"Menial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 to make ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... 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
... 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 German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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
... 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 with ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... 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 of my time. I once washed dishes in a filthy restaurant because ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... 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
... 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
... 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
... The menial servants of Englishmen, persons (to use the emphatical phrase of a ruined and patient Eastern chief) "whose fathers they would not have set with the dogs of their flock" entered into their patrimonial lands. Mr. Hastings's banian was, after this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... 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 his sister, "he threw himself into my mother's arms, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... 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
... 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 great ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... 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 small, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... 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 |
