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Servitude   /sˈərvətˌud/   Listen
Servitude

noun
1.
State of subjection to an owner or master or forced labor imposed as punishment.



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"Servitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... knew any liar nigh so bad as you. And then there is such a deal worse than lies. I believe I could send you to penal servitude, Captain Hotspur." ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... little boarding-house help, equally young, and with all youth's big demands pent up within her, yet ahead of her only a drab vista of other boarding-houses—some better, some worse, mayhap—but always eating the bread of servitude, her only possible way of escape by means of matrimony ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... key and looked at it, thinking of all the doors in the world it would unlock for him, thinking of the powers of which it was a symbol, of how it fastened the door of his freedom and opened for him the door of a great servitude of which he ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... amazement after this dream, but he was so certain that the voice which spoke to him was real that he did not hesitate to obey it. Watching his opportunity he slipped away from the chief who had held him for six years in bitter servitude, and walking and running by turns he made his way southward in search of the vessel that he knew must be ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... a half of servitude could not much improve or elevate the character of the people. Their fall from power, their loss of wealth and of dominion did indeed advantage them in one way: it but an end to that continually advancing sloth and luxury which had sapped the virtue of the nation, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... nothing in the war for the German who is not a noble or a junker, an officer or an official. German victory will only bend the collar of caste and servitude, low wages and militarism tighter on the German neck. Sooner or later the deceived German will discover this; revolution will not come during the war, but after it, unless it closes with a German peace, or unless in anticipation of revolt, rights are ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... enough (as his birth was small enough) to render it jealous of him under that aspect. There is an instinct in Toryism which renders pure intellect intolerable to it, except in some inferior or mechanical shape, or in the flattery of voluntary servitude. But, by a like instinct, it is not so jealous of military renown. It is glad of the doubtful amount of intellect in military genius, and knows it to be a good ally in the preservation of power, and in the substitution of noise and show for qualities fearless of ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... that Malgat has been sentenced to I know not how many years' penal servitude, and that he will see in your advertisement a trick of the police; so that he will only conceal himself more ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... chains upon him before he was well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some—his mother among them—gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a charitable view of his case. How could ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... lose more than he would gain; and to keep both is to infringe a law that is rarely suffered to be dormant. I know little, daughter, of the interests of life; but there are enemies of the Republic who say that its servitude is not easy, and that it seldom bestows favors of this sort ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... perhaps, of the unfittest was the result, which may account for some of the peculiar characteristics of the Midland lower classes. That the successive changes of masters were matters of little or no importance to the enslaved aboriginal, while a life of servitude was intolerable to the free white man, may account for the fact that the labouring classes of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Wales, and the Welsh border are of a type infinitely superior in manners, morals, and physique to the same class in the Midlands, because they now consist almost entirely ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... the best days of your youth are lost in barren, vulgar, common-place, at times repulsive occupations. Your spirit is extinguished, your responsibility as an intelligent man is destroyed at settled hours by the sound of the bugle or of the trumpet, those flourishes of gilded servitude; and beneath the heavy hammer of passive obedience your temples are already growing grey; you have wrinkles on your forehead and on your heart, for you have reached that part of the cup of life, at which ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... beauty, of soul and reason, freely and fully given, so that the poor child is born as capable of virtue as the king's son; and to each man is given free will to choose virtue or vice. Yet thou givest to men diversity of rank, wealth or poverty, lordship or servitude, not always according to their deserts; so much the more virtuous should that man be to whom thou hast put other men in subjection, men who are nevertheless his fellows and wear his likeness. Thou, O God, who hast put Nature and the whole universe under law, wouldst have all men ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... knight service on the one hand, and protection and patronage on the other, became, in the course of time, the baser relation of haughty assumption and oppression on the one hand, and the most abject servitude on the other. Descended from the same stern Saxon stock, separated only by purely artificial barriers, by the fortuitous circumstance of birth, the sturdy peasant could ill brook the tyranny of the privileged class—those ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... well got down from the Castalian cave,[3] {when} he saw a heifer, without a keeper, slowly going along, bearing no mark of servitude upon her neck. He follows, and pursues her steps with leisurely pace, and silently adores Phoebus, the adviser of his way. {And} now he had passed the fords of the Cephisus, and the fields of Panope, {when} the cow stood still and raising her forehead, expansive with lofty ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... the King nor the abbot heeded her as they walked along, talking in Latin mixed with Norman French. The monk, not tall, slender, spiritualized even in the remnant of his flesh, the incarnation of believing thought and word, the exposition of matter's servitude to mind, was the master; the King, heavy, strong, pale, obedient, was the pupil, proving the existence of the greater force by his blind submission to its laws. Beside them the Queen imaged the independence of youthful ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... of them had never felt the weight of a man's hand, and even those that had wintered in and around the barn-yard soon lost all trace of domesticity. It was not unusual to find that the wildest and wariest of all the leaders bore a collar mark or some other ineffaceable badge of previous servitude. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... Princetown, somewhat after the fashion of a picnic. At Princetown, in the middle of Dartmoor, about nine miles from Nuncombe Putney, is the prison establishment at which are kept convicts undergoing penal servitude. It is regarded by all the country round with great interest, chiefly because the prisoners now and again escape, and then there comes a period of interesting excitement until the escaped felon shall have been again taken. How can you tell where he may be, or whether it may not suit ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... of his Caesar is that he makes a wrong start. Points of resemblance between the first century before the Christian era and the nineteenth century after it may of course be found. But the differences are essential and fundamental. A society which rests upon servitude cannot be like a society which rests upon freedom. Christianity has modified the whole lives of those who do not profess it, and has created a totally new atmosphere, even if it be not in all respects a better one. Representative government, whether it ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... this subject is concerned, as it was originally adopted, except that the Fifteenth Amendment provides that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." It is, however, an anomalous condition that the right of citizens of the United States to vote remains wholly dependent on the laws of the States, subject only to the restriction that in the regulations the States establish they cannot discriminate ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... details of my private affairs. As an instrument of the Chinese doctor, it has sometimes been my duty to write of the beautiful Eastern girl; I cannot suppose that my readers have any further curiosity respecting her from the moment that Fate freed her from that awful servitude. Therefore, when I shall have dealt with the episodes which marked our voyage to Egypt—I had opened negotiations in regard to a practice in Cairo—I may honorably lay down ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... a slave to himself, which was natural in one with a healthy ego, but he rebelled in ways either murderous or panicky at being a slave to anybody else. Love's sweet servitude was a thing of which he had no comprehension. Men he had seen in love impressed him as lunatics, and lunacy was a thing he had never considered worth analyzing. But comradeship with men was different from love with women. There was no servitude in comradeship. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... psychological sense he had really been wronged. But he had only become conscious of his wrongs as his wrongs had been gradually righted. Similarly, it has often been found that a man who can patiently endure penal servitude through a judicial blunder will nevertheless, when once his cause is well asserted, quarrel about the amount of compensation or complain of small slights in his professional existence. These are the marks of the first literary action of Dickens. It has in it all the peculiar hardness of youth; ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... more rigid than any which had prevailed, except in the case of lyric measures like the Alcaic, became the rule. Even elision was very greatly restricted, though caesura was pretty strictly retained, and an additional servitude was imposed by the early adoption in French of the fixed alternation of "masculine" and "feminine" rhymes—that is to say, of rhymes with, and rhymes without, the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... "that the Minister of the Interior has advised his Majesty to grant a reprieve to the three strike leaders now lying under sentence of death for their part in the recent riots and police murders. It is understood that the sentences will be commuted to penal servitude ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... after long and cautious investigations, that its presiding genius was nothing more formidable than one of those petticoated creatures who trembled at his growl, he had licked his chops with pleasant anticipation. Here, at last, was his opportunity,—the flesh-pots of servitude, with freedom. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... have never bowed me to his might, Nor knelt before him—for I bear within My heart the sternest consciousness of right, And that perpetual hate of gilded sin Which made me what I am; and though the stain Of poverty be on me, yet I win More honour by it, than the blinded train Who hug their willing servitude, and bow Unto the weakest and the most profane. Therefore, with unencumbered soul I go Before the footstool of my Maker, where I hope to stand as undebased as now! Child! is the sun abroad? I feel my hair Borne up and wafted by the gentle wind, I feel the odours that perfume ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... to make material changes, as I supposed, in substance and effect, but changing the phraseology, particularly of the first article, in which I propose to substitute an amendment, to declare merely that the status of persons held to servitude or labor under the laws of any State shall continue with the laws thus unchanged, as long as the Territory remains under a territorial government; and when it forms a constitution, to come into the Union as a State, to be received with ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... of her royal career Rome, having sent to Greece to seek such principles of legislation as might suit the sky of Italy, stamped upon the forehead of the married woman the brand of complete servitude. The senate understood the importance of virtue in a republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development of the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her husband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... seems to be at an end. The queen regent of Spain has signed a decree freeing the Cuban slaves, some 300,000, from the remainder of their term of servitude. The work, thus consummated, began in 1869, which provided for the conditional emancipation of certain classes of slaves in Cuba, and for the payment of recompense to the owners of the men and women liberated. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... impossible doctrine, that young men, or any men, can or ought to be independent of the world. Let my sons make friends for themselves, and enjoy the advantage of mine. I object only to their becoming dependent, wasting the best years of their lives in a miserable, debasing servitude to patrons—to patrons, who at last may perhaps capriciously desert them ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... a servant to them." The servitude of Canaan was completed by Japheth, among whose sons (Gen. x. 2) Madai also appears; so that even the Medo-Persian kingdom is one of Japheth's. Ph[oe]nicia was completely overthrown by him. Haughty Tyrus fell to the ground. Zech. ix. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... himself gives the true explanation when he says: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." Matt. 19:8. This general principle applies also to polygamy and the modified form of servitude which prevailed among the Hebrew people. That the Mosaic economy suffered, for the time being, certain usages not good in themselves, is no valid objection to it, but rather a proof of the divine wisdom of its author. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... completed my tenth year's servitude in India, and on the succeeding day, the 4th, I embarked on board one of the P. and O. Company's steamers at Calcutta, and left the Indian shore for Aden; but previously to my departure I purchased various cheap articles of barter, all as tempting and seductive as I could find, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through that ordeal-fire of trial, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereignty: which finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her custody a sceptre as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-sixth of her age: a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body. ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... Mr. Buckram's were of a very shady order. Dirty-shirted, sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with the word 'gin' indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter Leather, the head man, was one of the fallen angels of servitude. He had once driven a duke—the Duke of Dazzleton—having nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into his well-indented richly fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head to 'let go' at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... incapable of looking an unpleasant fact in the face if there was any honourable manner of avoiding it. What they beheld, indeed, was the most interesting street in the world, filled with the most interesting people, who drove happy animals that enjoyed their servitude and needed the sound of the lash to add cheer and liveliness to their labours. Never had the Pendleton idealism achieved a more absolute triumph over ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... ancient and impregnable theory that all brides are beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, with the veil askew. Her graceless carriage was not improved by the difficulty of keeping step with her escort and the added task of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... a young and good-looking girl, who waited on him, cooked his food, lighted his pipe for him, etc. Her servitude seemed by no means galling. In the morning, just before we left on the return trip, interpreter John overheard him telling her that after the teacher came from Wrangell, he was going to dress her well and send her to school and use her in every way as if she were his own ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... should be liberally rewarded, which would encourage merit, and stimulate servants to acquit themselves with propriety. The contrary conduct is often visited with a kind of retributive justice in the course of a few years. The extravagant and idle in servitude are ill prepared for the industry and sobriety on which their own future welfare so essentially depends. Their faults, and the attendant punishment come home, when they have children of their own; and sometimes ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... beings, man is not only an effect but a cause; his freedom—not unlimited but quite real within its not inelastic confines—is the noblest of all his faculties, even though for that very reason it is capable of being most ignobly perverted. What its bestowal tells us is that God does not call us into servitude, but to that service which is perfect freedom; He might have made us His playthings, as Plato suggested,[3] but by endowing us with the power to choose for ourselves He has made us His potential fellow-workers. May we not ask—Who, after all, would prefer the safety of automatism to the glory of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... his shoulders: "two or three years in penal servitude, I expect. Anyhow, Broken Feather's ambitious career doesn't look as if it would materialize. He'll be put out of the way of doin' further mischief, and we can settle down in our peaceful solitude, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... million little priests and monks like mice were already nibbling at the bonds of the ancient servitude, another process was going on, which has here been called the weakening of the Empire. It is a process which is to this day very difficult to explain. But it affected all the institutions of all the provinces, especially the institution of Slavery. But of ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... invaders. The Copaipans accordingly began to attack Valdivia immediately on entering their country, assailing him at every step with much valour, but with very little conduct. Like barbarians in general, they were incapable of making a common cause with each other; and having been long accustomed to servitude under the Peruvians, during which all union among the northern tribes had been dissolved, they attacked their invaders in separate hordes as they advanced into the country, and without that steady and firm courage which stamps the valour of a free people in the defence of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... portion of the enterprising spirit that is gone abroad. Many agricultural experiments have been made, and the country appears better enclosed and cultivated, yet the cottages had not the comfortable aspect of those I had observed near Moss and to the westward. Man is always debased by servitude of any description, and here the peasantry are not entirely ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... of Hayti in 1801 came a century of struggle to fit the people for the freedom they had won. They were yet slaves, crushed by a cruel servitude, without education or religious instruction. The Haytian leaders united upon Dessalines to maintain the independence of the republic. Dessalines, like Toussaint and his lieutenant Christophe, was noted in slavery ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... vines, and the olives; set fire to the villages, and hung all the most able and active men who fell into their hands. A war of this kind may be carried on with success against a country so small and so thinly peopled as Corsica. Having reduced the island to perfect servitude, which they called peace, the French withdrew their forces. As soon as they were gone, men, women, and boys rose at once against their oppressors. The circumstances of the times were now favourable to them; and some British ships, acting as allies of Sardinia, bombarded Bastia ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... world, Bertie was astray; and perhaps God has kept her alive, intending she should fulfil her mission years hence, by bringing him out of the snares of temptation, back into the fold of Christ's redeemed. Five years of penal servitude to ransom his soul; was the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... society the means of work are the monopoly of the class of capitalists. The class of workingmen thus become dependent on them, and consequently are given over to all degrees of misery and servitude. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... those days never to be recalled without a blush—the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The principles ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: Therefore, we the citizens of the United States, and the Oppressed People, who, by a decision of the Supreme Court are declared to have no rights ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... stage and the school-boy's at Harrow, from which place he proceeded to Cambridge; and many and substantially happy years must have been passed, during which Claire was not forgotten. Poor Claire, who passed through much severe servitude, from which Mary would fain have spared her, as she wrote once to Mr. Trelawny that this was one of her chief reasons for wishing for independence; but "Old Time," or "Eternity," as she called Sir Timothy, who certainly ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... scene. A boding sadness sank into the heart of Mrs. Dalton as the sleighs drove up to the cabin in the clearing where they were to pass the night. It was occupied by an old negro and his wife, who had found in the Canadian woods a safe refuge from servitude. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... breathing—he had something the matter with his nose—pervade her left ear. It was something to fill an office under Government, and she knew but too well there were places commoner still than Cocker's; but it needed no great range of taste to bring home to her the picture of servitude and promiscuity she couldn't but offer to the eye of comparative freedom. She was so boxed up with her young men, and anything like a margin so absent, that it needed more art than she should ever possess to pretend in the least to compass, with any one in the nature of ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... in one year's servitude, 35 expired within the first six months of their captivity. During training, many elephants die in the unaccountable manner already referred to, of what the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... vent. "Wretch that I am!" he sighing said, "By arrogance and folly led; Had but my restive youth been brought To learn the lesson nature taught, Then had I, like my sires of yore, The prize from every courser bore. Now, lasting servitude's my lot, My birth contemned, my speed forgot; Doomed am I, for my pride, to bear A living death ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... southward on rejoicing suns, Gay colonies extend, the calm retreat Of undisturbed Distress, the better home Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands; Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe, And in their turn some petty tyrant's prey; But bound by ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... compar'd this day shall prove. 170 To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern repli'd. Apostat, still thou errst, nor end wilt find Of erring, from the path of truth remote: Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name Of Servitude to serve whom God ordains, Or Nature; God and Nature bid the same, When he who rules is worthiest, and excells Them whom he governs. This is servitude, To serve th' unwise, or him who hath rebelld Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee, 180 Thy self not free, but to thy self enthrall'd; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... 'Tis hard for an Empty Bag to stand upright! as Poor RICHARD truly says. What would you think of that Prince, or the Government, who should issue an Edict forbidding you to dress like a Gentleman or Gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude. Would you not say that "You are free! have a right to dress as you please! and that such an Edict would be a breach of your privileges! and such a Government, tyrannical!" And yet you are about to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... prettiness the lines of middle-age had given no meaning: as though whatever had happened to her had merely added to the sum total of her inexperience. After a Parisian residence of twenty-five years, spent in a state of feverish servitude to the great artists of the rue de la Paix, her dress and hair still retained a certain rigidity in keeping with the directness of her gaze and the unmodulated candour of her voice. Her very drawing-room had the hard bright atmosphere of her native skies, and one felt that she ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... savants in the French capital; there was nothing about them of that deprecatory sort which one sees so constantly in men and women with African blood in their veins in lands where their race has recently been held in servitude. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... an indisputable manner, that the Philippine people was not created, as all believed, for the sole purpose of dragging the chains of servitude, but that it has a perfect idea of order and justice, shuns a savage life, and loves a ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... there never was a system of oppression so bad that those who benefited by it did not recognize the moral sense so far as to make some excuse for themselves. Was the old system of property distribution, by which the few held the many in servitude through fear of starvation, an exception to this rule? Surely the rich could not have looked the poor in the face unless they had some excuse to offer, some color of reason to give for the cruel contrast ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... anything for anybody—except, indeed, unfastening the dog's collar; and not to be able to help was to Gibbie like being dead. Everybody, down to the dogs, had been doing for him, and what was to become of him! It was a state altogether of servitude into ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... of Emancipation put an end to the notion of the Southern slave holders that involuntary servitude was one of the "sacred institutions" on the Continent of North America. It also demonstrated that Lincoln was thoroughly in earnest when he declared that he would not only save the Union, but that he meant what he said in the speech wherein he asserted, "This Nation ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Wilson recovered and we managed to persuade him to retire. But we had to pension that damnable murderer more magnificently than any hero who ever fought for England. I managed to save Michael from the worst, but we had to send that perfectly innocent man to penal servitude for a crime we know he never committed, and it was only afterward that we could connive in a sneakish way at his escape. And Sir Walter Carey is Prime Minister of this country, which he would probably never have been if the truth had ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... attractions which belong to their respective sexes and ages, whom not captivity but freedom sets a price upon. These are with good reason sold by their parents, since they themselves gain by their very servitude. For one cannot doubt that they are benefited even as slaves [or servants?], by being transferred from the toil of the fields ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... important article declared that there should never be slavery or involuntary servitude in the Northwest, otherwise than for the punishment of convicted criminals, provided, however, that fugitive slaves from the older States might lawfully be reclaimed by their owners. This was the greatest blow struck for freedom ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the death of the testator, there to remain through the compulsory days of courtship up to and including the wedding day. Four months had already passed. It was also stipulated that the executors should receive L10,000 each at the expiration of their year of servitude, provided it was shown in court that they had carried out the wishes of the testator, or, in failing, had made the most diligent effort ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... spirits, void of mysteries, and do not torture people with mysticisms. They have but one aim, a great and glorious one, to free the mind from superstition and hypocrisy. They encounter with open countenance the false devotees who would force men into spiritual servitude, that they may become the slaves of their will. You call them 'Illuminati,' while they have undertaken to illuminate the minds with the beams of knowledge which the Rosicrucians ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and license are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this state, it must either change its customs and its laws, or perish: the source of public virtue is dry; and though it may contain subjects, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... I., confirmed in the subjection into which she fell a second time after Napoleon's ruin, by the treaties of the Holy Alliance, defeated in several attempts to throw off her yoke, and loaded with heavier servitude after the fall of the short-lived Republic of 1849,— Venice has always hated her masters with an exasperation deepened by each remove from the hope of independence, and she now detests them with a rancor which no concession short ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... came to pass that Pratinas had an interview with Phaon, Lucius's freedman, a sleek, well-oiled Sicilian Greek, who wore his hair very long to cover the holes bored in his ears—the mark of old-time servitude. He was the darling of waiting-maids; the collector of all current scandal; the master spirit in arranging dinners, able to tell a Tuscan from a Lucanian boar by mere taste. He used also to help his patron compose billets-doux, and had, by ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... had all heard of the story was this. Mr. Wood had been a head clerk in a house of business. A great forgery was committed against his employers, and he was accused. He was tried, condemned, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude, which, in those days, meant transportation abroad. For some little time the jury had not been unanimous. One man doubted the prisoner's guilt—the man we afterwards knew as the old miser of Walnut-tree Farm. But he was over-persuaded at last, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... been told, the daring patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment. Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal servitude. Frederick William, the young Duke of Brunswick, deprived by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his father, had raised, during the progress of the French campaign in Austria, a corps of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon famous ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... of existence and of tenure were comparatively comfortable and secure, they were liable to eviction at the will of the lord, and, to quote an account of their condition written in 1549, "were in more servitude than the children of Israel in Egypt." Henderson, the writer of 1549 whom we have quoted, hopes that the agricultural class may yet live "as substantial commoners, not miserable cottars, charged daily to war and slay their neighbours at ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... cannot be severed by man, according to Matt. 19:6: "What . . . God hath joined together let no man put asunder." And yet the marriage bond is broken on account of unbelief: for the Apostle says (1 Cor. 7:15): "If the unbeliever depart, let him depart. For a brother or sister is not under servitude in such cases": and a canon [*Can. Uxor legitima, and Idololatria, qu. i] says that "if the unbelieving partner is unwilling to abide with the other, without insult to their Creator, then the other partner is not bound to cohabitation." Much more, therefore, does unbelief abrogate the right ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... were the ever-recurring brief tragedies which told of denunciations, of domiciliary search, of sudden arrests, of an agonising desire for life and for freedom—for life under these same horrible conditions of brutality and of servitude, for freedom to breathe, if only a day or two longer, this air, polluted by filth and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... existed in India from time immemorial, and still flourished in 1836. Slavery, so far as the law can abolish it, was abolished by the Indian Act v of 1843, but the final blow was not dealt until January l, 1862, when sections 370, &c., of the Indian Penal Code came into force. In practice, domestic servitude exists to this day in great Muhammadan households, and multitudes of agricultural labourers have a very dim consciousness of personal freedom. The Criminal Law Commissioners, who reported previous to the passage ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... children, with the master, and the dead body of the little one, were escorted through the streets of the Queen City of the West by a national guard of armed men, back to the great and chivalrous State of old Kentucky and away to the shambles of the South—back to a life-long servitude of hopeless despair. It was a long, sad, silent procession down to the banks of the Ohio; and as it passed, the death-knell of freedom tolled heavily. The sovereignty of Ohio trailed in the dust beneath the oppressor's foot, and the great confederacy of the tribes ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... decent parentage. From a child he exhibited thieving propensities; soon got into the hands of the police, and was in and out of gaol continually. He led the life of a confirmed tramp, and roved all over the United Kingdom. He has been in penal servitude three times, and his last term was for seven years, with police supervision. After his release he married a respectable girl, and tried to reform, but circumstances were against him; character he had none, a gaol career only to recommend him, and so he and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... mechanics of Berlin, unlike those of the smaller towns of Germany, "are married and given in marriage," although the practice is regarded even there as indiscreet and improvident. It is doubtless a creditable feeling which demands of the workman that he shall have past out of his state of servitude, and have gained the position of an employer of labor, before he dare assume still higher responsibilities; but the system ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... explained to him, he was horrified at the horrible stories, he was ready to help her end the European war by starting a revolution among the working people of American City. Also, he told her about himself, and awakened her sympathy for his harsh life, his twenty years of privation and servitude; and when she wept over this, Peter liked it. It was fine, somehow, to have her so sorry for him; it helped to compensate him for the boredom of hearing her be sorry for the whole ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... Hercynian forest. His constant cries of positive pain in the progress of the work are distressing, as his indomitable determination to wrestle with and prevail over it is inspiring. There is no imaginable image that he does not press into his service in rattling the chains of his voluntary servitude. Above all, he groans over the unwieldy mass of his authorities—"anti-solar ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... idly lawless, or weakly lavish, neither in deed nor word. Their frankness, if you read it as a scholar and a Christian, and not like a modern half-bred, half-brained infidel, knowing no tongue of all the world but in the slang of it, is really opposed, not to Servitude,—but to Shyness![16] It is to this day the note of the sweetest and Frenchiest of French character, that it makes simply perfect Servants. Unwearied in protective friendship, in meekly dextrous omnificence, in latent tutorship; the lovingly availablest of valets,—the mentally and personally ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... so long sighed, and amidst the fearless security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according to the expression of Homer, "like an ox in the stall," slain by his faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer, and his children consigned to banishment or to hopeless servitude. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... or sexual exploitation. The International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN agency charged with addressing labor standards, employment, and social protection issues, estimates that 12.3 million people worldwide are enslaved in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor, sexual servitude, and involuntary servitude at any given time. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat, depriving people of their human rights and freedoms, risking global health, promoting social breakdown, inhibiting development by depriving countries of their human capital, and helping ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... freedom of women was scarcely launched when the long-threatened Civil War broke forth and precipitated the struggle for the liberty of another class whose slavery seemed far more terrible than the servitude of white women. The five years' ordeal which followed developed women as all the previous centuries had not been able to do, and when peace reigned once more, when an entire race had been born into freedom and the republic ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... place his cheap edition on the market whenever it might please him to do so, subject only to the payment of a third of the profit, to be assessed by himself, which practically would have meant nothing at all. How could I expect to dispose of work subject to such a legal "servitude." For five long years I was a slave to the framer of the "hanging" clause of the agreement. Things looked black indeed, when, thanks to the diplomacy of my agent, and to a fortunate change in the personnel ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... second is slothfulness, whereby they are performed slackly and carelessly."— Perkins cor. "Installment; induction into office, part of a large sum of money, to be paid at a particular time."—See Webster's Dict. "Inthrallment; servitude, slavery, bondage."—Ib. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the tame obedience years of servitude had taught him, I could see that the proud spirit his father gave him was not yet subdued, for the look and gesture with which he repudiated his master's name were a more effective declaration of independence than any Fourth-of-July orator ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... forbade the rest To stagnate on the plain. Nor life was reft, Nor safety only then; but reeled the world And all her manifold peoples at the blow In that day's battle dealt; nor only then Felt, but in all the times that were to come. Those swords gave servitude to every age That shall be slavish; by our sires was shaped For us our destiny, the despot yoke. Yet have we trembled not, nor feared to bare Our throats to slaughter, nor to face the foe: We bear the penalty for others' shame. Such be our doom; yet, Fortune, sharing not In that last ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... are living now with the best of men, making war upon enemies, and deliberating for (the interests) of the city, and remembering the mercenaries whom these men made the guards of their power and your servitude in the Acropolis. 95. This much I say to you, though there are many ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... their sight purely by its own Brightness; nor ever has any where done so, but here and there in a few Instances of Persons of more than ordinarily inquisitive Minds; and (probably) for the most part, exempted by a happy priviledge of Nature from the servitude of sensual, and ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... years between the first and the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land was disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of freedom and genius, her ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and intestine war; and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might repose with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the continent or in the isles; but our silence on the fate of Athens [51] would argue a strange ingratitude to the first and purest school ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... such things, she might yield her crown to the camera and the stenographer; and divine imagination would degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. Imagination is incompatible with inventiveness, or imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life. Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He who claims the name of artist must rise to that vision of a loftier reality—a more true because a more beautiful world—which only imagination can reveal. A truer world, —for the world of facts is not and cannot be true. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... of men, and destroyed every noble principle of science and virtue, was unable to resist the vigorous efforts of a free people, and Europe, as from a new epoch, rekindled her ancient spirit, and shook off the base servitude to arbitrary will and authority under which she had so long labored. The free constitutions then established, however impaired by the encroachments of succeeding princes, still preserve an air of independence and legal administration, which distinguished the European nations; and if ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... in his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of its inhabitants. If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and Empire-building. Every one understands the distinction; but so few people see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for his unconsciousness ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... months of my stay at M. Ferrand's I had no reason to complain of him. I had much work to do; the housekeeper was often very rough toward me; the house was gloomy; but I endured all with patience; servitude is servitude, otherwise I should have had other disagreements. M. Ferrand had a stern look. He went to mass; he often received priests. I did not mistrust him. At first he hardly looked at me. He spoke very cross to me; above all, in the presence ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... themselves by flogging prostitutes or pricking them till they bleed, while others prefer to martyrize their victims slowly, and thus procure the maximum of pleasure. Others again are contented with scenes symbolical of servitude, in which women are compelled to adore and supplicate them, etc. The humiliation of women takes part in the sadist appetite of man and often degenerates into fetichism. Simple imagination in which he plays ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... Turks; and even his son Solyman too hastily withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timur, who reproached their ignoble servitude under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these men ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Empire! Fit instrument, forsooth, of such an Emperor as Justinian, whose boundless avarice, whose shameful subjection to the base-born Theodora, were known to every one. To this had Rome fallen; and not one of her sons who dared to rise against so foul a servitude! ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... proceeds to enumerate certain good works appropriate to Christians in all stations of life, particularly those Christians under authority, or in a state of servitude—men-servants and maid-servants. In the apostle's day, Christians had to submit to heathen authority—to serve unbelieving masters. Peter admonishes Christians to glorify God by their conduct, patiently bearing the violence and injustice offered, and forbearing to return ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... reestablish slavery whenever it chose. Slavery could be prohibited only by an amendment of the Constitution. So the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, December, 1865. This amendment declares that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, ... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." In this way slavery came to an ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... battles, for he feared that Valia would break the treaty long ago made with Athavulf and that, after driving out the neighboring tribes, he would again plot evil against the Empire. Moreover Honorius was eager to free his sister Placidia from the disgrace of servitude, and made an agreement with Constantius that if by peace or war or any means soever he could bring her back to the kingdom, he should have her in marriage. Pleased with this promise, Constantius 165 set out for Spain with an armed force and in almost royal splendor. Valia, king of the ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... year 552, came to reside there as imperial prefect and representative of the absent eastern lord Justinian. Narses so ruled for fifteen years, but when he was recalled there ensued a long time of terrible distress and anxiety—a time of temporal servitude, but one also of spiritual expansion. The complete ruin of Rome as a secular city, the overthrow of all that ancient world of which Rome was the centre and capital, had been effected in the struggle ended by the extinction of the Gothic kingdom. By degrees the laws, the monuments, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... elapsed in which memorable events in his own reign could have taken place, and this is confirmed by the much more developed form of the Lydian narrative, with its dream from Ashur to Gyges, and its order for servitude. That this account is of value as over against the later ones has been recognized, [Footnote: Tiele, Gesch. 372.] but we should not forget that it already represents a developed form of the tradition. [Footnote: K. 2675; III R. 28 f.; G. Smith, 36 ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead

... are not tempered by laws quickly become anarchy Associating patience with activity Blindness that make authority to consist only in force Bounty, which, though very often secret, had the louder echo Civil war is one of those complicated diseases Clergy always great examples of slavish servitude Confounded the most weighty with the most trifling Contempt—the most dangerous disease of any State Dangerous to refuse presents from one's superiors Distinguished between bad and worse, good and better Fading flowers, which are fragrant ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger

... the whole of a long cigar; and afterwards, as Lord Alfred slowly paced his way back to his lodgings in Mount Street, he thought deeply whether there might not be means of escaping from his present servitude. 'Beast! Brute! Pig!' he said to himself over and over again as he slowly went ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... capitals of the other Continental nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest condition of individual liberty,—class servitude, sumptuary and travel restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest necessaries of life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... lives." He desired to strike out the provision which permitted this and to insert on in lieu thereof, declaring that "within the limits of the said State there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude otherwise than in the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Mr. Sumner's amendment was opposed by some of the most radical anti-slavery men in the Senate, notably by Collamer and Foot of Vermont, by Wade of Ohio, and by ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... which you may safely rely as your portion! When you are enjoying every variety of sumptuous profusion, as the reward of your untiring charitable exertions here on earth, the spirit of this short-sighted person will be engaged in doing menial servitude for the inferior deities, and perhaps scarcely able, even by those means, to clothe himself according to the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... to judge correctly respecting Domestics. They should be treated as we would expect to be under similar Circumstances. When Labor is scarce, its Value is increased. Instability of Domestics; how it may be remedied. Pride and Insubordination; how remedied. Abhorrence of Servitude a National Trait of Character. Domestics easily convinced of the Appropriateness of different Degrees of Subordination. Example. Domestics may be easily induced to be respectful in their Deportment, and appropriate in their Dress. Deficiencies of Qualifications for the Performance of their Duties; ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... dinners were given at a more fashionable hour to any friends or correspondents of the house who might be in London. Mr Thursby took the foot of the table, and I was always expected to be present. At length I completed two years of servitude in the house, and by that time was thoroughly up to all the details of business. I had been very diligent. I had never taken a holiday, and never had cause to absent myself from business on account of ill-health. On the very ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... how can a man die better than in a great endeavour to strike the gyves from his Country's limbs so that she again may stand in the face of Heaven and raise the shrill shout of Freedom, and, clad once more in a panoply of strength, trample under foot the fetters of her servitude, defying the tyrant nations of the earth to set their ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians, who dwelt on the banks of Lake Maeotis, till the fall of Mithridates, and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with servitude; that Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... later; the ferocity of practical love and hatred dominated the theory and practice of justice in the public life of the smaller towns, while the patriarchal system subjected the family in almost absolute servitude to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... of our nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas which may be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the powerful means at its disposal, produce effects of which instruments merely used for accompanying the voice are incapable. When instrumental music was released from all servitude to other arts, as well as from all positive sense of religious emotions or mythical and symbolic prejudice, thought was able to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it comes of having learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I was born unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they are both grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes when he is allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous tailors, send me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in me which Titians and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but I only put them on as the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very unworthy ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... much of the Tartar servitude, was that recorded by Peter Heylin in his Little Description of the Great World (Oxford, 1629), who says: "It is the custom over all Muscovie, that a maid in time of wooing sends to that suitor whom she chooseth for her husband such ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... and heavy labour of the mines, coupled with grief, told so much on men accustomed to the fresh air and free life of the wilderness, that death closed the scene before the first year of servitude was out. It is said that above eight millions of natives have perished thus in ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... honour, or fortune, any one hath ever yet achieved through them, is yet unheard of. If our English papists will only look to Portugal, against which they have no pretence of religion; how their nobility are imprisoned and put to death, their rich men made a prey, and all sorts of people reduced to servitude; they shall find that the obedience even of the Turk is ease and liberty, compared to the tyranny of Spain. What have they done in Sicily, in Naples, in Milan, in the low countries? Who hath there been spared even for religion? It cometh to my remembrance of a certain burgher at Antwerp, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... would sell his freedom a hundred times, if it were possible, rather than suffer his father's memory to remain unhonored even for a brief season. And furthermore, confiding in his youth and strength, he determined to put a high price upon his servitude,—a price which would enable him to build a handsome tomb, but which it would be well-nigh impossible for him ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... or in penal servitude. Never should have expected to see her here," said someone else ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... in upon us, the coldness and severity of government would relax, and that more than justice, that gratitude would blaze forth upon those hands which had upheld her in the darkest stages of her passage from impending servitude to acknowledged independence. But faith has its limits, as well as temper, and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into cowardice, or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive to be your situation. Hurried ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... business transactions or in the learned professions; and though it may be expected that this opposition will be continued for some time to come,—yet women have cause for thankful rejoicing, and may take courage. The long night of their bitter servitude is nearly over, the dawn of better days is beginning to tinge the horizon; and hope may now be entertained that erelong they shall occupy the position to which they are entitled, as man's compeer—the position of equality with him in all the relations of life—and enjoy the full ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... balance sheets, had gathered in deposits months after he ought to have known himself to be hopelessly insolvent, and done enough of other things, highly reprehensible in the eyes of the law, to earn for himself seven years' penal servitude. The sentence making its way outside met with a good reception. A small mob composed mainly of people who themselves did not look particularly clever and scrupulous, leavened by a slight sprinkling of genuine pickpockets amused itself by cheering in the most penetrating, abominable ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... alongside each a proportion of the lashes to be inflicted. But this was only awarded where the offence deserved a less punishment than death, and is now discontinued, solitary confinement or penal servitude being substituted. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... between Austrians and Italians, was the subject of very fierce talk on the part of the latter. All this time, be it remembered, the Slovenes had feeble forces; and their own officers do not pretend that they approach the Serbs as combatants. After centuries of servitude—a more insidious servitude than if their masters had been Moslem—they have now awakened to devote themselves, and with great success, to agriculture and industry. Nevertheless the old fighting spirit of the Slav has not been quite extinguished in them. Their ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... which disturb a free child with a whipping in prospect. He cringed not at the pain, he rebelled not at proper and wholesome punishment. This whipping was the scourging of the slave; it was the emblem of his servitude. The blows were the stripes which the master inflicts upon his bondman. His soul was free, while his body was in chains; and it was his soul rather than his body that ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic



Words linked to "Servitude" :   thralldom, freedom from involuntary servitude, bondage, villeinage, slavery, villainage, thrall, thraldom



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