"Drudgery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The room she had offered him was prepared as a studio. Drawing-boards and Whatman's paper were sent for, and in a few days Somerset began serious labour. His first requirement was a clerk or two, to do the drudgery of measuring and figuring; but for the present he preferred to sketch alone. Sometimes, in measuring the outworks of the castle, he ran against Havill strolling about with no apparent object, who bestowed on him an envious ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Burke. Pattison repeats in his closing pages his lamentable refrain that the author of Paradise Lost should have forsaken poetry for more than twenty years 'for a noisy pamphlet brawl, and the unworthy drudgery of Secretary to the Council Board' (p. 332). He had said the same thing in twenty places in his book on Milton. He transcribes unmoved the great poet's account of his own state of mind, after the physicians had warned him that if ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... which would enable them to put money in their purses. With liberty to leave a miserable condition, one often summoned courage to remain and face it. She pointed that out to her wistful constituents, the poor little wives who had found in marriage only a state of supine drudgery, and of unexpectant, monotonous days. She was trying to give them some game to play. That was the way she put it to them. If one had a game to play, there was use in living. If one had only to run after the balls of the players, there was not zest enough ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... drudgery of camp life the Russian soldier as the doughboy saw him was very unsatisfactory. Many a Yank has itched to get his hands on the Russian Archangelite soldier, especially some of our hard old sergeants who wanted to put them on police and scavenger details to see them work. In this ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... tried to gag him, but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no one answered him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put to it to have his drudgery done, when the Priests must leave their pulpits to turn informers against poor prisoners." The Justice obtained a list of the names of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and, taking it for granted that all were still present, issued warrants for the collection of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "gentleman" takes a siesta proportioned to his drink. The poorer classes sit at home weaving, spinning, or threading beads, whilst the wives attend to household work, prepare the meals, buy and sell, dig and delve. Europeans often pity the sex thus "doomed to perform the most laborious drudgery;" but it is a waste of sentiment. The women are more accustomed to labour in all senses of the word, and the result is that they equal their mates in strength and stature; they enjoy robust health, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... heaven, the publicans and harlots should press into it before us; and lest, while we are boasting that we are the children of Abraham, God should, without our help, raise up children to Abraham of those stones outside; those hard hearts, dull brains, natures ground down by the drudgery of daily life till they are as the pavement of the streets; those so-called 'heathen masses' of whom we are bid ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... her face remained blankly expressionless as before. Margot smiled at her radiantly every time that they met, and mentally decided to bequeath to her half her own wardrobe before leaving the Glen. In comparison with such a lot of drudgery, her own life seemed ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... summit of laudable ambitions into the sultry plains of domestic drudgery and menial toil, nearly every ray of hope had perished upon the strained vision of the Negro. The only thing young Colored men could aspire to was the position of a waiter, the avocation of a barber, the place of a house-servant ...
— 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
... really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a repugnant struggle for ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the drudgery and confinement of the counting-house, and longed to take his seat again at his old desk at India-House. In brief, Lamb felt that he should be happier and better, if he had something to do. And partly to amuse himself, and partly to assist a friend, he employed himself for a few months in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... work again, as I used to do. So thence he and I by water talking of many things, and I see he puts his trust most upon me in the Navy, and talks, as there is reason, slightly of the two old knights, and I should be glad by any drudgery to see the King's stores and service looked to as they ought, but I fear I shall never understand half the miscarriages and tricks that the King suffers by. He tells me what Mr. Pett did to-day, that my Lord ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... this new career with characteristic energy. Of course a reporter is not made in a day. It takes many months of drudgery to obtain such skill in shorthand as shall enable the pen of the ready-writer to keep up with the winged words of speech, and make dots and lines that shall be readable. Dickens laboured hard to acquire the art. In the intervals of his work he made it a kind of holiday task ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... express a wish to have a green coat, ordered a vestment of the colour to be made, and left in his haunts. Brownie took away the green coat, but was never seen more. We may suppose that, tired of his domestic drudgery, he went in his new livery ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... various commodities for marketing their crops. The fruit growers of California and the tobacco growers of Kentucky have furnished interesting examples of such organizations. Under the improved conditions there is less drudgery on the farm; the farmer does more work, produces more, and yet has more leisure than formerly. Better roads, rural free mail delivery, telephone and electric lines are removing the isolation of country life, and to some extent are diminishing the attractions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the scale of intellect, to seek knowledge rather than attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride, and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily, is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of beneficent labor, for ourselves and for our fellow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... packed up his drudgery hose, And put on his holiday clothes; His coat was of scarlet so fine, Full trimmed with buttons behind; Two sleeves it had it is true, One yellow, the other was blue, And the cuffs and the capes were of green, And the longest that ever were seen; His ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... aunt. Her fashionable dress, cape and hat won her the respect of her aunt, who no longer dared to offer her work as a washerwoman, considering her present position far above it. The question of working in the laundry did not even occur to Maslova now. She looked with compassion on the life of drudgery led by these pale, emaciated washerwomen, some of whom showed symptoms of consumption, washing and ironing in a stifling, steam-laden atmosphere with the windows open summer and winter, and she was horrified at the thought that she, too, might ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... southern climate, with very little ventilation beneath the upper deck, with nigh two hundred panting, naked human beings wedged in together below so closely that there is scarce room for one more, the heat, the smells, the drudgery, are dreadful. No wonder the crew demanded that the trierarch and governor "make shore for the night," or that they weary of the incessant grating of the heavy oars upon ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... they are her old scholars. Those black eyes are Hoglah's; that neat woman is Judy! Yes, she has lived among them, and worked among them all her life, never forgetting that "no good work can be done without drudgery." She has her Girls' Friendly Society class still in her own little house, though she has dropped most of her regular out-of-door work of late years. For the vicar—there is a vicar now—and his daughters teach constantly ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Castle Rackrent estate, was a remote branch of the family. Born to little or no fortune of his own, he was bred to the bar, at which, having many friends to push him and no mean natural abilities of his own, he doubtless would in process of time, if he could have borne the drudgery of that study, have been rapidly made King's Counsel at the least; but things were disposed of otherwise, and he never went the circuit but twice, and then made no figure for want of a fee, and being unable to speak in public. He received his education chiefly in ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... his career a tragic weakness of will takes possession of Coleridge, making it impossible for him, with all his genius and learning, to hold himself steadily to any one work or purpose. He studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary, till the drudgery wore upon his free spirit; then he went to Rome and remained for two years, lost in study. Later he started The Friend, a paper devoted to truth and liberty; lectured on poetry and the fine arts to enraptured audiences in London, until his frequent failures ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make her things clean, and be nasty itself. At length, worn out to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use, of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... hard, and earn high wages; but if he allows the pennies, which are the result of hard work, to slip out of his fingers—some going to the beershop, some this way, and some that,—he will find that his life of hard work is little raised above a life of animal drudgery. On the other hand, if he take care of the pennies—putting some weekly into a benefit society or an insurance fund, others into a savings bank, and confides the rest to his wife to be carefully laid out, with a view to the comfortable maintenance and culture of his ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... a determination which men of maturer years might well have envied. In everything he was scrupulously exact. His accounts were accurately kept; he was punctuality itself, and his patience was inexhaustible. For two years he submitted cheerfully to the drudgery of his position, re-establishing his health, but without advancing a single step towards the goal of his ambition. But before he was nineteen ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... command the former, and on the 12th of October I dispatched Brigadier-General A. McD. McCook to command the latter, which had been moved forward to Nolin Creek, fifty-two miles out of Louisville, toward Bowling Green. Staff-officers began to arrive to relieve us of the constant drudgery which, up to that time, had been forced on General Anderson and myself; and these were all good men. Colonel Thomas Swords, quartermaster, arrived on the 13th; Paymaster Larned on the 14th; and Lieutenant Smyzer, Fifth Artillery, acting ordnance-officer, on the 20th; ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... [Lat.], empressement [Fr.], earnestness, intentness; abandon; vigor &c (physical energy) 171; devotion &c (resolution) 604; exertion &c 686. industry, assiduity; assiduousness &c adj.; sedulity; laboriousness; drudgery &c (labor) 686; painstaking, diligence; perseverance &c 604.1; indefatigation^; habits of business. vigilance &c 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium^, insomnium^; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was no sentimental reverie in his look. Already his mind was engaged in scrutiny of the circumstances in which he was set. He realised fully his situation. The idealism which had been born with him had met its reward in a labour herculean at the least, and the infinite drudgery of the practical issues came in a terrible pressure of conviction to his mind. The mind did not shrink from any thought of the dangers in which he would be placed, from any vision of the struggle he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... affairs that we ever read, and we were both greatly amused over it. She had kept a faithful record for years—not every day, or even every week, but just when she happened to feel like writing, so it was no drudgery. ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... places in all our countries will be few in proportion, but the struggle will be won in the Nation, as in the Army, by the army of the myriads of faithful workers faithfully performing tasks of drudgery and quiet service—and a realization of this is ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... clerks—clerks of the express, of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank. With them are their giggling, over-gestured, pathetically pretentious women, who grow fat with them, bear them too many babies, and float helpless and uncontent in a colorless sea of drudgery ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... law," said she, with great firmness. And—in spite of the fact that little Renee begged and pleaded—he was forced to give up his idea of seafaring life for the dry drudgery and routine of a clerk at law. He was now about sixteen ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... all—but, Sir, I could not bow my Mind to this so necessary Drudgery; and yet however, I assum'd my native Temper, when out o'th' Trading City; in it, I forc'd my Nature to a dull slovenly Gravity, which well enough deceiv'd the busy Block-heads; my Clothes and Equipage I lodg'd at this End of the Town, where I still pass'd for something better ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... to that little grave and lie down among the feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this eternal struggle to live. What had life in store for her? There was the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Sweden and Denmark, found their way back in the strangest fashion to Havre, Paris, and Toulouse, by way of Hamburg, and finally settled down in London—Sainton to take an important post in the orchestra, while Luders got along as best he could by the drudgery of giving lessons. Now I found them living together in a pretty house like a married couple, each tenderly concerned for his friend's welfare. Luders had read my essays on art, and my Oper und Drama in particular moved him to exclaim, 'Donnerwetter, there's something in that!' Sainton pricked ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the inscription: Real Estate and Insurance, Mortgage Loans. And as he entered, and remembered that thirty years ago he and John Starkweather had occupied adjoining stools at the same high desk, and broken their back over the same drudgery, and at the same wage, he was filled with an emotion which made his cheeks warm. Side by side, only thirty years ago, and separated now by the Lord knew what, and the Lord knew why. Mr. Mix knew that he was brainier than John Starkweather; he admitted it. Brainier, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... as he finished. 'Thirty years of drudgery! When shall I be able to relieve her? Ha! O. J. F. Dynevor, Esquire, if it were you who were coming from Peru, you would find a score ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... elder children were indifferent to this, and indeed rather preferred it; it was a tradition that Hope had expressed the wish, when a child, that her father might lose his property, so that she could become a teacher. As for Harry, he infinitely preferred the drudgery of a law office to that of a gentleman of leisure; and as for their step-mother, it turned out, when she was left a widow, that she had secured for herself and Emilia whatever property remained, so that ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Glass, and almost ruins me in Ribbons. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft Man, and in Danger of breaking by her Laziness and Expensiveness. Pray, Master, tell me in your next Paper, whether I may not expect of her so much Drudgery as to take care of her Family, and curry her ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... fencing, and music. Mathematics he found hard dull work, as have so many men of like temperament, before and since, but music and fencing and geography were more to his liking. He was an ardent, imaginative youth, and chafed under all drudgery and routine. His foster-mother, in the absence of his father, suffered him to do much as he pleased, and he pleased to "play hookey" most of the time, joining boys of his own age and disposition, and deserting the school for the fields and ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... of the rules and grammar. I think you will do very well together; for her fluency will tempt you on to talk, and your perseverance will keep her up to the exercises and conjugations, which are sad drudgery, but very needful if you are ever really to know anything of the language. You are persevering, ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... of art, as the disinterested cognition devoid of Will, can afford an interval of rest from the drudgery of Will service. But esthetic beatitude can be obtained only by a few; it is not for the hoi polloi. And then, art can give ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... year, at twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolled as an instructor of chemistry in the University of California. Here the years passed quietly; he faithfully performed the drudgery that brought him his salary, and, a student always, he took half-a- dozen degrees. He was, among other things, a Doctor of Sociology, of Philosophy, and of Science, though he was known to the world, in later days, only ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... be free from sin and to find peace with God, led him at last to enter a cloister, and devote himself to a monastic life. Here he was required to perform the lowest drudgery, and to beg from house to house. He was at an age when respect and appreciation are most eagerly craved, and these menial offices were deeply mortifying to his natural feelings; but he patiently endured this humiliation, believing that it was ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... looking on, and some were agreeably stimulated by the general sense of festivity. But Emily Fox-Seton was found by Lady Maria to be invaluable on this occasion. It was so easy, without the least sense of ill-feeling, to give her all the drudgery to do. There was plenty of drudgery, though it did not present itself to Emily Fox-Seton in that light. She no more realised that she was giving Lady Maria a good deal for her money, so to speak, than she realised that her ladyship, though an amusing and delightful, was an absolutely selfish ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... than it was for the writer, and, if suitably indexed, such a work will in permanence serve as a guide-book to those who are going to exercise real thought and insight upon that subject. It is the element of disinterested drudgery which the Germans have contributed to science. Not that they have lacked men of genius, but that they have added to genius that which, Carlyle notwithstanding, it so often lacks—the infinite capacity for taking pains. Take up any scientific ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations; to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after office-drudgery—an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic panacea; when it professes ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... had a way of turning his face up to the sky sometimes, and it was not to scan the heavens for clouds. You saw him leaning on the plow handle to watch the whirring flight of a partridge across the meadow. He liked farming. Even the drudgery of it never made him grumble. He was a natural farmer as men are natural mechanics or musicians or salesmen. Things grew for him. He seemed instinctively to know facts about the kinship of soil and seed that other men had to learn from books or experience. It grew to be a saying in that section ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... to—it is our main desire. This is the way in which greatest discoveries, fortunes, and poems are made. It is the way in which we take the responsibilities and problems of life that makes it either a deadly bore—a mere dull round of routine and drudgery—or the most interesting and absorbing game, capable of enlisting all the energy and enthusiasm we have to put into it. The people who accomplish things are the people who play the game. They let themselves ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... to collect statistics showing the amount of property on which taxes were paid by women. It was impossible to obtain these in New York City, but in three-fifths of the towns and cities outside it was found to be $348,177,107. In Brooklyn women paid one-fourth of all the taxes. The drudgery of preparing these tax lists and recounting and labeling all the petitions was done ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the family. This has entirely ceased as a domestic industry with the exception of the "sewing" of the women's clothes and men's underwear. As a consequence, the women of the family are condemned to idleness, or to the drudgery of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... about your plans; make him feel that he is a partner. See that he has a chance to do part of the work, not only its "chores," but also its forms of service. But even a boy's attitude to the "chores" will depend on whether they are a responsibility with a degree of dignity or a form of unpaid drudgery. His room should be his own room, and he should be responsible for its neatness and its adorning. Services which he does regularly for all should receive regular compensation. In all services which the home renders ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... fields. They devote to homely duties the time devoted by European ladies to love, intrigue, public affairs; they preserve, thanks to countless labor-saving devices, for more or less intellectual pursuits the strength which among European women is consumed by habitual drudgery. The combination of functions has probably done much to increase sexlessness and to decrease helplessness, and so to produce almost a new species of womanhood which is bound eventually to be of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... This habit of carping, this trick of collecting notes, this inability to put a work through, this dawdling erudition, this horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man knows them, and feels those temptations which seem to be in the air. Oxford is a discouraging place. College drudgery absorbs the hours of students in proportion to their conscientiousness. They have only the waste odds-and-ends of time for their own labours. They live in an atmosphere of criticism. They collect notes, they wait, they dream; their youth goes by, and the night comes when ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... would then take up her position in his rear and wait till he had finished his meal. The position of the female among the birds is very much the same as that of woman among savage tribes. Most of the drudgery of life falls upon her, and the leavings of the males are often ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... made so useful and so honorable, it might be wished that he could have devoted himself entirely to scientific research. He had a strong taste for studies of that kind, and sometimes used to lament that his daily drudgery afforded him no leisure to compose a work on caloric, which subject he had ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of teaching them religion, or attempt civilising and reducing them by kind usage and affectionate arguments. As they gave them their food every day, so they gave them their work too, and kept them fully employed in drudgery enough; but they failed in this by it, that they never had them to assist them and fight for them as I had my man Friday, who was as true to me as the very ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... often sadly ill-treated by their husbands or friends, in addition to the dreadful life of drudgery, and privation, and hardship they always have to undergo; they are frequently beaten about the head, with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences. No one takes the part of the weak or the injured, or ever attempts to interfere with ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... bottom of all. And on the other hand, a nail ill driven, a joint ill fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's. There would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practised scales, impatient of his own imperfection, but resolute ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was instant: a long "Whoa-oa!" in best mule-whacker. The eight-team hauled negligent, their mulish senses steeped in the drudgery of the trail; only the wheel pair flopped inquiring ears. When I ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... with electricity, the new-woman idea that was claiming half of the war, the true squaw-spirit that takes up the drudgery at home while the braves go out to swap missiles with the enemy. When Marie Louise said that she, too, had come to Washington to get into harness somewhere, Polly promised ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... pages I have tried to take from our practical and often laborious calling its dull, commonplace, and prosaic aspects. It should be our constant aim to lift life above mere plodding drudgery. It is our great good fortune to co-work with Nature, and usually among her loveliest scenes. Is it not well to "look up to the hills" occasionally, from whence may come "help" toward a truer, larger manhood, and then, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... as mother is strong enough for her tiring life, so long as I live, we shall earn enough, perhaps, between us to keep Lucien until success comes. My courage will never fail," said Eve, brightening. "There is no hardship in work when we work for one we love; it is not drudgery. It makes me happy to think that I toil so much, if indeed it is toil, for him. Oh, do not be in the least afraid, we will earn money enough to send Lucien into the great world. There lies his road ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... reflex of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of innumerable observers. To no one of whom, however, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar courtierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amusement; the worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, voluntary business. Does not the frothy-hearted yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate's wig, regularly take post, and hurry up to London, for the sake of his Sage chiefly; as to a Feast of Tabernacles, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... a knife grinder, foretells unwarrantable liberties will be taken with your possessions. For a woman, this omens unhappy unions and much drudgery. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and perseverance. He therefore became apprehensive, if he remained with the commander-in-chief, that, instead of becoming a scientific soldier, he should dwindle down into a practical clerk—a species of drudgery to which his pecuniary circumstances did not render it necessary for him to submit, and for which neither his habits, his education, nor his temperament in any degree qualified him. He therefore determined promptly on a change, and was willing to enter the family of Major-general ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies and fed him carefully with hay and corn. But when the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment. War was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Soldier put on his charger its military trappings, and mounted, being clad in his heavy coat of mail. The Horse fell down straightway under the weight, no longer equal to the burden, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... capable, when well directed, of producing the most salutary effects on the temper and habits of the people. Thrice happy man, that parish-priest, who feels the extent and importance of his duties, and performs them for their own reward, not as acts of drudgery, or to gratify selfish feelings! Enviable seat, that pulpit, where power is conferred by law and by custom, of teaching useful truths, and of conveying happiness, through the force of principles, to the fire-sides of so many families! ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... an officer, a wealthy widow from Dusseldorf and a school-teacher from Coblenz among them. Catholic and Protestant, Belgian and French and German, they all labored together, cheerfully and earnestly doing drudgery of the most exacting, the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... livelier, and gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, and while he enjoys himself there he may forget the evils of the present moment. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation—something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... known that in this country and in Europe methods of teaching the alphabet have been introduced which materially diminish the labor of teachers, and lessen the drudgery to which children are usually subjected. The alphabet is taught as an object lesson. The object is usually an animal, plant, or flower. More frequently the first. The mind of the child is awakened either by the presence of the animal, or by a brief but vivid description ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... most kind of you. I'm sure Jean should be very grateful to you. You're a kind of fairy godmother to this little Cinderella. Only Jean must remember that it isn't very nice to come back to drudgery after an hour or two at the ball," and she gave ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... frank admission. "I like the excitement attending a case, and the fight to win, but it's drudgery between times—like soldiering in ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... weather was against me, and the debts kept piling up until I was ruined. You can describe the havoc made by drought, and frost, and cutting sand. Then there's the other side of the matter; the hardships a woman must bear on the plains when money's scarce. The loneliness, the monotonous drudgery, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... type the flame of spiritual emotion was harnessed and made to serve. The drudgery of founding New England was done by men whose hearts were touched with fire,—men such ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... seclusion and drudgery of office work, determined to lead a country life of some kind or other, and even then having a longing desire to roam the world and see foreign countries, I had arranged to accompany a friend to the Comoro Islands, north of Madagascar; ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... became of the very sound of its name, and how well I remember the expression on my father's careworn face one day, as he turned back from the door, out of which he was going to his daily drudgery at the theater, to say to my aunt, who had reproached him with the loss of a button from his rather shabby coat, "Ah, Dall, my dear, you see it is my ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the love of the work as for the small salary to which a private librarian would be entitled. Now you see the selfish reason I have for mentioning the matter to you, Mr Jeffreys. I offer you nothing to jump at; for it will need sheer hard work and a lot of drudgery to overtake the arrears of work, and after that I doubt if the keeping up of the library will leave you much leisure. You would incur no little responsibility either, for if I handed the care of the library to you, I should hold you responsible for every volume in it, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... man and not man for industry and that while we must have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work but the worker—not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... feet with his heart pounding, and a strange sense of expectancy. His little sister! Never during the endless months of drudgery, strife and conflict, and agony, had he forgotten Lorna. Not duty, nor patriotism, had forced him to enlist in the army before the draft. It had been an ideal which he imagined he shared with the millions of American boys who entered the service. Too ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... brought back again by my hopeless, hopeless lack of practical knowledge of how to earn a livelihood. The one gift I'd inherited wasn't good enough to be of any use—If my mother had only left me the whole of her voice, I'd have been an opera-singer. But I don't think I could have stood the drudgery—and I should have hated the publicity of it all.... Joan, how did you ever manage ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... I knew my mind was made up to go with him. My life at home with Pauline had become intolerable, nor did I take any active part in De Decker's business, finding the drudgery of the counting-house irksome after my more exciting experiences on sea and land, so, without further ado, I expressed to Hartog my willingness to join him in a ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... father's practical opposition, the refusal to pay the incidental expenses for what he always persisted in regarding as a useless education, was met, in Charles's case, by my mother's taking in the students' washing, to provide them. In the cases of Jacob and myself, this drudgery was exchanged for that of a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... and, nothing doubting that they would come round to the arguments there expressed, I gave myself up wholly to my Pansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all events (if the Swedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my Scholastics and it were my hap to die in that drudgery), the foundations of Pansophia, of the insufficient exposition of which I heard complaints, might be better dug down into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But from Sweden the answer that came was one ordering me to persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... sinking back into the narrow grave from which Hale had lifted her? It was all too strange and bitter, but if she wanted proof there was her step-mother's voice now—the same old, querulous, nerve-racking voice that had embittered all her childhood—calling her down into the old mean round of drudgery that had bound forever the horizon of her narrow life just as now it was shutting down like a sky of brass around her own. And when the voice came, instead of bursting into tears as she was about to do, she gave a hard little laugh ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... energy of will which broke through all difficulties. In his flights of imagination, in the light and fire of his language he had few equals, if any; but the perfection and classical finish which can be obtained by a sustained effort only, and by a patience which shrinks from no drudgery, these are wanting in most of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... her fist, a hard little wad of silver wrapped in the bill; nearly twenty-one dollars, the equivalent of three weeks' pay for drudgery, the winnings of an idle hour, the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... made no opposition,—now that his day-dream was dispelled, he had no right to pretend to be Helen's protector. He could have prayed her to share his wealth and his fame; his penury and his drudgery—no. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the music of a tuneless tin-whistle, bought for a penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor, manufactured by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of retaining his independence and personal freedom—failing to succeed in which, he is driven, as a last resource, to the comfortless drudgery of piano-grinding, which we shall have to notice in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... stopping to wonder at the strange madness that possessed her, now pounding harder to still her tumultuous thoughts. She did not know what it was that she expected, only something great and new and wonderful, something to lift her at last from the drudgery of her work and make her feel young and gay. Something to rouse her up to the wild joy of living and make her forget her misfortunes. To be poor, and deaf, and alone—all these were new things to Mary Fortune; but she was none of them when he was near. What need had she to hear when she could read ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... procuring a temporary post in a lawyer's office as a clerk. The drudgery was terrible. Daily, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, he found himself chained to the desk, and obliged to go through the dullest and most mechanical routine, the only respite being half an hour in the middle of the day, which he spent in dining at an eating-house. Nursed on the lap ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... teaching and catechising were laid on them, a man who had held one of the law or medical fellowships sometimes took orders late in life and then claimed presentation to a College benefice in virtue of his seniority as a Fellow, having in the meantime escaped the drudgery to which the Fellow in ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... that no dust was left. I could not wait to put my dress in order before running out into the street to see how my windows shone. Every workman who carries a dinner pail has these moments of keen delight in the product of his drudgery. Men of genius, likewise, in their hours of relaxation from their loftier tasks, prove this universal rule. I know a man who fills a chair at a great university. I have seen him hold a roomful of otherwise restless youths spellbound for an hour, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... bodies go abroad liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen by only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our slaves—ministering to us and doing drudgery for us. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the children, there was of course much of it that represented downright hard work and drudgery. There was also much training that came as a by-product and was perhaps almost as valuable—not as a substitute but as an addition. After their supper, the children, when little, would come trotting up ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... their days in publicly ventilating their vanity, feverishly courting notoriety and power; or those who, without cultivation, without expansion, without devotion, without aspiration, lead a life of monotonous drudgery, with not a single interest ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... comrades for bravery in climbing the perilous "kittle nine stanes" on Castle Rock, he was not content. Nothing more conclusively shows the genuineness of Scott's romantic feeling than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out of London, education and factory employment were whittling away at the supply of rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand the subterranean drudgery of these places, new classes of hard-up middle-class people such as my uncle, employees of various types, were coming into existence, for whom no homes were provided. None of these classes have ideas of what they ought to be, or fit in any legitimate way ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and then he would swear off from indulgence. But the drivers and the pit-boys knew his failing, and would tempt "Dago Charlie" until he fell from grace. Hal soon discovered this moral tragedy, and carried the pain of it in his soul as he went about his all-day drudgery. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... see important points, lucidity of statement, and extraordinary logical power. He did not like to undertake the management of a case which had not justice and right on its side. He had no method in his business, and detested mechanical drudgery. He rarely studied law-books, unless in reference to a case in which he was employed. He was not learned in the decisions of the higher courts. He was a poor defender of a wrong cause, but was unappalled by the difficulties of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... incensed at a shipwreck or an earthquake. The fact of being selected as the entertainer of the Bishop of Carisbury invested Mr Sharnall in the Rector's eyes with a distinction which could not have been possibly attained by mere intellect or technical skill or devoted drudgery. The organist became ipso facto a person to be ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the "covenant of works," is much of a piece with superstition. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among "heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... well aware that he could not live long. At any time a cold or a chill might hasten the end, yet the knowledge caused him no real regret. During his years of loneliness and privation he had learned to regard death as an open door through which he should escape from drudgery, ill-treatment, desolation, into the rest, the love, the happiness that remain to the children of God in that home where there is no death, "neither sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Now, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... beggar's death for years of Harshest drudgery— Learn to put your trust in God here, And ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... dinner-time, so that the results of this morning's work, so far as Mabel was concerned, had been anything but satisfactory when the books were put away; and it was with very painful feelings that Miss Livesay contemplated not only the drudgery she would be subjected to, in having to go through early lessons with this refractory niece of hers (who was far, very far behind both Clara and the Maitlands in her learning), but the conflict she was likely to encounter ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... woman's rights were usually circulated by women going from house to house. They did the drudgery, endured the hardships and suffered the humiliations attendant upon the early history of our cause; but their names are forgotten, and others reap the benefit of their labors. These women were so modest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... rather for the inner circle, we must add that the arrangements of civilized life have not been, as yet, such as to secure it to her. Her circle, if the duller, is not the quieter. If kept from "excitement," she is not from drudgery. Not only the Indian squaw carries the burdens of the camp, but the favorites of Louis XIV. accompany him in his journeys, and the washerwoman stands at her tub, and carries home her work at all seasons, and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... enjoyment—for that I never cared—but a life which should be filled with activities of the noblest kind, and it was intolerable to me to reflect that all my waking hours were in the main passed in merest drudgery, and that only for a few moments at the beginning or end of the day could it be said that the higher sympathies were really operative. Existence to me was nothing but these few moments, and consequently ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Pinckney, "at eighteen, was a sickly country lad with less than the usual elementary education and no other prospects than a life of drudgery on the old farm. But there was in him an elemental strength of will that was sufficient, as it turned out, to master fate. You have read his life again and again in the Advertising Pages of our magazines. On his nineteenth birthday, as I have ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... travel; but nearly all shrink back from its tiresomeness and drudgery. The transportation companies are constantly scheming to overcome this disagreeable side for both pleasure and business travel. One of the popular ways of pleasure travel of late is by means of personally conducted tours. A party is formed, often by the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... healing art, of which I have for so many years been at the head. Other physicians make the science to consist of various unintelligible branches; but I will shorten the road for you, and dispense with the drudgery of studying natural philosophy, pharmacy, botany, and anatomy. Remember, my friend, that bleeding and drinking warm water are the two grand principles—the true secret of curing all the distempers incident ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the gross mismanagement of schools in Yorkshire, England. Squeers, a vulgar, crafty despot, is head of Dotheboys Hall. Nicholas is an usher or undermaster in the school; Smike, a little, friendless, starved pupil who has run away to escape from drudgery and harshness.) ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... at Brook Farm. Every one served but no one was hired to serve. Household drudgery was reduced to the lowest practicable minimum. We did not live on the fat of the land, and that made a wonderful difference in the kitchen work,—that was at first. Later we had to employ farm-laborers and mechanics and as they needed meat for strong men, it ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... governed within doors, and how indulgent their husbands were to them, in demeaning themselves towards them with all kindness and respect imaginable. Upon this, conditions were agreed upon, that what women pleased might stay where they were, exempt, as aforesaid, from all drudgery and labor but spinning; that the Romans and Sabines should inhabit the city together; that the city should be called Rome, from Romulus; but the Romans, Quirites, from the country of Tatius; and that they both should govern and command in common. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... aproned maid. The obvious saving of steps by the speaking-tube and telephone-call is frowned upon for the same reason. It is this attitude of society which stands in the way of the adoption of those mechanical helps which might do away with nearly all the drudgery and dirty heavy work ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... the traffic in slops and the flimsy produce of the soda fountain, to him the drudgery of the illicit Sunday liquor trade, when the "regulars" entered by the side door from the hall, bearing the portentous sign, "Hugo Adler, M.D., Physician ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... furnished with weapons, horses, traps, and other requisites. These are under command, and bound to do every duty required of them connected with the service; such as hunting, trapping, loading and unloading the horses, mounting guard; and, in short, all the drudgery of the camp. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the reason I object to this move so strongly is that as far as my judgment goes it is not a step in the right direction. It might be so for the ordinary doctor—I don't know and I can't say—but I'm willing to help a son of mine over some of the drudgery, and it will be very disagreeable for me to have Walter settling down to married life in a place like Melbury Park, when he might do so much better. You must remember, Tom, that he is the first of the boys to get married. Dick will marry some day soon, I hope and trust, and Humphrey too, but ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... from Canadian cities. They naturally look for some grace of culture or refinement in the woman they would marry, and there are few women of the station they once belonged to who could face the loneliness and unassisted drudgery that must be borne by the small wheat-grower's wife. There were also reasons why this question had been troubling Hawtrey in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... keeping a close watch that would degenerate into drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with her back turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot upon the telegraph-wire. Of my observations on this subject, let me relate the following, which will be sufficient for ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the threshing-machine saves the threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,—which they used to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in the whole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn's floor. And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty work will be done more and more by machines, and people will have more and more chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and more time to read, and learn, and think, and be ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... light-hearted as a schoolboy just escaped from drudgery, while Bertie's Nellie, as a matter of course, was overcome ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... multitude of coverings, that Diana knew must be women. The contrast between them and herself was almost ridiculous. It made her feel stifled even to look at them. She wondered what their lives were like, if they ever rebelled against the drudgery and restrictions that were imposed upon them, if they ever longed for the freedom that she was revelling in, or if custom and usage were so strong that they had no thoughts beyond the narrow life they led. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... and drudgery has given a fuller meaning to American life. Our people are better educated; we have more opportunities for travel and recreation and enjoyment of the arts. We enjoy more personal liberty in the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... created for mankind, they are perpetually brooding over the disorders by which its progress has been attended. They are filled with horror and compassion at the sight of poor men spending their blood in the quarrels of princes, and brutifying their sublime capabilities in the drudgery of unremitting labour. For all sorts of vice and profligacy in the lower orders of society, they have the same virtuous horror, and the same tender compassion. While the existence of these offences overpowers them with grief and confusion, they never permit ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd take that, cheerfully ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... brave as the sailors who were doing there utmost to save the brig from destruction. Perhaps it would have been a pleasure to him in the last days of his life to do some noble deed; but there was only the drudgery of the common sailor to be done. He saw the man from the topsail yard strike heavily upon the deck. He dragged him into the galley, but he seemed to be dead. The steward had tender feelings, and he tried to do something to restore the unconscious sailor. While he was ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, "you'd be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great opportunities for a young man nowadays ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the sea, instead of to him, and go to sleep. But he doesn't mind. He is looking better, but work is loading up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar—he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life is ground out ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would not do, and what sort of a man Charles Grant was. Frankland Lewis does not seem to like his office, but he says he shall bring it into order if he remains there, and make it a Privy Councillor's office without drudgery. He and, indeed, all seem to wish they were better and more boldly led in the House of Commons. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... make a base hospital," replied Kemp. "I take off my hat—we all do—to women who are willing to undergo the drudgery and discomfort which hospital training involves. But I'm not talking about Florence Nightingales. The young person whom I am referring to is just intelligent enough to understand that the only possible thing to do this season ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... brutal treadmill of existence; and it not infrequently happens that they are the wives of men in easy circumstances, who are too fat- headed to realize that those womanly attributes which so charm the sterner sex cannot long withstand continual drudgery. One is tempted to believe that such men married to save the expense of hiring a housekeeper, that they hoped by sleeping with their laundress to avoid wash bills. Take the great middle class of America (which is the social and moral cream of the country) and you will ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Western deserts! Thou Art still untam'd and free! Ne'er shall that crest he forced to bow Beneath the yoke of drudgery low: But still in freedom shalt thou roam The boundless fields that form thy home Thy ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... which occupied—to his great delight in the first two cases, not quite so in the third—most of his life that was not given to literature. Some not ungenerous but perhaps rather unnecessary indignation has been spent upon his "drudgery" and its scanty rewards. It is enough to say that few men can arrange at their pleasure the quantity and quality of their work, and that not every man, even of genius, has had his bread-and-butter secured ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... true. Dick would never have succeeded as a business man; he was too full of crotchets and speculations to be content to run in narrow grooves. The notion of money-making was abhorrent to him; the idea of a city life, with its hard rubs and drudgery, was utterly distasteful to him. "One would have to mix with such a lot of cads," he would say. "English, pure and undefiled, is not always spoken. If I must work, I would rather have a turn at law or divinity; the three old women with the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... existed if you hadn't seen their pictures in Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi, and out Noodletoozy way, big, red-necked men with the long loping step that comes from walking on the plowed ground. Following them are lanky women with their front teeth gone, and their figures bowed by drudgery, dragging wide-eyed children whose uncouth finery betrays the "country jake," even if the freckles and the sun-bleached hair could keep the secret. From the far-off fastnesses, where there are still log-cabins chinked ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... rejoiced that the humble Peter was at least temporarily removed and other and richer suitors occupying the foreground. They were far from being worldly people, but two of their daughters having already married poor men, they, having had more than their own fair share of drudgery, could not help hoping that this pretty butterfly might be spared the coarser labors ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... kingdom, and infallible signs of charity. And then they foolishly deplore their own state as far removed from that perfection, because forsooth their minds are uncultured, their faith simple, and their time taken up with the drudgery ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... conceited fool. As to his political transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their interior, to the same outrages their commercial navy now experiences ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Latin and Greek, and English Grammar, to the little boys, who made faces at me, and put crooked pins on the bottom of my chair; I walked at the head of the string when they went out for an airing, and walked upstairs the last when it was time to go to bed. I had all the drudgery, and none of the comforts I was up first, and held answerable for all deficiencies; I had to examine all their nasty little trowsers, and hold weekly conversation with the botcher, as to the possibility of repairs; to run out ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... and dreary," they say. "The wheels of drudgery are for ever turning and grinding; let us sit in the sun a little and float our fairy balls. What if they are dreams and never come to anything; the dreams and the sunlight have made us happy; there is plenty of time in which to do ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Raymond died that way, Samuel Bowles, Horace Greeley. Once in a while there are surviving veterans like Thurlow Weed, or Erastus Brooks, or James Watson Webb—but they shifted the most of the burden on others as they grew old. Success in any calling means drudgery, sacrifice, push, and tug, but especially so in the ranks ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... avert this audible upbraiding was to point to the notebook and mutely beg that she would do her scolding by that silent channel. Not she, however. Never in all the years of her drudgery of teaching had she felt her responsibility so great as now. To be entrusted with the charge of Miss Rhinelander's most indulged pupils—all the school knew that—had, at first seemed a burden, and next a most delightful honor. But, after all, they were just like ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... countries, owe what they possess of suavity of manners to their intercourse with female society; after the drudgery of a professional morning, young men used to brush themselves up for their evening flirtations; but now few feminine drawing-rooms can tempt them to leave their luxurious palaces, where evening surtouts, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... while turning the crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial drudgery. Born at an Umbrian village during the first Punic war, not far from the year when Regulus was taken, [Footnote: See page 133.] he came to Rome at an early age, and after he began to write, produced a score or more ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... contralto of most remarkable power, strong enough to fill a cathedral, but altogether undisciplined. She was fond of music, and the organist at the church offered to teach her with his own daughters, if she would sing with them on Sundays; but she could not get through the drudgery of the exercises, and advanced only so far as to be able to take her proper part in a hymn. Here, however, she was almost useless, from incapability of proper subordination, the sopranos, tenors, and basses being well ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... anything particular to teach her. It was understood that she was to do what she could, and that what she could not do should be shared among them. She could fetch and carry, execute small commissions, manage the drudgery and answer the door-bell, when she was presentable, which was not often; indeed, this last duty had ceased to devolve upon her, after she had once confronted Lady Augusta with personal adornments so remarkable as to strike that august ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his mental vision. With intense regret he reflected that if he had only used reasonably well the brief period of life which as yet lay behind him, he might by that time have been done with initial drudgery and have been entering on a brilliant career in one of the learned professions. As to the army and navy, he was too old to get into either, even if he had possessed interest, which he did not. Sternly did he reproach his departed uncle when he brooded over his ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of drawing, or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive figures. He is a wise youth, to be sure, who can balance one part of genuine life against two parts of drudgery between four walls, and for the sake of the one, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much trouble and anxiety to write. This is the story: I live alone, and my servants become, as they are in France, and ought, I think, always to be, really and truly part of my family. A most sensible young woman, my own maid, who waits upon me and walks out with me, (we have another to do the drudgery of our cottage,) has a little fatherless boy who is the pet of the house. I wonder whether you saw him during the glimpse we had of you! He is a fair-haired child of six years old, singularly quick in intellect, and as bright in mind and heart and temper as ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... patch of a garden for the wherewithal to keep the poor roof over her head. She hoed and dug and drove hard bargains with the grocers to whom she sold her meagre products. She washed and ironed and mended and darned and cooked, coming at length perforce to the drudgery which throughout her brief life in the hole in the ground she ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... may be in it leaps to the lips; to give it utterance that moment is the only natural, courteous, and truthful course. Ten days hence, the reply, which now comes of its own accord, cannot be found; what might have been a source of pleasure to two persons will have become a piece of thankless drudgery. In vain the conscientious correspondent, at the appointed time, takes the letter which she would answer out of the compartment of her portfolio, whereon stationers, cunningly humoring a popular weakness, have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... hated the drudgery of an attorney's office. In six months I saw enough of its documentary evidence to convince me that I hated it from my heart, and that nothing on earth would induce me to become a solicitor. I took good care, meek as I was, to show this determination ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the brutal passions of vile frequenters of the place, she was then compelled each night to put off her tawdry costume, array herself in the garb of a scrub-woman and, on her hands and knees, scrub the house from top to bottom. No weariness, no exhaustion, ever excused her from this drudgery, which was a full day's work for ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... quick and active wit For drudgery is more unfit, Compared to those of duller parts, Than running ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... the children by waiting? Will waiting put George and Tom, and Sam, out into the world? Will it enable my poor girls to give up some of their drudgery? Will waiting make Bessy and Jane fit even to be governesses? Will waiting pay for the things we got ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... it awhile, that I might bring out to view its grimmest and most discouraging aspect The cares, trials, humiliations of a young physician, his months and years of uncompensated drudgery, passed in awful review before me. I thought of his toils among the poor and lowly, the vicious and depraved,—of his broken sleep,—the interruptions of his social ease,—and then of the many scenes so repugnant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... once, means something to them that they can understand. The crowd of hurrying waiters make room for one bearing aloft a small turkey adorned with much tinsel and many paper flowers. It is for the bride, the one thing not to be touched until the next day—one day off from the drudgery of housekeeping; she, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... improper use of the bodily functions. Then come weakness and disease and shortened life, not to speak of the misery included in these and the enjoyment missed. In the chain of results comes the toil that is drudgery. Not work, but excessive work, more than one should do, with less strength than one should have. Work itself under natural conditions is always a delight. But through sin has come strain, tugging, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... Sackville and Windsor, but rallying at Halifax as the headquarters—to say nothing of those sent to the Southern States. No wonder Captain McDonald complains, "We have absolutely been worse used than any one Regiment in America and has done more duty and Drudgery of all kinds than any other Bn. in America these thre Years past and it is but reasonable Just and Equitable that we should now be Suffered to Join together at least as early as possible in the Spring and let some Other Regimt ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean |
