"Manual labour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the circumstances of so many worthy members of the community seem to have 'an alacrity in sinking,' that it is possible to amend them by sheer industry. He, who was born in the workhouse, and bred up as a parish boy, has now, by mere manual labour, risen to the rank of a land-owner, pays rates and taxes, grumbles at the times, and is called Master Welles,—the title next to Mister—that by which Shakspeare was called;—what would man have more? His wife, besides being the best laundress in the county, is a comely woman still. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... chorus of assent, for none were accustomed to hard manual labour, and the pain in their arms ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... attend the coming annual meeting in Kiukiang, improving this opportunity of bringing them in contact with the doctors, who have long since become the ideals of our school girls.... Referring to the fear some native Christians have shown of sending their girls to a school having manual labour in its curriculum, Dr. Ida exclaimed hotly, 'This fear of work is the bane of China.' Here are two doctors of exalted privileges, educated abroad, honoured alike by native and foreigner, and yet putting their hand to cooking and housework of every kind, as the need may ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... or adherent to this Covenant agree that they will themselves seek to establish and maintain fair hours and humane conditions of labour for all those within their several jurisdictions who are engaged in manual labour and that they will exert their influence in favour of the adoption and maintenance of a similar policy and like safeguards wherever their ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... endure to have his men sitting doing nothing on their benches for fifteen minutes out of every hour of the working day, just because his back was turned? The hill farmer has, perhaps, a preferable life in some respects to the agriculturist in the vale. He has not so much actual manual labour to get through. On the other hand, he is at a great distance from any town, or even large village; he sees no one during the day, and he has to run great risks. Wool may fall, so may the price of mutton, either of which would derange ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... by which the evil charm is unwound. The Brownie—the Lubber Fiend—owns a department of legend and ballad scarcely less important than that possessed by his relatives, the Elfin folk and the Trolds; a shy and clumsy monster, but harmless and good-natured, and with a turn for hard manual labour that can be turned to useful account. Good and ill fortune, in the ballads, comes ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... was this abbe?" His speech showed he was French. He wore his cassock with the ease of long habit: he was young. His hand was the delicate hand of a Churchman—not coarsened by manual labour. Fandor, plunged in reflections, lost all sense ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... called the old man away. He then assisted his elder brother, and on his elder brother's death, lived with his son. He did not distinguish himself as a husbandman, and appears never to have been fond of manual labour. At an early period, however, he applied himself most assiduously to poetry, and before he had attained the age of thirty was celebrated, throughout Wales, as the best poet of his time. When the war broke out between Charles and his ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of vines flung from tree to tree. In England we should be obliged to cut them all down for fear of depriving the crops of heat and sunshine, but here they have no such fears. The style of husbandry is exquisitely neat, and in general performed by manual labour. The only plough I saw would have excited the amusement and amazement of an English farmer: I should think it was exactly similar to the ploughs of Virgil's time: it was drawn by an ox and an ass yoked together, and guided by a woman. The whole ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... they have is perhaps borrowed. Of course these girls help cheerfully in the household, in the dairy, and so forth? No. Some are forced by necessity to assist in the household with unwilling hands: but few, indeed, enter the dairy. All dislike the idea of manual labour, though never so slight. Therefore they acquire a smattering of knowledge, and go out as governesses. They earn but a small stipend in that profession, because they have rarely gone through a sufficiently strict course ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... his work. He felt that manual labour was almost below his dignity now. What! he, an inventor—a benefactor of mankind—the probable millionaire of years to come—he, who would soon be looked upon as the foremost man of the island, pointed at and envied by everyone—watering tomatoes. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... said Vane, quietly. "I couldn't help thinking how slow and laborious rowing seemed to be, and how little change has been made in all these years that are passed. You see," he continued, warming to his subject, "there is so much waste of manual labour. It took two of us to move that boat ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... judge of the respective merits of orators, poets, and artists. This sensibility to the pleasures of the imagination, when judiciously managed, adds much to the happiness of life, and it must be peculiarly advantageous to those who are precluded by their station in society from the necessity of manual labour. Mental exercise, and mental amusements, are essential to persons in the higher ranks of life, who would escape from the fever of dissipation, or from the lethargy of ennui. The mere physical advantages which wealth can procure, are reducible to the short sum of "meat, fire, and clothes." A ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... underbrushing, and which caught in the axletree every few score yards. Now came the handspikes into action, which provident Sam had cut, and laid into the waggon when the road was fair and smooth; for the wheels had to be lifted high enough to slip over the obstacles. In the pauses of manual labour came the chilling thought, 'All this difficulty ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... from helpless sympathy. But it is all over now, and the probity of two, presumably, gallant officers is vindicated, while the paying teller of father's bank is behind the bars with a certain prospect of years of manual labour for bed and board. Why will men be so foolish? Easily answered. The love of gold, not made in an honest way, but by speculating with other folks' money. Mr. Barr, the aforesaid teller, is a nice young fellow ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... perfect sang-froid and gravity, "may it not displease your highness, but I am not a rascal. My name is Jacquemin Lampourde, and I ply the sword for a living. My profession is an honourable one. I have never degraded myself by taking part in trade of any kind, or by manual labour. Killing is my business, at the risk of my own life and limb—for I always do my work alone, unaided, armed only with my trusty sword. Fair play is a jewel, and I would scorn to take a mean advantage of anybody. I always give warning before I attack a man, and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... is high time you began," she said calmly. "It will not only give you a greater respect for manual labour, but subdue ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... preparations were being made and parties scouring the country for timber the young engineer bent his mind to the task of inventing some better mode of getting rid of the water than by manual labour—the mine being sadly deficient in a lot of necessary gear, besides steam-power, as Ernest Wilton had quickly perceived, although he had refrained ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... kindly face, as if the memory of the bitter past was more than he could bear. "The two years that followed were crammed with poverty and privation; there was almost constant sickness in the home, and I could get no work except occasional jobs of manual labour, at which any drayman or navvy could have beaten me easily, by reason of superior strength. I left Bristol and went to Cardiff, hoping that I might lose my want of a character in the crowd. But it was of no use. 'Give a dog a bad name and hang him', is one ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... again." He was compelled, according to the then all but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging manual labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he says, "I had given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's 'Scottish Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." It was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in a great measure ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... saw there were two men to deal with. The bidder's face was keen and intellectual; his hands refined, lady-like, clean and white, showing they were long divorced from manual labour, if indeed they had ever done any useful work. Coolness and imperturbability were his beyond a doubt. The companion who sat at his right was of an entirely different stamp. His hands were hairy and sun-tanned; ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... armourers are making or mending firearms. Tailors, shoemakers, bricklayers, potters, millers, sawyers—every kind of labourer or artisan is here to be found. There are no idlers, and no unemployed. Everybody, from the humblest convert up to the bishop himself, is occupied in some sort of manual labour. It is a curious and interesting sight—a society so industrious and sober, so peaceful and well-regulated, yet built up of such divers elements drawn from such widely differing ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... their troubles afield; manual labour dulls, if it does not altogether exorcise, them; some have other less creditable means of seeking oblivion. But the poor women, shut in in their little houses, with their anxieties and sorrow staring ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... state of these islands, as well as that of Jamaica and Barbadoes, and from a consideration of the means of obviating the causes, which had hitherto operated to impede the natural increase of the slaves, and of lessening the demand for manual labour, without diminishing the profit of the planters, no considerable or permanent inconvenience would result from discontinuing the further importation of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... meagre type of religion has elevated them. But at length his little stock of money was nearly expended, and there was nothing that he could do, or learn to do, in this seaport. He felt impelled to seek manual labour, partly because he thought it more likely he could obtain that sort of employment, without a request for reference as to his character, which would lead to inquiry about his previous history; and partly, perhaps, from an instinctive feeling that hard bodily ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... labour-power in the steam-engine came at a time when the existing supply of manual labour was proving utterly inadequate to cope with the demands of the manufacturer. This was especially the case in textile fabrics. In its earlier stages the manufacture of cotton had been retarded by the difficulty with which the weavers obtained a sufficient supply of cotton yarn from ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... concept. As a tramp, I was behind the scenes of society—aye, and down in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of the social machine go around, and I learned that the dignity of manual labour wasn't what I had been told it was by the teachers, preachers, and politicians. The men without trades were helpless cattle. If one learned a trade, he was compelled to belong to a union in order to work at his trade. And his union was compelled to bully and slug ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... 1776, at Linkhouse, near Dunbar. His father was a notary; but, being in poor circumstances, he apprenticed his son, in his eleventh year, to a relative, who followed the conjoined business of a builder and house-carpenter. The drudgery of heavy manual labour proved very uncongenial; and the apprentice suddenly took his departure, walking a long distance to Edinburgh, whither his parents had removed their residence. He now selected the profession of a printer, and entered on an indenture to Mr David Ramsay of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... returned; but such was his poverty, and such the tattered state of his dress, that a number of persons subscribed a sum sufficient to have him put in a state fit to appear in the poll-room. The exhibition of his machine in a town where so many workpeople lived by the exercise of manual labour proved a dangerous experiment; ominous growlings were heard outside the school-room from time to time, and Arkwright,—remembering the fate of Kay, who was mobbed and compelled to fly from Lancashire because of his invention of the fly-shuttle, and of poor ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... abundant, was long, black, and inclined to curl; the black moustache was thick and drooping. The shirt was of fine linen, the drawers silk. On one finger were two good rings, the hands were clean, the nails well kept, and there was every evidence that the man did not live by manual labour. He was of the easy, cultured class, as distinct from the workman ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... labouring for daily wages capable of taking a creditable part in political, literary, and scientific discussion; but at the same time the followers of George Sand, and French preachers of proletarian perfection will not find their notions of the ennobling effects of manual labour realised. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... when you have once won their regard they will go through fire and water for you; but they despise any one who 'does nothing,' for, like most manual workers, they do not understand that brain-work is as hard as manual labour. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... money is what the peasant in such a district obtains with the greatest difficulty, and parts from with the greatest reluctance. "Money is dear," is one of his proverbs, because in his eyes money stands for something different from manual labour. It means traffic with men and things outside his world, an effort of foresight or circumspection, a bargain, a sort of intellectual struggle, which lifts him out of his ordinary heedless habits; it means, in a word, mental labour, and this for ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear,—the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates. Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing from the vulgar, wearisome toil of uninteresting, forced manual labour. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... earn a subsistence, I cannot imagine. The mind is necessarily imprisoned in its own little tenement; and, fully occupied by keeping it in repair, has not time to rove abroad for improvement. The book of knowledge is closely clasped, against those who must fulfil their daily task of severe manual labour or die; and curiosity, rarely excited by thought or information, seldom moves on the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... prescribes, then, that the Israelite should for ever remember the holy day of sabbath, as a representative of religion, and should, during that day, abstain, and cause all his dependants to abstain, from all manual labour and earthly occupation, that might distract him from the contemplation of heavenly subjects, which should exclusively occupy his mind on ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... who was to buy the goods. For, I remarked, you certainly cannot compete with foreign countries at this rate, and at home the Classes will be competing with you, being obliged to have recourse to manual labour. They said that was just what they wanted, everybody to labour with his hands. I answered that many of the Classes, a poor lot at best (cheers), would come on the Parish. Who was to pay the rates when everybody was working, and nobody was buying what was made? If there were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... could hardly believe that the boy was right. Brahmins who, being of the priestly caste, claim to be semi-divine rather than mere men, will take up professions or clerical work, but with all his experience of India he had never heard of any of them engaging in such manual labour. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... in such intricacies among the craggs, that there is no room for the action of a team and plow. The soil is then turned up by manual labour, with an instrument called a crooked spade, of a form and weight which to me appeared very incommodious, and would perhaps be soon improved in a country where workmen could be easily found and easily paid. It has a narrow blade of iron fixed to a long and heavy ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... nationalization as a cure for all social ills; or again The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, led by Gurdjieff and Uspenski which combines esoteric meditation with an extremely meagre diet and strenuous manual labour. It is interesting, by the way, to notice that the art of movement known as Eurhythmy—not to be confounded with the system of M. Dalcroze which is known in England only as Eurhythmics—forms an important part of the curriculum of the last society, as also of Herr Steiner's Order, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property. The slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry. They unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them. On the other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed, ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... importation, and large bounties were given; such temptations led parties to crowd the colony with numbers of miserable persons, quite unable to perform any laborious employment. It was the general opinion that, owing to physical inability, scarcely one in a hundred of these Coolies was fit for manual labour; and whilst our correspondent was at Demerara a law was issued by the governor granting permission for labourers to enter Guiana from certain countries only, omitting the East Indies. The wretchedness of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the leaders to those who worked under them. Abbot John of Trittenham thus admonished the workers in the Scriptorium in 1486: "I have diminished your labours out of the monastery lest by working badly you should only add to your sins, and have enjoined on you the manual labour of writing and binding books. There is in my opinion no labour more becoming a monk than the writing of ecclesiastical books.... You will recall that the library of this monastery... had been dissipated, sold, or made way with by disorderly ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... attention. This female, destined to be a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction; the daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces, was driving about the child all day to manual labour. "I know not," says Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows fastened, she ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... jolly, and I could see that Philip was discontented. He had never been accustomed to manual labour; he did not like being exposed to the cold winds, to the frost or rain, with no shelter except that afforded by our small tent. While at work we were always dirty, and often wet; and after we had passed a miserable night, daylight found us ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... symbols for the first nine digits into single "figures," enabled the computer to dispense with the manual labour of the abacus, whilst in his graphic notation he retained its essential principle of place. It seems to be almost invariably forgotten by writers on {280} the subject, what, without this principle, no improvement in mere notation would have been of material use in arithmetic; and on the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady, well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages, many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness a steady collier in my employment, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of royalty and of the nobility is, taken all round, a very lazy one. Exercise is considered a degenerate habit, fit only for people who have to earn a living; and, as for manual labour, a Corean nobleman would much prefer suicide to ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... and other kinds of paper money; all of which soon fell into discredit, and occasioned a depreciation of the currency, which has been the more injurious to the colony and its trade, as the prices of all things, and particularly of manual labour, have increased in proportion to the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for; but with anything like business, except manual labour, I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... mission station. He himself paid into the common fund the whole of his episcopal income of L1,200, and drew out as his proper share only L500. The farm was worked on communistic principles. Teachers and students must all take their share in manual labour. Lectures on Greek and Latin must be given in the intervals of ploughing, or printing, or teaching Maori children to read or hoe or spin. Each "associate" received a fixed salary; all profits went to the support of ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... trial, cannot have a better opportunity of testing it than by spending a couple of hours in seeing that single incident drag its slow length along, and witnessing a new comedian, named Bass, roll his heavy breadth about in hard-working attempts to be droll. As a specimen of manual labour in comedy, we never saw the acting of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... services, the nights broken by prayers; probably the time was dull enough, but passed quickly, like all lives full of monotonous engagements. They were not particularly ascetic, these Benedictines, and insisted much on manual labour in the open air. Probably at first the monks did their farm-work as well; but as they grew richer, they employed labourers, and themselves fell back on simpler and easier garden-work. Perhaps some few were truly devotional spirits, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into more horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters, Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to the Count Giberto Borromeo, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... prescribed by the doctor. Every night before compline the brethren meet to hear some pious lecture read, not to confess their thoughts to the superior. Instead of one meal a day, as stated by our correspondent, the lay-brethren, who are employed chiefly in manual labour, have at least two meals every day during the whole year, excepting fast-days; and the choir-brethren two meals a day during the summer, and one during the winter. To the latter, when they are of a weakly constitution, a collation is allowed in addition. The greatest error ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... alternative might have been possible if she had been willing to let them starve, but probably in no other way. To attempt to put them out upon the land again was hopeless; they knew nothing of agriculture, and were unused to manual labour, which they despised. ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the east wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effort to "keep up appearances," which deceive nobody; who have no formal visiting, but real sociability; who regard the light manual labour of domestic life as a pleasure, not a thing to be ashamed of; who are contented with their circumstances, and have leisure to be kind, cultured, and agreeable; and who live so tastefully, though ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... should be able to ride a buckjumper, or, at any rate, hold on till the saddle went, use a stockwhip, cut up and light a pipe of tobacco with a single wax vesta while riding full speed in the teeth of a sou'-wester, and be ready and competent to take a hand at any manual labour going. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... success, the brilliant scene of enlistment before the Lord Mayor, and the abrupt change one raw January morning from the ease and freedom of civilian life, to the rigours and serfdom of a soldier's. There followed a month of constant hard work, riding-drill, gun-drill, stable work, and every sort of manual labour, until the last details of the mobilization were complete, uniforms and kit received, the guns packed and despatched; and all that remained was to ride our horses to the Albert Docks; for our ship, the Montfort, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... usually the special accomplishment of the man who is not otherwise worth his salt, by reason of being too lazy for manual labour, and too slenderly upholstered on the mental side for anything else. Sir Francis Head, one of the five exceptions to this rule—Gordon being the second, 'Banjo' the third, 'Glenrowan' the fourth, and the demurring reader the fifth—says the greatest art in riding is knowing ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would have found that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, but honourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun, angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant wives, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scarcely ever washing their porringers, or only doing so in their broth; they hardly ever wash their clothes, more especially "when there is thunder about;" and they eat rats, mice, &c., if they are badly off for other food. The men are not brought up to any manual labour, their whole occupation consisting in hunting, shooting with bow and arrows, watching the flocks, and riding. The women and girls are very athletic and very brave, they prepare furs and make clothes, drive carts and camels, and as polygamy is practised ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... dwelt upon myself and my situation. It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner. Cabin-boy! I had never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life. I had lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of a scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income. Violent life and athletic sports ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... least before they will give way in the matter of Monkeys. To be a physician, a solicitor, an engineer, or a Commissioner for Oaths is denied them as effectually as though they did not exist. Indeed, no occupation is left them save that of manual labour, and on this I would say a word. It is fashionable to jeer at the Monkey's disinclination to sustained physical effort and to concentrated toil; but it is remarkable that those who affect such a contempt for the Monkey's powers ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... with the population of the town, there was in Carthagena a large admixture of native Iberians, who, belonging to the tribes first subdued by Carthage, had either been forced to settle here to supply manual labour needed for the rising city, or who had voluntarily abandoned their wandering life and adopted the more settled habitudes and more assured comforts of existence in a ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... all the conveniences that were far from coming readily to hand in a remote Italian inn—to give orders, send commissions to Vicenza, or even to Venice, and to do a good deal, with Anne's' assistance, by her own manual labour. Guy said she did more for Philip outside his room than he did inside, and often declared how entirely at a loss he should have been if she had not been there, with her ready resources, and, above all, with her sweet presence, making the short intervals ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to a common fund, for various objects. These objects were—first: to buy land for the agricultural members to cultivate, paying their rent, not to the other members, but to the company; not refusing machinery, but preferring manual labour. Next, to buy mills and factories, to be likewise owned by the Guild and worked by members—using water power in preference to steam (steam at first not forbidden)—and making the lives of the people employed as well spent as ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... though they were axiomatic, he asserts that the measure of exchange between one class of commodities and another—such, for example, as cigars, printed books, and chronometers—is the amount of manual labour, estimated in terms of time, which is on an average necessary to the production of each of them. His meaning in this respect is illustrated with pictorial vividness by his teaching with regard to the form ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... are so real that I am frequently able to remember, almost verbatim, long conversations I have had in them, and I awake repeating broken-off sentences. Often, after I have taken active exercise, such as running, or done manual labour, such as digging or lifting heavy weights in the land of my dreams, my muscles have ached all ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... greater tallness. Till past his thirtieth year he was notably slender in figure, a defect in symmetry being the observable shortness of the legs, and he walked with swift, elastic step. The foot was elegantly shaped, but the hand was that of the descendant of ancestors who had been engaged in manual labour. The head was of oval form, the chin small and feminine, the height of the forehead remarkable. The face, which (in youth) gave the impression of smallness, was brown in complexion; the nose was delicately formed ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... are cut off in this manner from their natural supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven. Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself; and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... was born in the parish of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, on the 1st day of January 1814. At the time of his birth his father rented a farm, but, being unfortunate, he was compelled to seek the support of his family by manual labour. With a limited education at the parish-school of Longside, whither his parents had removed, the subject of this memoir was sent, in his eleventh year, to tend cattle. When somewhat older, he found employment as a farm-servant; but having married in his twentieth year, he afterwards ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I might touch upon perils distinct from Unionism, which threaten industry, especially that growing dislike of manual labour which prevails to an alarming extent in the United States, and which some eminent economists are inclined to attribute to errors in the system of education in the common schools. I might speak of the duties ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and patiently at the temporary manual labour on which he was employed, and when that came to an end he looked ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... one of these planers and did just such work as that big Norwegian was doing, only the machines were vastly better and improved now. Mr. Hardy was not ashamed of having come along through the ranks of manual labour. In fact, he always spoke with pride of the work he used to do in that very shop, and he considered himself able to run all by himself any piece of machinery in the shops. But he could not help envying these men this morning. "Why," he said, "probably not ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... the yuga had come to be considered as an inferior one. And, O child, in the Krita age, there were neither gods, nor demons, nor Gandharvas, nor Yakshas, nor Rakshasas, nor Nagas. And there was no buying and selling. And the Sama, the Rich, and the Yajus did not exist. And there was no manual labour. And then the necessaries of life were obtained only by being thought of. And the only merit was in renouncing the world. And during that yuga, there was neither disease, nor decay of the senses. And there ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to stand upon her feet for more than ten hours in any one day and to perform severe manual labour while thus standing has the effect ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... natural sensibility, like the pain of hunger, or of cold, or of a musical discord; it is purely artificial; custom has made it, and could unmake it. The feeling of fatigue from overwork is natural; the repugnance of caste to manual labour is factitious. The dignity attached to the military profession, and the indignity of the office of public executioner, are capricious, arbitrary, and sentimental. Our prospective regard to the comforts of our declining years points to a real interest; our feelings as to the disposal of the body ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... themselves to service for a stated time in order to defray the cost of their voyage from Europe. At a later time there were many of these "redemptioners" in the middle colonies, but in New England they were very few; and as no stigma of servitude was attached to manual labour, they were apt at the end of their terms of service to become independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct class of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of the "mean white" are to be found ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... is extinct; he will bully, backbite, and speak daggers. Music, I hear, is not much better. But painting, on the contrary, is often highly sedative; because so much of the labour, after your picture is once begun, is almost entirely manual, and of that skilled sort of manual labour which offers a continual series of successes, and so tickles a man, through his vanity, into good humour. Alas! in letters there is nothing of this sort. You may write as beautiful a hand as you will, you have always something else to think of, and cannot pause to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than the demand. The code of social ethics in vogue among this class was such as might have been expected from persons who had been reared to regard themselves as the objects of a special dispensation of fortune. They looked upon manual labour as degrading. Any person, no matter what his abilities, who earned a livelihood by the sweat of his brow, or even by honest trade, was considered as no fit company for the brood of parasites who hung on to the heels of the Compact, and who nevertheless did not ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... supply, or heaving up the sounding line, it goes without saying that all the afterguard turn out to do it. There is no hesitation and no distinction. It will be the same when it comes to landing stores or doing any other hard manual labour. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... structures should be noticed. One, the dock or plunge hole, which is a deep place by a sharply raised bank, both made with careful manual labour. Next, the sunning place, generally an ant-hill on which the Beaver lies to enjoy a sun-bath, while the ants pick the creepers out of his fur. Third, the mud-pie. This is a little patty of mud mixed with a squeeze ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... we were busied in loading our boat. What pride we felt! no shame at being seen performing manual labour; but pride, and pleasure, and exultation. We had always been fond of boating, and now that it was about to be an useful employment, it seemed additionally agreeable. And what a noble scene for this our first adventurous ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... strongly tempted to reason with her unreasonableness, thus practically boasted as a virtue. It seemed so unworthy, this streak of snobbery, so senseless in an American at most three generations away from manual labour. But he had made up his mind long ago to trust to new surroundings, new interests to create in her a spirit more in sympathy with ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... say," replied Bain. Butler justified Bain's candour by saying that if he broke out again, he would be worse than the most savage tiger ever let loose on the community. As a means of obviating such an outbreak, Butler suggested that, intellectual employment having failed, some form of manual labour should be found him. Bain complied with Butler's request, and got him a job at levelling reclaimed ground in the neighbourhood of Dunedin. On Wednesday, March 10, Butler started work, but after three ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... operates through opinion, yet if it carries opinion with it, may, as M. Comte complacently observes, be of such powerful efficacy, that the richest man may be driven to produce his subsistence by his own manual labour, through the impossibility of inducing any other person to work for him. In this as in all other cases, the priesthood depends for its authority on carrying with it the mass of the people—those who, possessing no accumulations, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... pleasure unalloyed. She did not miss the luxuries to which she had become accustomed. She rather relished the hard, manual labour, to which she applied herself with full energy. But her baby was a stranger to her, cried when she wished to take her up, and became only gradually accustomed to her. Her faculties had been sharpened, too; she felt a certain shyness in her husband, noticed his weaknesses, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Holloway, who next occupied the witness's chair, admitted, in reply to the questions of Sir Gladney Jebb, that, since his student days, he had seldom been engaged in manual labour on any instrument for more than two hours a day. It was not necessary for a conductor. But he knew of pianists who practised for six or even eight hours a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... followed her in domestic avocations. The girl was taught to draw water, gather shell-fish, make mats and native cloth. The boy after a time followed his father, and soon became useful in planting, fishing, house-building, and all kinds of manual labour. Boys were also accustomed to club together, and wander about the settlement, the plantation, or in the bush. If they fell in with a fallen cocoa-nut one boy would sit down and name some to come and join him in ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... no rules, no vows, no constitution, and no cells formed. Prayer and study, and manual labour, were their only occupations. They applied themselves to the education of youth, and raised up little academies in the neighbourhood, where the members of Port-Royal, the most illustrious names of literary France, presided. None considered ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was b. near Ayr, the s. of William Burness or Burns, a small farmer, and a man of considerable force of character and self-culture. His youth was passed in poverty, hardship, and a degree of severe manual labour which left its traces in a premature stoop and weakened constitution. He had little regular schooling, and got much of what education he had from his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... from work. Manual labour is servitude. A day of idleness is a holy day. For those whose means do not permit to live in idleness the school is the only refuge; but they must prove their quality. This is the goal which drives many Scotch boys to the University, scorning delights ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... slenderly made. Her limbs were more delicately proportioned than is usual among women accustomed to manual labour from childhood. The rosy glow of health lit up her brown but clear cheek, free from freckles and sun-spots. Her eyes, black as sloes, were fringed with long dark eyelashes which gave their glances an espiegle expression. They were very wicked-looking eyes, full of fun and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and glory were to be gained. The cultivation of the West India Islands by the labour of Europeans, was found to be a task almost impracticable, and the attention was thence drawn to discover a source, from which manual labour could be obtained, adapted to the climate, and this resource was soon found in the black population of Africa. It is not to be doubted, that many of our African settlements were formed for the purpose of procuring a supply ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... ever you do take one up) it strikes you as being a very trifling thing—a mere insubstantial pamphlet beside the imposing bulk of the latest six-shilling novel. Little do you guess that every page of the play has cost more care, severer mental tension, if not more actual manual labour, than any chapter of a novel, though it be fifty pages long. It is the height of the author's art, according to the old maxim, that the ordinary spectator should never be clearly conscious of the skill and travail ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the prison, who had access to the Beaumonts, and was by him directed to Jobson. His talkative simplicity, and the danger that would result from his being sifted by Cromwell's spies, had obliged them to dispense with the services of the faithful trooper, who now earned his bread by manual labour, and only came occasionally to inquire after their health. Though care was taken to represent him as a porter occasionally employed, the jailor suspected he had been an old servant. Monthault immediately recollected him as attached ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... three classes, and removed from them by a long interval, was the mass of the population—"the multitude" as the Egyptians called them. These persons were engaged in manual labour of different kinds. The greater number were employed on the farms of the nobles, in the cultivation of the soil or in the rearing of cattle. A portion were boatmen, fishermen, or fowlers. Others pursued the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... manual labour. The loss of caste by any Brahman who follows the plough is only an application of this rule in the highest quarters. Caste has taught the people of this land that humble toil, however honest it may be, is more than mean; it is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... first machines were invented for saving much of the manual labour spent upon these processes, it occurred to the managers of the company that these machines might be advantageously worked with the water-power of the Oise at Chauny. This was in the beginning of the present ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... loved deeply, he knew that he was in turn as deeply beloved; but he was utterly powerless. On the confines of the estate, indeed, the men would run gladly to do his bidding. Beyond, and on his own account, he was helpless. Manual labour (to plough, to sow, to work on shipboard) could produce nothing in a time when almost all work was done by bondsmen or family retainers. The life of a hunter in the woods was ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... April! 'Oh! to be in England now that April's there!' How could Browning write that line without his teeth chattering! How well I understand the desire of the British to keep India and South Africa! They must have some place to go where they can get warm! Now for unpacking, or any sort of manual labour which will put ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... through a spiritual struggle, read the New Testament constantly, and became completely converted to the practical teachings of the Gospel. Then followed his well-known work, "My Religion," the abandonment of his former way of life, and his attempts to live like a peasant, in daily manual labour. Since that time he wrote a vast number of religious, political, and social tracts, dealing with war, marriage, law-courts, imprisonment, etc. Many of the religious tracts belong to literature by the beauty and simple directness of their style. Two ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... six years old than its compeers, especially if this is to be gained by a sacrifice of health which may never be regained? There may be some excuse for this early book-work in the case of those children who are to live by manual labour. It is worth while, perhaps, to run the risk of some physical injury to them, having only their early years in which we can teach them book-knowledge. The chance of mischief, too, will be less, being more likely to be counteracted by their after-life. But for ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... lake. Upon this headland the peasantry had been given permission to build their cabins by former owners of the Georgian house standing on the pleasant green hill. The present owners considered the village a disgrace, but the villagers paid high rents for their plots of ground, and all the manual labour that the Big House required came from the village: the gardeners, the stable helpers, the house and the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of the good by itself, and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest,— a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour,—a day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's creation. "Keep it holy"—says he—"for its use' sake,—both to body and soul! But if any where the day is made holy for the mere ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Christians: from the synagogue he was cut off by a public curse, and by the Church he was now regarded as in some sort a forerunner of Antichrist. For all this, he showed no resentment, but devoted himself quietly to his studies, and to the simple manual labour by which he supported himself; declined all proffered honours, among them a professorship at Heidelberg; found pleasure only in the society of a few friends as gentle and affectionate as himself; and died contentedly, without seeing any widespread effect of his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... purchaser, and particularly of a gentleman, that he will be able to transfer the improved system of cultivation of his own country into a kingdom at least a century behind the former. As far us his own manual labour goes, as far as he will take the plough, the harrow, and the broadcast himself, so far may he procure the execution of his own ideas. But it is in vain to endeavour to infuse this knowledge or this practice into French labourers; you might as well put a pen in the hand of a Hottentot, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... be pretty nearly a dozen public holidays in the year. Saturday is always a half-holiday. Nine till five are the accepted hours for the clerk; half-past nine till six for the shop-assistant. The eight-hour system is generally accepted in all classes of manual labour. Some shops are open on Saturday evenings; but there is a strong movement to abolish this system. The clerk is rarely called back to work after hours. In all trades and professions the hours and work ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... are of Gothick original; the ancients neither hunted by the scent, nor seemed much to have practised horsemanship, as an exercise; and though in their works there is mention of aucupium and piscatio, they seemed no more to have been considered as diversions, than agriculture, or any other manual labour. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Of a family of eight children, William was the youngest; he inherited a love of poetry from his mother, a woman of much intelligence. Early sent to school, impaired eyesight interfered with his progress in learning. Disqualified by his imperfect vision from engaging in manual labour, he chose the business of pedlar or travelling merchant. In the course of his wanderings he composed verses, which, sung at the various homesteads he visited with his wares, became popular. Having submitted some of his poetical compositions to Dr Duncan of Ruthwell, and Dr Alexander ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Angelo sought to realise a certain preconceived effect by want of finish. There is enough in the distracted circumstances of his life and in his temper, at once passionate and downcast, to account for fragmentary and imperfect performance; nor must it be forgotten that the manual labour of the sculptor in the sixteenth century was by no means so light as it is now. A decisive argument against this theory is that Buonarroti's three most celebrated statues—the "Pieta" in S. Peter's, the "Moses" and the "Dawn"—are executed with the highest polish it ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and spend at the first hotel the money he would otherwise have gladly spent on his family if his wife had tried and knew how to make him comfortable; and, there is no denying it, the greatest comforts a man can have after a day's work, be it manual labour or brain work, are a good meal and a quiet corner in which to smoke his pipe ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... residence, and if chance favoured him with a glimpse of his beloved, it was only to add to his misery, for she withdrew hastily from his sight. A rumour of the intended marriage of his perjured mistress reached his ears, and, struck to the soul, he endeavoured, by manual labour, to exhaust his strength and banish the recollection of his misery. He toiled all day in feverish desperation; and now that there was no more to be done, sat down to ponder over his altered prospects. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... desiderata; and then education was almost wholly physical: mental cultivation was little cared for, and indeed, as in feudal ages, was often treated with contempt. But now that our state is relatively peaceful—now that muscular power is of use for little else than manual labour, while social success of nearly every kind depends very much on mental power; our education has become almost exclusively mental. Instead of respecting the body and ignoring the mind, we now respect the mind and ignore the body. Both these attitudes are wrong. We do not yet ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... January, and February. It is in these months that all outdoor occupations come to a comparative standstill; it is then that the poorest section of the population—the men without a trade, the men who live by mere manual labour—are reduced to the greatest straits. In the winter months some of these men have to pass through a period of real hardship; the state of the weather often puts an absolute stop to all outdoor occupations, and when this is the case, ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... shabbiness too,—shabbiness in black. There was humour in the corners of his lip; and his hands, though they did not seem very clean—indeed his occupation was not friendly to such niceties—were those of a man who had not known manual labour. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of the nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself as to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... become essential. Such a party, to be in harmony with our traditions and our creed, to arrest in our democracy the process of class stratification which threatens to destroy it, must not draw its members from the ranks of manual labour alone, but from all elements of our population. It should contain all the liberal professions, and clerks and shopkeepers, as well as manual workers; administrators, and even those employers who have become convinced that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... such occasions, and Mr. —— seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood enforcing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their appointed tasks. How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labour, to what he then seemed, setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid exacted labour! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope this sojourn among Mr. ——'s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for the details of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... astrology and the other sciences pass through manual operation, but they are mental in the first place, as painting, which first of all exists in the mind of the composer, and cannot attain to fulfilment without manual labour. With regard to painting, its true and scientific principles must be established: what constitutes a shaded body, what constitutes a primary shade, a derivative shade, what constitutes light: that is, darkness, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... who was her first born, too, came home with gifts and money in her hands, her mother received her with frowning brows and sullen, silent lips. When the child came home with empty hands, and gave only cheerfully performed hard manual labour, she was received with fierce eyes, cruel rankling words, and many a cut and heavy blow, and was often thrust from the house itself, because 'twas known the girl was ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work— manual labour—he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... citizens, but they all knew that their lives depended on their repairing and strengthening their defences before their foes should again attack them. Not only the citizens of all ranks, but their wives and children assisted, many who had never before engaged in manual labour offering their services to carry baskets of earth to the ramparts, and otherwise aiding in the work going forward. In this task the commandant was ably supported by the burgomaster and other magistrates. Jaqueline often accompanied the burgomaster, and set ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... establishment. His possessions need never be mortgaged. The cost of living is measurable by a standard adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of a little manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates for the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit—not the profession—leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies luxuriously with time, free ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... fastened in tandem and drawn to the shore by a stout rope, which had already been run to the beach, and the two shore ends, one for Misamis and one for Cagayan, Mindanao, were laid with but little trouble. As Iligan's insurrectionary population was too aristocratic to demean itself by manual labour for any monetary consideration, the soldiers of the infantry company stationed at Iligan were detailed to dig the trench. But, being Americans, they worked with a right good will, completing the trench late that afternoon. The office was also established by this time, after which the two shore ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... k'an-chien "look-see," as in colloquial. There was a wonderful outburst of literary activity in the Confucian era, when it would seem that the older and more cumbrous form of Seal character was still in vogue. If the mere manual labour of writing was so great, we cannot wonder that all superfluous particles or other words that could be dispensed with were ruthlessly cut away. So it came about that all the old classical works were composed in the tersest of language, as remote as can be imagined ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... proceeded to replace by machinery the manual labour, and, thanks to the energy and ingenuity of the principal contractors, Messrs. Borel and Lavalley, that which seemed first of all to threaten destruction to the enterprise now led to its ultimate success. Without the machinery thus called into action, it is probable that the canal would ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... familiar to orientals. When the wheat is reaped, it is bound in sheaves and carted to the threshing-floor, which is generally a circular spot of hard ground from fifty to one hundred feet in diameter. On this the wheat is threshed from the chaff by manual labour, but the two lie intermingled till the evening, when the grain is caught up in broad shovels or fans, and thrown against the evening breeze, as it passes swiftly over the fevered land; thus the light chaff is borne ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... He protected his schools and his dioceses; at Quebec the Jesuits, and later the seminary, maintained even elementary schools. If we must believe the Abbe de Latour and other writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the children of the early colonists, skilful in manual labour, showed, nevertheless, great indolence of mind. "In general," writes Latour, "Canadian children have intelligence, memory and facility, and they make rapid progress, but the fickleness of their character, a dominant taste for liberty, and their ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... life; but it seldom, if ever, in remote situations, accomplishes more than this. The gentleman can neither work so hard, live so coarsely, nor endure so many privations as his poorer but more fortunate neighbour. Unaccustomed to manual labour, his services in the field are not of a nature to secure for him a profitable return. The task is new to him, he knows not how to perform it well; and, conscious of his deficiency, he expends his little means in hiring labour, which his bush-farm can never repay. Difficulties increase, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... speculation. Prejudice he found too deeply rooted to be dug up very easily, whilst the fashions and follies of the day seemed to him to lie so entirely on the surface of the soil, and to be so shortlived, that to throw away any manual labour in an attempt to eradicate them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... He turned his eyes from her for the first time, looked down at his fiddle, and idly picked at one of the strings. "But of course I can't truthfully say I love manual labour. I can do it when there is something in it; but I much prefer a hammock and a shade and a little nigger to fan me and bring me tall glasses full ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... His presence, however, was no doubt a further exasperation to the malcontents. There existed in Isabella a little faction of some of the aristocrats who had never, forgiven Columbus for employing them in degrading manual labour; who had never forgiven him in fact for being there at all, and in command over them. And now here was another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come to put his finger in the pie that Christopher has apparently provided so carefully for ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... are content with their harvests. Their carelessness is however unpardonable, in having never yet erected a mill. There is not one in all California; and the poor Indians are obliged to grind their corn by manual labour between ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... his appointment as engineer at the Killingworth Pit, George Stephenson was in a measure relieved from the daily routine of manual labour, having, as we have seen, advanced himself to the grade of a higher class workman. But he had not ceased to be a worker, though he employed his industry in a different way. It might, indeed, be inferred that he had now the command of greater leisure; but his ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the flaws in the above argument, but at least it shows a manual labour act performed both afloat and ashore under precisely similar conditions as to (a) its nature, (b) its musical setting; called by the same name, with the same pronunciation in each case; and lastly, connected, in one ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... was found located where low castes were not allowed to approach. In some provinces, also, teachers will object to the admission of low-caste children in their schools; or "if they admit them make them sit outside in the verandah."[18] What now of the dignity of manual labour which many a high official has expounded to native youth? Or to take another instance of un-British countenancing of the caste idea. The Shahas of Bengal are a humble caste, and the members of higher castes will ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... counsels manual labour for all. The pessimist believes that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what good is gained by my assisting to bring others here.' The pessimist is therefore the gay Johnny, and the optimist ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... volcanoes. The population, at least 2500 to the square league, is one of the densest to be found in purely agricultural districts: property is subdivided to an extraordinary extent. Tillage is carried on almost entirely by manual labour, with spade, hoe, or mattock; only in exceptional cases a light plough is substituted drawn by two cows, the wife of the peasant not unfrequently taking the place of one of them in the yoke. The team serves at once to furnish milk and to till the land. They have two harvests in the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... emotion may be relaxed or destroyed within him; he may have little thought of the past, and less interest in the future.—The great end and difficulty of life for men of all classes, and especially difficult for those who live by manual labour, is a union of peace with innocent and laudable animation. Not by bread alone is the life of Man sustained; not by raiment alone is he warmed;—but by the genial and vernal inmate of the breast, which at once pushes forth and cherishes; by self-support and self-sufficing endeavours; by anticipations, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of calculation and management, even in games of chance. Night after night will men play at rouge et noir, upon what they call a system, and for hours their attention never ceases, any more than it would if they were in the shop or oh the wharf. No manual labour is more fatiguing, and more degrading to the labourer, than gaming. Every gamester feels ashamed. And this vice, this worst vice, from whose embrace, moralists daily inform us, man can never escape, is just the one from which the majority of men most completely, and most often, free ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... in prayer till six, when she recited prime, and either went to Mass or heard it in spirit; and then read some chapters of Holy Scripture. These exercises lasted till eight; after which she devoted two hours to manual labour, either mending her clothes, or practising sculpture, or cultivating a little garden which she had made round her habitation. At ten she recited tierce, sext, and none; and then, prostrate at the foot of her crucifix, she ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... up the industrial or economic aspects of the problem of city poverty. Scarcely any trade in its lowest grades is free from it; in nearly all we find the wretched "fag end" where the workers are miserably oppressed. This is true not only of the poorest manual labour, that of the sandwich-man, with his wage of 1s. 2d. per diem, and of the lowest class of each manufacturing trade in East and Central London. It is true of the relatively unskilled labour in every form ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... lianas and foliage. We often tried to land, but without success. Towards sunset we sailed along for an hour seeking to discover, not an opening (since none exists), but a spot less wooded, where our Indians by means of the hatchet and manual labour, could clear space enough for a resting-place for twelve or thirteen persons. It was impossible to pass the night in the canoe; the mosquitos, which tormented us during the day, accumulated toward evening beneath the toldo covered with palm-leaves, which served to shelter us from the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and treatises exist for every possible department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams. The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is shown to be worth doing and ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... is concerned, more than counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of the community. This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you descend. You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride, and thereby providing for ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... of the soul; hence brethren ought, at certain seasons, to occupy themselves with manual labour, and again, at certain ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... the monastic life should remain there in voluntary but strict subordination to their superiors and to the established rules; some of them should be employed in preaching the Word of God, others should contribute by manual labour to the support of the institution. Outside, however, among the people of Wittenberg, Carlstadt, who had shortly before restrained even his own partisans in regard to the question of the mass, and who was neither a regular preacher in the town nor in the possession of any other office, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... beginning to disappear, since the introduction of printing had superseded the need of manuscript, but in some Religious Houses it was still thought a suitable exercise during the hours appointed for manual labour. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... forward on his low chair, with his hands clasped between his knees. They were rather large hands—suggestive of manual labour. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman |
