rolled into view, a stately limousine coming from the direction of the avenue de Friedland. Before the corner house it stopped. A lackey alighted with an umbrella and ran to hold the door; but Liane Delorme would not wait for him. The car had not stopped when she threw the door open; on the instant when its wheels ceased to turn she jumped down and ran toward the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... height, and half reading every title, passes over the latter part with a murmur, not without signifying what lord sent this, what great lady the other, and for what suits; the last paper (as it happens) is his news from his honourable friend in the French court. In the midst of dinner, his lackey comes sweating in with a sealed note from his creditor, who now threatens a speedy arrest, and whispers the ill news in his master's ear, when he aloud names a counsellor of state, and professes to know ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... sat staring from a lackey's ill-concealed grin to her Father's smoldering fury. Quite palpably she began to swallow with considerable difficulty. Then quick as a flash a diminutively crafty smile crooked across one corner ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... him; for the truth of it is that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak, clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at Trinity Hall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that was Satan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the way of Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, that far-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matter in him." I quote the epigram rather for its perfect form than for its truth. For once, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... turn, but its rotations on its axis keep exact time with its revolutions round our globe; it accompanies us as we encircle the sun, facing us all the while, never turning its back upon us; it waits on us like a link-bearer, or lackey; is our admiring Boswell, living and moving and having its being in the equability it derives from attending its illustrious master. An African sage once illustrated this philosophical principle of the greater controlling the less, by the following fine conundrum. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with which the stronger ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the bust, place it in the proper light, and do whatever more might be necessary to its proper effect on the company when they should return. As she left the room, Lady Bernard told Roger to ring for a servant to clear the table for him, and render what other assistance he might want. He did so. A lackey answered the bell, and Roger requested him to remove the things from the table. The man left the room, and did not return. Roger therefore cleared and moved the table himself, and with difficulty got the bust upon it. Finding then ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... his native one, rapidly, violently, half incoherently. "Ah, yes! It had come to this. It seems he was not a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or—why not?—an appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha! A picked-up foundling—a swineherd's daughter—to be ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, "having secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served, why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes I say nothing. The gallows awaits him, and I would ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beautiful neighbor affected me strongly. I burned with impatience to see her, and the first Sunday after her arrival I set out after dinner for the village of A—-, to pay my respects to the Countess and her husband, as their nearest neighbor and most humble servant. A lackey conducted me into the Count's study, and then went to announce me. The spacious apartment was furnished with every possible luxury. Around the walls were cases filled with books and surmounted by bronze busts; over the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... to Heaven is saintly Chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow's heritor, Or stood a lackey in the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... had been duly furnished. But I remember one case among several which impressed me as instructive and amusing. The newspapers told the tale, which ran somewhat as follows: A wealthy woman of position, residing in one of the best quarters of St. Petersburg, hired a prepossessing young lackey as one of her large staff of domestics. Shortly after his advent, many articles of value began to disappear. Finally, suspicion having turned on this lackey, he also disappeared, and the police undertook to find him. It then became apparent that ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... respected, we must be our own masters, and not let others saddle us as they think fit. If we try to please every body, we shall be like a toad under a harrow, and never have peace; and, if we play lackey to all our neighbors, whether good or bad, we shall be thanked by no one, for we shall soon do as much harm as good. He that makes himself a sheep will find that the wolves are not all dead. He who lies on the ground must expect to be trodden on. He who makes himself a mouse, the cats will eat him. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... What flowers! What lights! Each guest found his place without difficulty. As soon as he had read his name on the glazed card, a grand lackey in silk stockings pushed gently behind him a luxurious chair embroidered with a count's coronet. Fourteen at the table, not more: four young women in full toilets, and ten men belonging to the aristocracy of blood or of merit, who had ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... might make you my lackey, to wait upon me. That is what the Darleys should do for ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... MacLouis, and let them know that I wait their pleasure," said the Prince. "If my uncle desires to have the credit of shutting the father's apartment against the son, it will gratify him to know that I am attending in the outer hall like a lackey." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the harpsichord rose, surveyed the intruder with a haughty stare, and was about to speak when a lackey in silver-embroidered livery came hastily toward her and said ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... unscrupulous helpmate. Sarah Jennings was, in her way, almost as remarkable as her husband. She was a woman of great beauty. Colley Gibber, in his "Apology," pays devoted testimony to her charms. He had by chance to attend on her in the capacity of a sort of amateur lackey at an entertainment in Nottingham, and he seems to have been completely dazzled by her loveliness. "If so clear an emanation of beauty, such a commanding grace of aspect, struck me into a regard that had something softer than the most profound respect in it, I cannot see why I may ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... engraving of old Worksop Manor—should always be present in this suggestive place; and even a wheeled and curtained sedan of the kind fashionable at Marie Antoinette's Court would not appear incongruous, drawn by one officious purple-liveried lackey and pushed by another along the side paths. The Beech Avenue is the only spot in the Dukeries that permits one to recreate mentally the life of the eighteenth century. It should not terminate in a roadway ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... their amazed looks, asked the way to the cabinet, and no one ventured to refuse. So he was passed from lackey to lackey, until he reached the antechamber. "Here," said the servant that had accompanied him, "here your highness will find a person ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... splendid picture of that magnificent court and the conditions which eventually brought about the revolution. The precarious position of every member of that court from La Pompadour down to the meanest lackey, whose very lives were in constant danger from the whims of the weak but self-indulgent king, is made very real by ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... bell would bring her running to meet him, but on the perron of the servants' quarters appeared two bare-footed women with tucked-up skirts, carrying buckets, who were apparently scrubbing floors. She was not on the front perron, either; only Timon, the lackey, came forth in an apron, also apparently occupied with cleaning. Sophia Ivanovna came into the ante-chamber, attired in ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... was discovered and executed, who had been hired to murder Admiral Coligny, the most indispensable leader of the party, near his own castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing.[419] The last day of the year there was hung a lackey, who pretended that the Cardinal of Lorraine had tried to induce him to poison the Prince of Porcien; and, although he retracted his statements at the time of his "amende honorable,"[420] his first story was generally credited. The rumor ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... not necessary, your highness; here is monsieur the baron, he will conduct you himself," said the lackey. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... up. "But we lost an Assassin: discarnating this lackey won't equalize that. We think you should retire ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... that he was ashamed of the real reason for giving up his work, Latisan evasively decided that the thing was now up to Echford Flagg. He had warned Flagg man fashion. He had given his word to Flagg as to what would happen if Flagg persisted in treating him like a lackey. Flagg had persisted. Latisan had kept his word. He could not retreat from that stand; he could not crawl back to Flagg and still maintain the self-respect that a drive master must have in the fight ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... You'd like to use this, wouldn't you? But you lack the will. That's why you're a mere lackey." Abruptly, he ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... the prey's divided;—Keep away! I have some beef about me and bear up Against an insolence as basely set As mine own infamy; yet I have been Edged to the outer cliff. I have been weak, And played too much the lackey. What am I In this waste, empty, cruel, land of England, Save an old castaway,—a buccaneer,— The hull of derelict Ambition,— Without a mast or spar, the rudder gone, A danger ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... resources is perpetual, where, from the floor-scrubber to the dramatist, from the academician to the simpleton who gets muddled over the evening newspaper, from the witty courtier down to his philosophic lackey, each one revises Montesquieu with the self-sufficiency of a child which, because it is learning to read, deems itself wise; where self-esteem, in disputation, caviling and sophistication, destroys all sensible ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as his lackey—and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much of cold cunning in him to have ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Labour laboro. Labour labori. Labour, manual manlaboro. Labourer laboristo. Labyrinth labirinto. Lac (lacquer) lako. Lace lacxi. Lace pasamento. Lace (of shoe, etc.) lacxo. Lacerate dissxiri. Lack bezono. Lacker, lacquer laki. Lackey, lacquey lakeo. Laconic lakona. Laconism lakonismo. Lad knabo, junulo. Ladder sxtupetaro. Lade sxargxi. Lading, bill of garantiita letero. Lading sxargxo—ado. Lady sinjorino, nobelino. Lag malakceli. Laical nereligia. Lair nestego. Laity nereligiuloj. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... man confesses his animal nature; he is no longer an Emerson, a Dante, a Plato—he is simply a physiological contrivance taking in nutriment. The highest and the lowest are for the moment on the same level. The lady and her maid, the lord and his lackey are all one. Eating your bread on a mountain-top or in the camp of lumbermen or with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness adds a new element. Here the picture has all nature for a background and the imagination is moved. The rye and the oatcake now become a kind ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... lord's commands—that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him—HIM there—that very cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow—HIM there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband; furnishing against myself, Great God! whenever I was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would hew my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be regarded as an honourable matron ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... you not, after long study of the Beautiful that has been, seize upon new and airy combinations of a beauty that is to be? See you not that the grander art, whether of poet or of painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors the REAL; that you must seize Nature as her master, not lackey ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The lackey soon returned and ushered Duroy into Madame's presence. She was seated at a table and ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... then. Look here, Sal. I've got hold of a cull or I shouldn't be in this lackey's coat. The fool's bursting with gold and he wants someone to help him to spend it. I'll be hanged if there's another woman in London like you for that fun. Now's your chance. He's sweet on a wench—a raw boarding school miss—he ran off with ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... were the Copper King, gleaming ruddy and brave, and the Tin King, strutting in his trimmings of gaudy tinsel which looked nearly as well as silver, but were more economical. And this fine troop of lackey kings most politely led Thor and Loki into the palace, and gave them of the best, for they never suspected who these seeming maidens ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... (Monsieur Jourdain, Lackey) MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: What the devil is this? They have nothing other than the great lords to reproach me with, and as for me, I see nothing so fine as to associate with the great lords; there is only honor and ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... name of lineage did she come to have such a father?" Comyn went on. "I thank Heaven he's not mine. He's not fit to be her lackey. I would sooner twenty times have a profligate like my Lord Sandwich for a parent than a milk and water sop like Manners, who will risk nothing over a crown piece at play or a guinea at Newmarket. By G—, Richard," said ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quite innocent of any intentional affectation of the mode; for the new stomacher, so admired in London, had been the last alteration in female garniture at Paris a month before my father died. Is not this "Fashion" a noble divinity to possess such zealous adherents?—a pitiful, lackey-like creature, which struts through one country with the cast-off finery ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him—this man who was Governor of Hispaniola—as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf—that if the terms he had made with the buccaneers were not confirmed there was no harm done. M. de Rivarol bullied and browbeat him ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... lackey who received him, the courier strode into the council-room of the palace. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... used to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought 'twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped him. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 'Tell her Highness I will come immediately; but that, as I was not commanded for so early an hour, I am unfortunately not quite ready,' she called after the lackey's retreating form. She flung off her morning gown and began hastily to don a silken bodice, but it took her longer to dress without Maria's help, and it was some time before she stood at the door of her Highness's anteroom. She was met by one of the tiring-women whom she particularly ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... lackey boyes, give the word as ye passe, look about to my guests there; score up at the Bar there; again, agen, my fine Mercuries; if youle live in the facultie, be rulde by instructions, you must be eyed like a Serjeant, an eare like a Belfounder, your conscience a Schoolemaister, a knee ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... crept closer to the curb, and the man slouched back against the wall close to the exit from which the revelers would soon emerge. A distant clock over a jeweler's window chimed the hour of four. A moment later the door opened, and a lackey came out and loudly called the number of the Hawley-Crowles car. That ecstatically happy woman, with Carmen and the obsequious young Duke of Altern, appeared behind him in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... his seat and opens the door of the coach, exhibiting as he does so, in consequence of the inopportune displacement of his coat-tails, a very undiplomatic spectacle in the way of soiled stockings. The minister, however, makes amends for the lackey's shortcomings, for he is brilliantly attired in white cassimere breeches and a marquis's coat with embroidery, while a three-cornered chapeau with white plumes adorns his head. As he descends from his carriage the guard presents arms, and a horrible noise ensues of two brass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... was absent, as was also his wife. It was said that lately he was the hero of a love affair. M. de Joinville is prodigiously strong. I heard a big lackey behind me say: "I shouldn't care to receive a slap from him." While he was strolling to his rendezvous M. de Joinville thought he noticed that he was being followed. He turned back, went up to the fellow ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... having spent my two sous on a glass of absinthe, when there was a ring at the door, and I, Hector Ratichon, the confidant of kings and intimate counsellor of half the aristocracy in the kingdom, was forced to go and open the door just like a common lackey. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assur'd destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands, and bless'd with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to the porter, who passed it from lackey to lackey till it reached the lady it was ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Achille, how I long for you to come back! The court is as dull as a cloister now that you are gone. My ridiculous father still struts about like a turkey-cock, as if all his medals and crosses could cover the fact that he is but a head lackey, with no more real power than I have. He wheedles a good deal out of the king, but what he does with it I cannot imagine, for little comes my way. I still owe those ten thousand livres to the man in the Rue Orfevre. Unless I have some luck at lansquenet, I shall have to come out soon and ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... help, employe, attache; official. retinue, suite, cortege, staff, court. attendant, squire, usher, page, donzel[obs3], footboy[obs3]; train bearer, cup bearer; waiter, lapster[obs3], butler, livery servant, lackey, footman, flunky, flunkey, valet, valet de chambre[Fr]; equerry, groom; jockey, hostler, ostler[obs3], tiger, orderly, messenger, cad, gillie[obs3], herdsman, swineherd; barkeeper, bartender; bell boy, boots, boy, counterjumper[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... this witness was the manner of a lackey who hangs on every syllable that falls from ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was a mortification which Hillsborough could never forgive, and upon four occasions, when Franklin made the conventional call to pay his respects, he did not find his lordship at home. At his fifth call he received from a lackey a very plain intimation that there was no chance that he ever would find the ex-secretary at home, and thereafter he desisted from the forms of civility. "I have never since," he said, "been nigh him, and we have only abused one another at a distance." Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... in whispers, but the priest had passed already into the great hall of the palace and was speaking to a lackey there. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... build again the Forum. The people's business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... attendance, and, contriving to elude notice among the throng who were there lodged, was to take up his station at the foot of the stairs leading to the apartments of ladies, whence Eustacie was to descend at about eleven o'clock, with her maid Veronique. Landry Osbert was to join them from the lackey's hall below, where he had a friend, and the connivance of the porter at the postern opening towards ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by attaching his name to great questions. He had no special dislike for this country; so far from that, he admired and praised us, as by an extract from one of his books we will presently prove; but since he has become a self-appointed lackey, has donned imperial livery, and as a volunteer does the dirty work of despots, he must have lost all sympathy with and all regard for an independent, free, and brave people. We hope and believe that this country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... announce Master Peter Godolphin, and close upon the lackey's heels came Master Godolphin himself, leaning upon his beribboned cane and carrying his broad Spanish hat. He was a tall, slender gentleman, with a shaven, handsome countenance, stamped with an air of haughtiness; like Sir Oliver, he had a high-bridged, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in the Lease, too, that no peddler or agent, or suspicious stranger was to enter the Santa Maria, neither by the front door nor the back. The janitor stood in his uniform at the rear, and the lackey in his uniform at the front, to prevent any such intrusion upon the privacy of the aristocratic Santa Marias. The lackey, who politely directed people, and summoned elevators, and whistled up tubes and rang bells, thus conducting the complex social life of those favoured apartments, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... insisted so adroitly, giving the lackey to understand so explicitly that he did not come to collect money, and speaking so earnestly of urgent business, that the servant finally admitted him to the hall, saying that he would go and see if madame ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... went on for a long while. The former non-commissioned officer and lackey of the vaudeville star, Bulke, came towing Rosa across the deck in the same way as he did his master. Both looked red and contented. Frederick asked what the prospects were for ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the back he Feels fit for scourge or brand, No scurril scribes that lackey The lords of Lackeyland, No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet, For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet, No whelp of as currish a pack As the litter whose yelp it gives back, Though he answer the cry of his brother As echoes might ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a maze of halls and corridors which quite bewildered the poor poet. The sound of his heavy hob-nailed shoes on the polished floor made him tremble, no less than the sight of his mud-bespattered garments among all the splendid upholstery, through which the gorgeous lackey was guiding his steps. At last, after a transit through painted halls which seemed endless, Clare stood before the noble marquis. His lordship received the humble visitor in a quiet, unaffected manner; and the mind ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... a lackey, that would venture to speak thus before you," said Adrienne to her aunt, unable to conceal her disgust, "and yet you oblige me to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ideas which you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better fate than to be a humble lackey in that house." He had no sooner, however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public Opinion came back to him, and he added: "But are you really the general animus, or are you only the animus of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fellow," said he airily, as one might open with a lackey, "I protest I am in a hurry, for my presence makes itself much desired elsewhere. I cannot comprehend why in Heaven's name so large a regiment of you should turn ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,—the grin, of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... valley with their glasses. Monmouth himself had dismounted, and was leaning against the trunk of a tree, with his arms folded upon his breast, and a look of white despair upon his face. Behind the tree a lackey paced up and down leading his glossy black charger, who pranced and tossed his lordly mane, a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... office in Bowling Green, where, in two hours, aided by a single clerk, he transacts the business of the day, returning early in the afternoon to take his drive on the road. He despises show and ostentation in every form. No lackey attends him; he holds the reins himself, With an estate of forty millions to manage, nearly all actively employed in iron works and railroads, he keeps scarcely any books, but carries all his affairs in his head, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... consist of one long adobe house. The beach was low and sandy, and we were wet somewhat in wading through a light surf to get on shore. We had on board a Mr. Baylis, who we afterward learned came down with Capt. Lackey on a big speculation which was to capture all the wild goats they could on Catalina Island, and take them to San ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... us the greatness of his marvellous taciturnity his name is only once mentioned in the whole of that history, as long as it is truthful? From all I have said thou wilt gather, Sancho, that there must be a difference between master and man, between lord and lackey, between knight and squire: so that from this day forward in our intercourse we must observe more respect and take less liberties, for in whatever way I may be provoked with you it will be bad for the pitcher. The favours and benefits that I have promised you will come in due time, and if they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a powdered lackey, opening the folding doors of a magnificent dining-room. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle Zephyrine. The lieutenant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... again, our travellers have arrived at last in the great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets of La Ville Lumiere. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable perruquier is hurrying to an appointment. Or—in its way most curious of all—we see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have been ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton |
