"Beast of burden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seasons. How knowest thou these things? Not as I know them, who have seen—nay, but as a king knows conquering; it's in thy blood! Is a bundle of sugar-cane tribute enough for thee, Kumiria? Shall purple trappings please thee? Shall some fat rajah of the plains make a beast of burden of thee? Answer, lord of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... that the Romans sold their slaves to the slave merchants. I knew that slavery was horrible, and I approved of a mother's killing her children sooner than have them live a captive's life. I knew that a slave became a beast of burden. While the "horse-dealer" was speaking, I drew my hand across my forehead to make sure that it was really I, Guilhern, the son of Joel the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, a son of that free and haughty race, whom they ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... become a jaded beast of burden, Agnes, if always full laden with the present, and the actually existent. Happily, like Pegasus, it has broad and strong pinions—can rise free from the prisoner's cell and the rich man's dainty palace. Free! free! How the heart swells, ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... deities. But how is it that figures 687-689 [same as our plate LXVIII, 42] serve as a seat for the Chac? Now Chac [he refers to the long-nose god] is not really a god of water, but of rain; the rain-producing storm cloud is his vehicle; the storm bird is his beast of burden on ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... build and manufacture; the ruling and propertied classes soon perceive that a day of rest is absolutely requisite. Without it the laborer wears out too rapidly—like the horse, the ox, or any other beast of burden. The day is therefore decreed for economic reasons. It is only placed under the sanction of religion because, in a certain stage of human development, there is no other sanction available. Every change in social organisation has then to be enforced as an edict of the gods. This is carried ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... modern language the term dromedary is very improperly applied to the Bactrian, or two-hunched camel, a slow beast of burden. The word dromedary is formed from the Greek celer, and only belongs to a peculiar breed of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Xenophon. And now look at this side, if you can. Look at the time when the Church had imprisoned the minds, and violence the bodies of men, whereby knights and priests could lay the whole weight of life on the common beast of burden—the third estate. There you have club-law, feudalism, and fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train shocking uncertainty and darkness of mind, a corresponding intolerance, discord of faiths, religious wars, crusades, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... varieties, which do not exist in Mexico, nor are found anywhere in the world outside the highlands of Peru and Bolivia. Indeed, native Mexico, before the introduction of the equine race from Europe, had no beast of burden whatever, such as the llama afforded to ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... is your ring with which you married me; take it. You command me to take back the dowry which I brought you; to do which neither of you to pay it nor of me to receive it will demand either a purse or a beast of burden, because it has escaped your mind that you took me naked: and if you consider it honest that this body by which I have borne the children begotten by you shall be seen by everybody, I will go away naked; but I pray you in consideration of my virginity, which I brought to you ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and poor, animated by a common impulse, filled the narrow street that led to the city's southern gate. Carts drawn by dogs, laden donkeys, French limousines, victorias, wheelbarrows—every conceivable wheeled vehicle and beast of burden—were jammed in a seemingly inextricable tangle in the mad ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... came into her eyes and her arms ached to take the great boy and hold him tightly against her breast. With all her mother's soul she wanted to protect Hugh from a world she was sure would treat him always as a beast of burden and would take no account of what she thought of as the handicap of his birth. Her morning's work was done and without saying anything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform laboriously ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... used up in the most prodigal manner possible, as those in command had not the inducement of treating the rowers well, from that economic standpoint which causes a man to so use his beast of burden as to get the best work from him. In the galley, when a slave could row no more he was flung overboard and another was put ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... was proposed concerning him, he spake out as a true knight should speak "I am right thankful to you, my father-in-law, that you have caused me to be put in this place. Of a truth the King of France shall lose nothing by my means, neither charger, nor mule, nor packhorse, nor beast of burden." ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... partner he Will prove.) To this agreement should you not Consent, 'gainst Sarraguce his host will lay The siege; by force you will be tak'n and bound, And brought to Aix, the royal seat. Hope not To ride on palfrey, nor on steed, on mule Female or male;—on a vile beast of burden You shall be thrown, and doomed to have your head Struck off.—Behold the Brief our Emp'ror sends!" With his right hand he gives it to the ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... The lawyer had now no rival to fear but Monsieur Gravier. Now Monsieur Gravier was the typical man of forty of whom women make use while they laugh at him, whose hopes they intentionally and remorselessly encourage, as we are kind to a beast of burden. In six years, among all the men who were introduced to her from twenty leagues round, there was not one in whose presence Dinah was conscious of the excitement caused by personal beauty, by a belief in promised happiness, by the impact of a superior ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... when the water is raised the weight counterbalances the weight of the full bucket. The sakieh, which will raise twelve hundred gallons twenty or twenty-four feet in an hour, is a modified form of a Persian wheel, made to revolve by a beast of burden; it draws an endless series of buckets up from the water, and automatically empties them into a trough or other receptacle. In former times these appliances were heavily taxed and made the instruments of oppression, but these abuses have been reformed ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Christian Andersen," and in the stories she told to illustrate them, Miss Shedlock exemplified that teaching of Socrates, which represents him as saying: "All my good is magnetic, and I educate not by lessons but by going about my daily business." The story as a mere beast of burden for conveying information or so-called moral or ethical instruction was relieved of its load. The play spirit in literature which is the birthright of every child of every nation was set free. Her interpretation of the delicate satire and the wealth of imagery revealed in the tales ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... carrier, porter, bearer, tranter^, conveyer; cargador^; express, expressman; stevedore, coolie; conductor, locomotive, motor. beast, beast of burden, cattle, horse, nag, palfrey, Arab^, blood horse, thoroughbred, galloway^, charger, courser, racer, hunter, jument^, pony, filly, colt, foal, barb, roan, jade, hack, bidet, pad, cob, tit, punch, roadster, goer^; racehorse, pack horse, draft horse, cart horse, dray horse, post horse; ketch; Shetland ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... modern in their cleanliness; yet a touch of medievalism is retained in that the main work of cleaning is done by women. But, for that matter, it seems to the casual observer as if the bulk of all the work here were performed by the supposedly weaker sex. Certainly woman is here the chief beast of burden. In every direction she may be seen, in rustic garb, struggling cheerily along under the burden of a gigantic basket strapped at her back. You may see the like anywhere else in Germany, to be sure, but not often elsewhere in such preponderant numbers. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... religious condition of that land. There are more nations in India than are found in all Europe; they also present a greater diversity of type. Between the aboriginal tribes which treat the weaker sex only as a beast of burden, and the Parsee community which holds its women in the highest consideration and furnishes them with a liberal education and large opportunity, there are many intermediate tribes and nations which ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... longer to be determined by consideration of sentiment, but will be the result of cold commercial calculation, and so fixed as best to serve the ends of industrial expediency. All this in Belgium, where the dog is already in active service as a beast of burden and draught; doubtless the transition to that humble condition from his present and immemorial social elevation in less advanced countries will be slow and characterized by bitter factional strife. America, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... hands all roaring with laughter, Jim said, while the mate struggled in vain with his captors and the giant tortoise hissed its objections at the liberty taken with it in thus converting it into a beast of burden without ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... knowest the reason, I am terribly busy. I have all the preoccupations in the world. My committee—it is not all smooth, my committee. Everything and everybody depends on me. And in the committee I have enemies too. The fact is, I have become a beast of burden. I dream about it. And there are others in worse case. We shall soon be in the third year of the war. We must ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... end; —— de, to have just... acallar to quiet, hush. acampar to encamp. acariciar to caress. acaso perhaps, by chance. acceder to accede. accion f action, battle. acelerar to accelerate. acemila beast of burden. acento accent. aceptar to accept. acercar to bring near; vr. to approach. acero steel. acertado fit, proper. acertar to hit the mark, succeed, happen. acetre m. small bucket. achacoso infirm, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the Gypsy law was so strong against the debtor, that provided he could not repay his brother husband, he was delivered over to him as his slave for a year and a day, and compelled to serve him as a hewer of wood, a drawer of water, or a beast of burden; but those times are past, the Gypsies are no longer the independent people they were of yore, - dark, mysterious, and dreaded wanderers, living apart in the deserts and heaths with which England at one time abounded. Gypsy law has given place to common ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the peoples of the world find shelter and protection—save the African (who was formerly used as a beast of burden and now as a football, to be kicked by one faction and kicked back by the other) and the industrious Chinaman, who was barred out by the over-obsequiousness of the Congress of the nation, in deference to the Sand-Lot demagogues of the Pacific coast, headed by Denis Kearney, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... at him in the very moment of intensest bustle, on the arrival of the cars. The shriek of the engine as it rushes into the car-house is the utterance of the steam fiend, whom man has subdued by magic spells and compels to serve as a beast of burden. He has skimmed rivers in his headlong rush, dashed through forests, plunged into the hearts of mountains, and glanced from the city to the desert-place, and again to a far-off city, with a meteoric progress, seen and out of sight, while his reverberating ...
— The Old Apple Dealer (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Saint's Festival, and while, in Mannheim, even on those days the Christian traveller paid one kreuzer if he crossed the bridge on foot, and two if on horseback, the Jew was charged four kreuzer if on foot, twelve if on a horse, and for every beast of burden he, unlike the Christian wayfarer, paid a further toll of eight kreuzer. The Jewish quarter often lay near the river, and Jews had great occasion for crossing the bridges, even for local needs. In Venice, the Jewish quarter was naturally intersected by bridges; in Rome there was the pons Judeorum, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... brutal assertion of physical superiority begin by degrading her to the last,) woman is, we firmly believe, neither intended for a tyrant nor a slave—Not a slave, for till she is raised above the condition of a beast of burden, man, her companion, must continue barbarous—Not a tyrant, for terrible as are the evils of irresponsible authority, with whomsoever it may be vested, in her hands it becomes the most tremendous instrument that Providence in its indignation can employ to crush, degrade, and utterly to paralyze ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... and without aids, as the traveller has to climb alone when he nears the summit of the mountain. No beast of burden can help him there; neither can the gross senses or anything that touches the gross senses help him here. But for a little distance words may ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... inland woman and had so little knowledge of matters connected with the sea, that when she first heard the mention of the yacht it had brought into her mind the idea of an Asiatic animal, with long hair and used as a beast of burden, which she had read about in her school-books. But when she had discovered that the object in question was a vessel and not a bovine ruminant, her mind carried her no farther than to a pleasure boat with a ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... could not tell whether he was man, woman, or beast. A sort of cap or wide cloth band went across his head, concealing his forehead. His huge pack loomed over his shoulders, and as he walked, using two paddles as canes, he seemed some anomalous four-footed beast of burden. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... his journey, he answered that his saddle horse was in the pasture. Then the ass interrupted him, saying, "Am not I thine ass upon which thou hast ridden all thy life long?" Balaam: "I use thee as a beast of burden, but not for the saddle." The ass: "Nay, upon me has thou ridden since thine earliest day, and thou hast always treated me with as much affection as a man treats his wife." Balaam had now to admit that the ass had spoken the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... The principal beast of burden is the carabac or water buffalo, which is used for ploughing rice fields, as well as drawing heavy loads on sledges or ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... milked cows, toiled in the field, began his milking after dark, worked sixteen hours a day, had nothing to eat except what could not be sold by his employer. He was a German plebeian, with no chance ever to improve his condition. He was ignorant, stupid, a mere beast of burden. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... painful even to recollect the plight in which I was when I was stopped,—for stopped I was, as shortly and as sharply, as the beast of burden, with a bridle in its mouth, whose driver puts a period to his career. I was wet,—intermittent gusts of rain were borne on the scurrying wind; in spite of the pace at which I had been brought, I was chilled to the bone; and—worst of all!—my mud-stained feet, all cut and bleeding, were so ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... life of the hireling, whose sole function was drudgery, who had no other prospect until death, was to give as little to his employer as possible. In order to keep the necessary labourer submissive, it was a matter of public policy to keep him uneducated and as near the condition of a beast of burden as possible, and in order to keep his life tolerable against that natural increase which all the moral institutions of his state promoted, the labourer—stimulated if his efforts slackened by the touch of absolute misery—was forced to devise elaborate rules for ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... blackness of a wolf's mouth, than that I ought to hear myself called liar, without cramming the epithet down the speaker's throat with the spike of my battle-axe. The lie is to a man the same as a blow, and a blow degrades him into a slave and a beast of burden, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... occasionally transported in Indian fashion, on two poles tied to a horse and trailing on the ground behind. In general, however, recourse must be had for transportation purposes to the faithful horse and the patient donkey. In the northern part of the Republic the ox is often used as a beast of burden and sometimes for riding, furnishing an odd spectacle. The ox is guided by a string tied to a ring in his nose, but neither the configuration of his back nor his gait are to be ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... neighbours. The animal, in fact, was not used by the Egyptians, and its domestication in the valley of the Nile seems to be as recent as the Arab conquest. But though it was not used by the Egyptians, it had been a beast of burden among the Semites of Arabia from an early period. In the primitive Sumerian language of Chaldaea it was called "the animal from the Persian Gulf," and its Semitic name, from which our own word camel is derived, goes back to the very beginnings of ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... returned home, they all jeeringly asked him whether he had given way to love, and he avowed that he had ravished the maid. When he was next asked where he did it, and what had been his pillow, he said that he had rested upon the hoof of a beast of burden, upon a cockscomb, and also upon a ceiling. For, when he was starting into temptation, he had gathered fragments of all these things, in order to avoid lying. And though his jest did not take aught of the truth out of the story, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... America has attracted so much attention as the llama, as it was the only beast of burden the Indians had trained to their use on the arrival of Europeans in that country. So many strange stories were told by the earlier Spanish travellers regarding this "camel-sheep," that it was natural that great interest should attach to it. These reported that the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Wednesdays, and Fridays; Sanscrit Pond, Tuesdays, Thu'sdays, an' Saturdays. Me an' the beast's done it eighteen years together, and the creatur' warn't, so to say, young when we begun it, nor I neither. I re'lly didn't know's she'd hold out till this time. There, git up, will ye, old mar'!" as the beast of burden stopped short in ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... reason could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... poison with their mouths, and deaden and soothe the serpents themselves by charming them with music. Though the march was seven days in succession, Cato led at the head of his men without using horse or beast of burden. And he continued to sup in a sitting posture from the day that he heard of the defeat at Pharsalus, and he added this further sign of his sorrow, never to lie down except when he was sleeping. Having spent the winter in Libya[745] he led forth his army; and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... that I shall be able to lay not only my heart but my brute strength at her feet. I shall be allowed to be her beast of burden, to carry her whither she would; and so with my body her to worship more than most husbands have a ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... is still not much more than a beast of burden, given to man to ease his lot. She carries heavy burdens to market, while her lord rides; she may not walk at his side, but a few paces to the rear; neither may she sit at table in the presence of strange men. The kiss with which men salute each other is not allowed to her, and she ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Campbell's brilliant reply we extract the following: FREDERICK DOUGLASS, "the beast of burden," the portion of "goods and chattels," the representative of three millions of men, has been raised{328} up! Shall I say the man? If there is a man on earth, he is a man. My blood boiled within me when I heard his address ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... bags were very near rain-soaked and had become so heavy 'twas impossible for anything less than a beast of burden to carry them further, so leaving the friendly stream, he walked some little distance from it, gaining to his surprise an open road. This was not what he wished, and was turning from it when he stumbled and fell prone. Being hot with anger and fatigue, he reached for the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... disappeared from the more civilised world since the discovery of vril, and the results attending that discovery had dispensed with their uses. Machinery and the invention of wings had superseded the horse as a beast of burden; and the dog was no longer wanted either for protection or the chase, as it had been when the ancestors of the Vril-ya feared the aggressions of their own kind, or hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however, so far as the horse was concerned, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Bactrian camel is employed as a beast of burden, the bales being slung at each side, and the water-skins suspended below the belly. When the animal is employed for this purpose, a kind of pack-saddle is used, somewhat similar in shape to that which has already been described in the history of the one-humped camel, but necessarily ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... o'clock, Lessing and Nicolai often joining him. Besides, he had laid by a little sum, which enabled him to help his friends, especially Lessing, out of financial embarrassments. Business cares did, indeed, bear heavily upon him, and his complaints are truly touching: "Like a beast of burden laden down, I crawl through life, self-love unfortunately whispering into my ear that nature had perhaps mapped out a poet's career for me. But what can we do, my friends? Let us pity one another, and be content. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... be a beast of burden any longer.' And she flung the bucket so high in the air that it stuck in the branches ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... the lordship of a small class over four to nine times their number of slaves. Judged by mere numbers, Greece was a country inhabited by barbarians. How can the ancients be thought to be humane? There was a great contrast between the genius and the breadwinner, the half-beast of burden. The Greeks believed in a racial distinction. Schopenhauer wonders why Nature did not take it into her head to invent two entirely ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the morning advances, the din of labor augments on every side; the streets are thronged with man, and steed, and beast of burden, and there is a hum and murmur, like the surges of the ocean. As the sun ascends to his meridian, the hum and bustle gradually decline; at the height of noon there is a pause. The panting city sinks into lassitude, and for several hours there is a general repose. The windows are closed, the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... much chatter and apparent confusion. Weeko (Beautiful Woman), the young wife of the war-chief Shunkaska, who had made many presents at the dances in honor of her twin boys, now gave one of her remaining ponies to a poor old woman whose only beast of burden, a large dog, had died ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... watchman, And the pennon gaily flutters, And from yonder cliff is ringing Wondrously the Lurley's song. But, alas! the good time passes; Nought but grief is then my portion; I devote myself to drinking, Pray at Coeln in the Cathedral, And become a beast of burden. Shabby tradesmen must I serve then, On my ill-used back must carry All the Dutchman's clumsy tow-boats. In the sand, to me so hateful, Wearily my way I drag on, And I've long been dead already, Ere my grave, the sea, receives me. So beware of ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... think of compositions!" cried Harry; "they are the most hateful things. Just because I wrote in my last one, that 'a mule is a beast of burden which draws a rail-car shaped like a zebra, and is sometimes used for carts with two long ears and a miserable tail,' they all burst out laughing at me, and I ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... beast of burden by the Jivro insects! Tonight you will get your revenge. This shot of sense we are giving you will last only till daylight, so your life does not matter—it will revert to the beast in the morning. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... the guilty one or not, it mattered little, as he was the first to fall into the hands of the officers. For a long time he had been kept in the chain-gang, but lately he had been sent to the silver mines, where he would probably end his days carrying ore on his back like a beast of burden, a thousand feet ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and, although the foe was pressing on, he would not leave its bank until the noncombatants had gained a full hour in advance. Then the deira crossed another stream and reached a place of safety, for the time, on French territory. Not a life had been lost nor a beast of burden of all that crowd of men, women, children, and animals. Coolness, intrepidity, and skill had been their protectors. Of the fighting men, however, more than two hundred had been slain, and nearly all the rest were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... complete sketch of the habits and nature of the Camel is given, which has great interest. The value of the camel as a beast of burden is ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in school until she was grown, if he would; so stirred was her warm Southern blood at the thought of the fate to which poor Tillie seemed doomed—the fate of a household drudge with not a moment's leisure from sunrise to night for a thought above the grubbing existence of a domestic beast of burden (thus it all looked to this woman from Kentucky), that she determined, cost what it might, to go herself to appeal ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals—flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he would shyly give simple presents—carts carved out of wood, or a wooden sword; but he was so rough and uncouth a man that their elders were not pleased that he should speak with them; and indeed most people spoke of him as of one who could be trusted indeed to do hard toil punctually like a beast of burden, but whose mind was not wholly sound, but like that of a dog or ox. But he did his duty so faithfully, and was moreover so strong and fearless, if there was any troublesome comer to deal with, that he was held to be useful in his place. He had no courtesy for ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... business, they wish to be free from such a burden, and they give the gobernadorcillo two or three reals and he excuses them on the ground of sickness. A party of troops or a Spaniard passes by and asks for some beast of burden, or an aid in food. That is also an occasion for the gobernadorcillo to get even with those whom he dislikes and obtain part of his demands; for some give him presents in order that he may not give the beasts of burden, while others do not receive ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... slaves—with which, almost in infancy, they are provided—according to their pleasure—as dogs, as horses; they lash, they scourge them, long before they have the strength to kill. What wonder if the boy, who, when a boy, used a slave as his beast of burden, or his footstool, when he grows to be a man, should use him as a mark to be shot at? The youth of Antiochus was reared in Rome. I presume to say that his earliest play-things were slaves, and the children of slaves. I am not surprised at his act. And such acts are ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... who had dealings with Quereno knew, therefore, by his name what manner of man this was, and dealt with him accordingly. Juan Quereno was himself a muleteer, and in even such a humble capacity as scrambling behind a beast of burden over a rocky range of mountains and through a stream or two, a man may make for himself a small reputation in his small world. Juan Quereno was, namely, a Government muleteer, and carried the mails over nineteen chaotic miles of rock and river. When the mails were delayed owing, it ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... superstition about that. We have not the slightest respect for it as such, and it is just as well to remember this in all our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we cannot master it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water freeze in summer. We have no more reverence for the sun than we have for a fish-tail ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... what a spectacle! Here were four million human beings without clothing, shelter, homes, and, alas! most of them without names. The galling harness of slavery had been cut off of their weary bodies, and like a worn-out beast of burden they stood in their tracks scarcely able to go anywhere. Like men coming from long confinement in a dark dungeon, the first rays of freedom blinded their expectant eyes. They were almost delirious with joy. The hopes ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... before, hand in hand, speaking little, Nadia looking about on every side; twice a day they halted. Six hours of the night were given to sleep. In a few huts Nadia again found a little mutton; but, contrary to Michael's hopes, there was not a single beast of burden in the country; horses, camels—all had been either killed or carried off. They must still continue to plod on across this ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... us in turn had been jerked thrillingly round the room on his precarious back, had dug our heels into his unyielding sides, and had scratched our hands on the tin tacks that secured his mane to his stiffly-curving neck. Later, with increasing stature, we came to overlook his merits as a beast of burden; but how frankly, how good-naturedly, he had recognized the new conditions, and adapted himself to them ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... only as a beast of burden; its hair is woven into fabrics both fine and durable, chief of which are rugs, beautiful, much desired, and costly; the younger the animal the more is its hair esteemed. The natural colors harmonize readily with the furnishings ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... as commonly understood, does not explain why one man is born with a sinful nature and another with a virtuous one. It contents itself with saying as Luther said: "Man is a beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes God rides him and sometimes Satan." But why God should allow Satan to ride His own creature nobody can tell. At any rate, man must suffer eternally for the crimes which he is forced by Satan to commit. Moreover this theory ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... Roman empire and our Southern States! Gibbon says that slavery existed in "every province and every family," and that they were bought and sold according to their capacities for usefulness, and the demand for laborers—selling at hundreds of dollars, and from that down to the price of a beast of burden! Now, it is notorious that the gospel made considerable progress among the citizens of the Roman empire; and, as nearly every family owned slaves, it is certain that slaveholders were converted and admitted into the Church. It will not do to say that the poor, including ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... Sixth Species were made up of the Ingredients which compose an Ass, or a Beast of Burden. These are naturally exceeding slothful, but, upon the Husbands exerting his Authority, will live upon hard Fare, and do every thing to please him. They are however far from being averse to Venereal Pleasure, and seldom ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed to develop her ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... not one to brook immunity on the score of his master's greatness. In another second he was on his feet, had wrested the staff from the hands of his astounded beast of burden, flourished it round his head after the most approved manner of Shirley champions at Lyndhurst fair, and called to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume . . . all that he might come to this! . . . that he might be interred just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden! ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Paca are both held in a state of domestication; the former as a beast of burden, and the latter for its hair or wool. On the other hand, the Guanacos and Vicunas are wild animals, and are eagerly hunted by the mountain tribes of Indians for their flesh and skins, but in the case of the vicuna for the very fine wool which it yields, and which commands ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... things concerned his body alone: and I am more than an edifice of viands reared by my teeth. To pretend that what my body does or endures is of importance seems rather silly nowadays. I prefer to regard it as a necessary beast of burden which I maintain, at considerable expense and trouble. So I shall make no ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... These terrible winds, which of course were against us, with the frequently heavy cart-tracks, would make it quite impossible to ride. The monotony of many weary hours of plodding was relieved only by the bones of some abandoned beast of burden, or the occasional train of Chinese carts, or rather two-wheeled vans, loaded with merchandise, and drawn by five to six horses or mules. For miles away they would see us coming, and crane their necks in wondering gaze as we approached. The mulish leaders, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the other,—nevertheless every man, simply because he is a human being, has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of burden. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... testify that you might put up quite a while at Ballina and never hear its existence mentioned, so it cannot be of much account. The streets are thronged with barefoot women and ragged lads with their threepenny loads of turf. The patient ass, with his straw harness and creels, is the prevailing beast of burden everywhere I have travelled since I entered Enniskillen ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... sunk into a beast of burden. I trudge on with my mind torpid—I take whatever comes to me, and go on mechanically. Oh it cows me, it wears me down! I have learned to bear anything—anything! A man might kick me ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... not a mere beast of burden with nothing but her work in her head. She was not the servant, who stands like a post, with the frightened face and doltish air of utter stupidity, when masters and mistresses are talking in her presence. She, too, had cast off her shell, fashioned ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... himself could not be sure of finding her burial place if at any time it was necessary to seek it.... Such was the last scene in the career of this luxurious and pleasure-loving creature!... Thus had that body gone to dissolution in an unknown hole in the ground like any abandoned beast of burden!... ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... serenest trust. Hawthorne, standing in St. Peter's, saw only the gorgeous coloring; proportions, immensity, and sacredness were as nothing to the harmonious brilliancy of this expanded "jewel casket."[9] Stevenson, thinking of the beast of burden best suited to carry his great sleeping sack, discarded the horse, for, as he says, "she is a fine lady among animals."[10] The description of a horse which follows this statement emphasizes the fact that a horse is not intended for carrying burdens. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the alpaca wool. This creature is also a species of camel, though different in shape. Cavier regarded the paco as a variety of the llama; so also the vicugua. The llama is generally used as a beast of burden, while the former are used chiefly for their ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... were entering, the horse had taken the place of the ox as the beast of burden. Two men of some authority in the prefecture agreed that it was difficult to think of tracts in the south-west that would be suitable for cattle grazing. There was certainly no "square ri where the price of land was low enough to ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... a carman, a beast of burden; a very camel: have you any eyes, niece? do you know a man? is he to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... drift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out the room there—do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast when at last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she was very young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A real mother's heart—all mothers are not real ones—would have ached to see the dirt and bruises on the delicate childish limbs, and the vermin that crawled under the yellow rings of hair. How to be clean and tidy nobody had ever shown her, though she had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and Austria and Holland each one fifth, the last fifth being advanced by Prussia herself until she reimbursed herself from France at the general peace. The device was suggestive of that of the rustic who tempts his beast of burden onwards by dangling a choice vegetable before ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Already in describing the Roman economy of the sixth century we have explained that it was based, like all the large undertakings of antiquity generally, on the employment of slaves.(8) In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its instrument was without exception man reduced in law to a beast of burden. Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that the proceeds fell to the master. The levying of the public revenues in the lower grades was regularly conducted by the slaves of the associations that leased them. Servile hands performed the operations ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... thinks that elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome merrymaking he had better not meet the African elephant in the rough. Most people are acquainted with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of burden, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian elephant is about as much like his African brother as a tomcat ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... may infer that all its other characters would be equally amenable to selection. The small size of the ass in England and Northern Europe is apparently due far more to want of care in breeding than to cold; for in Western India, where the ass is used as a beast of burden by some of the lower castes, it is not much larger than a Newfoundland dog, "being generally not more than from twenty to thirty inches high." (2/45. Col. Sykes Cat. of Mammalia 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' July 12, 1831. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... at his elbow. "Fill this in!" he said, in those tones of his that would have roused rebellion in a beast of burden. "And tread the earth down ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... country in the early days of the Revolution will be transitory and of a nature that will right itself from day to day; for the village will not fail to improve its dwellings as soon as the peasant has ceased to be the beast of burden of the farmer, the merchant, the money-lender, and the State. In order to avoid an accidental and transitory inequality, shall we stay our hand from righting an ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... of the master's household. This also was the loyalty demanded of the Greek and Roman domestic,—before there had yet come into existence that inhuman form of servitude which reduced the toiler to the condition of a beast of burden; and the relation was partly a religious one. There does not seem to have been in ancient Japan any custom corresponding to that, described by M. de Coulanges, of adopting the Greek or Roman servant into the household cult. But as the Japanese vassal-families furnishing domestics ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... left carried most of what they had, and they each took with them a bundle of about twenty-five pounds; but they made no progress, all the creeks they followed to the southward ran out into earthy plains and their one solitary beast of burden being knocked up, they ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... I have shown that riding men as asses is a facetious exaggeration of an African practice, the Minister being generally the beast of burden for the King. It was the same in the Maldive Islands. "As soon as the lord desires to land, one of the rhief Catibes (Arab. Khatib a preacher, not Katib a writer) comes forward to offer his shoulder (a function much esteemed) and the other gets upon his shoulders; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... stone crosses, telling of Calvary, which are found at every parting of the ways. Told to simple dwellers in such a land the Bible story was neither vague nor remote. They knew its setting because their own surroundings were the same. They practised the shepherd customs; the ass was their own beast of burden; the tending of vines and fig-trees and olive-orchards was a part of their daily lives. And so, naturally, the older noel writers without any thought of anachronism, and the modern writers by poetic instinct made complete ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... for it was filled with daily tasks and rebukes. No one cared for me. My mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... foot is well adapted for a sandy country; and, by a singular motion of his upper lip, he picks the smallest leaves from the thorny shrubs of the desert as he passes along. The camel is therefore the only beast of burden employed by the trading caravans which traverse the desert in different directions, from Barbary to Nigritia. As this useful and docile creature has been sufficiently described by systematical writers ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... the pathway, staying your steps awhile, What is the symbol? "Only death? why should you cease to smile At death for a beast of burden?" On through the busy street That is ever and ever echoing the tread ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... distance of 130 miles in fifty-six hours. The Blue Nile garrisons, with the exception of the post at Rosaires, were also concentrated. By the 8th of October the whole force was collected at Abu Haraz. Five hundred camels, which had marched from Omdurman, and every available local beast of burden joined the transport of the column. On the 9th the XIIth Soudanese started up the Rahad river for Ain el Owega. From this point the road leaves the river and strikes across the desert to Gedaref, a distance of 100 miles; and in the whole distance water is only found at the wells of El Kau. Owing ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... uniform team; and almost all the people of Southern Africa value their cattle next to their women, and take a pride in possessing animals that look high-bred." "They rarely or never make use of a handsome animal as a beast of burden."[500] The power of discrimination which these savages possess is wonderful, and they can recognise to which tribe any cattle belong. Mr. Andersson further informs me that the natives frequently match a particular bull ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... To see this beast of burden, signifies that you will entertain great patience and fortitude in time of almost unbearable anguish and failures that will seemingly sweep every vestige of hope ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of British East Africa was greatly enhanced by the opening of a railway, 580 miles long, from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza in 1902. Among other benefits, it has cut the ground from under the slave-trade, which used to depend on the human beast of burden for the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... plenty in this household Who can hold the horse-reins for you, And the chest-bands can unloosen, And can sink the shaft-poles for you. Perhaps ten men may be sufficient. Or a hundred If you need them, 350 Who would raise their sticks against you, Give you, too, a beast of burden, And would drive you homeward, rascal, To your country, wretched creature, To the household of your father, To the dwelling of your mother, To the gateway of your brother, To the threshold of your sister, Ere this very day is ended, Ere the sun has ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... or with a missile, he has nothing to do but to spit at once into the palm of the hand which has inflicted the blow, and all feeling of resentment will be instantly alleviated in the person struck. This, too, is often verified in the case of a beast of burden, when brought on its haunches with blows: for, upon this remedy being adopted, the animal will immediately step out and mend its pace. Some persons, also, before making an effort, spit into the hand in the manner above stated, in order to make the blow more heavy."—Pliny's Natural ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... some twelve prisoners, who came in useful as transport; in fact, until we got to Chitral every man we caught was turned into a beast of burden and given a load; and if he was an Adamzada, or nobleman, he was given the heaviest load that we could find for him, oftentimes much to the delight of the poorer coolies, as an Adamzada is exempt from coolie ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... and endeavours to urge it on when weary, it turns round its head towards the man, blowing upon him a most offensive breath mixed with a kind of stinking dew, which seems to proceed from the contents of its stomach. This is a most useful and profitable animal, as besides serving as a beast of burden, its wool is excellent and very fine; more especially that species which is called pacas, which has very long wool. These animals are supported at very little expence while on a journey, requiring only a very small allowance of maize, and they can ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... was evidently a beast of burden. At least, it carried a saddle on its back. Piled atop the saddle was a conglomeration of which looked to Hector—at first glance—like a pile of junk. He went over to the animal and examined it carefully. The "junk" turned out to be a long spear, various ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... through, while making the trail like wet soap. Part way up, at one of the worst places, a pack came loose, and, slipping back, hung on the rump of the horse. There was no room for bucking it off, and there was no trouble so far as the beast of burden was concerned, for he realised fully his own danger. Two of us managed to climb along past the other animals to where he meekly stood waiting on the narrow ridge, with a descent on each side of eight hundred or nine hundred feet, and set things in order once more, when ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was, to lug the cart up the mountain. Where there is a will, however, there is generally a way; and although the pony could not drag the cart up, he could go up himself, being very sure-footed and quite willing to be turned into a beast of burden for the nonce. The heavy tarpaulin, therefore, was fastened on his back, and, with Angus leading and Hannah following with the basket of provisions, and the two girls making up the rear, the little cavalcade started forward. Oh, how hot it seemed, and oh, how tired Molly got! But never mind; they ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade |
