"Absentee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long as this agitation lasts. I need not say good appetite to you after your walk. You have no fear of the men, I know. Owain's men are undisturbed; he has them in hand. Absentee masters can't expect continued harmony. Dear, he tells me Mr. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... community. And in the parish and in the rural canton, it had taken away from the noble his office of resident protector and hereditary patron, reducing him to the odious position of a mere creditor, and, if he were a man of the court, to the yet worse position of an absentee creditor.[2302]—So that in the parish and in the rural canton, it had taken away from the noble his office of resident protector and hereditary patron, reducing him to the odious position of a mere creditor, and, if he were a man of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... remained to be done. Warde, of course, would satisfy himself that no boy in his house was missing except John, before he pronounced him the absentee. Poor Warde! This would be a hard knock for him. John's thoughts were jostling each other freely, when he recalled Desmond's words: "I have one more chance before the term is over." He had wished to clear the way for his friend, not to block it. Then he remembered the terms ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... ordered a pitcher and two glasses as the former had done, then sat erect with his hands in his pockets and his back against the wall, waiting in his turn. The two empty glasses in front of them, intended for the same absentee, seemed to be hurling defiance at ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... think, have surpassed her. But the fact that she has been surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude; for, in truth, we owe to her not only "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla," but also "Mansfield Park" and "The Absentee." ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Dear Old Friend and Absentee,—This is Christmas Day, 1815, with us; what it may be with you I don't know,—the 12th of June next year, perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... for him, or to go on at once. The case was urgent, but the need of Sego's arm was also urgent, and he concluded to wait still further. The forenoon, the afternoon, and finally the night came and went, without bringing any signs of the absentee, and at daylight on this day, Lewis and his men made ready to start, resolved not to lose another moment. As they passed down to the river's edge, the delinquent made his appearance and joined them. ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... Conyngham, mostly absentees. Lord Conyngham was naturally indifferent, for his estate in Clare was to be sold in Dublin on Tuesday, and his interest in the county thus had ceased. Lord Leconfield is also an absentee, without even an address in the county. Perhaps, as the three noblemen mentioned own between them 85,226 acres in county Clare alone, without counting their other possessions, they thought that at any rate there was land enough, such as it is, in the county. Judging by the Government ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... and BUMSTEAD lives there, too—him as is always tryin' to put a head on me. I'll play my points on him yet, though. I'll play my points!" And the rather vulgar young chronic absentee from Sunday-school retired to a proper distance, and from thence began stoning his benefactor to the latter's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... has concentrated the control over the natural resources in a small group, not of individuals, but of corporations; has created a new form of social master, in the form of a land-tool-job owner; has thus made possible a type of absentee-landlordism more effective and less human than were any of its predecessors and has decreased the responsibility at the same time that it has augmented the power of the owning group. These changes have been an integral ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... is the landlord and his incompetent family, and not the peasantry. In Ireland, the absentee landlord is bitterly reproached for not administering his estate in person. It is pointed out, truly enough, that the absentee is a pure parasite upon the industry of his country. The indispensable minimum of attention ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Donnington near Shrewsbury, where under a certain Scotchman named Douglas, who was an absentee, and who died Bishop of Salisbury, he officiated as curate and master of a grammar school for a stipend—always grudgingly and contumeliously paid—of three-and-twenty pounds a year. From Donnington he removed to Walton in Cheshire, where he lost his daughter who ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and exports of a country, so must there be a balance between the revenue raised in a nation and the public expenditure on that nation. Irish economic depression after the Act of Union was due in large measure to absentee landlordism and the expenditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland with no proportionate return. This must not be expected to continue against Irish interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it desires, would ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... custom, began his reign by taking an exactly opposite course to his predecessor, and ended it by falling into nearly the same errors and abuses. He suggested an Absentee-tax, which was introduced by Flood, but rejected through the preponderating influence of the landed aristocracy. In preparing the tables of expenditure, he had caused arrears amounting to 265,000 pounds, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "The absentee landlord is a curse, of course. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a one myself. And I'm bound to say—though I'm keen on shooting—if the game laws were abolished, it might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... since Dr. Proudie began his reign, and changes have already been effected in the diocese which show at least the energy of an active mind. Among other things absentee clergymen have been favoured with hints much too strong to be overlooked. Poor dear old Bishop Grantly had on this matter been too lenient, and the archdeacon had never been inclined to be severe with those who were absent on reputable pretences, and who provided ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... unexpected invitation requires a reference to his journal: if you invite him for Saturday next, he will turn to his tablets, apologise for a previous engagement, run his eye eagerly down the column for an occasional absentee, and then invite himself for some day in the ensuing week, to which your politeness cannot fail to accede. You will meet him in London, Brighton, Bath, Cheltenham, and Margate during the fashionable periods; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... coddling of every artificial power. They go abroad only to conquer and tax the foreigner for the benefit of those at home. Their harbors are filled with ships, and their treasury with the gold of the world. For our people, there is only permission to work the soil, for the benefit of absentee landlords, or encouragement to depart to America. No mines, no factories, no commerce, no harbors, no ships, in a word no future. So the Irish do not stay at home. The laws of England accomplished this destruction ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... interpreted to the child as he grows up, so that he will accept and believe in the participating presence of God in human life. An obstacle in the way of this achievement occurs when people separate God from life and make Him a kind of absentee operator of the machine called the world. It then is necessary for the child to make a huge leap from his trust of his parents to faith in God. While we cannot equate parental action with divine action, nevertheless we can affirm that divine action ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... opinions. Ned Meredith, having, it is to be presumed, all his energies occupied in his own private intrigues, had somewhat withdrawn of late from the Jacobite party; and Sir Hugh heard, with his grim, unmoved smile, many a jest and innuendo levelled at the absentee. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way: 'Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made-up ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... world that it is said that the battle of Waterloo was not heard of there until a month after it had been fought. But all this has now been changed, and is changing. Not long ago, the proprietor of Somersby (now, alas! an absentee), complained to the writer that his carpets were being worn into holes by the feet of the many pilgrims to this modern poetic “Mecca,” who seemed to think they had a right freely to intrude everywhere; with the barren compensation to himself that his paternal home was becoming historical. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... extended to Ireland; and they seemed more vexatious there because in Ulster the Presbyterians were in the vast majority and the established church almost unrepresented, except by tithe collectors and absentee landlords. At the close of the seventeenth century there were more than a million Ulster Presbyterians. But soon, as a result of this combined economic and religious oppression, they began to migrate in a narrow stream which by 1720 became a wide river. They formed the largest ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... British protectorate, being owned and administered by a private trading corporation, the British North Borneo Company, which operates under a royal charter. But the idea of turning over a great block of territory, with its inhabitants, to a corporation whose sole aim is to earn dividends for its absentee stockholders, is in itself abhorrent to most Americans. What would we say, I ask you, if Porto Rico, which is only one-tenth the size of North Borneo, were to be handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the Standard Oil Company, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I felt that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent proprietor. Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the contrast between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately Hall and the smiling homes of his villagers was ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trouble. There was hint of it in his occasional profound abstraction; but more than all else in the fact that here he was, a gentleman, having lived his life for over four years past as a sort of horse-expert, overseer, and stud- manager for Terry Brennan, the absentee millionaire. In the opinion of the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind of occupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Always he had his estate to put in order, and functions connected with it to perform. According to the local records, he served this year the office of Mayor of Youghal. During a considerable portion of the term he must have been an absentee. In Ireland the news reached him that the Armada had started or was starting. Hastening back he commenced by mustering troops in the West, and strengthening Portland Castle. But his own trust was in the fleet. In his History of the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... on scanty wages, ten hours each day and 313 days each year, than when cultivating our free and fertile lands? Do they have equal opportunities for mental and moral improvement? The trades-unions tell us, No. Whatever may be the experience of other countries where the land is either owned by absentee lords, who take all the product except what is necessary to give the tenant a bare subsistence, or where it is cut up in parcels not larger than an American garden patch, it is an undeniable fact that no other class of American workingmen are so independent, so intelligent, so well ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... my brother Robert, who is away from home at this moment," he said, and his tone deprecated the mere allusion to the rifle owned by the absentee. "I only mentioned Miss Manning's words to show how completely at a loss we all were to account for my father's wound. I helped Tomlinson and Brodie to carry him to the settee in the hall. Then we—Tomlinson, that is—opened ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... in 1798, Lamb tells the poet that Christmas is a "glorious theme"; and addressing his "dear old friend and absentee," Mr. Manning, at Canton, on December 25, 1815, Lamb says:—"This is Christmas Day, 1815, with us; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... divided burns with gay quirks and jets of flame, and making cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth and brightness are as evanescent as love's young dream. And your solid log has a certain irritating inertness. It is an absentee fuel, spending its fire up the chimney, and after its youthful clouds of glory turns but a cheerless side of black and white char towards the room. And, above all, the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with the poker, and you get but a sullen ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... agency whose laws they did not completely understand. But the mere play of personal forces in themselves aggravated the antagonism. The fact that most of the railroad magnates lived in the East added that element of absentee landlordism which is essential to most agrarian problems. Many of the Western capitalists were real leaders; yet it is only necessary to remember that the most active man in Western railroads in the seventies was Jay Gould, to understand the suspicion in which ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... into the troubles of Ireland, and he asked him what was the greatest affliction that Ireland suffered from, and when he answered him he described just the sort of Irishman who won't be wanted in Ireland now. He said, 'It's the absentee landlords, your honour. This unfortunate country ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... exactly of the same import. And though there is many a thing he seems at times not to recollect, yet I am bound to say he recollects these words, and the impressions, of which these words were the expressions to the House. He referred to an absentee aristocracy and an alien Church. I would not say a syllable about the aristocracy in this matter; if I had to choose a phrase, I would rather say an absentee ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... property and beautify and discouraging land speculation; and when the Government wanted land owned by private parties who were citizens of the Republic (for no foreigner was permitted by law to own land directly or indirectly, so that the curse of Absentee Landlordism which was the ruin of Ireland, should never blight the happiness of the people of Eurasia), they added up the assessments for the previous five years and divided them by five and added twenty per cent. to it in payment for the land, together with fair compensation for any buildings ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop perishes. Then in step the Jap labor bosses. They're the masters already. They contract for the crop. The fruit-growers are at their mercy, you see. Pretty soon the Japs are running the valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee landlords and are busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy them out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market and could bankrupt them ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... precisely in this situation; and we cannot therefore wonder, that the proposal of a tax upon absentees should be so very popular in that country. It might, perhaps, be a little difficult to ascertain either what sort, or what degree of absence, would subject a man to be taxed as an absentee, or at what precise time the tax should either begin or end. If you except, however, this very peculiar situation, any inequality in the contribution of individuals which can arise from such taxes, is much more than compensated by the very ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... from time immemorial that absenteeism has been one of the curses of Ireland," I remarked to Salemina; "so, whatever the charms of the cottage in Rostrevor, do not let us take it, and in so doing become absentee landlords." ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... garden and clumps of planted eucalypts, willows, and poplars—an oasis in the grassy wilderness—no more. Sometimes a new squatter reigned in his stead, sometimes for years the mortgagee left the place in charge of a shepherd—a new and dreary form of absentee ownership. Meanwhile, in the earlier years the squatters were merry monarchs, reigning as supreme in the Provincial Councils as in the jockey clubs. They made very wise and excessively severe laws to safeguard their stock ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Dear old friend and absentee,—This is Christmas-day 1815 with us; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... had now for some generations been the habitation of the dowager of the Brotherton family. When the late marquis died, this had become for her life the property of the Marchioness; but had been ceded by her to her son, in return for the loan of the big house. The absentee Marquis had made with his mother the best bargain in his power, and had let the dower house, known as Cross Hall, to a sporting farmer. He now kindly offered to allow his mother to have the rent of her own house, signifying at the same time his ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... cantoris side was taking holiday that day, and Mr Milligan availed himself of the opportunity to offer the absentee's copy of the service to the intruder, who was sitting immediately behind him. He turned round, and placed the book, open at the Magnificat, before the stranger with much deference, casting as he faced round again a look of misprision at Janaway, of which ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... in the street, wherever he went. He was pointed out when he drove by, and he often overheard the name of Nastasia Philipovna coupled with his own as he passed. People looked out for her at the funeral, too, but she was not there; and another conspicuous absentee was the captain's widow, whom Lebedeff had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from Scott's 'Monastery' and 'Guy Mannering.' The Laird of Avenel, who was obliged to fly from Scotland after the battle of Culloden, entrusted his estates to his steward Gaveston. Many years having passed without tidings of the absentee, Gaveston determines to put the castle and lands up for sale. He has sedulously fostered a tradition which is current among the villagers, that the castle is haunted by a White Lady, hoping by this means to deter any of the neighbouring ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... its county, owing, I was told, to the fact that the county lunatic asylum near by caused money to be spent there. In the next village, which was in a deplorable state, and had no asylum, the people were looking enviously towards this one, and wishing that at least their absentee landlords would come and hunt the neighbourhood, though it appeared that one of these gentlemen was a Bishop. But the labouring folk were not exacting as to the sort of person—lunatics, fox-hunters, Bishops—anybody would be welcome who would spend riches in a way to "make work." And so here. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... admirably portrayed in her "Belinda" and eight or ten other tales: and she makes a still stronger claim to permanent remembrance in such studies of Irish types, whether in England or on the native soil, as "The Absentee" and "Castle Rackrent." I venture the statement that even the jaded novel reader of to-day will find on a perusal of either of these capital stories that Miss Edgeworth makes literature, and that a pleasure not a penance is in store. She first in English fiction exploited the better-class Irishman ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... work. The long-deserted grounds were filled with labourers; the carpenters were busy at the fences; the house looked alive and stirring; the grooms were exercising the horses in the park,—all betokened the return of the absentee. This seemed to denote that Maltravers had come to reside; and the rector thought of Caroline, and was pleased ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bell ringing. We had just reached our tavern when a committee appeared stating that they had been waiting for us and that the congregation was assembled. It appears that a noted exhorter had been expected who had no doubt been delayed as we had been. I was taken for the absentee minister and asked how soon I would be ready to accompany them to the meeting-house. I was almost prepared with my companions to carry out the joke (we were in for fun), but I found I was too exhausted with fatigue to attempt ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... see you're blushing to think how many ages; and you've taken sides with the heretic Saxon against us in our struggle for Home Rule—which I blame you for, though, being a landowner and a bit of an absentee, I 'm a traitorous ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... what I set out to say. There was a moral to the tale of my friend the absentee Apostle who was so cocksure about the crisis. This moral is that he has Continental blood in his veins. To these foreign corpuscles he owes the floridness of his outlook, his conception of the excited Englishman. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. A mere bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the actual chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long. What was it like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a letter or ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... now in control in Belgium had imposed an absentee tax of ten times the normal on all Belgians who had left the country and did not return by the fifteenth of March. The general snorted his ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... public notice was taken of another distinguished absentee—the Member for East Herts. A few days ago, after a violent collision with Mr. JUSTICE DARLING, MR. PEMBERTON-BILLING announced his intention of resigning his seat and submitting himself for re-election. But since then we have been given to understand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... all the misery and misfortune together, and say, now find me a remedy large as the evil, to meet it. Resolve the evil into its original component parts. Imagine that there had been no such thing as the squandering, drinking, absentee Irish landlords we read of in the last generation—do you suppose that we should have as many inhabitants in St. Giles's, and the Liverpool cellars, to look after now? So, with the English landlords and manufacturers of that time, see what a subtraction from the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the expelled tenants died of starvation on the public roads, or crowded the workhouses, where they were supported by rates levied on the industrious occupier. The poor-law was continued upon a plan which protected the property of the rich English absentee, and threw the burden upon the resident landlords who cultivated their own land, and upon the farmer who rented land. The agents of these absentees exacted the rents with bitter severity, and often the dwelling of the wretched occupier ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... idea than to suppose, as do some people, that there was a large body of resident landed proprietors in Ireland until the land war drove them to seek safety across the Channel. As a matter of fact, long before this had begun there existed an absentee aristocracy dependent on middlemen or agents—"the vermin of the country," Arthur Young called them—who constituted a mere mechanical medium for the collection of rent, and as such were the worst exponents of the amenities ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... is not on account of anything the owner may do —in fact, he is usually an absentee and does nothing. The increase comes from the enterprise and thrift of people for whom the owner has no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... noticed for many years, and were specially advertised in the early eighties by the enormous holdings of a few British noblemen. The problem of absentee landlordism was exciting Ireland in these years. When Cleveland became President his Commissioner of the General Land Office, Sparks, turned cheerfully and vigorously to reform, and denounced the discreditable condition the more readily because it had appeared under ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... is infested with Absentee Snakes. It is believed that the Serpent who tempted Eve (from the "way he had with the women") was one ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in Italy to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... THE ABSENTEE is not intended as a censure upon those whose duties, and employments, and superior talents, lead them to the capital; but to warn the thoughtless and the unoccupied from seeking distinction by frivolous imitation of fashion and ruinous ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... gratification which is to be found in the conversation of clever people, who can, with perfect courtesy, make a thousand atrocious, but laughable remarks about their neighbors. In their stifled laughter, and in the little reticences of their sardonic humor, Monsieur, the poor absentee, was not spared. But they pitied, and bewailed greatly, the fate of De Guiche, and it must be confessed that their compassion, as far as he was concerned, was not misplaced. The king and Madame having breathed the horses, and repeated a hundred times over such remarks as ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we write of, any curate might, with the assistance of the soldiers, fine whom he pleased, and as much as he pleased, or he might, by reporting a parishioner an absentee from public worship, consign him or her to prison, or even to the gallows. But though all the curates were in an utterly false position they were not all equally depraved. Selby was one who felt more or less of shame at the contemptible part he ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... time perhaps have conditions been so favourable in Canada for land-grabbing and land-speculation as they were then. Owing to the large amount of land granted to absentee owners, and to the policy of free land grants announced by Simcoe, land was sold at a very low price. In some cases two hundred acre lots were sold for a gallon of rum. In 1791 Sir William Pullency, an English speculator, bought 1,500,000 acres of land in Upper Canada at one shilling an acre, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... longer, the army will not miss you," that some other poor fellow, too brave and manly to shirk, shivers through the long winter hours at his own post, and then through other long hours at the post of the absentee, thus doing double duty; and they should bear in mind, also, that in battle this same poor fellow has to fight for two, and that battles are lost, the war prolonged, and the National arms often disgraced, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... woods coming almost close to the town, and in the absence of the owner, a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being constructed on supposed ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reasoning and how many stupid accusations would fall away if this truth were accepted as a basis of discussion! Of course there is no more flagrant example of a systematic endeavor to get something for nothing than the present business system based on profits, and absentee ownership of stocks. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... once for all, but has never meddled with it; never, so to speak, looked at it since: so that the world would go on just the same, and just as well, if God thenceforth had ceased to be. No: that is a dead God; an absentee God—as one said bitterly once. But the Psalmist believed in the living God, and a present God, in whom we live and move and have our being; in a God who does not leave the world alone for a moment, nor in the smallest matter, but is always ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... only to the respect, but to the affection of his companions and his employer. That employer was Judge J. M. Sterrett, and from him I heard many curious particulars of Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As he was only working in the office as a substitute, the return of the absentee deprived him of his place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere. His employer said to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... imperilled the Banner. The black mark on the register was a snowflake compared with the black frown on all those childish foreheads. As for the absentee, the scowls that would meet her return not improbably ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... her ladyship—"but is it possible that I have discovered another absentee? I don't see Mrs. Glenarm. Yet surely she must be here! Mrs. Glenarm is not training for a foot-race. Do you ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Scoutbush, the absentee landlord,—was a shrewd, hard-bitten, choleric old fellow, of the shape, colour, and consistence of a red brick; one of those English types which Mr. Emerson has so well hit off in his rather ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... That "absentee God"—of which Carlyle wrote, has been discerned as the Universal Intelligence, and equally Love ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Bluebell's neighbour, had gone for a smoke with the skipper. Mrs. Oliphant was also an absentee; she had tottered from the saloon the instant the wind freshened, with a contortion of countenance that betokened her dallyings with the vol-au-vent would be severely visited. Mrs. Rideout, the lady of position, went off on the arm of her maid, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... no absentee management. The men who manage must be in close touch with the work and the workers—not merely through written or oral ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... cultured professionals to illiterate peasants, though mainly, of course, the peasant class. The one common feature of the Italian provinces is the poverty produced by the crushing taxes and agricultural depression. Absentee landlordism has blighted southern Italy as it has Ireland. Yet with great tracts of fertile soil thus held away from the people, and with no new territory to cultivate, the population of Italy has increased within twenty years from twenty-eight and a half to thirty-two and a half millions, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... Theodore Roosevelt was so vastly human, that no worshiper can make him abstract and retain recognizable features. We have reached the time when we will not suffer anybody to turn our great ones into gods or demigods, and to remove them far from us to dwell, like absentee deities, on a remote Olympus, or in an unimaginable Paradise; we must have them near, intimates whom our souls can converse with, and our hearts love. Such an intimate was Roosevelt living, and such an intimate will he be dead. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt—those ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and waited—and only two days since did the matter come to a satisfactory conclusion—so, as the Irish song has it, 'Open your eyes and die with surprise' when I inform you that I have purchased the Manzoni Palace here, on the Canal Grande, of its owner, Marchese Montecucculi, an Austrian and an absentee—hence the delay of communication. I did this purely for Pen—who became at once simply infatuated with the city which won my whole heart long before he was born or thought of. I secure him a perfect domicile, every facility for his painting ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the noise from below, and presuming it to be occasioned by the return of the absentee, I left the table, and hastened down stairs, eager to gain intelligence that might relieve the anxiety of the prince and princess. I had scarcely reached the last step, when I beheld before me a man dressed as a bandit; a carbine in his hand, and a stiletto and pistols in his belt. His ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... care of an idiot or a lunatic. Used in this sense, the word is pronounced com-mit-tee. A curator is one appointed to act as guardian of the estate of a person not legally competent (qualified) to manage his property, or of the estate of an absentee. ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... declare I get a little weary of this Deity of yours. He neglects his business so flagrantly. He really is rather scandalously much of an absentee. And He would be so welcome if He would condescend to deal a trifle more openly with one, and satisfy one's intelligence and moral sense. If, for instance, He would afford me some information regarding this same psychological moment which I need so ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... won but a barren triumph in gaining for himself the lands of Iscennen. A very short residence there had proved enough for him, and he had withdrawn, in fear that if he did not do so some fatal mischance would befall him. He had reigned there as an absentee ever since, not less cursed and hated for the oppressive measures taken in his name than when he ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... instinct, unchanged in nature though circumscribed in scope; if on many estates they are herded in barracks whose promiscuous life debases still lower their already low morality; if their labors are directed for absentee masters by hired overseers, whose interest is not to create a wholesome confidence between laborers and proprietors, but to get the most they can out of them during their own term of employment; if they are treated with the old slaveholding arrogance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wear markings to prove they have served in the ranks; but by a most reprehensible error of somebody in authority the typical head waiters of the cafes were spared. I base this assertion upon the fact that all of them appeared to be on duty at the time of my latest visit. If there was a single absentee from the ranks I failed ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... and day—the fourth day since Marshall had left them, and the last of their prescribed sojourn where they were—dawned without sign of the absentee; and when at length Dick Chichester awakened and this fact was borne in upon him, all his former apprehensions returned with redoubled force. Something had gone wrong with the Captain; he was convinced of it; Marshall would never ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... eleven scrutinies, and then he received but seven out of eighty-one votes.[438] The election was long and keenly contested. The conclave commenced on the 28th of December, and it was not till the 9th of January, 1522, that the cardinals, conscious of each other's defects, agreed to elect an absentee, about whom they knew little. Their choice fell on Adrian, Cardinal of Tortosa; and it is significant of the extent of Charles's influence, that the new Pope had been his tutor, and was proposed ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Blackbourton, Berks; from her fifteenth year her home was in Ireland; she declined the suit of a Swedish count, and remained till the close of her life unmarried; amongst the best known of her works are "Moral Tales," "Tales from Fashionable Life," "Castle Rackrent," "The Absentee," and "Ormond"; her novels are noted for their animated pictures of Irish life, and were acknowledged by Scott to have given him the first suggestion of the Waverley series; the Russian novelist, Turgenief, acknowledges a similar indebtedness; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... got some peace of mind by sending word to the Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner. She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who ought to be a presentee—a word which she meant to look out in the dictionary at a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... limited to 300 acres.[2] In consequence of this, massive holdings were impossible to maintain legally, as the customary holdings of two to three hundred acres indicate in the tax lists for the years after 1784.[3] In fact, the tax lists suggest that absentee-owners or persons outside the actual geographic limits of the Fair Play territory who participated with the Fair Play settlers were the only ones to possess 700 to 1,000 acres or more.[4] This fact, combined with the "subsistence farming" which all of the area settlers pursued, ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... of Summer The Sea of Death To an Absentee Lycus the Centaur The Two Peacocks of Bedfont Hymn to the Sun Midnight To a Sleeping Child To Fancy Fair Ines To a False Friend Ode—Autumn Sonnet—Silence Sonnet Sonnet—to an Enthusiast To a Cold Beauty Sonnet—Death Serenade Verses in an Album The Forsaken Song Song Birthday Verses ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and thieves, forced there by the desolation which prevailed in the country districts, where people starved by the wayside, and where those who lived barely kept body and soul together to pay the rents of the absentee landlords. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... part being in French, the native tongue of the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson the lawyer, who was half Americain; but running sometimes into English and sometimes into mild laughter. Mention had been made of the absentee. ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... with Mrs. Norton, and returned homeward. After tea, various games amused the fleeting hours, and among them "Proverbs" was played as follows: While one is absent from the circle, all fix upon some well-known old saw or proverb; the absentee then returns and asks a question of every individual, to which an answer must be returned, embracing some one word of the sentence, care being taken not to emphasize it. The first proverb was this: "When the cat's away, the mice will play." Cornelia had ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... habiliments of the genial saint was too much for his imagination. It left him without the power to set James straight in the matter, and Uncle Joe was immediately accepted as Santy by the expectant Sykeses, all of whom revealed a tremendous interest in the avuncular absentee. They even appeared to be properly apprehensive, and crowded a little closer to the knees of the grown- ups, all the while eyeing the door at the upper end ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... appearance had the good effect of detering the multitude so that they became only peaceable spectators." Whether an honorary captain could be called upon for active service in an emergency I cannot say, but Smith's name is not mentioned in the list of absentee captains ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... officially speaking, irregular, and both he and his wife were afraid of meeting any one they knew. The first person they saw at the inn was the Chaplain of the British Embassy at Vienna, who might have reported the absentee Consul to his Ambassador. Burton bolted up to bed to avoid him; but Isabel thought that the better plan would be to take the bull by the horns. So she went to the Chaplain, and made a frank confession that they were truants. He burst out laughing, and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... trait of His character is Love. He does not become Father, He is not reconciled to us by persuasive offerings and sacrifices. He is inherently and by essential disposition Father and the God of all Grace. He is not remote and absentee—making a world "in the beginning," and leaving it to run by law, or only occasionally interrupting its normal processes—He is immanent Spirit, working always, the God of beauty and organizing purpose. He {xlv} is Life and Light and Truth, an Immanuel God who can and does ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... under holding company domination the utility industry has long been hopelessly at war within itself and with public sentiment. By far the greater part of the general decline in utility securities had occurred before I was inaugurated. The absentee management of unnecessary holding company control has lost touch with, and has lost the sympathy of, the communities it pretends to serve. Even more significantly it has given the country as a whole an uneasy apprehension ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... head the threatened eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr. Wombold, Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner in the vicinity of Wickenberg who prided himself on not yielding to the trend of the times by becoming an absentee landlord. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... among the stars. Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One's domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all—an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers—Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception. Whatever there was, indeed, of ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... had an early dinner, and our cavalcade started from Laura's. I rode my small bay horse Folly, a gift from my absentee brother. His coat was sleeker than satin; his ears moved perpetually, and his wide nostrils were always in a quiver. He was not entirely safe, for now and then he jumped unexpectedly; but I had ridden him a year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... whom, as their intrigues at the court of St. James's chanced to prevail, the delegated powers of sovereignty were alternately swayed. The evils attending upon this system of government resembled those which afflict the tenants of an Irish estate, the property of an absentee. There was no supreme power, claiming and possessing a general interest with the community at large, to whom the oppressed might appeal from subordinate tyranny, either for justice or for mercy. Let a monarch be as indolent, as selfish, as much disposed to arbitrary power ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... seat, where the Negro was usually benevolently treated and loved as though one of the family. This type of slavery was most common along the Mason-Dixon line. The other type was determined by the large scale enterprises in the cotton and rice fields in the "southern" South, where absentee ownership was often the rule. Here frequently masters knew little about their slaves, and the driving of the mobs of laborers gave Harriet Beecher Stowe, no doubt, her concept of a Simon Legree.[14] In Brazil slaves did every type of work. First ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... smoked his after-dinner cigar in his bachelor quarters. The years had been good to the firm of Conward & Elden; good far beyond the wildness of their first dreams. The transaction of the section bought from the English absentee had been but the beginning of bigger and more daring adventures. That section was now considered close-in property, and lots which Conward & Elden had originally sold for two hundred dollars each had since changed hands at more than a thousand. The street railway ran far beyond it. Water mains, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... himself on the horns of one of those dilemmas which present themselves so frequently to absentee governments and secretaries of state—either reciprocity and an Americanized colony, or a new rebellion as the consequence of a refusal in Britain to consent to a reciprocity treaty.[35] In 1849, "looking at these indications of the ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... was evidently not well pleased with the course pursued by these men in regard to Duval; most likely, he suspected there was a conspiracy between them, having its foundation on some ill will these desperadoes had conceived against the absentee. This was really the case, whatever were the leader's thoughts. The two had sworn to stand by each other, in all times of need and in all matters of rascality. Duval had unintentionally insulted one ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... still smiling, and breathing a little glad sigh over this thought, when the door opens and Lady Stafford comes in. She is radiant, a very sunbeam, in spite of the fact that Sir Penthony is again an absentee from his native land, having bidden adieu to English shores three months ago in a fit of pique, brought ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... English prairies, comprising a farm called the Moors, was, at the time of which I write, in the occupation of a wealthy yeoman named John Cobbam, who, the absentee tenant of an absentee landlord, resided upon a small property of his own about two miles distant, leaving the large deserted house, and dilapidated outbuildings, to sink into gradual decay. Barns half unthatched, tumble-down cart-houses, palings rotting ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... lack of material inducement the absentee of moral stimulus, and you will see how he who is not indolent in that country must needs be a madman or at least a fool. What future awaits him who distinguishes himself, him who studies, who rises above the crowd? At the cost of study and sacrifice a young man becomes ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... elicited no official action, has brought censure upon us from the press, while great dissatisfaction has been created in our own body by the failure of a portion of its members to sustain the allegations to which the entire board, with the exception of one absentee, had affixed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... blockade of the town by the Dauphin's troops and a military demonstration from the Chateau, which could be reinforced from outside through a postern to the west of the Porte Bouvreuil.[40] The citizens then surrendered, the Sire de Gamaches was made bailli, and Jean d'Harcourt (a relation of the absentee archbishop) was made captain of the town, with command of the castle; but the Dauphin's party was not strong enough to punish as they wished, and Rouen was left in a state of ill-suppressed disloyalty. This broke out once more ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... his life, at least,) of pleasure. It will be seen in the sequel how soon his gains were dissipated, and his house overthrown. At his death he wielded all the power of the Empire which his energies and virtues had restored. He was Deputy Vazir of the absentee Viceroy of Audh, and Commander-in-Chief of the army. He held the direct civil administration, with receipt of the surplus revenues, agreeably to Eastern usages, of the province of Agra and the Jat territories, together with ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... untoward circumstances. This woman's selfishness was a part of her nature, carefully cultivated. She believed her body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and she made herself exceedingly comfortable in the building, quite as if the Holy Ghost were an obliging absentee landlord. Nancy observed, too, that although the servants did not like her, they obeyed her without question. She got ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... wish that Congress would always be in session, as he never was so happy as when he could be in daily contact with it. His door was open at all times to a senator or a member of the House of Representatives. If either failed to see him at least once a week, the absentee usually received a message stating that the president desired him to call. He was very keen in discovering any irritation on the part of any senator or member about any disappointment or fancied slight, and always most tactfully managed to straighten the ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... had provided itself with a charter, granted by King James, and as characteristic of that monarch as was his treatment of Raleigh. It was the first of many specimens of absentee landlordism from which America was to suffer. It began by setting apart an enormous stretch of territory, bounded on the north by the latitude of the St. Croix River, and on the south by that of Cape Fear, and extending westward indefinitely. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... greater in being unexpected, Lady Vignoles!" he said. "I gather I am thus favoured that I may take the place of an absentee. Shall I hazard a ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... to become a widow, especially without male issue, she testifies her grief in every imaginable manner, filling the air with her lamentations, tearing her loosened hair, and giving all the demonstrations of the deepest sorrow. At each meal food is placed at the accustomed seat, and the absentee is entreated to return and partake in the most endearing terms. This is continued for a season, when, as if tired of entreaty so unavailingly lavished, and in the true spirit of her sex, the widow changes her tune, and commences to abuse the "dear departed." For one year this practice is kept ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... was, as has been said, one of those spiritual outrages which, in their reactions, are like lead poured into the veins. It lowered the vital resources of Ireland. It made hope an absentee, and enterprise an exile. That was ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... no God? or, at best, an absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of His universe, and seeing it go?' Know that for man's well-being, whatever else be needed, 'Faith is one thing needful.' Mark, 'how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... it were what you suppose, there would be never an absentee. No, no, it concerns a thing I have turned about and about this way and that of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... authenticated; when the abandonment is solemnly and voluntarily set forth in a contract in the presence of a magistrate; when the proprietor dares to say, "I cease to labor, but I still claim a share of the product,"—then the absentee's right of property is protected; the usurpation of the possessor would be criminal; farm-rent is the reward of idleness. Where is, I do not say the consistency, but, the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... exceedingly short, happy year to me. You are such a confirmed absentee, that when you are at home, time ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... under father and son, attained enormous prosperity, prestige and real power. It suffered chiefly from what they call in Ireland "absentee landlordism." Its "proprietor," for he never described himself as its "editor," was a man of exquisite sensibilities—a "despot" of course—whom nature created for a good citizen, a good husband and the head of a happy domestic fabric. He should have married the woman of his choice, for he was deeply ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Jermyn, was an absentee, following the fortunes of the widowed Queen, Henrietta Maria, in France. The actual administration, both civil and military, was in the hands of a naval officer of experience, Sir George Carteret, or de Carteret, cousin and brother-in-law to the Seigneur of S. Owen, a large manor ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene |
