"Peasant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a place where two roads met, Jena asked a peasant if he had seen any strange horsemen pass that way. The peasant said that four horsemen had passed a short time before, and he told Jena which ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Apennines.[7] It was there that he learned the tongues of beasts and birds, and preached them sermons. Stretched for hours motionless on the bare rocks, coloured like them and rough like them in his brown peasant's serge, he prayed and meditated, saw the vision of Christ crucified, and planned his order to regenerate a vicious age. So still he lay, so long, so like a stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind and low his voice, that the mice nibbled breadcrumbs from his wallet, lizards ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the unexplained attitude of her son, who, apparently, never saw Gracieuse and yet never talked of her. Then, while was amassing in her the sadness of his coming departure for military service, she observed him, with her peasant's patience and muteness. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... North, slavery gradually disappeared, and between the years 1000 and 1500 a very real liberty existed as the product of Christianity and under its protection. Society was hierarchical: from the serf up through the peasant, the guildsman, the burgher, the knighthood, the nobles, to the King, and so to the Emperor, there was a regular succession of graduations, but the lines of demarcation were fluid and easily passed, and as through the Church, the schools and the cloister ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... highest grade in the hierarchy of men belongs of right to the Mage or the athravan, to the priest whose voice inspires the demons with fear, or the soldier whose club despatches the impious, but a place of honour at their side is assigned to the peasant, who reclaims from the power of Angro-mainyus the dry and sterile fields. Among the places where the earth thrives most joyously is reckoned that "where a worshipper of Ahura-mazda builds a house, with a chaplain, with cattle, with a wife, with sons, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... natural enough mistake. To her, Monsieur Covington was still the husband of madame. She had stood in the little chapel in Paris when madame was married. When one was married, one was married; and that was all there was to it for all time. So, doubtless, Marie reasoned. It was the simple peasant way—the ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass, whom when he spies, In wrath he to the gardener cries: 'What means yon peasant's daily toil, From choking weeds to rid the soil? Why wake you to the morning's care? Why with new arts correct the year? Why grows the peach's crimson hue? And why the plum's inviting blue? Were they to feast his taste design'd, That vermin of voracious kind! Crush then the slow, the pilfering ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... no man could live if he took his neighbour's pack on his shoulders. (Enter VERA in peasant's dress.) Well, my girl, you've been long ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... I suppose looked maliciously, for she hastily added—"He has entirely cured me of those horrid eruptions in the face, that made my complexion like a peasant's." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... peasant pay cheerfully his share of the public taxes, and I on my part will guarantee him the administration of justice in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... had never crossed. The Brents were accorded by the whole section of the country a unique social dominance, and had ever held themselves as high above the yeoman class to which Margaret Delandre belonged, as a blue-blooded Spanish hidalgo out-tops his peasant tenantry. ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... says Bismark, "so much in my life, As Gladstone has done in fomenting sad strife, I could not at this day have looked in the face Of king, prince or peasant of my noble race." ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... apathetically waiting. Poor John, the days of his whips and spurs, and Yeomanry dinners, were quite over; and with that incredible softness of the Jenkin nature, he settled down for the rest of a long life, into something not far removed above a peasant. The mill farm at Stowting had been saved out of the wreck; and here he built himself a house on the Mexican model, and made the two ends meet with rustic thrift, gathering dung with his own hands upon the road and ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... become hysterical, and the Capuchin Father Aurelian tried to exorcise him, and charged a peasant's wife, Frau Herz, with bewitching him, on evidence that would have cost the woman her life at any time during the seventeenth century. Thereupon the woman's husband brought suit against Father Aurelian for slander. The latter urged in his defence that the boy was possessed of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... peasant women who waited on us—talked all the time; and were tutoyees by the family. Farm-laborers came in and discussed agricultural matters, manures, etc., quite informally, squeezing their bonnets de coton in their hands. The postman sat by the fire and drank a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in green swathes, or tedded, or in the luxuriously-scented quiles. The lane was quite populous with waggons and hay-makers—the men in their corduroys and blue hose—the women in their trim jackets and bright calamanco petticoats. There were more women than men, by far, for the flower of the peasant youth of England had been drafted off to fight against "Bonyparty." Still hay-time was a glorious season, when half our little town turned out and made holiday in ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... digressing on this possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old patriots—they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. "HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one—"he is still innocent. But what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up for ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... you ignorant peasant! What do you come here for, spoiling our enjoyment, and keeping us awake at nights? Don't you know this is no common conventicle? It is the place where the king says his prayers! Away with you, or we will take off your head!" So ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... [To ARKEL.]—They have just found another peasant dead of hunger, along by the sea. You would say they all meant to die under our eyes.—[To MELISANDE.] Well, my sword?—Why do you tremble so?—I am not going to kill you. I would simply examine the blade. I do not employ the sword ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... so. And in line with it, and in addition to it, prices are high because the working class is no longer thrifty. If our working class saved as the French peasant does, we would sell more in the world ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... a legend about a hermit who lived long ago. He lived high up on the mountainside in a tiny cave; his food was roots and acorns, a bit of bread given by a peasant, or a cheese brought by a woman who wanted his prayers; his work was praying, and thinking about God. For forty years he lived so, preaching to the people, praying for them, comforting them in trouble, and, most of all, worshipping in his heart. ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... the most distant sense, could be construed opposite to the doctrines of the supreme authority of this council of Trent; where it seems to have been enacted, that all men, literate and illiterate, prince and peasant, the Italian, the Spaniard and the Netherlander, should take the mint-stamp of their thoughts from the council of Trent, and millions of souls be struck off at one blow, out of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... humanity of all shades, from the haughty aristocrat of the Pullman, to the peasant of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the partition; a man strangely improbable in appearance, with close-cropped grey hair, a young, fresh-coloured face, a bristling orange moustache, and a big, blunt nose. One could have believed him a soldier, a German, anything but what he was, a peasant from the furthest shores of Western Ireland, cut off from what we call civilisation by his ignorance of any language save his own ancient speech, wherein the ideas of to-day stand out in English words like telegraph posts in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the introduction of elaborate forms of legal procedure produced results more unfortunate and less foreseen by their authors than in the Punjab. The conversion of the occupants of the land into full proprietors was intended to give greater stability and security to the peasant ownership of land, but the result was to improve the position of the moneylender, who, owing to the thriftlessness of the Indian rayat and the extravagant expenditure to which he is from time to time driven by traditional custom in regard to marriages, funerals, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... throng gathered about a puppet-show, somewhat like the English Punch and Judy, shrieking with laughter like so many children; a group of girls consulting an old fortune-teller; pretty peasant girls from the hills slily listening to compliments from the town gallants, evidently to the great indignation of their country swains; in short, every way we turned, some picture that would have been a treasure to any great artist, met the eye, and all ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... maid of sixteen in those far-off days, the child of humble peasant-folk, and she had gone uncomplaining to the arms of her swarthy ravisher. To-day, at thirty-four, she was still beautiful, more beautiful indeed than when first she had fired the passion of Asad-Reis—as he then was, one of the captains of the famous Ali-Basha. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... outraged and then strangled in the woods a peasant woman, the mother of a family. On this occasion there could be no question of a miscarriage of justice or even of any suggestion of such a thing, because the prisoner pleaded guilty. That is a great point. In France every conviction that is not based upon ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... himself to break the head of Anatole France or Bertrand Russell, but he will not trouble Carlyle. And besides finding him empty, the new age is quite aware of his positive defects. It cannot away with his peasant morality—moralizing rather—his provincialism, and the grossness of his method. From the beginning to the end of his works there is neither pure thought nor pure feeling—nothing but a point of view which is now perceived to be ridiculously plebeian. Nevertheless, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... It will be about a quarter of a dollar, in the Yankee currency. A quarter of a dollar, mind. My honest friend, in pecuniary matters always be exact as a second-hand; never mind with whom it is, father or stranger, peasant or king, be exact to ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... brave man, Sir Priest," the peasant responded, "to lie down here! This place has a bad name,—a very bad name. But, as the proverb has it, Kunshi ayayuki ni chikayorazu ['The superior man does not needlessly expose himself to peril']; ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... would ye like 'em to stop?' whispered a great hulking peasant who had been looking on; 'for if ye would, I'll do it while ye'd be taking a ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Christmas to us no holy-days; When with the oyster-sauce and chine We roast that aldermen may dine. They call us 'alderman in chains,' With sausages—the stupid swains! Ah! gluttony is sure the first Of all the seven sins—the worst! I'd choke mankind, had I the power, From peasant's hut to ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He, too, was a shepherd, and is—a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realises that to educate would be to emancipate; to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices; to let in ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... monthly stage, The yearly march doth mete and guage And rustic peasant's messuage, Dost brim with ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... is shown us as feeding her sheep or spinning with her distaff. But these poems are, to the best of my knowledge, all of a single pattern, and extremely insincere and artificial in tone, that I feel inclined to class them with the pastorals—Dresden china idylls by men who had never looked a live peasant in the face—of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, —as distant descendants from the pastoral poetry of antiquity, of which the chivalric poets may have got some indirect notions as they did of the antique epics. It is moreover extremely the likely that these ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... down the Somme in the morning to Amiens, or the Parisian clerk, business man and workman—they are France and the French Army. But the heart-strength and character-strength of France, I think, is her stubborn, conservative, smiling peasant. It is repeating a commonplace to say that he always has a few gold pieces in his stocking. He yields one only on a critical occasion and then a little grumblingly, with the thrift of the bargainer who means that it ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... interesting description of his life at this period, which elucidates his methods and his motives in writing "The Prince." After describing his daily occupations with his family and neighbours, he writes: "The evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasant-clothes, covered with dust and dirt, and put on my noble court dress, and thus becomingly re-clothed I pass into the ancient courts of the men of old, where, being lovingly received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone; where I do not ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... wel vsurpe the grace, Voice, gate, and action of a Gentlewoman: I long to heare him call the drunkard husband, And how my men will stay themselues from laughter, When they do homage to this simple peasant, Ile in to counsell them: haply my presence May well abate the ouer-merrie spleene, Which otherwise would grow into extreames. Enter aloft the drunkard with attendants, some with apparel, Bason and Ewer, & ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... built. We remarked that the water was kept in large earthen jars—like those used in the Holy Land, I conclude. The sleeping-places were neatly arranged round the rooms, and there was a general air of comfort and respectability perceptible in most of them. Very different was a peasant's hut when we entered. It was not more than twenty feet square, divided into two compartments. In the outer were calves, lambs, and fowls. In the inner, at one end was a bed, and at the foot of it a fireplace, over which a man was cooking a pot ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... die for it!" cried West. "You cowardly cur!" And turning as the Boers closed him in, he continued, with bitter contempt, and speaking in their own tongue: "I suppose you are a specimen of the brave peasant farmers making ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... seized during the Revolution. The country population of France heard with indifference of the fall of Louis Philippe, and possibly approved the proclamation of the second Republic. But the communism of 1848 roused every landowner against Paris. The peasant proprietors filled the benches of the National Assembly with Conservatives or Reactionists who would save them from plunder; fear became for once the cause of courage, and dread of loss of property sent thousands of peasant proprietors to Paris, that ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... is not a creature from England's king To the peasant that delves the soil, Who knows half the pleasures the seasons bring If he had ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... get voila as the French say for over there itll come handy to be able to sit down and have a dosy dos with them poilus. (That means chew the rag in English.) A poilus Mable is a French peasant girl an they say that they are very belle. (Now don't mispronounce things an get sore till you know. You pronounce that like the bell in push button. It means good lookers.) There crazy about us fellos. They call us Sammies. They named one of there rivers for us. You have heard of the battle ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... a book of ringing Irish ballads that will stir the heart of every lover of true poetry. "Here and there a verse may be as frankly unadorned as the peasant cabins themselves in their homely cloaks of thatch, but every line rings true to life and home and with the tone, as heartmoving as the Angelus which holds Millet's peasants in its ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... crisp upon the rough stone paving of the disappointing road which is all that is left of the most famous highway of the world. A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon each ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... creed, was aroused, and a new army followed of a very different type of skill and training; led by most of the ablest captains and by some of the most chivalrous gentlemen of the age. For curiously enough, the host contained more than one cultured gentleman who was as simple a Christian as any peasant, and as recklessly ready to be butchered or tortured for ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... occasion, Queen Victoria sent for Thomas Carlyle, who was a Scotch peasant, offering him the title of nobleman, which he declined, feeling that he had always been a nobleman in his own right. He understood so little of the manners at court that, when presented to the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... outside the Cabinet than the rest of them, inside, will do. But suddenly I've a feeling the work would be barren. [His eyes shift beyond her; beyond the room.] What is it in your thoughts and actions which makes them bear fruit? Something that the roughest peasant may have in common with the best of us intellectual men ... something that a dog might have. ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... a law-giver, Daniel was a prince, Isaiah a courtier, and David a king; but Amos, the author of my text, was a peasant, and, as might be supposed, nearly all his parallelisms are pastoral, his prophecy full of the odor of new-mown hay, and the rattle of locusts, and the rumble of carts with sheaves, and the roar of wild beasts devouring the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... people is, in a great measure, the thermometer of its physical sensitiveness and its moral sentiments; and the reason of this is evident. The shepherd tending his flock, the fisherman mending his nets, the soldier on the march, the peasant at the plough, has no inducement to sing unless his heart's emotion incite him to it. A true national music is, then, what the Germans call Volksmusik, and, springing from the hearts of the people, it is psychologically one of their best interpreters. For this reason the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... dyes and the least known are to be found among the Lichens. They seem to have been used among peasant dyers from remote ages, but apparently none of the great French dyers used them, nor are they mentioned in any of the old books on dyeing. The only Lichen dyes that are known generally among dyers are Orchil ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... the enchantress. And she is an enchantress. She is a woman of about thirty, tall, fair, with striking features, lovely eyes, and the most superb complexion I have ever seen. The best complexion I ever recollect was that of a peasant girl's at Ivy Bridge in Devonshire, but hers was nothing to compare with Mrs. Tenterden's. It is perfect. I ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... disarranging their plans and delaying their journey. He urged them to go on and leave him, but they would not consent. Sometimes the Little Colonel slipped into the room with a bunch of Alpine roses or a cluster of edelweiss that she had bought from some peasant. Sometimes she sat beside him for a few minutes, but most of her time was spent with Hero, wandering up and down beside the lake, feeding the swans or watching the little ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... could mention another interesting fact. Long before England dreamt of the simplest justice for women, it was not an uncommon thing for a Russian peasant who had appropriated money earned by his wife, to be punished with a flogging ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... which I hope, hereafter, to mould into a consistent form; but it is a gross perversion of the truth, in Socinians, to declare that we believe in three gods; and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice affirm that we believe in three suns. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of christianity, would shrink back from a thing so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A Revelation that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!—no religation, no binding ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... she repeated, in the patois of the Normand peasant, lifting her riding crop in warning to the ball of fluff who had refused to get on his chair and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... been slowly emerging from medieval ways throughout the fifteenth century. With the beginning of the sixteenth the rate of emergence had greatly quickened. The soil-bound peasant who produced enough food for his family from his thirty acres was being gradually replaced by the well-to-do yeoman who tilled a hundred acres and upwards. Such holdings produced a substantial surplus for the market. This increased the national wealth, which, in its ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... in a cold iron case Tears harden'd to crystal. Yet harsh if he were, His severity seem'd to be trebly severe In the rule of his own rigid life, which, at least, Was benignant to others. The poor parish priest, Who lived on his largess, his piety praised. The peasant was fed, and the chapel was raised, And the cottage was built, by his liberal hand. Yet he seem'd in the midst of his good deeds to stand A lone, and unloved, and unlovable man. There appear'd some inscrutable flaw in the plan Of his life, that love fail'd to pass over. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... are, in their relations to each other, by no means as unconstrained as one often represents them, but hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in one of Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant loves to surround himself. The scene in which the townsman who thinks that he can dispense with forms among the peasants is very entertainingly taught better, is exceedingly valuable in an educational point of view. The feeling ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... Monsieur Honore de Gabry, his uncle, had been on very bad terms with some poachers, whom he used to shoot at like rabbits. One of them, a vindictive peasant, who had received a whole charge of shot in his face, lay in wait for the Seigneur one evening behind the trees of the mall, and very nearly succeeded in killing him, for the ball took off ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... shade of the temple and amused themselves by gathering underneath the familiar jar and calling out, "Sibyl, what do you wish?" a hollow voice, like an echo, used to answer from the urn, "I wish to die."[251] A story, taken down from the lips of a German peasant at Thomsdorf, relates that once upon a time there was a girl in London who wished to live for ever, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... interested in cooking and eating. Those countries in which music plays the greater part in the national life are precisely those which are the most interested in the culinary art. The food of Italy, the cooking, is celebrated; every peasant in that sunny land sings, and the voices of some Italians have reverberated around the world. The very melodies of Verdi and Rossini are inextricably twined in our minds around memories of ravioli and zabaglione. Vesti la Giubba is spaghetti. The composers of these melodies and their interpreters ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... enchanting man! what does not the world owe to thee and to the great Being who could produce such as thee? Teacher alike of the infant and of the aged; who canst direct the first thought and remove the last doubt of man; property alike of the peasant and the prince; welcomed by the ignorant and honoured by the wise; thou hast translated Christianity into a new language, and that a universal one! Thou art the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... daily bread, the freedom from daily care, all the vulgar temptations of such a life in hard times—the career of a monk opened no mean path to the ambitious spirit. The offices of the monastery alone might well seem prizes to be contended for by the son of the peasant or burgess, and the highest of these placed its holder on a level with ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... dastard coward!" Stutely cried, "Faint-hearted peasant slave! If ever my master do thee meet, Thou shalt thy ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... two lengths of cloth of gold, which were hung in the courtyard, as prizes to be given to the victor in the tournament. That evening two hundred Milanese ladies of high rank were invited to the great ball, or festa per le donne, given in the Sala della palla. On this occasion peasant girls from all parts of Italy, clad in the red, white, and blue of the Sforza colours, danced before the court, and "the palm of Terpsichore," we are told, was ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Modern German, the word for "sun" is feminine, and in mythology the orb of day often appears as a woman. The German peasant was wont to address the sun and the moon familiarly as "Frau Sonne" and "Herr Mond," and in a Russian folk-song a fair maiden sings ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in proud earnest," she answered, quietly resuming her work, "and I am not English, but a Swiss peasant's daughter." ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... fesse azure. The noblesse of the family was later scrutinised by the famous d'Hozier and pronounced authentic. Jeanne, with bare feet, and straws in her hair, is said to have herded the cows, a discontented indolent child, often beaten by her peasant mother. When her father had eaten up his last acre, he and the family tramped to Paris in 1760. As Jeanne was then but four years old, I doubt if she ever 'drove the cattle home,' as M. Funck-Brentano finds recorded ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... who wrote forty volumes, was of peasant origin. [The relative clause is non-restrictive; it is not inseparably connected with the noun it modifies, and to omit it would not change the thought of the main clause. Thus: Thomas Carlyle was ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... absurd notions as to what the Talmud was, given credence in the Middle Ages, one was that it was a man! The mediaeval priest or peasant was perhaps wiser than he knew. Almost, might we say, the Talmud was Man, for it is a record of the doings, the beliefs, the usages, the hopes, the sufferings, the patience, the humor, the mentality, and the morality of the Jewish ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... know how long a time passed in this manner before I was aroused by the appearance of an old peasant around the corner of my rock, bending under a huge bundle of faggots. I addressed myself to him in the best Italian I could then command, and asked whether it were possible to enter the city—entrare la citta. He rung a bell by pulling a rope that hung ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... been ever since. That broad face, the clear eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the audacity—only, the live face was English, not Italian, had more humour, more "breeding," less poetry—something "old Georgian" about it. How he would laugh if she told him he was like that peasant acolyte with fluffed-out hair, and a little ruching round his neck! And, smiling, Gyp plaited her own hair and got ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gallant with the wit of Propertius, or damn his eyes like any trooper, amused herself with the overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... of Lucerne was in the utmost danger, the Landamman was slain, and sixty of his men, and not an Austrian had been wounded. The flanks of the Austrian host began to advance so as to enclose the small peasant force, and involve it in irremediable destruction. A moment of dismay and stillness ensued. Then Arnold von Winkelried of Unterwalden, with an eagle glance saw the only means of saving his country, and, with the decision of a man who dares by dying to do all things, shouted ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... believing their chattels were threatened with an execution and their cows seized, deceived in their turn the poor priest with their innocent tears. He would then manage with great difficulty to provide the seven or eight hundred francs demanded of him—with which the peasant bought himself a morsel of land. When pious persons and vestrymen denounced the fraud, begging the abbe to consult them in future before lending himself to such ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... Her pride is to be wounded, her self-love humiliated, and every other consideration must yield to that. She is ready to commit perjury, to swear to love and honour a man who is no more to her than that peasant walking along the road. She is ready to degrade herself and risk her soul by a mercenary marriage sooner than bear that ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... hill-side, Willie Ferrars was holding the hand of the chestnut-curled, black-eyed fairy, 'little Awk,' who was impressing him by her fluency in two languages at once, according as she chattered to him in English, or in French to a picturesque peasant, her great ally, who was mowing his flowery crop of hay, glancing like an illumination, with an under-current of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I have studied still, To root abuses from the commonwealth, That may infect the king or commonalty. Therefore, base peasant, wilful as thou art, I tell thee troth, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... until, impatient at this trickery, he sprang boldly upon it. A moment later a rain of sharp spears and daggers fell upon his couch, but did him no harm, for he had not removed his heavy armor. When the rain of weapons was over, a gigantic peasant, armed with a huge club, stalked into the room, closely followed by a fierce lion. When the peasant perceived that the knight was not dead, as he expected, he beat a hasty retreat, leaving the lion to attack ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... period is found in the curious novel, "The Adventurous Simplicissimus," written by Grimmelshausen, and published in 1669, which describes the adventures of a wise peasant who finally leaves his native Germany and betakes himself to a desert island which he refuses to leave when offered an opportunity to go back to the Fatherland. He answers those who wish to persuade him to go back with words which seem quite appropriate to-day: "My God, where do you want ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... her to a remote part of the hospital he continued: "Of course greater love hath no man than this, that he gave his life for that which he loves. Considered relatively to the person the peasant who falls in the defense of his country gives just as much as the Emperor who may die by his side. In either case the measure of devotion is brim-full. Nothing more can be added to it. But there are accessories and surroundings ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... believe that her sham elegance born of the shop, her pretentious manners, pursed up mouth, and affectedly uplifted little finger, fascinated him and appeared to him the height, of Parisian refinement; for he was born a peasant and in spite of his intelligence remained one to the end ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Frances Chislett making her feel "rough." My cousins were ladies in every sense of the term, but Miss Chislett had a certain perfection of courteous grace and dignified refinement, in every word, and gesture, and attitude, as utterly natural to her as the vigorous tread of any barefooted peasant girl, and which one does meet with (but by no means invariably) among women of the highest class in England. Her dignity fell short of haughtiness (which is not high breeding, and is very easy of assumption); her grace and courtesy were the simple results of constant ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... liberal-minded Englishmen to move along reasonable lines and to confine itself within the bounds of moderation. The excesses and outrages that followed immediately upon the first upheaval, the murders of Foulon and Berthier in Paris, the peasant war upon the castles, were regarded as the unavoidable, deplorable ebullitions of a long dormant force which, under the guidance of capable and honorable men, would be directed henceforward solely to the establishment of a stable and popular system ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... eager, how dependent, yet how commanding! As I mount to the top of the pile, if I ever feel myself a royal personage it is then; I ascend my throne; I am king of the corn; and there is not a brute peasant in my domain that does not worship me as ruler of heaven ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... contiguity of books. There was only man and space and one unceasing library, and the men neither ate nor slept nor spoke. Nature was transformed into the processes and products of writing, and man was now no longer lover, friend, peasant, merchant, naturalist, traveller, gourmet, mechanic, warrior, worshipper, but only an author. All other faculties had been lost to him, and all resources for anything else had fled from his universe. Anon some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... all sit about the kitchen or in the alley-way, chatting, smoking. She who has been lucky in her sales basks in Sorel's favor. The unfortunate peasant from the Brie country feels the little bullet in his heart, and nurses a desperate resolution to redeem himself on ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... already singing in their gentle hearts. It is a great field of succulent verdure, that wide old market-place; and fancy loves to browse about among its gay stores of fruits and vegetables, brought thither by the world-old peasant-women who have been bringing fruits and vegetables to the Paduan market for so many centuries. They sit upon the ground before their great panniers, and knit and doze, and wake up with a drowsy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... seriously she took it all—how much she was in love with him—he tried hard to break it off, he tried hard to put matters to her in their proper light; he tried to show her that an officer and a gentleman, a Kelmscott of Tilgate, could never really have dreamed of marrying the half-educated, half-peasant daughter of a Devonshire farmer. Though, to be sure, she was a lady in her way, too, poor Lucy; as much of a lady in manner and in heart as Emily herself, whose father was an earl, and whose mother was a marquis's ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... centuries of serfdom, when they were accustomed to say: "We are yours, but the land is ours." Instead of twenty-five million people rejoicing with grateful hearts, there was a ferment of discontent and in some places uprisings—one peasant leader telling ten thousand who rose at his call that the Emancipation Law was a forgery, they were being deceived and not permitted to enjoy what the Tsar, their "Little Father," had intended for their happiness. But considering the intricate difficulties attending such a tremendous ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... never seen more regular or more ingenuous features. Imagine, my lady, a picture of the Virgin. What gave still more to her appearance a most modest expression was, that when she came here she was dressed like a peasant girl ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... some the word 'refuge' suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. But the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. A thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. And you cannot find it easily if it be not at hand. The peasant built his cottage under the shadow of his lord's castle walls. In the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. 'Trust in Him at all times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... he told me, that he lost contact for good and all with one of those three men who the summer before had been going about through all the little towns in the foothills of his country. They would arrive on market days driving in a peasant's cart, and would set up an office in an inn or some other Jew's house. There were three of them, of whom one with a long beard looked venerable; and they had red cloth collars round their necks and gold lace on their sleeves like Government officials. They sat ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... of the storm that rumbled in the financial world. It was a thing which he thought of with wonder in future times—that he should have had so little idea of what was coming. He seemed to himself like some peasant who digs with bent head in a field, while armies are marshalling for battle all around him; and who is startled suddenly by the crash of conflict, and the bursting ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... eyes had a worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke puzzled wrath. It was evident his slow moving peasant's mind was grappling with the bloody fact of a hell-ship. It was something new in his experience. He was trying to fathom it. Why were he and his mates thumped, when they willingly did their work? What for? "Nils iss goot boy," he said to ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... day upon his pathway pressed, Beaming with splendor, toward the shining west, Cast one long, lingering glance upon the scene, Lit up the river and the forest green, Left his last rays upon the lordly dome, And deigned to smile upon the peasant's home; Then 'neath the western hills he sought repose, And sank to rest as calmly as he rose: Bright at the dawn of day, but brighter now, When day had almost passed, and round her brow Hung the expiring beams of dazzling light, The certain presage of approaching ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... duties on tea, tobacco, and alcohol—articles which form a larger part of the family budget of the Irish peasant than of the English labourer—are the causes of this burden. The reasons for the larger consumption of what may be roughly called stimulants by the Irishman is undoubtedly to be found in climatic conditions, and also in the smaller amount of nourishing food ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... higher artistic level of colour and glaze, it still, to my mind, continues mediocre, and has neither the highly finished beauty of such work as the Ruskin pottery, nor the genuinely simple lines or colouring of "peasant pottery," such as that from Quimperle in Brittany. The Barum ware has a sort of bourgeois mediocrity between these two different types, and there is room for a bold innovator to reform the present models and methods. It is a pity, perhaps, that he ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... whom all the Fenians mocked and yet endured. They are a very human band of fighting men, and though many of them, like Oisin and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in these their ordinary human nature. The Connacht peasant has no difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... hunters of the forests, that darken the mountain-tops with verdure! these be thy charge, and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O star of the sullen beams, that thy duties are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren; for the peasant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch; nor doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than on the herd. The passions and the heart are the dominion of the stars—a mighty realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... no other than the peasant Whom thou didst seek before to see: but this Could best be told by ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Calpurnia's monument I fell into a dream, and saw her whole story unfolded before me. Caius Marius was a rough-mannered man, of peasant origin, but he had a wife Julia, of patrician rank, and who, I have not a shadow of doubt, flourished her noble origin before him, and talked very big of her grand relations. When little missie was born: "I'll ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... railway in Turkey, came on board at Trebizond; there were one or two light women on their way home from Baku, and the attache of a foreign embassy from Teheran. But the Irishman felt more in touch with the hundred peasant-folk who joined the ship at Ineboli from the interior of Asia Minor and were bound as third-class emigrants for Marseilles and far America. Dark-skinned, wild-eyed, ragged, very dirty, they had never seen the sea ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... inherited a small property from his wife's father, and the toll on the highway being at the same time abolished, he bought the now superfluous house cheap from the State, and set up as a peasant proprietor. He had now a new source of pride: that this land, which he watered with his sweat, should bring forth abundantly; that his cattle, whom no strange hand might touch, should be the sleekest and fattest of all. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... not withdrawn from the world. She travelled incessantly from one end of Spain to the other, establishing new foundations, visiting her convents, and dealing with all classes of men, from the soldier to the priest, from the prince to the peasant. The severity of her discipline was tempered by a tolerant and half-amused insight into the pardonable foibles of humanity. She held back her nuns with one hand from "the frenzy of self-mortification," which is the mainstay of spiritual ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... would leave this dull and heavy sense. Let me grow mad; perhaps, I then may gain Some joy, by kind imagination form'd, Beyond reality.—O! my Evanthe! Why was I curs'd with empire? born to rule?— Would I had been some humble Peasant's son, And thou some Shepherd's daughter on the plain; My throne some hillock, and my flock my subjects, My crook my sceptre, and my faithful dog My only guard; nor curs'd with dreams of greatness. ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... almost amounted to insanity, conceived the project to which he determined to devote the remainder of his life. He imagined that he had discovered a means by which he could restore the ancient house of Champdoce to all its former splendor and position. "I can," said he, "by living like a peasant and resorting to no unnecessary expense, treble my capital in twenty years; and if my son and my grandson will only follow my example, the race of Champdoce will again recover the proud position that it formerly held." Faithful to this ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the mountain-top, alone, I dwell, as one who holds a throne; Or prince, or peasant, him I count My peer, who stands upon a mount, Sees farther than the tribes below, And knows the joys they cannot know; And, though beyond the sound of speech They reign, my soul goes out to reach, Far on their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... one of you, what we are going through! Only a few weeks ago all of us were peacefully following our several vocations. The peasant was gathering in this Summer's plentiful crop, the factory hand was working with accustomed vigor. Not one human being among us dreamed of war. We are a nation that wishes to lead a quiet and industrious life. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... few moments Girasole came back and entered Minnie's room. He was followed by a woman who was dressed in the garb of an Italian peasant girl. Over her head she wore a hood to protect her from the night air, the limp folds of which hung over her face. Minnie looked carelessly at this ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... cows and sheep, cheeses and butter firkins, doublets and petticoats, guns and pistols, everything that could serve the city and country-side for months to come—and displayed them in temporary booths or on the ground, in every street and along every canal. The town was one vast bazaar. The peasant-women from the country, with their gold and silver tiaras and the year's rent of a comfortable farm in their earrings and necklaces, and the sturdy Frisian peasants, many of whom had borne their matchlocks in the great wars which had lasted through their own and their fathers' lifetime, trudged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... supplications night and day; and the guileless Nathanael, an Israelite indeed, who had perhaps already commenced to sit at the foot of the ladder which bound his fig-tree to the highest heaven; and the peasant maiden Mary, the descendant of a noble house, though with fallen fortunes, who, like some vestal virgin, clad in snowy white, watched through the dark hours beside the flickering flame; and last, but not least, Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth, "who ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... thought worth making could not be unworthy of representation. Hence he had willingly undertaken a likeness of her, to be finished within a certain time, and was now working at it as conscientiously as if it had been the portrait of a lovely young duchess or peasant-girl. I was only afraid he would make it too like to please the lady herself. His time was now getting short, and he could not leave ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... sight in the midst of the luxurious people of Rome. A peasant he was, dwelling in a cave far out on the Roman Campagna, remote from the splendid villas and gardens lining the wide ways leading out of the city to North and South and West. This cave was in a mass of tufa rock rising abruptly from the flat, green fields, ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... simple peasant married to a nice, pleasant woman, who did much as she liked, and who in order that she might be alone with her lover, shut up her husband in the pigeon-house in the manner you ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... be a faith, not of sorrow, but of joy." Now, the deepest sorrow of the race is not physical, neither is it bound up with material and social conditions. As the Scotch say, "The king sighs as often as the peasant"; and this proverb anticipates the fact that those who participate in the richest civilization that will ever flower will sigh as men sigh now. When the problem of poverty is mastered, when disease is extirpated, when a period is put to all ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... callouses of toil are no indications that you are not a gentleman. The soul of gentlemanliness is a kindly feeling toward others, that prompts one to secure their comfort. That is why the thoughtful peasant lover is always so gentlemanly, and in his love ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the same kind of pride that an Englishman may feel in belonging to a country that has produced Shakspeare and Bacon. I have never, I hope, felt the vulgar pride that disdains want of birth in others; and I care not three straws whether my friend or my wife be descended from a king or a peasant. It is myself, and not my connections, who alone can disgrace my lineage; therefore, however humble Lady Vargrave's parentage, do not scruple to inform me, should you learn any intelligence that bears ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and without the sense of their pain we would never amend from this affliction. From the desire of {104}being approved and noticed, arises every effort which constitutes the variety of employments and excellencies the world possesses. It actuates the prince and the beggar, the peasant and the politician, the labourer and the scholar, the mechanic and the soldier, the player and the divine. In a word, there is not an individual in the community whose conduct is not influenced by its ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... legislation presented to the whites-only parliament of South Africa was the Natives' Land Act, eventually passed in 1913, which was designed to entrench white power and property rights in the countryside — as well as to solve the "native problem" of African peasant farmers working for themselves and denying their ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Landlady and Washerwoman. The Einsiedlerstein. Its Dungeons and Hall. Its History. Inscription over the Hermit's Grave. Lose our Way. Guided by a Peasant. His Conversation. Mistaken for ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... the natives. An Indian servant, who had been with us during our journey to Caripe and the Orinoco, and whom I brought to France, was so much struck, on landing, when he saw the ground tilled by a peasant with his hat on, that he thought himself in a miserable country, where even the nobles (los mismos caballeros) followed the plough. The Chayma women are not handsome, according to the ideas we annex to beauty; yet ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... not at all repugnant to the haughty spirit of chivalry, which, reserving its courtesies exclusively for those of gentle blood and high degree, cared little for the inferior orders, whether soldier or peasant, whom it abandoned without remorse to all the caprices ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... when the peasant tossed his sheep-skin mantle to the ground and, without troubling to remove his leathern tunic, advanced towards the two wrestlers; but it became uproarious when with a quick spring he seized the Greek under one arm and the Roman under the other, holding them as in a vice. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... village near the junction of the British and French armies, two guards with loaded rifles kept watch at the doors of a hut. The warm sunlight of May was bathing the fields in gold, where here and there a peasant woman could be seen sprinkling seed into the furrows. Across a field, cutting its way through a farmyard, a light railway carried its occasional wobbling, narrow-gauged traffic; and outside half-a-dozen huts soldiers were lolling in the warmth of early afternoon, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... pass for holy birds. There is a tradition that their forefathers helped the Lord Almighty to build the firmament, but how and in what manner popular tradition does not tell us. Being blessed by God and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the simple peasant often leaves his doors and windows open to attract such valued inmates, seeing that peace and happiness enter with them, and lightning never strikes the roof where swallows build. Should they forsake a house in the course of the summer, it is a sign of coining misfortune. He who kills a swallow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... was not devoid of truth. Its great offensiveness lay in its boldness: that a negro should publish in a newspaper what white people would scarcely acknowledge to themselves in secret was much as though a Russian moujik or a German peasant should rush into print to question the divine right of the Lord's Anointed. The article was racial lese-majeste in the most aggravated form. A peg was needed upon which to hang a coup d'etat, and this editorial offered the requisite opportunity. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... while she was standing just at Wych Hazel's shoulder, touching her head with a slight touch; in her face and voice the utmost soothing charm of tender tranquillity. She had been doubtless a Norwegian peasant woman, and had known little of what we call refining advantages in outward things; but love and peace and sympathy had made her wonderfully delicate and quick to divine the needs of those with whom she dealt. It was a hard little hand, but a very soft touch upon Wych ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... laughter came from the direction of the officers' wing. He stood still and drew in his head as if from a blow on the back of his neck, and a gleam of ungovernable hatred flitted over his broad, good-natured peasant face. He spat out again, to soothe his feelings, then took a fresh start and passed the merry company ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... The breeze became slightly stronger, and the fruit shower from the trees increased so much, that a soft muffled sound rang through the whole wood. It was literally raining food. Some millions of nuts must have fallen that day in the Val Lucerna. I saw the young peasant girls coming from the chalets and farm-houses, to glean beneath the boughs; and a short time sufficed to fill their sacks, and send them back laden with the produce of the chestnut-tree. These nuts are roasted and eaten as food; and very nutritious food they are. In all the towns ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes and a mass of curly black hair. He was shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a Neapolitan than a Cuban. You could imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or Genoa, lolling in the sun and showing his white teeth when ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... on thine image once The gaze alike of prince and peasant rested— As if, unsated of thy thrilling glance, They never until then of beauty tasted: So I, by lonely contemplation led To muse awhile amid the silent dead— Turn me from all around I hear or see— From all of Shakspeare and of great to thee: And think on all thy wrongs—on all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... It was very affectionate—full of longings to be coming home again, even though she allowed that their present life was very bright and interesting. I was just laughing at a description of Pert and Quick going to market on their own account, and how they bargained with the old peasant women, when a slight sound—was it a sound or only a sort of feeling in the air?—made me look up from the open sheet before me, and glance ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... in the first months of the War than the rally of the manhood of Great Britain to the call of the country in its time of need. All classes, rich and poor, patrician and peasant, employer and workman, were uplifted by the great occasion. Through the influence of patriotism, the recognition by all sorts and conditions of our people of the honourable obligation of fidelity to ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... make the journey in his uniform, and in those boots?" (The last words were especially emphasised.) "If I might be so bold, I would suggest a peasant's coat like mine, and a pair of ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... he now wears trousers instead of breeches, while his world has become more and more assimilated to that of the Faubourg St. Antoine, with the result of losing all those really very notable and stiff and sturdy virtues which differentiated the Breton peasant, when I first knew him, while it would be difficult indeed to say what it has gained. At all events the progress which can be stated is mainly to be stated in negatives. The Breton, as I first knew him, believed in all sorts of superstitious ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... which I viewed the afternoon's battle was literally carpeted with the corpses of Germans who had been killed during the morning. One of them had died clasping a woman's picture. He was buried with it still clenched in his hand. I saw peasants throw twelve bodies into one grave. One peasant would grasp a corpse by the shoulders and another would take its feet and they would give it a swing as though it were a sack of meal. As I watched these inanimate forms being carelessly tossed into the trench it was hard to make myself believe that only a few ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... disorder of her appearance. Over her rough peasant's clothes, some article of cast-off apparel cuts a strange and lamentable figure: a muslin morning-wrap, once white and covered with filmy lace; long, faded ribbons, which fasten a showy Watteau pleat to the back, with ravelled ends spreading over the thick red-cotton skirt; old pink-satin ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... shackles. There was much to do and few left to do it. Therefore the few should be freemen, name their own price, and work where and for whom they would. It was the black death which cleared the way for that great rising thirty years later which left the English peasant the freest ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... others in their turn have since had. Society was organized on the feudal hierarchy of status. In the first place, a noble class, spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either wholly servile or but nominally free. In addition to this opposition of noble and peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporate capacity, stood in the relation of lord to ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Wood, A Female Voice pierc'd, thro' my Ears, Crying, You Rogue drive home the Steirs. I listen'd to th' attractive sound, And straight a Herd of Cattel found Drove by a Youth, and homeward bound; Cheer'd with the fight, I straight thought fit, To ask where I a Bed might get. The surley Peasant bid me stay, And ask'd from whom (g) I'de run away. Surprized at such a saucy Word, I instantly lugg'd out my Sword; Swearing I was no Fugitive, But from Great-Britain did arrive, In hopes I better there might Thrive. ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... which you had recklessly plunged. Lady, had you known the dangers of travel in these wild and lawless days, you never would have left the shelter of your father's house with but one attendant to protect you. Think you that those peerless charms could ever have been hidden beneath the dress of a peasant lad? Well was it for you, lady, that your true love was first to follow and find you, ere some rude fellow had betrayed the secret to his fellows, and striven to turn it to their advantage. Here ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... France had bowed in silence beneath two galling burdens—a selfish and corrupt monarchy, and a multitudinous, privileged, lazy, and oppressive aristocracy, by whom the peasant was handled like a Russian serf. [Said peasant is now the principal proprietor ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Poor-law. True enough:—and yet, human beings cannot be left to die! Scotland too, till something better come, must have a Poor-law, if Scotland is not to be a byword among the nations. O, what a waste is there; of noble and thrice-noble national virtues; peasant Stoicisms, Heroisms; valiant manful habits, soul of a Nation's worth,—which all the metal of Potosi cannot purchase back; to which the metal of Potosi, and all you can buy with ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... which paid six hundred dollars for letter-postage will pay hereafter only four hundred; it will add, then, a net profit of two hundred dollars to the ten thousand which its business brings it, and it will owe this to the munificence of the treasury. On the other hand, the peasant, the laborer, who shall write twice a year to his son in the army, and shall receive a like number of replies, will have saved ten cents. Is it not true that the postal reform acts in direct opposition to the equitable distribution of the tax? that if, according ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... with water, and was returning to the place he came from, when his eye fell on me. He started on seeing me, and then, putting down his water-pitcher, advanced towards where I was sitting. I rose to receive him, as I should have done had he been the poorest peasant; but from the dignity of his air and the gravity of his countenance, he seemed to be much above that rank. He salaamed, and so did I, imitating his action; but it appeared that here our power of intercourse must cease, for I soon discovered that he did not understand a word of my language ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... by the number of MSS. which are extant, and by imitations, such as Piers the Plowman's Crede (1394), and the Plowman's Tale, for a long time wrongly inserted in the Canterbury Tales. Piers became a kind of typical figure, like the French peasant, Jacques Bonhomme, and was {32} appealed to as such by the Protestant reformers of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... might well have answered in the affirmative had she considered personal beauty a merit of high order; for few palaces in this world could boast a princess so superbly beautiful as this peasant girl that this poor hut contained. Beneath those rich sable tresses was a high broad forehead as white as snow; slender black eyebrows so well defined and so perfectly arched that they gave a singularly open and elevated character to the whole countenance; large dark ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the 17th of April, 1774, at Eisleben, in Saxony, the birthplace also of a still more famous person, Martin Luther. His father was a respectable peasant proprietor, described by Herr Goebel as Anspanner. But this word has now gone out of use. In feudal times it described the farmer who was obliged to keep draught cattle to perform service due to the landlord. The boy received a solid education at the Gymnasium, or public school of the town. At a ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of a peasant Deputy and a Polish representative were particularly impressive and well received. The Socialist leader's demand for peace called forth a smart rejoinder from a member ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was famed of old, The British wool is growing gold; No mines can more of wealth supply; It keeps the peasant from the cold, And takes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... according to the specialists, Limnophilus flavicornis, whose work has earned for the whole corporation the pretty name of Phryganea, a Greek term meaning a bit of wood, a stick. In a no less expressive fashion, the Provencal peasant calls it lou portofais, lou porto-caneu. This is the little grub that carries through the still waters a faggot of tiny fragments ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... great crowd assembled to see the heretic, and his conductors, Pappenheim and Deutschland, were obliged to take him to the hall of audience in the Bishop's Palace through gardens and by back ways. There he was introduced into the presence of the Estates. He was a peasant and a peasant's son, who, though he had written bold letters to Pope and Prelate, had never spoken face to face with the great ones of the land, not even with his own Elector, of whose good-will he was assured. Now he was bidden to answer, less for himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... . You will believe me. I the father of Cosette! before God, no. Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean. I am not related to Cosette. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... present themselves in the different provinces in forms as diverse as the past history and local conditions of each province, long before it was brought under British administration, had combined to make them. Whereas in the Bombay Presidency, for instance, land is chiefly held by small landlords and peasant proprietors, it was held in Agra and Oudh before they became British by a great landed aristocracy whose rights, like all established rights, it was a principle of British policy to respect, and the talukdars of Oudh and the zemindars of Agra stood for the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... incident of that sort, it is that incident itself which I know, which leads me to combat—" he turned with a deep bow—"the position of the Sena-torr that the great war did not make for democracy. Gentlemen, my compatriot was a peasant, a person of ignorance, yet with a desire of fulfilling his possibilities. He had been born in social chains and tied to most sordid life, beyond hope, in old Russia. To try to shake free he had gone to America. But it was that caldron of fire, the war, which freed him, which fused his life and ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ye pitying bosoms, cease to bleed! Such scenes no more demand the tear humane; I see, I see! glad Liberty succeed With every patriot virtue in her train! And mark yon peasant's raptur'd eyes; 25 Secure he views his harvests rise; No fetter vile the mind shall know, And Eloquence shall fearless glow. Yes! Liberty the soul of Life shall reign, Shall throb in every pulse, shall flow thro' every ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... well understood the meaning of this relationship, though I cannot make it plain to you. You can ill comprehend the horrid feeling. Talk of a mesalliance of the aristocratic lord with the daughter of his peasant retainer, of the high-born dame with her plebeian groom—talk of the scandal and scorn to which such rare events give rise! All this is little—is mild, when compared with the positive disgust and horror ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... under which the peasant proprietary was formed in Roumania, as communicated to us by Prince Jon Ghika, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson |
