"Dustman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and instantly alert to his situation. It was so very early of a dark winter morning that not even the sparrows were out foraging in the kirkyard for dry seeds. The drum and bugle had not been sounded from the Castle when the milk and dustman's carts began to clatter over the frozen streets. With the first hint of dawn stout fishwives, who had tramped all the way in from the piers of Newhaven with heavily laden creels on their heads, were lustily crying their "caller herrin'." Soon fagot men began to call up the courts of tenements, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... to get a poor, common soldier, with one arm, is it, mim? He he! I wouldn't have a husband with one arm, anyways. I would have two arms. I would have two arms, if it was me, though instead of hands they'd only got hooks at the end, like our dustman!' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... weak and nervous. Beautiful in pallor. (Do we not remark this in moon likewise? J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing in carriage. J. looking out of window, and barking violently at dustman, occasioned smile to overspread features of D. (Of such slight links is chain of life ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... if we remember that it is the nature of compliment, as we daily hear it, to attribute more than is due—that in the constantly widening application of "esquire," in the perpetual repetition of "your honour" by the fawning Irishman, and in the use of the name "gentleman" to any coalheaver or dustman by the lower classes of London, we have current examples of the depreciation of titles consequent on compliment—and that in barbarous times, when the wish to propitiate was stronger than now, this effect must have been greater; we shall see that ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... by Charles Dickens (1864). The "mutual friend" is Mr. Boffin, "the golden dustman," who was the mutual friend of John Harmon and of Bella Wilfer. The tale is this: John Harmon was supposed to have been murdered by Julius Handford; but it was Ratford, who was murdered by Rogue Riderhood, and the mistake arose from a resemblance between ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... had been their home so long that vast accumulations of papers had piled up there. "Mister Ed." too had been in a sort keeper of the family archives. Gilbert glanced at the mass and, as I mentioned at the beginning of this book, told the dustman to carry it off. Half had already gone when Dorothy Collins arrived and saved the remainder. She piled it into her car and drove back to Beaconsfield, Gilbert keeping up a running commentary all the way on "the hoarding ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "Citizen Carrots," a tired newspaper boy up every morning at five, is revealed as responding with great enthusiasm to this interesting lesson which commences with a drawing on a blackboard of a "regulation workhouse, a board school, a free library, a lamp post, a water-cart, a dustman, a policeman, a steam roller, a navvy or two, and a long-handled shovel stuck in a heap of soil." A hypothetical payer of rates, "Mrs Smith," is revealed as getting a great deal for ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... suddenly exclaimed little Jem, running as fast as his poor withered legs would allow him toward a fresh heap, which had just been shot down on the wharf from a dustman's cart. He made a dive and a search—then another—then one deeper still. "I'm sure I saw it!" cried he, and again made a dash with both hands into a fresh place, and began to distribute the ashes ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... Jane was 'elping 'er mother do the 'ouse. I WAS excited—I tell you. I tried the lock and then gave a whack at the hinges. Open it came. Silver coins—full! Shining. It made me tremble to see 'em. And jest then—I'm blessed if the dustman didn't come round the back of the 'ouse. It pretty nearly gave me 'eart disease to think what a fool I was to 'ave that money showing. And directly after I 'eard the chap next door—'e was 'olidaying, too—I 'eard him watering 'is beans. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... dialect of its own, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean under the Empire, a dialect of mixed Latin and Greek. The longest and most important fragment is the well-known Supper of Trimalchio. It is the description of a Christmas dinner-party given by a sort of Golden Dustman and his wife, people of low birth and little education, who had come into an enormous fortune. Trimalchio, a figure drawn with extraordinary life, is constantly making himself ridiculous by his blunders and affectations, while ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... made a complete little gallery of dustmen. There is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon property not strictly his own, is pursued, we presume, by the right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked shanks will ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Veneerings and their acquaintances, for they have no friends; and some fine sketches of the river-side population; striking and amusing characters too—Silas Wegg, the scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets among the dust for wills in order to confound the good dustman, his benefactor; and the little deformed dolls' dressmaker, with her sot of a father; and Betty Higden, the sturdy old woman who has determined neither in life nor death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse; such, with more added, are the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Lady's we have seen, Now blusters forth the Blackguard's Magazine; And (Heaven from joint-stock companies protect us!) Dustman and nightman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, parish beadle, and original dustman. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Dustman was first to forego his brass clapper, The Muffinboy speedily followed his shade; And, now, 'tis the Postman—that double-tongued rapper— Must give up his Bell for the eve's promenade. "Tantae Animis?' sage Legislators! ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... me up two hours after I had retired to rest, for the loan of the jug of cold water from my washhand-stand, to make grog with, and a 'Little Warbler,' if I had one, with the words of 'The Literary Dustman' in it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... Mary sat in her little attic room and held Tommy close to her hungry heart. All day she worked with the thought of coming back to him at night; but with night came the dustman, and in spite of her games and stories Tommy's blue eyes would get full of the sleep-dust. Tonight, however, he ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... she accept such costly presents from men of rank and wealth, but she graciously received the donations of tradesmen and menials. Francis Bacon made her majesty "a poor oblation of a garment;" Charles Smith, the dustman, threw upon the pile of treasure "two bottes of cambric." The fashion thus countenanced by the queen was followed in all ranks of society; all men, from high to low, receiving presents, as expressions of affection ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... vocal; but the molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care that, for all but a very few among the people, the discipline of danger and perpetual effort shall not be wanting. You do not find the pitman, the dustman, or the bargee puling for bayonet exercise to make them hard, and if our nervous gentlemen were all serving the State in those capacities, they might even approach their addition sums in "Dreadnoughts" without a tremor. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... which made the rest of the tradesmen jealous, as well as Bull and Frog; they, hearing of the quarrel, were glad of an opportunity of joining against old Lewis Baboon, provided that Bull and Frog would bear the charges of the suit. Even lying Ned, the chimney-sweeper of Savoy, and Tom, the Portugal dustman, put in their claims, and the cause was put into the hands of ...
— English Satires • Various
... dustman might delve; the Employers' Liability Act is a tricky business and I am only insured against my own death—which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... him. However, Time and the progress of modern enlightenment put things right; and the mis-alliance passed muster very well. We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you can scratch me, if I scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament, whether you are a Dustman or a Duke? That's the modern way of looking at it—and I keep up with the modern way. The Ablewhites lived in a fine house and grounds, a little out of Frizinghall. Very worthy people, and greatly respected in the neighbourhood. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... most of whom will take a great deal of exercise anyhow, with spade or hammer, pickax or saw. And for the third case, of washing, it is obvious that the same sort of rhetoric about corporeal daintiness which is proper to an ornamental class cannot, merely as it stands, be applicable to a dustman. A gentleman is expected to be substantially spotless all the time. But it is no more discreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for a deep-sea diver to be wet. A sweep is no more disgraced when ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... donors; but it is often merely surface-kindness, and the gifts are bestowed in a bitter and grudging spirit. Let me ask, What are the real feelings of a householder who is requested to hand out a present to a turncock or dustman whom he has never seen? The functionaries receive fair wages for unskilled labour, yet they come smirking cheerfully forward and prefer a claim which has no shadow of justification. If a flower-seller is rather too importunate in offering her wares, she is promptly imprisoned for seven days or fined; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... vehicle unhurt; a group immediately formed round the cab, a knot of young thieves, almost young enough for infant schools, a dustman, a woman nearly naked and very drunk, and two unshorn ruffians with brutality stamped on every feature, with pipes in their mouths, and their hands ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of some strange and popular adventures, and, after the fashion of novel-writers, introduce my reader to the great characters of this remarkable time. These persons (I mean the romance-writers), if they take a drummer or a dustman for a hero, somehow manage to bring him in contact with the greatest lords and most notorious personages of the empire; and I warrant me there's not one of them but, in describing the battle of Minden, would manage to bring Prince Ferdinand, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray |
