"Sweeper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing. Make your way into Germany—What do you find there? an aristocracy of functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess—for the women there must be better-half even in their titles—you find society led, or, to speak more correctly, society consisting of functionaries, and they, every office son of them, and their wives—nay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper, developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is Jack-in-the-Green. Jack who? Was he Jack Sprat, or the young swain who mated with Jill! Who knows? The chimney-sweeper has all I ask, all that the butterflies possess, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... perspiration was out over her face, sparkling forth again after each mopping. A box arrived from a jeweler's and one from a department store. They were a pie knife and a table crumber in the form of a miniature carpet sweeper. The usual futilities with which such occasions can be cluttered and which have shaped the destinies of immemorial women into a tyranny of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. O, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! then thou shouldst ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... three white eggs in it, a splendid nest, stock-full of the fireflies that light the little hen at night, he showed it privately first to Hurry Ghose, and then to Sumpsi Din, and lastly to Budhoo, the sweeper's son; and not one of them could he coax to carry off a single egg in company with him. Sonny Sahib recognised the force of public opinion, and left the weaver-bird to her house-keeping in peace, but he felt privately ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... four of the little ones were crushed. That was the end. The trucks disappeared. Even Tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. They were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking-places of all manner of mischief at night, but I have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... thus come up from the bottom. The head of the factory started as a machinist. The man in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a patternmaker. Another man overseeing one of the principal departments started as a sweeper. There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. Everything that we have developed has been done by men who have qualified themselves with us. We fortunately did not ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... very skilful in fencing, and is always represented with his magic Excalibur named Chan-yao Kuai, 'Devil-slaying Sabre,' and in one hand holds a fly-whisk, Yuen-chou, or 'Cloud-sweeper,' a symbol common in Taoism of being able to fly at will through the air and to walk on ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Princely! [His pipe goes out. He takes a last puff at it, squints into it to make sure all the tobacco is gone, then lays it down with a sigh.] I reckon I'll try making 'em too. I went to the Vestry again, this morning, to see whether they'd take me as sweeper—but they've thirty names down, ahead of me. I've tried chopping wood, but I can't—I begin to cough the third stroke—there's something wrong with me inside, somewhere. I've tried every Institution on God's earth—and there are others before me, and there is no vacancy, and I mustn't ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... The street sweeper was taking up the fragments of the shattered windows half an hour later, when Martin Jaffry found himself going rather aimlessly along Main Street with a feeling that the bottom had recently dropped out of things—a sensation which, if the truth ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... a dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's habits. Mr. Harrington Surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early forenoon. So much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon by engagements then, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... weighty concerns on his mind. And, besides, my whole life almost has passed away in the delusion that, next to my eldest brother, none but Dietrich was capable of giving me advice where to leave my few relics, consisting of a few books and my sweeper [that is, the seven-foot telescope with which she was accustomed to sweep the heavens for comets]. And for the last twenty years I kept to the resolution of never opening my lips to my dear brother William about worldly concerns, let me be ever so much at a loss for ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... anger, half ecstasy, Pinchas galloped toward the fiddling and banging orchestra. A harmless sweeper in his path was herself swept aside. But her fallen broom tripped up the runner. He fell with an echoing clamour, to which his clattering cane contributed, and clouds of dust arose and gathered where erst had ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... and used to tear his clothes getting birds' nests, and was always playing with a tame bear his father kept. Mopstaff fell in love with one of his father's maids, and used to help her to clean the house. Broomstaff was a chimney-sweeper. The Mopstaffs and Broomstaffs are naturally as civil people as ever went out of doors; but alas! if they once get into ill hands, they knock down all before them. Pilgrimstaff run away from his friends, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... one had any definite memory on these points; they were just like other sightseers. Was there a tall woman with a brown cloak among them? Prescott put this question to several people, but drew no affirmative reply until he found an old coloured man who swept the halls. The sweeper thought that he did remember seeing such a figure on the lower floor, but he was not sure, and with that Prescott was forced ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... however, that he fancied himself mounted upon old Battle, reviewing the Barnstable Invincibles, whom he was berating right soundly for a set of stupid knaves. An invitation from the general to join him and the aid in drinking a morning sweeper, suddenly brought him to his understanding, and, after offering numerous apologies for the distressed state of his person, said he was not aware that the earliness of the hour prevented military men and politicians ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... resembled in his nastiness as well as greediness. For if he was dressed in the morning as clean as hands could make him, he would, by running into puddles and kennels, and rolling upon the ground, become as black as a chimney sweeper before noon; and I sincerely believe that he thought it as great a punishment to have his hair combed, or to wash his hands and face, as to be whipped; for he would cry and struggle as much to avoid the one as to escape the other. But, to ease his parents of their heavy apprehensions ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... punch-houses;—but in Cossitollah all castes and vocations are met, whether their talk be of gold mohurs or cowries; here the Sahib gives the horrid leper a wide berth, and the Baboo walks carefully round the shadow of Mehtur, the sweeper. Therefore, reader, Cossitollah is by all means the street for you to draw profound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... answered; "I know there is the sort of idea that it is funny, but somehow it does not strike me more with reference to woman than to ourselves. I mean it does not seem more incongruous than that a man like yourself and an offal sweeper ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... born a Brahmin with wealth and power because you won the favor of the gods in some previous existence; or you were born a Sudra, predestined to a life of suffering and semi-starvation, because in your previous existence you failed to merit better treatment from the gods. If you are only a sweeper, be glad that you were not born a pig or a cobra. Kismet, Fate, has fixed at birth your changeless station in this life; and, more than this, it has written on your brow the things which must happen to you ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... foul and many a broad street by the Basso Porto in Naples smells far worse. The keen high atmosphere of the Calabrian mountains is a mighty purifier of nastiness, and perhaps the pig is not to be despised after all, as sanitary engineer, scavenger and street sweeper. ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... contributed to our literature by Dickens—quite as typical and quite as truthful in their way, each of them, as Hugo's Gavroche. There is Jo the poor crossing-sweeper. There is the immortal Dodger. There is his pal the facetious Charley Bates. And there is that delightful boy at the end of "The Carol," who conveys such a world of wonder through his simple reply of "Why, Christmas Day!" The boy ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... clamorous insult.[10] It was obvious that the weaker poet must be the winner by this contest in abuse; and Dryden gained no more by his dispute with Settle, than a well-dressed man who should condescend to wrestle with a chimney-sweeper. The feud between them was carried no further, until, after the publication of "Absalom and Achitophel," party animosity added spurs ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... is said, when the profession of a street-sweeper in London was a certain road to competence and fortune—when the men of the brooms were men of capital; when they lived well, and died rich, and left legacies behind them to their regular patrons. These palmy days, at any rate, are past now. Let no man, or woman either, expect a legacy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... to dinner to-night," he announced, "and shall hope to find you in your places. What the mischief are you hanging about for, Brown?" he asked, turning to the steward, who was standing by with a carpet-sweeper in his hand. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... redress of grievances. This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was suspended from his empire for the day. He was pushed aside; he was forgotten. He was not distinct from the crowd. Like Titus, he had lost a day,—his vocation was gone. This person was the Sweeper of the Crossing! ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before, or that they had not washed their hands clean; nay, he sometimes flogged a boy without ever telling him what it was for; and frequently, while his hand was in, he would, gnashing his large white teeth, which looked white from the same cause that a chimney-sweeper's teeth look so, merely because they were such a great contrast to his black fiend-like visage, he would dart his eye round the different classes to see which boy he should fix upon as his next victim. During these disgusting periods, with the exception of two or three ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... and hard it will be necessary to use considerable force in scraping off the inequalities. A metal cutting edge, such as a hoe or scraper, will be found useful. A court should be swept with a coarse broom to distribute the fine material evenly. Another very good sweeper can be made from a piece of wood about six or eight feet long to which several thicknesses of bagging have been tacked or fastened. The final step in making a court consists in marking it out. Most courts are marked so that they will be suitable either for singles or doubles or ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... are not. Every profession has its unpresentable aspects, which ought not to be seen by out-siders. Think of a sculptor's studio and of the sculptor himself when he is modelling a large figure or group in the clay. He might be a bricklayer or a road-sweeper if you judge by his appearance. This is the tomb I was telling ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... now since Diamond had seen North Wind, or even thought much about her. And as his father drove along, he was thinking not about her, but about the crossing-sweeper, and was wondering what made him feel as if he knew her quite well, when he could not remember anything of her. But a picture arose in his mind of a little girl running before the wind and dragging her broom after her; and from that, by degrees, he recalled the whole adventure of the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... sunk ten miles off shore; German liner Macedonia, interned at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, slips out of port; British cruiser Amethyst is reported to have made a dash to the further end of the Dardanelles and back; a mine sweeper of the Allies is blown up; Vice Admiral Carden, "incapacitated by illness," in words of British Admiralty, is succeeded in chief command in the Dardanelles by Vice Admiral De Robeck; Germany protests to England against promised harsh treatment of submarine crews; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... do not comprehend the Meaning of such enormous Outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above Ela, and in Sounds so [exceeding [2]] shrill, that it often sets our Teeth [on [3]] Edge. The Chimney-sweeper is [confined [4]] to no certain Pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest Base, and sometimes in the sharpest Treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest Note of the Gamut. The same Observation might be made on the Retailers ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... is a translation from the French version of Johnson's Rambler, No. 190. MALONE. Mrs. Piozzi relates how Murphy, used to tell before Johnson of the first time they met. He found our friend all covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making aether. 'Come, come,' says Dr. Johnson, 'dear Murphy, the story is black enough now; and it was a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... o'clock, when the dentist had been in his office for over an hour, Trina descended upon the bedroom, a towel about her head and the roller-sweeper in her hand. She covered the bureau and sewing machine with sheets, and unhooked the chenille portieres between the bedroom and the sitting-room. As she was tying the Nottingham lace curtains at the window into great ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white kaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours. Between them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent carpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where among the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... elevated and forms a prominence as thick as a man's finger. No doubt but pain must be severely felt until the wound be healed. But the love of ornament defies weaker considerations, and no English beau can bear more stoutly the extraction of his teeth to make room for a fresh set from a chimney sweeper, or a fair one suffer her tender ears to be perforated, with more heroism than the grisly nymphs on the banks of Port Jackson, submit their sable shoulders ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Formerly a Brahman never entered a house with his shoes on, as he would consider the house to be defiled. According to the old rule, if a Brahman touches a man of an impure caste, as a Chamar (tanner) or Basor (basket-maker), he should bathe and change his loin-cloth, and if he touches a sweeper he should change his sacred thread. Now, however, educated Brahmans usually wear white cotton trousers and black or brown coats of cloth, alpaca or silk with the normal allowance of buttons, and European shoes and boots which ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... succeeded or to comfort him with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered to the needs of the strong man's very soul in unsuspected, often unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp for tired eyes; a funny bundle of domestic ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... the city by visiting the funeral chapel of the margraves in the crypt of St. Johannis Church. In the little ex-margravely capital there was something of the neighborly interest in the curiosity of strangers which endears Italian witness. The white-haired street-sweeper of Ansbach, who willingly left his broom to guide them to the house of the sacristan, might have been a street-sweeper in Vicenza; and the old sacristan, when he put his velvet skull-cap out of an upper window and professed his willingness to show them the chapel, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not help seeing the true state of things. Logic was to her but the smoke that rose from the burning truth; she saw what is altogether above and beyond logic—the right thing, whose meanest servant, the hewer of its wood, not the drawer of its water, the merest scullion and sweeper away of lies from the pavement of its courts, ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... lift us almost level with the rail of the low-built patrol boat and mine sweeper, but the next receding wave would swirl us down into a darksome gulf over which the ship's side glowered like a slimy, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... not yet invaded by the revolutionizing influence of the railway, and consequently the dak bungalows are still kept up in form to provide travellers with accommodation. Chowkeedar, punkah-wallah, and sweeper are in regular attendance, and one can usually obtain curried rice, chicken, dhal, and chuppatties. An official regulation of prices is posted conspicuously in the bungalow: For room and charpoy, Rs 1; dinner, Rs 1-8; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... street-sweeper!' bitterly began Leonard.—'Oh, Dr. May, do let me have that!' he cried, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand, as he perceived in the Doctor's button-hole a dove-pink, presented at a cottage door by a grateful patient. For a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... left the district. The old devil left a note for us to say that he had rather be a free crossing sweeper in New York than a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers. By Gar! it was as well that he made a break for it before the note reached us! I guess he won't show his face in this ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the best of my remembrance, this was in 1764; upwards of sixty years, therefore, have now elapsed, and yet the artist is still undiscovered. The suspicions of posterity have settled upon two pretenders—a baker and a chimney-sweeper. But posterity is wrong; no unpractised artist could have conceived so bold an idea as that of a noon-day murder in the heart of a great city. It was no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that executed this work. I know who it was. (Here there was a general ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of passion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... with horrid familiarity, "go thy ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT." And he retired up the chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on carpet-sweeper wheels often become so badly worn and streched that they fail to grip the carpet firmly enough to run the sweeper. To remedy this, procure some rubber tape a little wider than the rims of the old wheels, remove the old rubber ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... looked after the simple cares of her household she was now ready to cast her eyes abroad, and relieve in so far as she might the distress around her. The first object of charity she encountered was an old crossing-sweeper. She addressed him in a matter-of-fact way which was intended to conceal her fluttering self-consciousness. She inquired whether he had a wife; whether he had any children; whether they were not rather poor. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... street and danced for joy like a child, yes, and presented a crossing-sweeper against whom he butted with a whole sixpence in compensation. Thus he reached the Mansion House, not unsuspected of inebriety by the police, and clambered to the top of a bus crowded with weary and anxious-looking City clerks returning ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... at's red an' yan at's blake A gift o' my finger Sunday clipt, Sunday shorn A Monday's bairn 'll grow up fair A cobweb i' t' kitchen, Snaw, snaw, coom faster Julius Caesar made a law A weddin', a woo, a clog an' a shoe Chimley-sweeper, blackymoor The Lady-bird Cow-lady, cow-lady, hie thy way wum, The Magpie I cross'd pynot,(1) an' t' pynot cross'd me Tell-pie-tit The Bat Black-black-bearaway The Snail Sneel, sneel, put oot your horn, Hallamshire When all the world shall be aloft, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... Duke of Cumberland, then a child, being carried to big grandfather on his birthday, the King asked him at what hour he rose. The Prince replied, "when the chimney-sweepers went about." "Vat is de chimney-sweeper?" said the King. "Have you been so long in England," said the boy, "and do not know what a chimney-sweeper is? Why, they are like that man there;" pointing to Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and dark-"the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... done by the Marshal de Richelieu with a purse he had given to his grandson, and which the lad, not knowing how to use, brought back intact. Money, on this occasion, was at least of service to the passing street-sweeper that picked it up. But had there been no passer-by to pick it up, it would have been thrown into the river. One day Mme. de B—, being with the Prince de Conti, hinted that she would like a miniature of her canary bird set in a ring. The Prince offers to have it made. His offer is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... spring woods blowing down the valley. I want to be holding slow converse with leisurely rustic persons, to be surveying from the side of a high grassy hill the rich plain below, to hear the song of birds in the thickets, to try and feel myself one with the life of the world instead of a sordid sweeper of a corner of it. This is all very ungrateful to my profession, which I love, but it is a necessary reaction; and what at this moment chiefly makes me grateful to it is that my pocket is full enough to let me have a holiday on a liberal scale, without thinking of small economies. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... purse out of the window to a sweeper in the courtyard, and said to his grandson, 'Then they do not teach you to be a ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... SWEEP, SWEEPER. The name given at Yale and other colleges to the person whose occupation it is to sweep the students' rooms, make their ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper or an old woman, and made them laugh till the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... writing this within thirty minutes after stepping on the dock here in Queenstown from the British mine sweeper which picked up our open lifeboat after an eventful six hours of drifting, and darkness and baling and pulling on the oars and of straining aching eyes toward that empty, meaningless horizon in search of help. But, dream or ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of fire steamed a little mine sweeper. She looked for all the world like a tugboat. She had a single gun mounted in her bow, and one or two amidships. She had no armor and a rifle bullet probably would have pierced her sides with ease, but she pounded straight toward us; the water around ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... places where people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered—'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones in the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... arbitrariness of things. The thirteen passed pitilessly on. Mr. Curtenty freed the gander from the coiling wire, and picked it up, but, finding it far too heavy to carry, he handed it to a Corporation road-sweeper. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... bungalow are of hard wood. They are waxed a few times each year, and a little work each morning with dust mop and carpet sweeper keeps them in good order. The ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... from what I have already described to a very grotesque fashion. His head was covered with an old smoke tie-wig that did not boast one crooked hair, and a slouched hat over it, which would have very well become a chimney-sweeper, or a dustman; his neck was adorned with a black crape, the ends of which he had twisted, and fixed in the button-hole of a shabby greatcoat that wrapped up his whole body; his white silk stockings were converted into black ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... industry and skill in 'translating' old boots and shoes, her motherly instincts and efforts to keep her young brother Dick, the crossing-sweeper, honest, because mother had made them promise to be so when she died; the good-natured, agreeable, clever young thief Jenks, the tempter and beguiler of poor Dick; and, above all, the dear dog Scamp, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... of humanity. She no longer wants to be the beast of burden of the house. She considers it sufficient work to give many years of her life to the rearing of her children. She no longer wants to be the cook, the mender, the sweeper of the house! And, owing to American women taking the lead in obtaining their claims, there is a general complaint of the dearth of women who will condescend to domestic work in the United States. My lady prefers art, politics, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... I have always thought some day I'd kape a pig and live pritty in me own house," said Mrs. Kilpatrick. "But I'm the old sweeper yet in Number Two. 'Tis a worrld where some has and more wants," she added with a sigh. "I got the manes for a good buryin', the Lord be praised, and a bitteen more beside. I wouldn't have that if Father Daley was as ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... black as a coal; and, though my face and hands have undergone a thorough purification, I feel not altogether fit to hold communion with doves. Methinks my profession is somewhat akin to that of a chimney-sweeper; but the latter has the advantage over me, because, after climbing up through the darksome flue of the chimney, he emerges into the midst of the golden air, and sings out his melodies far over the heads of the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these interested ones, few of the pedestrians stopped or even looked at the chain-gang. To most, if not all, it was an ordinary spectacle, and attracted no more attention than would a crossing-sweeper on a London street. Not as much as the latter, as he is often an Oriental. On that particular day, however, the party of scavengers presented a novelty, in having the two Tejanos in it; with a yet greater one in the odd juxtaposition of Cris Rock and his diminutive "mate." ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of an Oxford straw, with a red-turbaned, blue dungaree-clad, supple Oriental of the coolie class. Jim Gubo, with liberal display of ivory, assured the Baas, in defiance of the Baas's own eyes and the organ in juxtaposition, that the work had been regularly done. Rasu the Sweeper, with many oaths and protestations, assured the Presence that such neglect as was apparent was owing to the incapacity of the hubshi and his myrmidons, Rasu's own share of the labour and that of his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... phonograph records. You say a thing to a man that calls up Record No. 999873 and he puts it in for you, starts his motor and begins to make it go round and round for you. He just tumtytums off some of his subconsciousness for you. Whether he is selling you a carpet sweeper or converting your soul, it is his body that is using his brain and not his brain ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... my place where I sleep?" said another crossing-sweeper to him one day, when he told him his trouble. "The little 'un 'ud keep warm there." And he painted in glowing colours the glories of the cheap lodging-house where he had slept ...
— Willie the Waif • Minie Herbert
... comes another, mounted on a cart and blowing a hoarse and dreadful blast from a tin horn, as much as to say, "Fresh fish!" And hark! a voice on high, like that of a muezzin from the summit of a mosque, announcing that some chimney-sweeper has emerged from smoke and soot and darksome caverns into the upper air. What cares the world for that? But, well-a-day, we hear a shrill voice of affliction—the scream of a little child, rising louder with every repetition of that smart, sharp, slapping sound produced by an open hand ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks—especially the black one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to all the other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she is with me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd things that a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what end? She knows how I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go on being friends as we once ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that he was ready to shed tears, and that he possessed a pocket handkerchief, but wanted something more. "J'ai un mouchoir, mais pas de loge," he said. Yet his letter was left without a reply. After waiting a day or two, and still receiving no answer, Vivier engaged the dirtiest crossing-sweeper he could find, made him put on a little extra mud, and sent him with a letter to Mr. Gye demanding "the return of his correspondence." The courteous manager of the Royal Italian Opera could scarcely have known that, besides being one of the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... story called the Hobgoblin, Antonia, a little girl "who has been told a hundred foolish stories by her maid, particularly one about a black-faced goblin," is represented as making a lamentable outcry at the sight of a chimney-sweeper; first she runs for refuge to the kitchen, the last place to which she should run; then to the pantry; thence she jumps out of the window, "half dead with terror," and, in the elegant language of the translator, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The method of construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder, for their security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or sweeper of the court, or some other shadowy being without substance or effect, is a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the old statute of Westminster, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of war which had closed in upon us, no one wanted to spend his money for a useless art, which perhaps could be used only for dirges. A music-teacher was the most unnecessary and useless of mortals, and the music-teacher felt this, and was ready to become wood-cutter, laborer, street-sweeper, anything to procure food for his sick wife, his only child, to brighten their impoverished, sorrowful lives with a ray of comfort. But it was all in vain; the poor music-teacher found employment nowhere; he might have starved in the ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... summer, when the sparrows built their nests in the tall chimneys on either side, and were perpetually flying to and fro, twittering, caressing, quarrelling—this was quite a society. When a chimney-sweeper once thrust out his black face from one of these chimneys, and shouted aloud to testify the accomplishment of his ascent, it was an event that brought a shriek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... much-enduring jurist took no cash, but found a generous sheriff who entertained him without charge. "He was one of nature's noblemen, from Massachusetts," writes the grateful prosecutor. The lawyers in what was called good practice earned less than a street- sweeper to-day. It is related that the famous Stephen A. Douglas once traveled from Springfield to Bloomington and made an extravagant speech, and having gained his case received a fee of five dollars. In such a state of things it was not to be wondered ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... senses; I saw them all five in china in Mrs. Watkins's left hand corner-cupboard, china images she called them, and I thought them so pretty. Give me the fourpence half-penny for buns, Fern—one Bath, two plain, and a half-penny to the sweeper that takes ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... double return—increased profit from his crop and increased pleasure of living. Viola Lawson, writing on the subject, "How to Dust and Sweep," makes some pertinent comments. "I think if a house is very dirty, a carpet sweeper is not a very good thing. A broom is best, because you can't get around the corners with a sweeper." Note this hint to the school board: "We spend about one-third of our time in the school house, so it is very important to keep the dust down. The directors ought ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance. [(Quoted from a review in the "Daily News," October 17, 1871, of the Report on Spiritualism of the Committee ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... off!" cried he; and he made a movement with his foot like that which a street-sweeper makes to catch a bark shoe thrown up ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... household presented the picture of misery, for the 'scopatore santissimo' and his numerous family were obliged to live on two hundred Roman crowns a year, and as there are no perquisites attached to the office of apostolic sweeper, he was compelled to furnish all needs out of this slender sum. In spite of that Momolo was a most generous man. As soon as he saw me seated he told me he should have liked to give me a good supper, but there was only pork chops and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the week, Which will abound with store of ale and cake, With hams of bacon, and with powder'd beef, Stuff d to give field-itinerants relief. Then I, who have within these precincts kept, And ne'er beyond the chimney-sweeper's stept, Will take a loose, and venture to be seen, Since 'twill be Sunday, upon Shanks's green; There, with erected looks and phrase sublime, To talk of unity of place and time, And with much malice, mix'd with little satire, Explode ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... them, for twenty years! By the Gospel, it was black ingratitude that the son of Costantin should be set apart for their priesthood, be made an Englishman, a grand khawajah, whilst Iskender was offered employment—mark the kindness!—as a scullion and a sweeper in their house—Iskender, who had been their favourite ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Hossein said, and led the way to a comfortably furnished apartment. "I think that you might stay here, for months, unsuspected. A sweeper comes, every day, to do my rooms downstairs. He believes the rest of the house to be untenanted, and you must remain perfectly quiet, during the half hour he is here. Otherwise, no one enters ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... years returned home, and, after furlough, joined the Belle Isle in the Irish station. Whisky here again got hold of him, and excess ruined his constitution. On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... to a beggar to quiet my conscience was only half charity, because I did not add 'kind words,' as she would say. But I wonder what people would say if I were to inquire after the birth, parentage, and education of every street-sweeper I came across? No, my vocation is to defend my Queen and country, and not to act the charitable." Something whispered, "Cannot you do both?" but Edward would not listen, and soon arrived at his destination. The door was opened by the ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... singular resemblance to the entrance of nothing at all, to borrow the memorable expression of the principal tenant, this Jondrette had said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the same time portress and stair-sweeper: "Mother So-and-So, if any one should chance to come and inquire for a Pole or an Italian, or even a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... The street-sweeper's broom is the genuine besom, made of birch stems, cut out in the country, and brought into town tied up in bundles like fagots; suitable enough for those stalwart men who drag them along so leisurely, but burdensome for the hands of the wretched little ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... creep out over baked sidewalks, broadening to a strip of superheated shade, a few stirred abroad in the deserted streets; here a policeman, thin blue summer tunic open, helmet in hand, swabbing the sweat from forehead and neck; there a white uniformed street sweeper dragging his rubber-edged mop or a section of wet hose; perhaps a haggard peddler of lemonade making for the Park wall around the Metropolitan Museum where, a little later, the East Side would venture out to sit on the benches, or the great electric tourists' busses would halt to dump out a living ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... within the sound of Bow Bells and Westminster. Those of the Strand and Fleet Street, of the Borough, Bermondsey, Southwark southward of the river, and Bloomsbury in the north, form that debatable ground which is ever busy with hurrying feet. The street-sweeper, though, has mostly disappeared, and the pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than were the Halls of Hampton ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Everybody was in military uniform, everybody was shrugging his shoulders, and everybody was in the condition of a London policeman were he to see himself marched off to the station by a street-sweeper. That the Prussian should have taken the Emperor prisoner, and have vanquished the French armies, had, of course, astonished these worthy bureaucrats, but that they should have ventured to interfere with postmen had perfectly dumbfounded them. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with old Dodden; he only shakes his head and says firmly, "An old man, seventy-five come Martinmass knows more o' life than a young chap, stands ter reason"; besides, his epitome of the town life he knows nothing of was a just one as far as it went; and his own son is the sweeper of a Holborn crossing, and many other things that he should not be; but that is ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... banking too steep . . . That's Boche shrapnel. They always burst it high. That's our big gun behind that outer hill . . . He'll drop his machine in the street if he doesn't take care . . . There goes a trench-sweeper. Those last two were theirs, but that"—it was ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... gone up to Apolline, the street-sweeper. The good woman, as broad as she is long, was gaping on the edge of the causeway, her two parallel arms feebly rowing in the air, an exile in the Sabbath idleness, and awkwardly conscious of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... lamp stood in the window there and the tap of a light hammer informed him that the indefatigable Pole was still at work. In truth, old Paul was bending copper tubing—for a firm which said that he had no equal at the task and paid him a wage which would have been despised by a crossing-sweeper. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... going through the door would have put on his hat—but, behold, a very singular revolution had taken place within it, and a mass of tin soldiers, stones, matches, and heaven knows what besides, came rattling down upon his head; and even one little chimney-sweeper fell astride on his nose. Nothing could compare with the immeasurable delight of the children at the astonishment of the Candidate, and the comic grimaces and head-shakings with which he received this their ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... and as it was a fine afternoon she came out to walk in the garden, while we innocently amused ourselves. That evening I kept awake, and again enjoyed the superb display of Miss Frankland's wonderfully hairy cunt, all the lower part of her body was as black as a chimney sweeper's. The sight awakened every lustful feeling within me. I felt I must possess her, and determined to brave the severest infliction she could give me with the rod. I somehow, instinctively, arrived at the conclusion that this extraordinary profusion of hair could ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... morning. I'd like to be the sweeper in that establishment. But still I don't get you. Where ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... wilderness of London simply because, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to be the only place in the wide world where our poor little talents could earn us a few shillings a week to live on. Music and literature! but I fancy the nearest crossing-sweeper did better, and could afford to give himself a more generous dinner every day. It occasionally happened that an article sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so many rejections to have one accepted and paid for with a cheque worth several ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... In the old days all five sitting-rooms had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper languidly. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Penates of The Square, who varied as individuals but remained the same as inherent principles—its Policeman, its Milk, its Wash, its Crossing-Sweeper—even after the germ of contagion had been identified beyond a doubt as a resident in Drury Lane, held fast to a belief that Typhus had been dormant at the corner house since the days of the Regency, and had seized ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... you will not take offense so easily," Janice rejoined. "Here is clean linen for your bed. We send the flat work to the laundry. There is a broom and carpet sweeper in the storeroom, and plenty of dust cloths. You would better put your own room in order first. Then you can come down and I will ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... 'RYDER'".—Last week, on the 15th, as was reported in the Globe, and elsewhere, "a humble crossing-sweeper," named RYDER, stopped a runaway cab-horse (a great rarity this, too) just as he was about to descend headlong the steps of the Duke of York's column, and so saved the two passengers, who, we hope, in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... Dwarf-King to the other King, "the Lord Chief Justice condemns you to be for the rest of your natural life Master Sweeper of the ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... to Berne, and the next day called upon a pious chimney-sweeper, waiting whilst he ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, and oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon enquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is. The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them, about which of the seven loved a pipe and ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering unprotected. Rosemary McClean knew it; the old woman, of the sweeper caste, that is no caste at all,—the hag with the flat breasts and wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection than a toothless dog,—knew it well, and growled about it in incessant undertones that met with neither comment ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... ropes, when I volunteered to help in hoisting sail, surprised and even perplexed him. "But I thought you was a chimney-sweeper?" he insisted. I told him then of my voyages with Mr. Trapp, yet without completely reassuring him. Hitherto he had taken me on my own warrant, and Ben's, without a trace of suspicion: but henceforth I caught him eyeing me furtively from time to time, and overheard him muttering ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Then the PODGERS' family history should give a good third. Father made a fortune in blacking, so daresay he recollects his grandfather. No doubt latter settled in London with the employment of junior office-sweeper, and the capital of an eleemosynary half-crown. Need not trouble about the Heraldic Visitations, or the coat and crest. Keep those items for an interview characterised more by "blood" than "brains." Suppose he has received presentation copies of works of poetical rivals. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various |
