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Drudgery   Listen
noun
Drudgery  n.  The act of drudging; disagreeable and wearisome labor; ignoble or slavish toil. "The drudgery of penning definitions." "Paradise was a place of bliss... without drudgery and with out sorrow."
Synonyms: See Toll.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drudgery" Quotes from Famous Books



... their portent to the initiated eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, the cultivator lives his daydream. What there is of squalor, and drudgery, and carking care in his life melts into a brief oblivion, and he is a man in the presence of his God with the holy stillness of Nature brooding over him. With lengthening shadows comes labour and a re-awaking. The air is ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... advising you not to give up all idea of the theatre. You're too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... Jokai, by common consent the greatest Hungarian novelist of the nineteenth century, was born at Komarom on February 19, 1825. Trained for the law, as an advocate he achieved the distinction of winning his first case. The drudgery of a lawyer's office, however, proved uncongenial to him, and fired by the success of his first play, "The Jew Boy" ("Zsido fiu"), he went to Pest, where he devoted himself to journalism, in due course becoming editor of "Eletkepek," a leading Hungarian literary periodical. At the outbreak of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... salary added to his board, which enabled Tom to be independent of the shop, as far as liquorice was concerned, and to cut a very smart figure among the young men about Greenwich; for on Tom's promotion another boy was appointed to the carrying out of the medicine as well as the drudgery, and Tom took good care that this lad should clean his boots as well as the doctor's, and not make quite so free with the liquorice as he had done himself. I found out also that he had ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... such a much more practical standard for our boys, has always puzzled me. If an excellent opening offered itself to one of our sons at a bank, we should agree with his father in expecting him to take it, though it would involve the drudgery of sitting in a cramped attitude on a tall stool for hours and hours every day. Why should we accept life's necessary drudgery for our boys and refuse it for our girls? No life worth living can be had without ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... with all Humility and Simplicity, as they use to do, who thinking themselves safe and secure, behold the Captain comes into the City, where they were to do their work, and commands all these Indians, sleeping and taking their rest, after Supper, being wearied with the heavy drudgery of the day, to be slain by the Sword: And this stratagem he put in practice, to make a greater impression of fear on all the minds of the Inhabitants; and another time a certain Captain commanded the Spaniards to declare upon Oath, how many Casics and Indians every individual ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... believe men when they told us that it was unfeminine—hardly respectable—for women to be students and to aspire to the arts that bring fame and fortune. But men have never told us it was unfeminine for women to do the heavy drudgery that's badly paid. That kind of work had to be done by somebody, and men didn't hanker after it. Oh, no! Let the women scrub and cook and wash, or teach without diplomas on half pay. That's all right. But if they want to try their hand at the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... of all. And on the other hand, a nail ill-driven, a joint ill-fitted, a tracing clumsily done, anything to which a man had set his hand and not set it aptly, moved him to shame and anger. With such a character, he would feel but little drudgery at Fairbairn's. There would be something daily to be done, slovenliness to be avoided, and a higher mark of skill to be attained; he would chip and file, as he had practiced scales, impatient of his own imperfection, but resolute ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... transactions, he has by his side, as a secretary, a man of the name of Petry, who has received a diplomatic education, and does not want either subtlety or parts; and on him, no doubt, is thrown the drudgery of business. During a European war, Turreaux's post is of little relative consequence; but should Napoleon live to dictate another general pacification, the United States will be exposed, on their frontiers, or in their interior, to the same outrages ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... that in each of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but scientifically—sterilizing them—and do it at a saving of all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops, and read about the new science of agriculture, which has been built up in the last ten years; by which, with made soils and intensive culture, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... became his faithful hound, the friend who does the drudgery, the unpleasant tasks, for whom one sends when one has need of him and with whom one does not stand on ceremony. But it chanced through some parliamentary incident that the deputy became a minister. Six months later Jean Marin was appointed a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... perpetual drudgery and to that subordinate position to which woman is always consigned where civilization and religion are not, she was little less than a beast of burden, busy with cooking, the manufacture of pottery, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... Hurons had no bright side. It was a youth of license, an age of drudgery. Despite an organization which, while it perhaps made them less sensible of pain, certainly made them less susceptible of passion, than the higher races of men, the Hurons were notoriously dissolute, far ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... would have been to the apprentice lad, could he have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand, to comfort, and to help the toiling masses of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... power, strong enough to fill a cathedral, but altogether undisciplined. She was fond of music, and the organist at the church offered to teach her with his own daughters, if she would sing with them on Sundays; but she could not get through the drudgery of the exercises, and advanced only so far as to be able to take her proper part in a hymn. Here, however, she was almost useless, from incapability of proper subordination, the sopranos, tenors, and basses being well ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... pay; but the depressing thing is that Goldsmith should have been the man who had to do it. He may have done it better than any one else could have done—indeed, looking over the results of all that drudgery, we recognise now the happy turns of expression which were never long absent from Goldsmith's prose-writing—but the world could well afford to sacrifice all the task-work thus got through for another poem like the Deserted Village or the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... into a livelier, and gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, and while he enjoys himself there he may forget the evils of the present moment. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day's work, and gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation—something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... may understand that I continue to write, as Tony Lumpkin says, not to please my good-natured friends, "but because I can't bear to disappoint myself;" for that which I commenced as an amusement, and continued as a drudgery, has ended ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... one basis: that the will exists—that is, has been developed, and has become strong. One of the examples usually given to our children, to teach them to admire strength of will, is that of Vittorio Alfieri, who began to educate himself late in life, overcoming the drudgery of the rudiments by a great effort. He, who had hitherto been a man of the world, set to work to study the Latin grammar, and persevered until he became a man of letters, and, in virtue of his ardent genius, one of our greatest poets. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... enemy abandoning Gaza when Beersheba was captured, and falling back to the line of the wadi Hesi. His troops had been confined to trench warfare for months, digging and sitting in trenches, putting out wire, going out on listening patrols, sniping and doing all the drudgery in the lines of earthworks. They were hard and strong, their health having considerably improved since the early summer, but at the end of September the infantry were by no means march fit. Realising that, if General Allenby's operations were successful, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... at Balloch, with the aunt and the cousin of his friend Hope: and the lady Maria has made his beliefs begin to fail and totter, and he feels for something to hold firmly. He seems to think, at one moment, that the mere knowledge of the existence of such an one ought to compensate for lives of drudgery hemmed in with want; then he turns round on himself with, "How shall that be?" And, at length, he appeases his questions, saying that it must and should be so, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... had been specially selected, while still a young man, for the command of a battalion. He had made several campaigns. Already he had passed through the drudgery of the lower ranks of the service, and all the bigger prizes of the military profession appeared in view: and though the death in action of a colonel at the head of his regiment is as fine an end as a soldier can desire, it is mournful to record the abrupt termination of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... seeing his pet safe and alive that he set up a great shout; and the monkey, thus warned that boys who would chain him down to the drudgery of a circus ring were on his track, started off at full speed, scolding furiously ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... that he has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago: since then, he may be said to have lived on the sound of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too rich in intellectual wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery: he has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... life. Such taxation is barbarism and savageness. This heathenism always destroys home. The American Indian has no home; he lives an idle, lazy, good-for-nothing life, while his wife, or woman, as the case may be, does all the drudgery. For this very reason he was never elevated, as a general rule, above a shot-gun and a hound dog, and never had a home superior to Doolittle's birth-place, which, he said, was "at Cape Cod, Nantucket, and all along up and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... time he said this, or some speech of the same kind, the idea came more and more clearly into Mr. Wilkins's head, of how pleasant it would be to himself to take Dunster into partnership, and thus throw all the responsibility of the real work and drudgery upon his clerk's shoulders. Importunate clients, who would make appointments at unseasonable hours and would keep to them, might confide in the partner, though they would not in the clerk. The great objections to this course were, first and foremost, Mr. Wilkins's ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... needs type-making and type-setting machines of great complexity, printing-presses of great size and cost, and much curious machinery in the departments of electrotyping and bookbinding; but these machines, intended to relieve the drudgery of monotonous manual labor, do not supplant the necessity for a higher skill in craftsmanship. They really ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... the English, even the children speak both languages with fluency:' this fact, contrasted with the labour and pain entailed upon the boy who is learning Latin (to say nothing of the eventual disgust to literature which is too often the remote consequence), and the drudgery entailed upon the master who teaches Latin,—and fortified by the consideration, that in the former instance the child learns to speak a new language, but in the latter only to read it,—first ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... unjust stewards, and their homes will ere long be made desolate. Other parents prostitute the holy trust of home to money. They are "self-willed" stewards, "given to filthy lucre," who, for the sake of a few dollars, will "waste the goods" of their Lord, make their homes a drudgery, and work their children like their horses, bring them up in ignorance, like "calves in the stall," and contract their whole existence, and all their capacities, desires and hopes, in the narrow compass of ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... placed himself at the table next to Vogt and Weise. He was overcome with heat, and said he would rather hang himself than endure this horrible drudgery for two whole years. But Weise chaffed him in his genial way: "How do you know you could find a tough enough rope, brewer? you're no light weight!" And presently the brewer grew less melancholy; now that he could sit down things did not look so formidable, and he only ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... compared to your cook's implements, his knives and his caldrons, or to a baker's chimney and bins and kneading-tubs. Verily one may observe the souls of some men confined to their bodies, as to a house of correction, barely to do the drudgery and to serve the necessities thereof. It was our own case but even now. While we minded our meat and our bellies, we had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; but now the table is taken away, we are free to discourse among ourselves and to enjoy one another; and now our bellies are full, we have ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Sabine-like invasion upon the settlement a few months since, and stole away all the young and fair muchachas, leaving them but a few old squaws. These poor withered creatures, who are seldom seen far from the encampment, do all the drudgery. Their entire wardrobe consists of a fringe about two feet in length, which is formed of the branch or root—I cannot ascertain exactly which—of a peculiar species of shrub shredded into threads. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... had not been entirely reserved for him, had accumulated in a supreme delight, been kept back, like the best of all presents, for the last. He was glad that it wasn't too late for him to enjoy it. Here, suddenly, intervening in the midst of a prosaic drudgery, a tepid and meaningless period, was a magnificent relief. By God, would he take advantage of it! Would he! There was a knock at the door, and the hotel valet hung a freshly pressed suit in the closet; the shoes into which he intended to change were in a perfection of readiness; laid out were ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... fantastic—has that a merely evil root? No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of "the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;" angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life. It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... so engrossed in getting rich that we forget that by and by, when we have become rich, we shall have to learn how to live; for work can never be an end in itself; it is a "means of grace" when it is not drudgery; and it must, in the long run, be a preparation for play. For play is not organized idleness, frivolity set in a fanciful order; it is the normal, spontaneous exercise of physical activity, the wholesome gayety of the mind, the natural expression of the spirit, without self-consciousness, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... of Mary! The sword has now a heart—and thine the glory! So now; but, in the days of which we are writing, for captivity there was drudgery on walls, and in the streets and mines, and the galleys both of war and commerce were insatiable. When Druilius won the first sea-fight for his country, Romans plied the oars, and the glory was to the rower not less than the marine. These ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... sooner was the wedding over, than the stepmother began to show her bad temper. She could not bear her stepdaughter's good qualities, that only showed up her daughters' unamiable ones still more obviously, and she accordingly compelled the poor girl to do all the drudgery of the household. It was she who washed the dishes, and scrubbed down the stairs, and polished the floors in my lady's chamber, and in those of the two pert misses, her daughters; and while the latter slept on good featherbeds in elegant rooms, furnished with full-length looking-glasses, their ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... in procuring a temporary post in a lawyer's office as a clerk. The drudgery was terrible. Daily, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, he found himself chained to the desk, and obliged to go through the dullest and most mechanical routine, the only respite being half an hour in the middle of the day, which he spent in dining at an eating-house. Nursed ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... enough money to pay my poker debts and purchase iced drinks to soothe the asperities of the game. When there is anything big going on anywhere in the country, I am there, with other fellows to do the drudgery; I writing the picturesque descriptions and interviewing the big men. My stuff goes red-hot over the telegraph wire, and the humble postage stamp knows my envelopes no more. I am acquainted with every hotel clerk that amounts to anything ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... education, sir, has been so different from what would be required in that station," resumed her husband, choking with vexation, at the idea of his beauteous high-born bride being doomed to the drudgery ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... counted on marrying comfortably enough some day, and accepted board and lodging at home as one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd take that, cheerfully oblivious to the fact, as naturally one might expect them to be, that by ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... are at ease, whose lives, to use Wordsworth's felicitous phrase, are made up "of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows"—it is difficult for such even faintly to apprehend the dullness, the drudgery, and the hardships of those who, even at the best estate, are obliged to live in such surroundings. The vast metropolis a few years ago was for a short time shaken out of its lethargy by a voice that would be heard, when The ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... the days of my youth, those merry days of California before the gold was about her dear form like prisoner's chains; before the greed of the States and England had forced us into the weary drudgery of the earth, and made us ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison

... is as wonderful, as their remuneration is unworthy of the opulent classes who derive enjoyment from their labour. They consist, for the most part, of Shropshire and Welsh girls, who walk to London at this season in droves, to perform this drudgery, just as the Irish peasantry come to assist in the hay and corn harvests. I learnt that these women carry upon their heads baskets of strawberries or raspberries, weighing from forty to fifty pounds, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... mean quite all I said; but I am angry and disappointed. I pictured to myself the labourer, English, Scotch, or Irish—a man whom I know, and have lived with and worked for some years, emigrating, and, after a few years of honest toil, which, compared to his old hard drudgery, was child's-play, saving money enough to buy a farm. I pictured to myself this man accumulating wealth, happy, honest, godly, bringing up a family of brave boys and good girls, in a country where, theoretically, the temptations to crime are all ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... couldn't earn an income from the farm if I had a farmhouse without modern improvements," Mrs. Tupper declared. "Reducing drudgery to a minimum is only plain business sense. Laundry work, scrubbing, and dishwashing have a low economic value. Such unskilled labor eats up the time and strength one needs for the more profitable and interesting ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... see a man, after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his youth,—mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in his shirt-sleeves,—and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then went to oversee the laborers at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... softest bed to lie on, nor them that sup on the richest pasties that most enjoy their supper. If a man wants to be comfortable, he must keep his heart clear of envy, and put a good will into his work. I believe a man may come to take pleasure in any thing, even the veriest drudgery, that brings a good heart to it and does his best ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... copied an agreement, each for the other, and had sworn an oath ever to remain true to that solemn bond.... She had brought nothing to him, but herself; not even affection. He, on the other hand, had saved her from a life of drudgery by elevating her to a position where, free of the necessity of struggling for a bare existence, she might hope to consummate the fruition of at least a part of her ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... business and profession of women, if it is raised to the level of the other great businesses and professions, and managed quickly, efficiently and economically, will cease to be regarded as drudgery and take its real place among the arts ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... November, 1787, and the companionship of the two friends was for a time interrupted. To part with Coleridge, to exchange the ease and congenial scholastic atmosphere of the Hospital for the res angusta domi, for the intellectual starvation of a life of counting-house drudgery, must have been a bitter trial for him. But the shadow of poverty was upon the little household in the Temple; on the horizon of the future the blackening clouds of anxieties still graver were gathering; and the youngest child was called home ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... one of a large orphan family, living on Port Royal Island, S.C. When her mother died, she went to live with a colored woman who made her work very hard, 'tote' wood and water, hoe cotton and corn, do all manner of drudgery, rise at daybreak, and live on scanty food. Laura suffered from want, exposure and abuse. The freed-women of the plantation looked with pity into her eyes, and desired her to run away. But she replied, 'Aunt Dora will run after me, and when she done cotch me, she'll stripe me well with the lash; ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... ill-treatment on my husband's part, but from poverty and want. I came of a wealthy family, and had been accustomed from my earliest youth to order and comfort; and now I frequently knew not where I should lay my head, or find a little money to buy the commonest necessaries. I performed household drudgery, and endured cold and hunger; I worked secretly for money, and gave lessons in drawing and music; and yet, in spite of all my exertions, there were many days when I could hardly put anything but dry bread before my poor children for their dinner." These children were two ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... earliest times taken the standpoint that the masses of people are of crude susceptibility and clumsy intelligence, "sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery; and religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life." (Schopenhauer.) Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... untiring whirl and tangle of court life and gaiety Rallywood lived and moved with a growing enjoyment that half surprised himself, and for which he accounted on the score of change from the dull drudgery of the frontier. His acceptance by the Guard had been thorough; even the colonel-in-chief, Count Sagan, whose strongest point was not courtesy, had given him a pronounced recognition. The pretty Countess demanded a good deal of his attention ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... for, was expected by certain old landlords in Scotland even in the youth of the author. In requital mine host was always furnished with the news of the country, and was probably a little of a humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... strange madness that possessed her, now pounding harder to still her tumultuous thoughts. She did not know what it was that she expected, only something great and new and wonderful, something to lift her at last from the drudgery of her work and make her feel young and gay. Something to rouse her up to the wild joy of living and make her forget her misfortunes. To be poor, and deaf, and alone—all these were new things to Mary Fortune; but she was none of them ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... at Brook Farm. Every one served but no one was hired to serve. Household drudgery was reduced to the lowest practicable minimum. We did not live on the fat of the land, and that made a wonderful difference in the kitchen work,—that was at first. Later we had to employ farm-laborers and mechanics and as they needed meat for strong men, it became necessary for greasy Joan ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... is doing the fundamentals of reform. The studies of Miss Goldmark of industrial fatigue, recuperative power and maximum productivity are contributions toward that distant and desirable period when labor shall be a free and joyous activity. Every suggestion which turns work from a drudgery to a craft is worth our deepest interest. For until then the labor problem will never be solved. The socialist demand for a better distribution of wealth is of great consequence, but without a change in the very nature of labor society will not have achieved the happiness ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... at this British sentiment; "as a man of self-respect, you have only one course left, if your father refuses to apologise. You must cast off his tyranny; you must prove yourself a man; you must begin life upon your own account. No more of this drudgery, and slavery for others, who allow you no rights in return. But a nobler employment among free people, with a chance of asserting your courage and manhood, and a certainty that no man will think you his bondslave because you were born upon ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... childhood and dreaming youth. The dull monotony of daily toil is broken only by the gayety of the thoughtless and the Saturday trip to town. The toil, like all farm toil, is monotonous, and here there are little machinery and few tools to relieve its burdensome drudgery. But with all this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a day ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... tent. He showed his men how it should be done, selecting a bit of ground that sloped away a little to one side, setting the pegs at the proper angle, and digging a little trench around the whole to carry off the water. Maurice was excused from the usual nightly drudgery on account of his sore foot, and was an interested witness of the intelligence and handiness of the big young fellow whose general appearance was so stolid and ungainly. He was completely knocked up with ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... worked all day in the breaker, who had no father and no mother, and whose name was—Ralph! Both wife and daughter had listened eagerly to the tale, and had made him promise to look carefully to the lad and help him to some better occupation than the drudgery ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... Society, as originally constituted, was Edmund Gurney. Gurney was a man of the rarest sympathies and gifts. Although, like Carlyle, he used to groan under the burden of his labors, he yet exhibited a colossal power of dispatching business and getting through drudgery of the most repulsive kind. His two thick volumes on 'Phantasms of the Living,' collected and published in three years, are a proof of this. Besides this, he had exquisite artistic instincts, and his massive volume on 'The Power of Sound' was, when it ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... something to live for, otherwise they become discontented or dull. People wonder at the present unrest among the working classes. But to me this unrest is inevitable to the conditions in which they live. They have no ideal to light up their drudgery with glory. They cannot express themselves in the dull labour which is their daily task. They just have to go on and on doing the same monotonous jobs, not in order to enjoy life, but just in order to live at all. Their "rut" is well-nigh unendurable. Of what good, for example, is education, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... is never paid for all she does. Her salary is not augmented in proportion to all the extra help she gives to the backward or delicate pupil—to the hours of drudgery, outside school hours, willingly given in order to be prepared for every eventuality of school life. Such things are never paid for in money, the only reward is in the partial realization of the ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home

... nonsense, Patty, and you know it. The straight truth is, that you don't like school life and school restraint. Now some girls enjoy the fun and pleasures of college life, and think that they more than compensate for the drudgery of actual study." ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... and me, 'tis a little kind of venture that we make, in doing this Don's drudgery for him; for the whole nation of them is generally so pocky, that 'tis no longer a disease, but a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... is no longer plodding, ox-like drudgery, nor is the farm a place of humdrum, brainless routine. Science offers her aid on every hand, and beauty, in numberless forms, is ever present to those who have eyes and hearts capable of recognizing it. The farmer has a literature of his own, which every year is growing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... Paul's example as well as his precept. A Christian workman wielding chisel or trowel for Christ's sake will impress 'them that are without.' Dignity depends, not on the nature, but on the motive, of our work. 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery divine.' It is permissible to take the opinion of those who are not Christians into account, and to try to show them what good workmen Christ can turn out. It is right, too, to cultivate a spirit of independence, and to prefer a little earned to abundance given as a gift or alms. Perhaps some of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... stole it, and came home to wave it like a triumphal banner in the bosom of the excited family. The tattered paper still exists, folded away with other relics of those early days, so hard and yet so sweet, when the first small victories were won, and the enthusiasm of youth lent romance to life's drudgery." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... had gone over from Rochester to see. At No. 11 Ordnance Terrace the little Charles Dickens lived from 1817 to 1821, and at No. 18 St. Mary's Place from 1821 to 1823, the financial troubles, which eventually drove the family into the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Charles himself into the sordid drudgery of the blacking-shop by Hungerford Stairs, having already enforced a migration to a cheaper and meaner house. In Clover Street (then Clover Lane) the little Dickens went to a school kept by a Mr. William ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... tribes are a most pitiable lot of hard working, ragged and dirty humanity. Upon them falls all the drudgery of the camp; they are "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and bend under immense burdens piled upon their backs, while thousands of ponies browse, undisturbed, in every direction. As the troops are withdrawn, the squaws swoop ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make her things clean, and be nasty itself. At length, worn out to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use, of kindling ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... also established at Tiverton an iron-foundry and works for the manufacture of agricultural implements, which proved of great convenience to the district. It was a favourite idea of his that steam power was capable of being applied to perform all the heavy drudgery of life, and he laboured for a long time at the invention of a steam-plough. In 1832 he so far completed his invention as to be enabled to take out a patent for it; and Heathcoat's steam- plough, though it has since ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... invoice-books and similar literature with endless arithmetical calculations began to float before his mental vision. With intense regret he reflected that if he had only used reasonably well the brief period of life which as yet lay behind him, he might by that time have been done with initial drudgery and have been entering on a brilliant career in one of the learned professions. As to the army and navy, he was too old to get into either, even if he had possessed interest, which he did not. Sternly did he reproach his departed uncle when he brooded over his wrongs, and soliloquised thus:—"You ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... whatever touched her feelings or awoke the vivid impressions of her young fancy; and I found some trouble in curbing within rational limits her natural and fascinating prepossessions. As she grew older, and passed what she deemed the drudgery of learning, and drew nearer, with rapid steps, to Thought's promised land of compensation, we constantly read and conversed together. We dwelt on the inspired pages of the poets, I, with old age's returning love for the romantic, and increasing reverence for the true, and she, with the intense, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... narrow! The truth is, there is no straitness, no bondage, no scantiness, but in sin. That is the most abominable vassalage, and the greatest thraldom of the immortal spirit; to be so basely dragged by the flesh downward, to the vilest drudgery, and to be so pinched and hampered(449) within the narrowness of created and perishing things. To speak properly, there is no slavery but this of the spirit; for it is not so contrary to the nature and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... finished the dreary drudgery of drink and sauntered out. Five minutes later, having exercised the proper caution, he was in Room 613, and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... own family to do more than provide the barest necessities of life. Charles Buonaparte was an idle, careless man and the family poverty bore hardly on his wife Letitia, who had been married at fifteen and compelled to perform much drudgery. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... "I first condemned myself to the drudgery of this Reply, I intended nothing but a serious prosecution of my Argument, and to let the World see that it is not reading Histories or Plays or Gazettes, nor going on pilgrimage to Geneva, nor learning ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies and fed him carefully with hay and corn. But when the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment. War was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Soldier put on his charger its military trappings, and mounted, being clad in his heavy coat of mail. The Horse fell down straightway under ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... slavery of five years, of five years taken from the best part of life, and wasted in menial drudgery or in recreations duller than even menial drudgery, under galling restraints and amidst unfriendly or uninteresting companions. The history of an ordinary day was this. Miss Burney had to rise and dress herself early, that she might be ready to answer ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... such a lamentably meagre intellectual equipment as to be hopelessly inadequate as companions. Even the eldest, almost her own age, could only read with difficulty words of two syllables; and taste in dress was beyond their comprehension. In the long vista of future years she saw nothing but dreary drudgery at her detested old trade without prospect ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... Secretaryship: 'It was a very difficult task to Mr. Hyde, who had most credit with him, to persuade him to submit to this purpose of the King cheerfully, and with a just sense of the obligation, by promising that in those parts of the office which required most drudgery he would help him the best he could, and would quickly inform him of all the necessary forms. But, above all, he prevailed with him by enforcing the ill consequence of his ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... a most singular contrariety of opinion prevailing in the community, in regard to the pleasantness of the business of teaching. Some teachers go to their daily task, merely upon compulsion: they regard it as intolerable drudgery. Others love the work: they hover around the school-room as long as they can, and never cease to think, and seldom to talk, of their ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary; but it has been drudgery which they regarded as the price of success. Addison amassed as much as three folios of manuscript materials before he began writing. Newton wrote his Chronology fifteen times over before he was satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his Memoir nine times. Hale ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... not possible to know if I am mistaken or not. And when shall I know? The day after the first performance, if I have it performed, which is not certain. There is no fun in anything except work that has not been read to any one. All the rest is drudgery and PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS, a horrible thing. So make fun of all this GOSSIP; the guiltiest ones are those who report it to you. I think it is very odd that they say so much against you to your friends. No one indeed ever says anything ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... erring, or the tremendous efforts that he has made, and is still making, for the laboring poor. You can't know this, or else I'd tell you, Miss Brooke, what you would be doing! You would be working heart and soul to lighten his burdens and relieve him of the incessant drudgery that interferes with his higher work, instead of sitting here day after day reading yellow-backed novels ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... a reason for this hostility to domestic employments. It is because mothers, almost universally, consider their occupations as mere drudgery, and bring up their children in the same spirit. And what else could be expected as the result? It would be an anomaly in the history, of human nature, if the female members of families were to grow up in love with ordinary ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... females wear braslets on their wrists of copper brass or Iron in various forms. I think the most disgusting sight I have ever beheld is these dirty naked wenches. The men of these nations partake of much more of the domestic drudgery than I had at first supposed. they collect and prepare all the fuel, make the fires, assist in cleansing and preparing the fish, and always cook for the strangers who visit them. they also build their houses, construct ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... finding fault with one another; how, indeed, could one of us poor devils be in a position to find fault with another, when we were all of us half dead and, as it were, turned to stone? For the heavy drudgery seemed to crush all feeling out of us. But silence is only terrible and fearful for those who have said everything and have nothing more to say to each other; for men, on the contrary, who have never begun to communicate with one another, it is easy ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... the punishment seems barbarous and senseless, except from the point of view of getting rid of troublesome pupils. Balzac, however, welcomed the relief from ordinary school life, and indeed manoeuvred to be shut up. In the cells he had leisure to dream as he pleased, he was free from the drudgery of learning his lessons, and he managed to secrete books in his cage, and thus to absorb the contents of most of the volumes in the fine library collected by the learned Oratorian founders of the college. The ideas in many of the learned tomes were far ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... parents, will cater to his consuming passion for learning, and offer him the education which the limited resources of his family cannot provide. We save him from the drudgery of commercialism, and open to him the life of the scholar. We suggest to him a career consecrated to study and holy service. The Church educates him—he serves his fellow-men through her. Once ordained, his character is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... thought much about it before, I always hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It was just drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... a little. "Why is it," he exclaimed, "that every other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist's work is supposed to be mere play? Good God! don't we suffer enough? Have we not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious gathering of statistics and troublesome search into details? Have we not an appalling weight of responsibility on us?—and are we not at the mercy ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... follows:—One morning, instead of making the best of his way to school, (which he was constantly ordered to do) happening very luckily to be overtaken by Tom Sharper, and Dick Lackwit, they prudently agreed to avoid the intolerable drudgery of the hornbook, by playing truant and indulging themselves in the profitable diversions of sitting all day on the bank of a lonesome brook to fish for minows; they had pretty good sport, as they called it, for the first hour; but then Mr. Sharper's line happening to be entangled ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous

... still playing the march and lending to this great display the unity of music. We dismounted and watched from the turf of the roadside a pageant which the accident of an ordered and servile life afforded us; for it is true of armies that the compensation of their drudgery and miserable subjection is the continual opportunity of these large emotions; and not only by their vastness and arrangement, but by the very fact that they merge us into themselves, do armies widen the spirit of a man and give it communion with the majesty of great numbers. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... had by her summer's work in the stock company earned immunity from drudgery, she had earned no more than that. With the exception of this one gown, she dressed almost as simply as in the old days. She confined her wardrobe to one or two serviceable one-piece dresses, a coat suit and a quantity of dainty white silk blouses and ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... more people don't try it," Randolph exclaimed. "When I look around me in the train and see the care-worn, harassed faces the men wear, I wonder they don't break loose from their drudgery and go to living. What's the use of existing if you have to drudge continually for your bread, and must eat even that in debt ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... see to that. Do you seriously believe that I'm going to let you go back to that drudgery, and kick my heels waiting for four months? You don't understand the kind of man ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, God becomes one, unrivalled ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... green leaves. In some cases this mental chlorosis reached such a height as almost to nauseate one with Nature, when in the society of the victims; and surfeited companions felt inclined to rush to the treadmill immediately, or get chosen on the Board of Selectmen, or plunge into any conceivable drudgery, in order to feel that there was still work enough in the universe to keep it sound and healthy. But this, after all, was exceptional and transitory, and our American life still needs, beyond all things else, the more habitual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... increasing co-operation and to the organization of the growers of various commodities for marketing their crops. The fruit growers of California and the tobacco growers of Kentucky have furnished interesting examples of such organizations. Under the improved conditions there is less drudgery on the farm; the farmer does more work, produces more, and yet has more leisure than formerly. Better roads, rural free mail delivery, telephone and electric lines are removing the isolation of country life, and to some extent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the poor, despised, "frog-eating Mounseer Jacques" of boys' stories, the butt of all their facetious brutality? If ever anything was calculated to make a man diabolique! I trust biographers will not forget to place all this depressing drudgery to our "vagabond's" credit. Think of it! The first poet of France correcting French exercises! The poet of the passions conjugating the verb aimer in its ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... to that wretched drudgery," said Mr. Longworth, in his impetuous, nervous manner. "Do not imagine you are ever to do it again. Tell me," he said, lowering his voice, and leaning toward me so that he could see my face, shaded by the vine-hung ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... true. Dick would never have succeeded as a business man; he was too full of crotchets and speculations to be content to run in narrow grooves. The notion of money-making was abhorrent to him; the idea of a city life, with its hard rubs and drudgery, was utterly distasteful to him. "One would have to mix with such a lot of cads," he would say. "English, pure and undefiled, is not always spoken. If I must work, I would rather have a turn at law or divinity; the three old women with the eye between ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... though I have picked out the noxious creature to be anatomised, yet doth scarce excuse the offensiveness of the scent and fouling of my fingers: therefore, I will here break off abruptly, leaving many a vein not laid open, and many a passage not searched into. But if I have undergone the drudgery of the most loathsome part already (which is his personal character), I will not defraud myself of what is more truly pleasant, the conflict with, if it may be ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... vanishing from her enfeebled arms. What use to found colleges for girls whom even the high-school breaks down, or to induct them into new industrial pursuits when they have not strength to stand behind a counter? How appeal to any woman to enlarge her thoughts beyond the mere drudgery of the household, when she "dies daily" beneath the exhaustion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... and good. In a thousand disingenuous ways, backed by nimble sophistry, the whole ruling class, with its clouds of retainers, turned out either an increasing flood of praise of these conditions, or masses of misinforming matter which tended to reconcile or blind the victim to his pitiful drudgery. The masters of industry, who reaped fabulous riches from such a system, were covered with slavish adulation, and were represented in flowery, grandiloquent phrases as indispensable men, without whom the industrial system of the country could not be carried on. Nay, even more: while being ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... taught that her mission is to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is unwilling, therefore, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... than three months. C——sickened at the expense; and, as the people were now indifferent to my fate, he looked round for an opportunity of ridding himself of a useless charge. He had previously attempted to engage me in the drudgery of husbandry. I drove the plough for one day to gratify him, but I left it with a firm resolution to do so no more, and in despite of his threats and promises, adhered to my determination. In this ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... ignorant and improper use of the bodily functions. Then come weakness and disease and shortened life, not to speak of the misery included in these and the enjoyment missed. In the chain of results comes the toil that is drudgery. Not work, but excessive work, more than one should do, with less strength than one should have. Work itself under natural conditions is always a delight. But through sin has come strain, tugging, friction, unequal division. The changes ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... correspondent of the Charleston "Mercury," and in 1864 he became editor of the "South Carolinian," published first at Columbia and later at Charleston. He also served for a time as assistant secretary to Governor Orr. The advance of Sherman's army reduced him to poverty, and he was compelled to the greatest drudgery in order to earn a bare living. His health soon broke down, and he died of hemorrhage of the lungs. The following little poem seems, almost, to have been written under a presentiment, so accurately does it describe the closing incidents of the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... contemplative sitting on a log and talking increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of the woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about the woods-life or the various problems of existence, than cut wood, or busy himself in the drudgery of the camp. His critics went so far as to say, "Old Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same of Socrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrates lived, thought he was lazy. Probably ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... charmed with his merry laughter, and felt infinite joy in seeing him about him, healthy and vigorous, and without a care. Florent for his part remained very slim and lean in his threadbare coat, and his face began to turn yellow amidst all the drudgery and worry of teaching; but Quenu grew up plump and merry, a little dense, indeed, and scarce able to read or write, but endowed with high spirits which nothing could ruffle, and which filled the big gloomy room in the Rue Royer ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the feet and hoofs of the preceding divisions. Happily the march of Napoleon was not harassed, like that of Hannibal, by the assaults of living enemies. The mountaineers, on the contrary, flocked in to reap the liberal rewards which he offered to all who were willing to lighten the drudgery ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... confer it. Who has not seen high officials leave a counselor with brave intentions, and an instant after return to him, from I know not what fascination, with a perplexity that gave the lie to the wisest resolutions? "Oh!" they say, "we will not be caught there again! what drudgery!" The more shamefaced add, "I'd like to see you in my place!" When a minister says that, be sure he has no longer a head. There is indeed one of them, but only one, who, without having lost his head, has often used this phrase ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... dream of my life has been realized. In youth I saw the orphans of the worker scattered at a blow, little brothers and sisters doomed to a life of drudgery, and never to see one another again. No longer need such things be. The humblest worker can afford to join an association that guarantees a home and an education to his children. In Mooseheart the children are kept together. Family life goes on, and with it comes an education better ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... working drudge like poor Jan; and the Church, for which he had not any liking, he was by far too conscientious to embrace only as a means of living. There remained the Bar; and to that he turned his attention, and resolved to qualify himself for it. That there would be grinding, and drudgery, and hard work, and no pay for years, he knew; but, so there might be, go to what he would. The Bar did hold out a chance of success, and there was nothing in it derogatory to the notions in which he had been reared—those ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the flower, I asked them to observe the roots, and see in what they were embedded. They replied, "The roots are in the mud." That lily illustrates truthfully the spiritual character of woman's work. Though her life may be passed in drudgery, yet the flower of her life is seen in the neatness, beauty, and comfort of the home, and her joy is derived from the commendation received by her diligence and toil. Truly has the poet told, in this homely ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... who have been guilty of crimes that are not worthy of death: Some are sentenced to remain there ninety-nine years, some forty, some twenty, some less, down to five, in proportion to their offence; and during their banishment, they are employed as slaves in making ropes, and other drudgery.[141] In another island, called Purmerent, they have an hospital, where people are said to recover much faster than at Batavia.[142] In a third, called Kuyper, they have warehouses belonging to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... from their help, and take him out at sunrise; work him under a burning sun, and a heartless overseer, and the threat of the lash until the night fall; give him not a penny's wages but sorrow; leave him no hope but the same dull, dreary round of endless drudgery for many years to come; let him see no opening by which to escape, but through a long, narrow prospect of police courts, of gaols, of triangles, of death cells, and of penal settlements; let him all the while be clothed in a dress of shame, that shows to every living soul his ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... them during times of trade depression and unemployment in previous years. The human side of the workshop has, therefore, to be built up, and you cannot hope to build it up upon any foundation of drudgery such as the workmen in the main have had to live under, and, as I have said, it will pay the country to conciliate the men on these terms. It is a high ideal, but it is attainable. I believe it is attainable because we have seen it in another sphere of sacrifice ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... have his house in town, and make a figure with an extraordinary number of domestics. The plough-boys, cow-herds, and lower hinds are debauched and seduced by the appearance and discourse of those coxcombs in livery, when they make their summer excursions. They desert their dirt and drudgery, and swarm up to London, in hopes of getting into service, where they can live luxuriously and wear fine clothes, without being obliged to work; for idleness is natural to man — Great numbers of these, being disappointed in their expectation, become ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... Milton's L288 a year for his lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's L600 a year, or Thurloe's L800, for their more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... light-hearted as a schoolboy just escaped from drudgery, while Bertie's Nellie, as a matter of course, was overcome ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... required. But to him, for that very reason, all that can be given should be given; he should have every facility for learning what he can about this earth, its composition, its capabilities; lest his intellect, crushed and fettered by that artificial drudgery which we for a time miscall civilisation, should begin to fancy, as too many do already, that the world is composed mainly of bricks and deal, and governed by acts of parliament. If I shall have awakened any townsmen ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... to raise the harvests that ancestor's heroic but feeble efforts could not secure. She has mechanical and commercial aids as housemother such as the primitive woman never imagined. She has been released from much of the drudgery which burdened her grandmother in the domestic stage of industry. She is under social protection such as no previous woman enjoyed in the solitary household of the past. And in the United States the Federal ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... property on which taxes were paid by women. It was impossible to obtain these in New York City, but in three-fifths of the towns and cities outside it was found to be $348,177,107. In Brooklyn women paid one-fourth of all the taxes. The drudgery of preparing these tax lists and recounting and labeling all the petitions was done chiefly by Miss ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... also that if the matter reached the ear of our only servant she would immediately take her departure. Help is not easy to obtain in A——, and if it were known that our home was haunted we would be obliged to do all our own drudgery in future. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... appears, was a very fine looking, gentlemanly person, had rendered her very impatient of her former menial employments, and she soon became virtually the mistress of the house. Grace Marks was hired to wait upon her, and perform all the coarse drudgery that Hannah considered herself too fine a ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... these distractions that beset him, taking into account also the frequent derangement of his health, and the time and temper he must have thrown away on the minute drudgery of watching over every item of his household expenditure, the mind is lost in almost incredulous astonishment at the wonders he was able to achieve under such circumstances—at the variety and prodigality of power with which, in the midst of such interruptions and hinderances, his "bright ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... advantage of library work should be carefully explained to the class. It is a great error to allow pupils to think of their library work as drudgery, assigned solely to keep them busy or to make the course difficult. There are too few boys to-day with a genuine love of books, partly no doubt due to the fact that a reference library has become for them, not a rich ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell

... monopolized by men, they are actively and successfully engaged. Every law put upon the statute books affects their interests directly and indirectly—undreamed of in a social order where household drudgery and motherhood ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... boy, of ten years of age—full of fun and mischief, unsteady and volatile. My father found considerable difficulty in confining Henry's attention to his studies; for, though uncommonly quick and intelligent, he wanted patience and application. He could not bear the drudgery of poring over musty books. He used to say to me—'How I should like to be an officer, a gallant naval officer, to lead on my men through fire and smoke to victory!' And then the little fellow would wave his hand, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... drudgery, but the Christmas tour of the Glee and Mandolin clubs is drudgery amidst bowers of roses. The hard-working professional would call it play; yet, even in this gilded stage-life, there is the common affliction of being forced to appear ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... of the "Maximes," declaring that "the splendour of dying with a firm spirit, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave a fair reputation behind us, the assurance of being released from the drudgery of life and of depending no more on the caprices of fortune," are remedies which would medicine our pain in approaching the dreaded goal of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... newspapers by studying the newspaper files themselves. As the aim of history is truth, and as newspapers fail sadly in accuracy, it is not surprising that many historical students believe that the examination of newspapers for any given period will not pay for the labor and drudgery involved; but the fact that a trained German historical scholar and teacher at a German university should have found some truth in our newspaper files when he came to write the history of our own country, gives to their use for that period the seal of scientific approval. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... activity, much supposed goodness, are, in their eyes, titles to the kingdom, and infallible signs of charity. And then they foolishly deplore their own state as far removed from that perfection, because forsooth their minds are uncultured, their faith simple, and their time taken up with the drudgery ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... opened out, proved distance with our swords, so as to have plenty of room, and not be likely to cut each other; and there for a good hour the sun flashed on the blades, as the sword exercise was gone through, with its cuts, points, and guards, the men taking to it eagerly as a pleasant change from the drudgery of the mine, and showing no ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... only true, I am sure I should be most happy, for it has been my fortune so far to conjure up only pleasure through day-dreaming—the things I like and long for become my very own then. But if you mean, as I suspect, that I do not enjoy the dirt and drudgery of life, then my plea will have to be guilty. I, of course, grant their necessity, yet apparently there are plenty who find them well worth while, and there should be other work for those who aspire. Back ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... that it was very selfish of him to go on with these things when they never brought in a penny, and Vera had to do all the drudgery. She was suddenly indignant with him. In how clear a light her uncle ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... of life, he maintained, must keep in touch with life at every feasible angle. No experience should come amiss to a detective; he should be a pundit of all knowledge. A detective he now frankly considered himself; and the real drudgery of his unique profession of Ad-Visor was supportable only because of the compensating thrill of the occasional chase, the radiance of the Adventure of Life glinting from time to time across ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... preceded him thither during the previous month. Evidently they were beckoning him to leave this wicked South Africa and everything in it, and come to eternal glory. In this condition we left him early in the afternoon to answer the call of our daily and nightly drudgery — it would be gross extravagance to call it "duty" — an occupation which has no reverence for mournful occasions. At 9.15 p.m., just about the time of his birth sixteen months before, the little soul was relieved of its ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... and of genial frolicsome humour; to see some innocent, simple enjoyment: but instead, what had he seen but vanity, jealousy, hoggish sensuality, dull vacuity? drudges struggling for one night to forget their drudgery. And yet withal, those songs, and the effect which they produced, showed that in these poor creatures, too, lay the germs of pathos, taste, melody, soft and noble affections. 'What right have we,' thought he, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... that makes men poor; For few do write that were not so before; And those that have writ best, had they been rich. Had ne'er been clapp'd with a poetic itch; Had loved their ease too well to take the pains To undergo that drudgery of brains; But, being for all other trades unfit, Only t' avoid being idle, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... meditation, could not but tend to give a spiritual tone to the whole work. Agnes revelled in all this, and found great happiness in the daily routine, in spite of much which was, perhaps, somewhat needless drudgery, such as sweeping and dusting her room, washing up after meals, and even black-leading stoves. She had, however, well learned the lesson that no action can be mean to the Christian if it come in the way of duty. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed a waste ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... conveyed to the child something of what their loss typified. They seemed to stand for all the beauty and hope and light of the young bride's life, that had been ruthlessly destroyed by the hardness and drudgery ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... beautiful, or remarkable by any special beauty of attitude and gesture. They are, in truth, studies, anatomical or otherwise, although studies in nearly every case dignified by the habit of a very serious and tender devoutness: rarely soulless or insolent studio drudgery or swagger such as came when art ceased to be truly popular and religious. Studies, however, with little or no selection of the reality studied, and less thought even for the place or manner in which ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... on the Educational subject, the great Comenius, though doubtless remembered, had practically gone out of view. Labouring at Elbing on that piece of mere drudgery for which Oxenstiern and others had persuaded him to lay aside his Pansophic dreams (ante, p. 228), he had indeed compiled, in four years, a large recast of his Latin Didactics under the title of Novissima Linguarum Methodus, and had returned to Sweden ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson



Words linked to "Drudgery" :   donkeywork, labour, toil, labor, grind, drudge, plodding



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