"Able-bodied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proved at fault, so eager was he to catch fairly the justice of the other man's attitude. He held his men inexorably and firmly to their work on the indisputably comfortable days; but gave in often when an able-bodied woodsman should have seen in the weather no inconvenience, even. As the days slipped by, however, he tightened the reins. Christmas was approaching. An easy mathematical computation reduced the question of completing his contract with ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... was at that time, so strong—to which must be added the wish to secure the adherence of stout, able-bodied, and, as the Scotch phrase then went, pretty men—that the representative of the noble family of Perth condescended to act openly as patron of the MacGregors, and appeared as such upon their trial. So at least the author was informed by the late Robert MacIntosh, Esq., advocate. The circumstance ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mountains of freight the work went forward faster than ever. But the night had served to point the anger of the strikers, and the dock owners, becoming alarmed for the safety of their property, joined with Emerson in establishing a force of a dozen able-bodied guards, armed with clubs, to assist the police in disputing the shore line with the rioters. The police themselves had proved ineffective, even betraying a half-hearted sympathy with the union men, who were ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Number of the Militia.—All able-bodied male citizens of the United States and males between eighteen and forty-five years of age who have declared their intention to become citizens are regarded as the militia force of the country. As a matter of fact, there are at present only about 100,000 men enrolled in this service. ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... Labor force: total: 14 able-bodied men (1993) by occupation: no business community in the usual sense; some public works; subsistence ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... quiet here. Our little commune sent two hundred men only, but to take two hundred able-bodied men away makes a big hole, and upsets life in many ways. For some days we were without bread: bakers gone. But the women took hold and, though the bread is not yet very good, it serves and will as long as flour holds out. No one complains, though ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... society would aim to secure the common participation in the necessary social tasks—the drudgery and the "dirty-work." With the essential work performed in part by all able-bodied persons, no stigma would attach to those who were engaged in it, the class of economic pariahs would be eliminated, and each participant in the necessary economic work of the world would feel that he belonged to the group in which he was playing so ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... very much as usual: the shops are open; people walk about and chat, and smoke, and drink their coffee or absinthe, just as usual. The only difference is, that everyone is in some sort of uniform or other. One does not see a single able-bodied man altogether in civilian dress; and at night the streets are very dismal, owing to there being ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... already done a good deal at hunting linnets on their own account, in a clandestine and irregular manner. They were fond of linnet flesh, and were only too glad to have the assistance of an able-bodied ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... Edward Williams, in 1650, that two able-bodied laborers could seed sixty acres in wheat in the course of one season and reap the grain when it was ripe. The yield from such an area had a market value of four hundred and eighty pounds sterling. It was reported that these ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... freshness of tint, and a comeliness of appearance, among the bourgeoises and common people, which were not to be eclipsed even by the belles of Coutances. Our garcon de poste and his able-bodied quadruped having each properly recruited themselves, we set forward—by preference—to walk up the very long and somewhat steep hill which rises on the other side of Conde towards Pont Ouilly—in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... accumulated; or if the administration had not been embarrassed constantly by lack of soldiers and revenue, the resistance of New England to the Federal attempts to control her militia, to recruit her young men, and even to contemplate drafting her able-bodied citizens might never have arisen. But if the test had not come, the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut would not have put themselves on record as resisting the call of the President for their quota of militia to serve both ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... not been told. There are about eight hundred thousand inhabitants in the place. Some twenty thousand of these owe small sums for unpaid taxes, averaging about nine and a quarter cents to a man. To collect these sums, an army of seventy-two thousand able-bodied men, at salaries of one thousand dollars per annum, has been commissioned by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... now renewed in a much more oppressive form. Not only every laborer, but every member of a laborer's family above the age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages of an able-bodied man for at least several ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... ran. He would not have hesitated for a moment, in spite of the display of armed men ready to attack, for if he had felt free to act he would have chanced everything, depending as he felt he could upon his little party of thoroughly well-drilled able-bodied seamen, and boldly attacked at once; but he had to think of his captain and the great risk he ran of bringing him into difficulties and forcing him to answer for some international difficulty over the rights of the United States, which, if the American overseer ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... to be flogged for having trod on her gown; if Pievepelago the next morning refused to give audience to a poor devil of a pamphleteer that was come to ask his intercession with the Holy Office; if the Bishop at the same moment concluded the purchase of six able-bodied Turks from the galleys of his Serenity the Doge of Genoa—it is probable that, like the illustrious author of the drama, all were unconscious of any incongruity between ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... good-bye to us at the far side of the ford! How the fire of patriotism burned in our hearts, and how the sudden loss of all our strongest and best men left us helpless among secret cruel enemies! And then that spirit of manhood leaped up within us, the sudden sense of responsibility come to "all the able-bodied boys" to stand up as a wall of defence about the homes of Springvale. Too well we knew the dangers. Had we not lived on this Kansas border in all those plastic years when the mind takes deepest impressions? The ruffianism of Leavenworth and Lawrence and Osawatomie had ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 'oman must see what we can do for you. She aint as young as she used to be, and she mustn't work so hard. She must part with some of her own spinning and weaving to you. And I must work a little harder to pay for it. Which I am very willing to do; for I say, Hannah, when an able-bodied man is not willing to shift the burden off his wife's shoulders on to his own, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... hide too highly to remain, my dear captain." Having gained the corner of the boulevard St. Denis, Lanyard pulled up. "One moment, by your leave. You see yonder the entrance to the Metro—don't you? And here, a dozen feet away, a perfectly able-bodied sergent de ville? Let this fateful conjunction impress you properly: for five minutes after you have descended to the Metro—or as soon as the noise of a train advises me you've had one chance to get away—I shall mention ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... organize or class the militia as would enable us on any sudden emergency to call for the services of the younger portions, unencumbered with the old and those having families. Upward of three hundred thousand able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 26 years, which the last census shews we may now count within our limits, will furnish a competent number for offense or defense in any point where they may be wanted, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... whole force of the island; and they were defending their liberty by precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it. Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at large seemed more like a garrison under the power of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... told Mr. Milligan that I am sure Jack Landis is coming back here to try to kill me. I have asked for his protection. He has refused it. I intend to stay here and wait for him, Jack Landis. In the meantime I ask any able-bodied man who will do so, to try to stop Landis ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... city was then almost in ruins; its inhabitants were starving in the gutters; soldiers and civilians were dying. When Morillo entered its streets he found them almost deserted, and he made the few remaining persons suffer the worst tortures he could devise. The able-bodied men succeeded in escaping ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... the greatest possible harvest. The planters talked about their prospects, discussed the cotton markets, just as the farmers of the north discuss the markets for their products. I often saw Boss so excited and nervous during the season he scarcely ate. The daily task of each able-bodied slave during the cotton picking season war 250 pounds or more, and all those who did not come up to the required amount would get a whipping. When the planter wanted more cotton picked than usual, the overseer would arrange a race. The slaves ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... that Pleaseman able-bodied Took this voman to the cell; To the cell vere she was quodded, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thousand people is a low estimate of the number of lives lost from this town, but few of the bodies have been recovered. It is directly above the ruins and the bodies have floated down into them, where they burned. A walk through the town revealed a desolate sight. Only about twenty-five able-bodied men have survived and are able to render any assistance. Men and women can be seen with black eyes, bruised ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... hands or lips of mortal men than those whose attributes are more pleasing; and it is safe to assert that many a male monster has been rooted to his seat in street-cars by the coldly intellectual eye of some not altogether able-bodied feminine person. The recent victories all along the line of women over men in examination-rooms, and their more or less successful ventures in the fields of law, medicine, and newspaper enterprise, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... destruction of Louvain; of whole villages of innocent men, women, and children being wiped out; of the horrible crimes of the sinking of the Lusitania, the Falaba, and the Laconia; of the execution of Edith Cavell; of the carrying off into slavery, or worse than slavery, of the able-bodied women and men from the conquered territory—when Americans learned these horrors one after another, they at last were forced to acknowledge that, like the brutal Assyrian kings who sought to terrify their enemies into submission by standing as conquerors ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Then, I grieve to say, shame and its twin brother rage took possession of their weak humanity. Oh, yes! It was all of a piece! Why in the name of Folly hadn't he sent for an able-bodied man. Were they to be drowned ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... doing— getting ready for war, meaning business for everybody, from the Shiek-ul-Islam to the thieving tax-farmers of Bagdad—to the Kislar-Jinn of Abad-on with them. He has the census finished, and now the Pachas go listing the able-bodied, of whom they have half a million, with as many more behind. They say the young master means to make a sandjak ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... interests of mine, certain authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Edward Carpenter, H. G. Wells, but it would n't do, it made them too uncomfortable, they would n't play, I had to be silent. An intellect thus tied down by literality and decorum makes on one the same sort of an impression that an able-bodied man would who should habituate himself to do his work with only one of his fingers, locking up the rest of his organism and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... grappling, at tremendous outlay, with two rebellions abroad. Yet all her many parties cried for war. Popular subscriptions were taken to aid the impoverished treasury; reserves were called out; in Cuba, Blanco summoned all able-bodied men. The navy was supplemented by ships purchased wherever hands could be ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... brought much of their fruits to us in their little canoes, which are long and narrow boats, like troughs, hollowed out of single trees; but their cattle we bought on shore. I observed the people to be straight, well-limbed, and able-bodied men, of a very dark tawny colour. Most of the men, and all the women, were entirely naked, except merely enough to hide their parts of shame. Some few of the men wore long garments, after the fashion of the Arabs, whose language they spoke, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... village, stealing whatever they could lay their hands on, and mistreating the women and children. It was a terrible thing to do, but nothing new for the Prussians. As in other towns of which I have told you, all the able-bodied men of this village had gone to ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... badge. "You're out, too, my friend," he laughed. "Don't be foolish and try to buck the law. If you do, I shall have to place a nice little pair of handcuffs on you and throw you in jail—and if you resist arrest, I shall have to shoot you. I have one of these little restraining orders for every able-bodied man in the Laguna Grande Lumber Company's employ—thanks to Mr. Ogilvy's foresight; so it is useless to try to beat this game on ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... were under supervision; and in a day, if need were, a large number of men could be added to the forces of his Majesty's navy. But if the Admiralty became urgent in their demands, they were also willing to be unscrupulous. Landsmen, if able-bodied, might soon be trained into good sailors; and once in the hold of the tender, which always awaited the success of the operations of the press-gang, it was difficult for such prisoners to bring evidence of the nature of their former occupations, especially when none had leisure ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sovereign, cash. But he has to do all the bringing part of it on his own. Consequence is, you see boats rowing out to the ship, carrying men who have overstayed their leave; and, when they get near enough, the able-bodied gentleman in custody jumps to his feet, upsets the boat, and swims to the gangway. The policemen, if they aren't drowned—they sometimes are—race him, and whichever gets there first wins. If it's the policeman, he gets his sovereign. If it's the sailor, he is considered ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... thousand men, while today France has put fifteen or twenty times as many in the field. In the present war, when an army sustains a 10 per cent. loss it is not merely 10 per cent. of the army, but actually of the able-bodied men of the nation. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the Governor recited, impressively, "all able-bodied persons who will not work are put to work or deported. Have you made any effort ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done, and done immediately, to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty—to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... daughter might become a servant in the imperial household itself—though she could occupy only an humble position in the service. Certain farmers were privileged to wear swords. It appears that in the early ages of Japanese society there was no distinction between farmers and warriors: all able-bodied farmers were then trained fighting-men, ready for war at any moment,—a condition paralleled in old Scandinavian society. After a special military class had been evolved, the distinction between farmer and samurai still remained vague in certain parts ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you the basest thing an able-bodied man can ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... replied the Secessionist, "that you have four millions of brave, able-bodied men, while we have not, perhaps, more than two millions; but bear in mind that you are divided, and therefore weak; we ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... of Arbroath were not slow to answer the summons. There were neither lifeboats nor mortar-apparatus in those days, but there were the same willing hearts and stout arms then as now, and in a marvellously short space of time, hundreds of the able-bodied men of the town, gentle and semple, were assembled on these wild cliffs, with torches, rope, etcetera; in short, with all the appliances for saving life that the philanthropy of the times had ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... scratched, she pulled his hair, she bit him. But what can a woman do in the line of beating? Nothing! Her neighbors joined her, one, two, three; and all tried hard to take me out of the hands of the Catcher. What can a few women do against one able-bodied man? Nothing at all! That happened during the dinner hour. One of our neighbors got the best of the Catcher, a woman who happened rather to dislike me and my mother; they quarreled frequently. Perhaps on account of this very dislike she was not over-excited, and was ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... to tell how many armed men confronted them, so they fell back a little, but formed a cordon around the entire building. From the printing office to the old mill was a distance of only a few hundred feet, and every able-bodied inhabitant of Millville except Peggy McNutt and Sara Cotting—who had discreetly disappeared at the first sign of danger—was assisting Joe Wegg to protect the electric cable he was trying to connect. The men from ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal republics. The Committee of Public Safety, now installed in power at Paris, decreed a levee en masse of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the "organizer of victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts that sprang from the soil. On their side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and were embarrassed by the adhesion of very many royalists. Consequently ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... all strong, and, moreover, the constant presence of a sense of injury at the hands of life filled her very soul with a subtle poison, to her weakening vitality. She was a child hurt and worried and bewildered, although she was to the average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged woman; but David had not the average eye, and he saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There had always been about her a little weakness and dependency which had appealed to him. Now they seemed fairly to cry out to him like the despairing voices of the children ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wounded their pride and self-respect, and has not given them objects of ambition or preserved their ancient habits of labour and self-restraint. A hundred years ago the tribes were organized and disciplined communities. No family or able-bodied unit need starve or lack shelter; the humblest could count on the most open-handed hospitality from his fellows. The tribal territory was the property of all. The tilling, the fishing, the fowling were work which could not be neglected. The chief was not a despot, but the president of a council, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... his head as if he could not understand such an enormous loss where there were keen able-bodied men about. "But that's awful, dad. How could it happen? Where were your herders an' cowboys? An' Bill ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... imagination only, as there is nothing for the most gallant to stride here but Husky dogs), in making examination of the men below decks, got to their enquiries a technical reply that staggered them. One able-bodied seaman, busied with between-decks blubber, proved to be a medical man with degrees from two colleges. He subsequently made at the request of the Police a searching report on the state of health of the island community, adding suggestions for its improvement. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the millions of intelligent, able-bodied Americans, who could crush the tribe of Rockefeller as elephants crush snakes, rise with each sun and dig and delve and suffer that a Rogers may wallow in wealth and an Armour gain a greater income than the Rothschilds? Why are they so easily hoodwinked into imagining ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... shares by white tenants. He has an overseer, makes a snug income, and spends a good part of his winters in Baltimore and New York. He laughs when you ask him if he regrets slavery. Nothing would induce him to take care of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, furnishing perhaps thirty able-bodied men, littering the house with a swarm of lazy servants, and making heavy drafts on the meat-house and corn-crib, and running up ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Tosti had been to Norway, to Harold Hardraade, and asked him why he had been fighting fifteen years for Denmark, when England lay open to him. And how Harold of Norway had agreed to come; and how he had levied one half of the able-bodied men in Norway; and how he was gathering a mighty fleet at Solundir, in the mouth of the Sogne Fiord. Of all this Hereward was well informed; for Tosti came back again to St. Omer, and talked big. But Hereward and he had no dealings with ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... borough, and five or six in each village, we find, on an average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National Guards, while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put together do not amount to 300,000.[1246]—This is a small number for the enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this disorganized, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... en regle. It has cost the labors of myself and an able-bodied valet-de-place since yesterday morning, and the expenditure of five dollars and a half, to accomplish this great work. I have just been righteously abusing the Neapolitan Government to a native merchant whom, from his name, I took to be a Frenchman, but ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... going to say, Martha dear, is, I'm quite well and strong now, and I want to set about immediately looking for something to do. I ought to be able to support myself, you know, for I'm able-bodied, and not so stupid but that I managed to graduate from college. Once, two summers ago, I tutored—I taught a young girl who was studying to take the Wellesley entrance exams. And I coached her so well she went through ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... Laurens, a member of Washington's staff. In his own way Colonel Laurens was a man of parts quite as well as his father; he was thoroughly devoted to the American cause and Washington said of him that his only fault was a courage that bordered on rashness. He eagerly pursued his favorite project; able-bodied slaves were to be paid for by Congress at the rate of $1,000 each, and one who served to the end of the war was to receive his freedom and $50 in addition. In South Carolina, however, Laurens received little encouragement, and in 1780 he was called upon to go to France on a patriotic ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Utah says that the State militia is to consist of "able-bodied males," and I have not yet heard that the women who vote there have insisted that the word "male" be struck out of that clause of the Constitution. By no means, every woman expects to be exempt. After women ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... may have to lean on himself for a while. Uncle Sam needs every able-bodied man he can get these times and you look to be as strong as a mule. Here, take this card and go on through that door yonder to the second room down the hall and let Doctor Dismukes ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... saint, but he Of the Opera-house) could brisker be, There gathered a gloom around their glee— A shadow which came and went so fast, That ere one could say "'Tis there," 'twas past— And, lo! when the scene again was cleared, Ten of the dancers had disappeared! Ten able-bodied quadrillers swept From the hallowed floor where late they stept, While twelve was all that footed it still, On the Irish side of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... throughout the school that war was to be made upon Juno, and that every able-bodied boy must be ready when called out by the General. The minute they were dismissed, which, at this season of the year, took place at three o'clock, no interval being given for dinner, because there was hardly any afternoon, the boys gathered in a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... forth in silence and secrecy, with all the vigorous and able-bodied forces under his command, leaving the weary, the sick, and the infirm to the mercy of their enemies. The long column succeeded in making good their retreat, without exciting the suspicions of the Scythians. They took the route ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Canadian militia by law comprised every able-bodied man except the few specially exempt, like the clergy and the judges. A hundred thousand adult males were liable for service. Various causes, however, combined to prevent half of these from getting under arms. Those who actually ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the devil. If you were an able-bodied man, I'd get you, too—just to have a pair of you. Yelping, snapping curs, both of you." He played the dog as a fisherman plays ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... acquainted with the nature of our institutions, and the genius of our government. She determined to try the experiment of organized labor with negroes. Purchasing two thousand acres of land on the Bluffs, now known as Memphis, Tenn., she took a number of families, with fifteen able-bodied men, and, giving them their freedom, organized her work. Prostrated by illness, she was compelled to yield her personal supervision, and thus her attempt to civilize those people failed, and they were ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was always in touch with his own social world, and he had leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank, gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they reached port again. A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of evangelical habits. Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers, and costermongers ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... slender maiden of twelve summers, removing her elegant hat and passing her tapery fingers lightly through her fair tresses, "how sad it is—is it not?—to see able-bodied youths and young ladies wasting the precious summer hours in idleness ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... he never paid more than 15,000 drachmae for a slave. After the great conquests of the Romans, in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Greece, and the Orient, the market went down by reason of the multitude of human beings thrown upon it. An able-bodied, unlettered man could be bought for the price of an ox. Such were the men of Spain, Thrace, and Sardinia. Educated slaves from Greece and the East brought a higher price. We learn from Horace, that his slave Davus whom he has rendered so celebrated, cost him 500 drachmae.[3] Diodorus of Siculus ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... ditch March 7, 1877. All hands worked with a will. Part of the company moved down on to lands located for settlements. Most of the able-bodied men formed a working camp near the head of the ditch, where a deep cut had to ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... ourselves around it, and heard the little folks say the Ten Commandments, when there was a rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" [Our author afterwards explains the learned education of the maiden.] But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, and who now came to bring us word how things stood there. I therefore called to her directly, "Emergas amici," whereupon she came skipping joyously out, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... voyage, but I had for shipmates men who had come through the hard school of the merchant service of Europe. As boys, they had had to perform their ship's duty, and, in addition, by immemorial sea custom, they had had to be the slaves of the ordinary and able-bodied seamen. When they became ordinary seamen they were still the slaves of the able-bodied. Thus, in the forecastle, with the watch below, an able seaman, lying in his bunk, will order an ordinary seaman to fetch him his shoes ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... luck led him to a hamlet whose mean auberge served him bread and cheese with a wine singularly thin and acid. Here he enquired for a guide, but the one able-bodied man in evidence, a hulking, surly animal, on learning that Duchemin wished to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux, refused with a growl to have anything to do with him. Several times during the course of luncheon he caught the fellow eyeing him strangely, he thought, from a window of the auberge. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... for congratulating himself. The diversion which he had planned was terrible. The defenders of Irkutsk found themselves between the attack of the Tartars and the fearful effects of fire. The bells rang, and all the able-bodied of the population ran, some towards the points attacked, and others towards the houses in the grasp of the flames, which it seemed too probable would ere ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... minutes. It was not too early in the season for them to take possession of it, and they were still sufficiently strangers in London to suppose that seats were placed for the accommodation of the weary of all ranks and both sexes, and not merely for the benefit of nurse-maids and their charges, or of able-bodied tramps. The sisters prepared to talk over their own concerns and Redcross with the empressement of girls, to forget all about the moving crowd around them, and the grinding of that great mill of London in the traffic that is ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... that, until they made him let himself be taken away." The colonel, who listened and at the same time wrote letters, said that the thing that pleased him most during the last few days was the patriotic instinct of some cows. When the Hun evacuated Le Cateau he took away with him all the able-bodied Frenchmen and all the cows. But his retreat became so rapid and so confused, that numbers of the men escaped. So did the cows: for three days they were dribbling back ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... Kitchener has gone to the War Office, and in twelve days from the declaration of War our Expeditionary Force, the best trained and equipped army that England has ever put into the field, landed in France. The Dominions and India are staunch. Every able-bodied public school boy and under-graduate of military age has joined the colours. The Admiralty is crowded with living counterparts of Captain Kettle, offering their services in any capacity, linking up the Merchant Marine with the Royal Navy in one ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... instruction to the Committee to introduce a clause allowing out-door relief in all cases of able-bodied paupers married previously to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for many feet went over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and, getting up, surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the meeting, much superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to the large man, and the three or four other able-bodied persons who had rallied to them from among the audience, were taking every advantage of their superiority; and it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they thumped and maltreated their opponents. The sight of their brutality, indeed, rendered him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... England's home government are perfected and carried out, every man, woman and child will have to band together to repel invasion." Sir Percival lowered his voice. "If there are any able-bodied men ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... meeting-house. A rumor, which no one attempted to trace or authenticate, spread from lip to lip that the British regulars had landed on the coast and were marching upon the town. A scene of indescribable terror and confusion followed. Defence was out of the question, as the young and able-bodied men of the entire region round about had marched to Cambridge and Lexington. The news of the battle at the latter place, exaggerated in all its details, had been just received; terrible stories of the atrocities ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of a fatherly care to the masses than liberalism. This cannot be otherwise; for liberalism sets itself to educate the masses to self-responsibility, and each individual to thrift and self-reliance. The sight of an able-bodied beggar is, to a genuine liberal, a source of anger first, and only on further contemplation, of pity. He will exert all his energies to remove every obstacle from out of the way of his poorer brethren; he will preach wise economy, and facilitate it by personal sacrifices and legislative ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... he grasped what appeared to be a piece of parchment in the other. His voice, when he spoke, was deep and sonorous. He said, "I am a murderer. I am a ruffian. I crouch when I walk. I step noiselessly. I know something of the Spanish Main. I can do the lost treasure business. I have charts. Am able-bodied and a good walker. Capable of haunting a large park." He looked toward me beseechingly, but before I could make a sign I was paralyzed by the horrible sight which appeared ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... pathetic," said Oliver. "In his heart he would like to play the devil with the bishops and kick every able-bodied parson into the trenches—and there are thousands of them that don't need any kicking and, on the contrary, have been kicked back; but he has become half-petrified in the atmosphere of this place. It's lovely to come to as a sort of funk-hole of peace—but my holy aunt!—What ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... by substituting a rigid administration and contract management for the existing scenes of neglect, extravagance, jobbery, and fraud." Mr. Chadwick points out that "if no relief were allowed to be given to the able-bodied or to their families, except in return for adequate labor or in a well-regulated workhouse, the worst of the existing sources of evil—the allowance system—would immediately disappear; a broad line would be drawn between the independent laborers and the paupers; the numbers of paupers would be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... All right, jolly, well, and through with the difficulty. My father pleased about the Burns. Never travel in the same carriage with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer from Kent; the A.-B.'s speak all night as though they were hailing vessels at sea; and the fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a noisy market-place—such, at least, is my funeste experience. I wonder if a fruiterer from some place else—say Worcestershire—would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have brought back your man—not without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! He is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward your prisoner!' And the third stranger ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord Downy had cursed his fate, which had not made him an able-bodied porter, or an independent labourer in the fields, rather than that saddest of all sad contradictions, a nobleman without the means of sustaining nobility—a man of rank with no dignity—a superior ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... anecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came once to rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He was obliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the masseur of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator, her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, overjoyed to see that his wife was contented, was not conscious of the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... entitled to the satisfaction of their affectional and emotional impulses if they so desire, and on the other hand whether, since a high civilization involves a diminished birthrate, the community is not entitled to encourage every healthy and able-bodied woman to contribute to maintain the birthrate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... our outfit was complete—seven able-bodied men, With navy six and needle gun—our troubles did begin; Our way it was a pleasant one, the route we had to go, Until we crossed Pease River on the ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... big neighbour. "Well, I'm off tomorrow, Leonard. Don't mention it to my folks, but if I can't get into the army, I'm going to enlist in the navy. They'll always take an able-bodied man. I'm not coming back here." He held out his hand and Leonard took it with ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... subsequently all along the route, the country was astir with volunteers, and the war is all that seems to be alive, and even that doubtfully so. Nevertheless, the country certainly shows a good spirit, the towns offering everywhere most liberal bounties, and every able-bodied man feels an immense pull and pressure upon him to go to the war. I doubt whether any people was ever actuated by a more genuine and disinterested public spirit; though, of course, it is not unalloyed with baser ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... resources for bringing them together as no other has. To these outcast soldiers of his, unregimented roving banditti for the present, or unworking workhouse prisoners who are almost uglier than banditti; to these floods of Irish Beggars, Able-bodied Paupers, and nomadic Lackalls, now stagnating or roaming everywhere, drowning the face of the world (too truly) into an untenantable swamp and Stygian quagmire, has the Chief Governor of this country no word whatever to say? Nothing but "Rate in aid," "Time will mend it," "Necessary business ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... what scraps there were, and did not even have to stoop over to do it. He walked about in the clean, fresh air, and when it rained, he cuddled up against the stove in the pharmacy. The present paper-gatherer was a chemist; his predecessor had been a priest. It was a very nice position for an able-bodied man with some education, and Fouquet greatly desired it himself, only he feared he was not sufficiently well educated, since in civil life he was only a farm hand. So in his march up and down the trottoir he cast envious glances at the ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... another risk of the affair collapsing, by the French authorities declining to allow me to proceed. On we paddled, M'bo the head man standing in the bows of the canoe in front of me, to steer, then I, then the baggage, then the able-bodied seamen, including the cook also standing and paddling; and at the other extremity of the canoe- -it grieves me to speak of it in this unseamanlike way, but in these canoes both ends are alike, and chance alone ordains which is bow and which is stern—stands Pierre, the first officer, also ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that," cried Bessie. "No doubt everybody thought that, but it wasn't entirely Teddy's fault. If there is anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. Teddy was egged on to all sorts of indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the bell-boys up. If he'd stand on his head on the cashier's desk, the cashier would laugh first, and then, to get ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... a short council of war. It was agreed that every able-bodied man would go into the city. Nea and a few of the older men were detailed to stay by The Nebula and take care of ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... side alley to the Padshahi Gate where I found Wali Dad's house, and thence rode to the Fort. Once outside the City wall, the tumult sank to a dull roar, very impressive under the stars and reflecting great credit on the fifty thousand angry able-bodied men who were making it. The troops who, at the Deputy Commissioner's instance, had been ordered to rendezvous quietly near the Fort, showed no signs of being impressed. Two companies of Native Infantry, a squadron of Native Cavalry and a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... policy of the confederates, which opened the jails of the country, and put arms in the hands of the convicts, and pardoned every felon that would fight, might be expected to find a better use for an able-bodied fellow, like Gad, than ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... to become a draft animal, to be forced to lower himself to the level of an ox or an ass. It must have an insidious, demoralizing effect, too, upon the persons who ride in these little vehicles. I am not yet used to seeing able-bodied young foreigners, especially men, being pulled about by thin, tired, exhausted coolies. I feel ashamed every time I enter a rickshaw and contrast my well-being with that of the ragged boy between the shafts. I suppose I shall ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... can be interpreted in language alone. The church is but an obscuration on Christianity when it meets only to analyze the life of its Lord and never to exemplify His deeds. What must heaven think to see a thousand able-bodied men and women gather in a beautiful building to sing hymns of praise to their Diety [Transcriber's note: Deity?] and to listen to arguments about His divinity while, within block of them, there are, in sickness and squalor, distress and sorrow, the ones to whom He sent these people ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... exclusive laws. But, on the other hand, suppose this bill to be passed into law by this day month; declare war if you like the next day; and I assert that you will have no difficulty, within six weeks, to raise in that country 50,000 able-bodied, and what is better, willing-hearted, men, who will traverse the continent, or find their way to any quarter of the globe to which you may choose to direct their arms. The passing of this bill is worth to the British ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... point I cannot, of course, judge as well as the persons accustomed to and acquainted with the physical capacities of their slaves—that the labour is not judiciously distributed in many cases; at least, not as far as the women are concerned. It is true that every able-bodied woman is made the most of in being driven a-field as long as under all and any circumstances she is able to wield a hoe; but on the other hand, stout, hale, hearty girls and boys, of from eight to twelve and older, are allowed to lounge ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... to do the work with mental defectives and cripples and Bolsheviki, because every able-bodied puncher in the country had gone over to create a disturbance in Europe! Hadn't she combed out the county hospital and poor farm to get a haying crew? Didn't the best cowboy now on the pay roll wear a derby hat and ride a ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... her eyebrows to the extent of the eighth of an inch. She lowered them in a moment, however, for the tea was being brought in. It required two able-bodied men (in plush) to carry in a dainty little silver tray, with a little silver tea-pot of a pattern that silversmiths, for reasons which have never been fully explained, call "Queen Anne." One of the men, however, devoted himself to the care of the hot cakes of various subtle types which ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... exclaimed Mr. Rivers, "for they would walk into a trap. Some of these Indians have muskets and ammunition, and are therefore as well armed as our men. If many more of us were taken there would not be left able-bodied men enough to sail the sloop. 'Twould be better if they held off and waited for the Indians to take the initiative. My hope is that we will be able to treat with the savages for ransom,—that is, if the friar bears us no real ill will. See, here he comes again, ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... insupportable. The Spaniards have fooled him to the top of his bent; it has paid them to do so. Through his representations the ministry at home have distributed millions among them. Arms enough have been sent to furnish nearly every able-bodied man in Spain, and harm rather than good has come of it. Still, he is a very great man, and our generals are obliged to treat him with the greatest civility, and to pretend to give grave consideration to the plans that, if they emanated from any other man, would be considered ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... seems to be the seat of intellect, if a person is to take its quick and furious whisking as being given in reply to Mr. Lucre's observations, or by way of corroboration of the truth uttered by the huge and able-bodied individual who is astride of him. That individual is no other than the Rev. Father M'Cabe, who is dressed in a coat and waistcoat of coarse black broadcloth, somewhat worse for the wear, a pair of black breeches, deprived of their original gloss, and a pair of boots well greased with ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... will be offered for sale on Monday, September 10, at 12 o'clock, being the entire stock of the late John Graves. The negroes are in excellent condition, and all warranted against the common vices. Among them are several mechanics, able-bodied field-hands, plough-boys, and women with children, some of them very prolific, affording a rare opportunity for any one who wishes to raise a strong and healthy lot of servants for their own use. Also several mulatto ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... after all, he said to himself, for an able-bodied man? He could bear that well enough, if his life had not been poisoned, if hope hadn't been taken from him. She had spoilt him for everything else. His success, if ever he should succeed, would ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... head an' his wife's, an' bread in their two mouths; jest that, no more. He 'ain't had any children; nobody but himself an' his wife, an' she contented with next to nothin'. Jest a roof an' bread for them—jest that; an' he an able-bodied man, that's worked like a dog—jest that; an' he's got to give it up. Look at him, he's a sight for wise men an' ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of your State, and Commander-in-Chief of its army, I call upon every able-bodied man of the State, without regard to age, to enlist in its service. I command him who can obtain a weapon to march with our armies. I ask him who can repair or forge an arm to make it ready at once ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... address to you other than his own words. 'If, Athenians, you will now, though you did not before, adopt the principle of every man being ready, where he can and ought to give his service to the state, to give it without excuse, the wealthy to contribute, the able-bodied to enlist; in a word, plainly, if you will become your own masters, and cease each expecting to do nothing himself, while his neighbour does everything for him, you will then, with God's permission, get back your own, and recover what has been lost, and punish ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... terminations fore and aft, making her very dry on either the quarter-deck or forecastle. She might have numbered fifty men for her crew, and if you had looked in board over her bulwarks you would have seen that her complement was made up of men. There were none there but real able-bodied seamen—sea dogs, who had roughed it in all weather, and on ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly the owner of the face was the sacristan's daughter; and, but for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan: 'He was laughing in the church,' words which were answered only by a look of terror from ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the people seemed at its coldest. Defeats in the field and Copperheadism at home combined in their dispiriting and deadly work. Voluntary enlistment almost ceased. Thereupon Congress passed an act "for enrolling and calling out the national forces." All able-bodied citizens between twenty and forty-five years of age were to "perform military duty in the service of the United States, when called on by the President for that purpose."[50] This was strenuous earnest, for it portended ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... drawing something from them for the Advantage of my Countrymen, I shall take the Liberty to make an humble Proposal, that whenever the Trunk-maker shall depart this Life, or whenever he shall have lost the Spring of his Arm by Sickness, old Age, Infirmity, or the like, some able-bodied Critick should be advanced to this Post, and have a competent Salary settled on him for Life, to be furnished with Bamboos for Operas, Crabtree-Cudgels for Comedies, and Oaken Plants for Tragedy, at the publick Expence. And to the End that this Place should be always disposed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... well for that, and so do you; besides, it is far more perilous to venture out into the open, as you are about to do, than to remain here, where, united together as we are in a phalanx of stout, able-bodied men, in an almost impregnable position, we could resist any formidable attack in force. No, no, my boy; you may tell that to the marines. But do inform me, Wilton, what is your real motive in wishing to go ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... to the lure of downtown, which to any live man was in those days especially great. Every evening the "fellows" got together, jawed things over, played pool, had a drink or so, wandered from one place to another, looked with the vivid interest of the young and able-bodied on the seething, colourful, vital life of the new community. It was all harmless and mighty pleasant. Keith argued that he was "establishing connections" and meeting men who could do his profession good, which was more or less true; but it ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White |
