"Peasant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traveling in Greece, says that "he was one day jogging along with an Albanian peasant, who said to him, 'Women are really better than donkeys for carrying burdens, but not so good as mules.'" This was the honest opinion of barbarism—the honest feeling of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... air. "You are the sort that used to run wild in Germany, dressed in their hair and a piece of skin. Soldiers caught 'em in nets. Old Nathanmeyer," he mused, "would like a peep at her now. Knowing old fellow. Always buying those Zorn etchings of peasant girls bathing. No sag in them either. Must be the cold climate." He sat up. "She'll begin to pitch rocks on me if I don't move." In response to another impatient gesture from the crag, he rose and began ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent out two days previously to get information ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... VI. of Scotland the Tweed accordingly overflowed and joined the Pansayl at the prophet's grave. It was also claimed by one of the witnesses at the trial of Jeanne d'Arc, that there was a prediction by Merlin that France would be saved by a peasant girl from Lorraine. These prophesies have been often reprinted, and have been translated into different languages, and there was published in London, in 1641, "The Life of Merlin, surnamed Ambrosius, His Prophesies and Predictions ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... champions of immutable justice and ministers of peace. And though these may be regarded as personages beyond the sphere of ordinary emulations, yet the same principles, or their opposites, prevail in every order of men from the prince to the peasant; and, perhaps, at no period of the world more than the present were these divers principles in greater necessity to be considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be obeyed. On all sides of us we see public ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... patience of Job, and a conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the Kruboy in the African climate, and live. In his better manifestations he reminds me of that charming personality, the Irish peasant, for though he lacks the sparkle, he is full of humour, and is the laziest and the most industrious of mankind. He lies and tells the truth in such a hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either. He is ungrateful and faithful ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... again, you struck him with something sharp. Then you carried him away, and laid him down under a lilac bush for a short time. After resting awhile and considering, you carried him across the fence. Then you entered the road. After that comes the dam. Near the dam, a peasant frightened you. Well, what ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... patriot until his country be organised on Christian principles, and so from being merely a 'kingdom of the world' become 'a Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.' To help forward that consummation, by however little, is the noblest service that prince or peasant can render to his country. By conformity to the will of God and not by material progress or intellectual enlightenment is a state prosperous and strong. To keep His statutes and judgments is 'your wisdom and understanding ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... may have taught Scott his manner of delineating peasant character, but her comparatively little power is revealed when you put her beside Miss Austen, and so it is all the way down the list to our own day. There are many contemporary story-tellers who have managed well the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... tools, occupations, industries—these all stop in the outer court of the soul. It is given to affection alone to enter the sacred inner precincts. But once the good man comes his power is irresistible. Witness Arnold among the schoolboys at Rugby. Witness Garibaldi and his peasant soldiers. Witness the Scottish chief and his devoted clan. Witness artist pupils inflamed by their masters. What a noble group is that headed by Horace Mann, Garrison, Phillips and Lincoln! General Booth belongs to a like group. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it—that unhappy, hopeless love, which unkind nature often sets between poor souls of very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the cavalier's fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East arises the mournful ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... blood, he happened to meet a suspicious-looking peasant from County Kildare, who could not satisfactorily account for himself according to the lieutenant's notion of evidence; and having nobody at hand to vouch for him, the lieutenant of course immediately took for granted that he must be a rebel strolling about, and imagining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... of voice in framing laws, Right of peers to try each cause; Peasant homestead, mean and small, Sacred as the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... saving only the Frenchmen, worshipped almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he was impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's court or a cottage table, where his plans were laid, or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... mountain basins and valleys which made up the Inca's territory in ancient Peru, every available natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terraces brought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the Andean peasant. They were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising 1000 or 1500 feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting in width as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only two feet broad. These were extended by communal labor year after ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass, whom when he spies, In wrath he to the gardener cries: 'What means yon peasant's daily toil, From choking weeds to rid the soil? Why wake you to the morning's care? Why with new arts correct the year? Why grows the peach's crimson hue? And why the plum's inviting blue? Were they to feast his taste ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... were turning the face of Screen cliff a sound of singing reached us, ricochetting over the water. It had a plaintive ring such as peasant songs are wont to have, and came, as we at length made out, from a boat homeward bound from the island, steering a course at right angles to our own. The voices were those of women, and as our courses swept us nearer each other, we saw that women alone composed the crew. They ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... About's books, such, for instance, as "Germaine"; but from which censure I like to exclude the rollicking fun of "Le Nez d'un Notaire." As to the recent realistic atrocities of Zola, and even of Tolstoi, a more rare sinner, if we exclude his disgusting drama of peasant life, I prefer ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... a forest-side Or fountain, the belated peasant saw, Or dreamed he saw, while overhead the moon Sat arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheeled her pale course—they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charmed his ear; At once with joy and fear ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... bind the workmen to a wage fixed by law was the very cause of the notion that strikes were illegal, which, indeed, was the English common law down to early in the last century. Moreover, when an English mediaeval peasant refused to labor for his three pence a day he might be sent to gaol by the nearest justice of the peace, as, perhaps, some employers would like to do to-day in our South, and which resulted—if not in slavery—in precisely that condition which we call "peonage." Economically speaking, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... this dark circle of pro-Germans within the Russian court was the monk Rasputin—Rasputin the peasant, the picturesque, the intriguing, the evil medium through which the agents of Germany manipulated the Russian Government toward their own ends, the interests of the German autocracy. Such a figure could have played a part in no other than a court of Oriental pattern, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of a peasant from Anjou, who may be now about thirty-three or four years of age. Before the insurrection he was curate of Saint-Laud at Angers. He refused to take the oath and sought refuge among the Vendeans. Two or three times the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... The highest is the measure of the man, And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman: and in arts of government Elizabeth and others; arts of war The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man: And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bowed her state to them, that they might grow To use and power on this Oasis, lapt In the arms of ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... oppressed and avenge the injured. To complete his chivalrous equipment, which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armor strange to his century, he took an esquire out of his neighborhood, a middle-aged peasant, ignorant, credulous, and good-natured, but shrewd enough occasionally to see the folly of their position. The two sally forth from their native village in search of adventures, of which the excited imagination of the knight— turning windmills into giants, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... yet what genuine grief he displayed at the death of that prince. What a contrast was this conduct with that of M. du Maine at another time, who, after leaving the King (Louis XIV.) at the point of death, delivered over to an ignorant peasant, imitated that peasant so naturally and so pleasantly, that bursts of laughter extended to the gallery, and scandalized the passers- by. This is a celebrated and very characteristic fact, which will find its proper place if I live long enough to carry these memoirs ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... patient should return home, and for nine days frequently drink a few sips of water; and also take opportunities to look at water or a looking-glass, so as to accustom the nerves to be under control. I knew a case of a peasant girl, who was bitten by a mad dog, and who had to be brought to him tied on a car, whom he cured. The dog, before he was killed, bit several valuable dogs, all of {323} which had to be destroyed; he also bit two pigs, which, after showing most frightful symptoms of hydrophobia, had to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... had been made inadequate for the occasion. The torches went out, the guides lost their way, and the future conqueror of the world wandered about bewildered and lost, until, just after break of day, the party met with a peasant who undertook to guide them. Under his direction they made their way to the main road again, and advanced then without further difficulty to the banks of the river, where they found that portion of the army which had been sent forward encamped ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Elbe. To the English of Northumbria, the Saxons of Wessex were almost foreigners. Even at the present day, when the existence of a recognised literary dialect has done so much to obliterate provincial varieties of speech in England, a Dorsetshire peasant, speaking in a slightly altered form the classical West Saxon of AElfred, has great difficulty in understanding a Yorkshire peasant, speaking in a slightly altered form the classical Northumbrian of Baeda. But in the ninth century the differences between the ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Suffering at Menopause.— Dusourd, whose practice lay in an agricultural district in the south of France, as well as Tilt, believes that peasant women suffer little at this time. Their health is generally good when the menopause comes on and they are little liable to nervous disorders. The poor of large towns suffer much at this epoch— the necessity of working hard, the anxieties of poverty and their unhygienic surroundings. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... in material as in this power of expressing it. The secret of the best writer lies in his art. He is not so much above the common stature; his experience is no richer than ours; but he knows how to put handles to his ideas, and we do not. Give a peasant his power of expression, or of welding the world within to the world without, and there would be no very precipitous inequality between them. The great writer says what we feel, but could not utter. We have pearls that lie no deeper than his, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sordid suffering ran through the beauteous ensemble. Of all our personal friends, the one who most adores and loves to personify Nature is a successful farmer of unceasing diligence. Mr. Ashby errs, we are certain, in taking the point of view of the unimaginative and unappreciative peasant. This sort of animal interprets Nature by physical, not mental associations, and is unfitted by heredity to receive impressions of the beautiful in its less material aspects. Whilst he grumbles at the crimson flames of Aurora, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... easily recognize such in them; quietly talking and drinking tea with dignity and care and biting their sugar with the force of explosions. They never put their sugar into the tea-tumblers. Later a man with a disagreeable face entered the room and looked around. This was not a peasant, I said to myself,—he would not take off his hat. The newcomer was evidently looking for me, as when he noticed me, he first bought some tea and a sandwich, and then, as if there were no other place in the room, picked out a seat near me. "An ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... moors and rocks From eve to morn may roam: Nor shriek, nor shout, nor reddened sky, Shall warn the startled hind to fly From his beloved home. Nor to the pier shall burghers crowd With straining necks and faces pale, And think that in each flitting cloud They see a hostile sail. The peasant without fear shall guide Down smooth canal or river wide His painted bark of cane, Fraught, for some proud bazaar's arcades, With chestnuts from his native shades, And wine, and milk, and grain. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... called because there was a suggestion of the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... thousand of them, and hundreds of new ones came with every September. Sometimes he felt prompted to "collect" them, as contrasts to his older curios. They were fully as interesting, in their way, as brasswork and leatherwork, those products of peasant natures and peasant hands. But these youths ran past one's eye, ran through one's fingers. They were not static, not even stable. They were restless birds of passage who fidgeted through their years, and even through the days of which the years were made: intent on ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... not speak it much better himself; but he carried us into the village to his house, gave us wine and bread, and entertained us with wonderful courtesy. After this he sent into the village, hired a peasant, and a horse for my captain, and sent him to guide us into the road. At parting he made a great many compliments to us in French, which we could just understand; but the sum was, to excuse him for a question he had a mind to ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... deified buffalo. The explanation seems to be that in former times, when forests extended over most of the country, the cultivator had in the wild buffalo a direr foe than the wild pig. And one can well understand how the peasant, winning a scanty subsistence from his poor fields near the forest, and seeing his harvest destroyed in a night by the trampling of a herd of these great brutes against whom his puny weapons were powerless, looked on them as terrible and malignant ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. Wherever their kettle-drums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood of the hyaena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I propose, every man who stole a sheep would have to pay the same penalty before he could exercise the rights of citizenship—no matter whether his character was good, bad, or indifferent; no matter whether he was rich or poor, a peer or a peasant, the voice of impartial justice would say, "You have incurred the same debt to the State, and the ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... he took the third part of my gain, since I was a journeyman (for such is the custom of the trade, two-thirds fall to the workman and one-third to the masters of the shop), yet inconsiderate envy had more power in him than avarice: it ought indeed to have worked quite the other way, he being a peasant's son from Iesi. He cursed his art and those who taught it him, vowing that thenceforth he would never work at large plate, but give his whole attention to those brothel gewgaws, since they were so well paid. Equally enraged on my side, I answered, that every bird sang ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... society.—Such companions, in this remote corner of the kingdom, has been a boon too precious to be enjoyed without alloy, it seems; and I have now to exchange the past pleasure for present pain. Adieu! my young friend; let your trust be in Him, to whose eyes both prince and peasant, the European and the American, are alike, and we shall meet again, though it be neither in the island of Britain nor on ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... throne the priest-prince Chowfa Mongkut, frustrated the machinations of the son of his predecessor, they by the same stroke crushed the secret hopes of Chow Phya Sri Sury Wongse, the present premier. It is whispered to this day—for no native, prince or peasant, may venture to approach the subject openly—that, on the day of coronation, his Excellency retired to his private chambers, and there remained, shut up with his chagrin and grief, for three days. On ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... a man strangely improbable in appearance, with close-cropped grey hair, a young, fresh-coloured face, a bristling orange moustache, and a big, blunt nose. One could have believed him a soldier, a German, anything but what he was, a peasant from the furthest shores of Western Ireland, cut off from what we call civilisation by his ignorance of any language save his own ancient speech, wherein the ideas of to-day stand out in English words like telegraph ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... arrived in Russia, Fox and his party drove to the beautiful Galitzine estate, about 12 miles from Moscow. The members of the party were met by the Prince and went with him to a part of the park where a deputation of peasants awaited them. Leader of the peasant group was the mayor of the neighboring village, an emancipated serf, who presented Fox with bread and salt—traditional symbols of Russian hospitality—on ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... universal prevalence of intemperance is another prolific source of the moral darkness and degradation of the people. The great mass, among all classes of the inhabitants, from the governor in his palace to the peasant in his hut—from the bishop in his gown to the beggar in his rags—are all slaves ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... industrious insect which spins the wonderful substance called silk out of its bowels, though lately introduced into that part of Asia, seemed to receive new vigour from the mildness of the climate; corn and oil, the noblest fruits and the most salubrious herbs, were found in the garden of every peasant; and the herds of cattle and horses, which wandered over our luxuriant pastures, equalled or surpassed all I had observed in other countries. But this profusion of blessings, instead of being attended with any beneficial ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... that formed in my mind was not of Joan, but that other woman unknown to history—her mother, who after Joan had left the village and rumours of her battles and banquets drifted back, must have sat there staring into the blazing logs, her peasant's hands folded in her lap, brooding, wondering, hoping, fearing—fearing as the mothers of soldiers ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... a peculiar kind of magic, will metamorphose an old barn, stable, or out-house, in such a wonderful manner that the said barn, stable, or out-house, shall appear, according as it suits the will or purpose of the said magicians, at one time a prince's palace; at another a peasant's cottage; now the noisy receptacle of drunken clubs and wearied travellers, called an inn; anon the magnificent dome of a Grecian temple. Nay, so vast is their art that, by pronouncing audibly certain sentences which are penned down for them by the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... an improving book was prepared for children concerning a Peasant and a Camel. The Peasant was depicted as having a Hut, and a Fireside, and as loafing lazily in its warm glow. Then, in the crack of the door, appeared the appealing nose of a Camel—might he warm that nose? The lazy Peasant wouldn't ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... reserved by the nobility and gentry to themselves, and the disputes of the vulgar were decided by the weapons which nature had given them, or by cudgels cut, broken, or hewed out of the next wood. But now, sir, the clouted shoe of the peasant galls the kibe of the courtier. The lower ranks have their quarrels, sir, and their points of honour, and their revenges, which they must bring, forsooth, to fatal arbitrament. But well, well! it will last my time. Let us have in this fellow, this Vanbeest Brown, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... interest as against other countries, and justified for the wages they provided for labor. About this {531} time, for some reason, the agitation gradually died down. It is probable that the religious controversy took the public's mind off economic questions and the Peasant's War, like all unsuccessful but dangerous risings of the poor, was followed by a strong reaction in favor of the conservative rich. Moreover, it is evident that the currents of the time were too strong to be resisted by the feeble methods proposed by the reformers. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Tolstoy or Bergson or Berkley or Leon Bloy or Peguy or Plato himself to break the head of Anatole France or Bertrand Russell, but he will not trouble Carlyle. And besides finding him empty, the new age is quite aware of his positive defects. It cannot away with his peasant morality—moralizing rather—his provincialism, and the grossness of his method. From the beginning to the end of his works there is neither pure thought nor pure feeling—nothing but a point of view which is now perceived to be ridiculously plebeian. Nevertheless, Carlyle ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... crab-tree, but the seat was empty. "What has become of the Blind Man?" the Mayor's son asked of a peasant who ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... so circumstanced as to afford a probability that they grew by nature. . . The shape of ground, the disposition of trees and the figure of water must be sacred to nature; and no forms must be allowed that make a discovery of art. . . The taste of the citizen and of the mere peasant are in all respects the same: the former gilds his balls, paints his stonework and statues white, plants his trees in lines or circles, cuts his yew-trees, four-square or conic, or gives them what he can of the resemblance ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... gathered about a puppet-show, somewhat like the English Punch and Judy, shrieking with laughter like so many children; a group of girls consulting an old fortune-teller; pretty peasant girls from the hills slily listening to compliments from the town gallants, evidently to the great indignation of their country swains; in short, every way we turned, some picture that would have been a treasure to any great artist, met the eye, and all so strange and picturesque, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... and prove that you have a Delaware stomach, as you say you have had a Delaware edication," cried Hurry, setting the example by opening his mouth to receive a slice of cold venison steak that would have made an entire meal for a European peasant; "fall to, lad, and prove your manhood on this poor devil of a doe with your teeth, as you've already ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Church of England, who for the last forty-one years of his life was perpetual incumbent of the parish of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Patrick Bronte was born at Emsdale, Co. Down, Ireland, on the 17th of March 1777. His parents were of the peasant class, their original name of Brunty apparently having been changed by their son on his entry at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1802. In the intervening years he had been successively a weaver and schoolmaster in his native country. From Cambridge [v.04 p.0638] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of July I stopped on a march by a threshing-floor where they were measuring grain. When the shares had been divided, the one who had cultivated the land received a single tumolo (less than a half bushel). The peasant, leaning on his spade, looked at his share as if stunned. His wife and their five children were standing by. From the painful toil of a year this was what was left to him with which to feed his family. The tears ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... I saw a crowd of the peasant-people assembled round a one-horse chair, and my friend in green, as I thought, making off half a mile up the hill. A footman was howling 'Stop thief!' at the top of his voice; but the country fellows were only laughing at his distress, and making all sorts of jokes at the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... What do you know about the world? Convert your Indians, sir, if you please, and leave affairs of state to your superiors. You will excuse him, senors" (turning to the Dons, and speaking in a lower tone). "A very worthy and pious man, but a poor peasant's son; and beside—you understand. A little wrong here; too much fasting and watching, I fear, good man." And the bishop touched his forehead knowingly, to signify that Fray Gerundio's wits ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... had written a treatise on the agrarian tenures of Egypt he might not have bought them up so easily at famine prices, and he might have entangled himself in a discussion upon peasant properties. The economist who makes an inductive demonstration of unalterable natural laws and propensities may be likened to the scientific legislator who undertakes to codify prevailing usages: he turns an elastic custom, constantly modified in ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... than is a government expressing only the people's energies, as the predatory shepherd and his dog prove better guardians for a flock than its own wethers. The robbers that at their first incursion brought terror to merchant and peasant may become almost immediately representative organs of society—an army and a judiciary. Disputes between subjects are naturally submitted to the invader, under whose laws and good-will alone a practical ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that they had deteriorated in the process of being handed down by recitation. He called tradition "a sort of perverted alchymy which converts gold into lead." "All that is abstractedly poetical," he said, "all that is above the comprehension of the merest peasant, is apt to escape in frequent repetition; and the lacunae thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties or from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The injury, in either case, is ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... it is a debt, a pecuniary liability, owing to me. It will be about a quarter of a dollar, in the Yankee currency. A quarter of a dollar, mind. My honest friend, in pecuniary matters always be exact as a second-hand; never mind with whom it is, father or stranger, peasant or king, be exact to a ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... photograph. It was a beautiful girl in a Russian peasant costume; evidently the portrait of some one taken at a fancy dress ball, because both the refined face and the figure of the girl were ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... whose first teacher in theory was Homer A. Norris, and who later studied under Humperdinck in Germany. Among his works are an elaborate ballade for piano and violin, a setting of Shelley's "Indian Serenade," and four folk-songs to words by Johanna Ambrosius, the peasant genius of Germany. Among others of his published songs is "Strow Poppy Buds," a ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... into the wall in a corner of the room, is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture by Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shakspeare's house,—though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious respect which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms with the law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent on the humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of their financial difficulties, lending them money on the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... their duans, who fleece the manufacturers and farmers to a still greater amount than they had furnished; thus the country is subjected to a general system of tyranny. From the chieftains and nobles of the realm to the humblest peasant in a village, neither the property nor the life of a subject can be called his own. When Providence has blessed the land with the former and the latter rain, and the seed sown produces an hundredfold, the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... advantage of me by thirty years. You'll see what I shall not—the last of the English peasant. Did you ever read 'Erewhon,' where the people broke up their machines? It will take almost that sort of national heroism to save what's left ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... forces with Jellacic. The insurgents at Vienna manned their fortifications as well as they could, and called upon the people throughout Austria to take up arms. Emperor Ferdinand, at Olmuetz, offset this by an imperial proclamation to his people in which he guaranteed all peasant rights. Prince Windischgraetz was created a field marshal, with full command over all the forces in the empire, except those under Radetzky in Italy. Windischgraetz took immediate steps to effect a junction with Jellacic by seizing the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... a large one, sufficed for both breakfast and dinner for the three of them. The boy, a bright little fellow, with the ruddy brown cheeks of an Italian peasant boy, but with the slight squint of eyes and flatness of nose peculiar to these natives of the North, watched every move they made with ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... are studying the boor (pignouf). As for me, I avoid him. I know him too well. I love the Berrichon peasant who is not, who never is, a boor, even when he is of no great account; the word pignouf has its depths; it was created exclusively for the bourgeois, wasn't it? Ninety out of a hundred provincial middle- class women are ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the faces of dead boys—one boy outstretched at length on a doorstep with the smoke of his burning body rising through the mesh of his blue army clothing; and then a half mile beyond, in the yard of a farm-house, a young peasant spread out as he had fallen when the chance ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... evening revels in this spot; and the high cliffs, circling either side in the form of a bay, tolerably well concealed our meetings from the gaze of the vulgar. It is true (for these cliffs were perforated with numerous excavations) that some roving peasant, mariner, or perchance smuggler, would now and then, at low water, intrude upon us. But our London Nereids and courtly Tritons were always well pleased with the interest of what they graciously termed "an adventure;" and our assemblies were too numerous to think an unbroken secrecy ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brought them to the hut of a peasant. The owner came to the door as they approached. He was a rough-looking man in a long jacket made of goat-skin, coarse trousers reaching down to the knee, and his legs bound with long strips of wadding. "Who are you," he asked ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... favourite saints—St. Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth, Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'I was coming before Thee,' said St. Cassianus, 'and I was afraid of soiling ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... intended impartiality, it was inevitably adopted as a partisan document by the poor and oppressed, and together with the revolutionary songs of John Ball it became a powerful incentive to the Peasant's Insurrection. Piers himself became and continued an ideal for men who longed for a less selfish and brutal world, and a century and a half later the poem was still cherished by the Protestants for its exposure of the vices of the Church. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... born? and if that is under his control, or in any way affected by his whims and wishes? Would not Louis XVI. have been the son of a goldsmith, if he could have had his way? Would Burns have been born a slaving, starving peasant, if he had been consulted beforehand? Would not the children of vice be the children of virtue, if they could have had their choice? and would not the whole tenor of their lives have been changed thereby? Would a good many of us have been born at all, if we could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... illustrates what I mean by the Oberammergau spirit. In 1830 he was a young peasant who saw the possibilities of the Passion Play. He went to the head of the Monastery at Ettal, and vowed to consecrate his whole life to this work, if they would make him a priest and permit him to become the spiritual director of the people of the village. But he was obliged to study ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail; small fry. commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary[obs3], proletaire[obs3], roturier[obs3], Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier[Fr], Philistine, cockney; grisette[obs3], demimonde. peasant, countryman, boor, carle[obs3], churl; villain, villein; terrae filius[Latin: son of the land]; serf, kern[obs3], tyke, tike, chuff[obs3], ryot[obs3], fellah; longshoreman; swain, clown, hind; clod, clodhopper; hobnail, yokel, bog-trotter, bumpkin; plowman, plowboy[obs3]; rustic, hayseed*, lunkhead ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gap, I perceived—what my enemy below must have missed—the form of a man who stood there, motionless, clear cut against the sky, with his back on us as he gazed seaward. He was too far off for me to see if he were a soldier or only a peasant. Yet I remember marking that he was great of stature; and as he stood there, with his hair floating in the wind, he seemed some image of a giant god set there to stand sentinel and brood ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... silently with their hands. At Three Rivers they thought themselves safe and Carleton lay down in a house to sleep. But, while he was resting, some American soldiers entered the house. His disguise as a peasant saved him; he passed out unchecked. The skiff soon carried him to an armed brig, the Fell, which lay at the foot of the Richelieu Rapids. He hastened on to Quebec, which showed joy unspeakable when ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... for the supreme egotism of the lady. To get mad about it were vain—let us all smile. Surely the imagination that can trace points of resemblance between Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and Jesus, the lowly peasant of Nazareth, is admirable. Jesus was a communist in principle, having nothing, giving everything. He carried neither scrip nor purse. He wrote nothing. His indifference to place, pelf and power is His distinguishing characteristic. Mrs. Eddy's love of power ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... school to learn mathematics, and that he was very glad that he had escaped the infliction of learning grammar. Indeed, on every subject besides mathematics, he was profoundly ignorant. He had no manners whatever; in fact, he was a mere peasant. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... uncrowned, and sordid pleasures to have no scepter. The soul becomes restless and disappointed where once it was contented. Looking afar off it sees in its vision hours the goodly estate to which God shall some day bring it. Here we recall the peasant's dream. His humble cottage while he slept lifted up its thatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and small became many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful, looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar, o'er which hung ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that peasant maiden's conduct was that she had not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do so if she wished. Surely a young creature had never before been so reticent in such circumstances. At length he ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... decorated with saints and virgins fit to make one weep. The fact is that genius is only the fruit of the social soil; and a great artist can only send up a blaze of the faith of the time he lives in. For my part, I'm the grandson of a Beauceron peasant. My father came to Paris to set himself up in business as a marble worker for tombstones and so forth, just at the top of the Rue de la Roquette. It was there I grew up. I began as a workman, and all my childhood was spent among the masses, in the streets, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... here with their flocks; they will show me the way to some village where I can live disguised as a peasant girl. Alas! it is not always kings and princes who are the happiest people in the world. Who could have believed that I should ever be obliged to run away and hide because the King, for no reason at ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... and the regiment marching out towards the firing line and its turn of duty in the trenches meets on the road every now and then a peasant woman on her way to church. Some of the women are young and pretty, some old and wrinkled and worn; they walk alone or in couples or threes, but all alike are dressed in black, and all alike tramp slowly, dully, without spring to their step. Over them the sun shines in a blue ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... good thing: it is giving the men white teeth; you can tell an old soldier by his polished ivory; his teeth approach the appearance of the Italian and Swiss peasantry, who also chew hard bread. Reader, did you ever try to work your way through the hard loaf of the peasant's fare? The army regulations require tooth brushes for the men; it is supposed that the proper use keeps off ague and disease; still many regiments were without one to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... young peasant to possess her," the other said. They went on. Erick looked after them, still smiling a little. Then he joined the surging mass of people that milled eternally through the ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... longitude, of civilization and barbarism, the opinions and manners of men grow different. They who observe from positions widely separate do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same light. Proof for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or become altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts of Christians should again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the warlike ardor ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... agreement." "How!" said the other, in great amazement—"who ever heard of such a bargain?—it is impossible." In short, after many words and much altercation, the overbearing barber seized the pack-saddle, wood and all, and sent away the poor peasant in great distress. He immediately ran to the cadi, and stated his griefs: the cadi was one of the barber's customers, and refused to hear the case. The wood-cutter applied to a higher judge: he also patronized Ali Sakal, and made light of the complaint. The poor man then appealed ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant.—LONGFELLOW. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... renowned now living. Though only an illiterate peasant woman, she has been able for more than twenty years to baffle every scientist who has studied her. Her organism remains the most potent ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... The peasant was struck with terror and astonishment at the appearance of seven Danes; and he could with difficulty be made to understand that their object was neither plunder nor murder, but that they wished only information from him of the situation ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... The peasant, as he trims his hedge, whose riotous tangle threatens to encroach upon the road, cuts the trailing stems of the bramble a foot or two from the ground and leaves the root-stock, which soon dries up. These bramble-stumps, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... question. It is impossible at the present time to describe the enthusiasm which the latter work created. It was a new departure in opera. It united two strains very dear to the German heart—the simple peasant life and the people's song are represented in the choruses, and in the arias of the less important people. Agatha, the heroine, has a prayer of exquisite beauty, which still is often heard as a church tune. And in contrast ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... power to dazzle and the will to cheat, The love of daring and the love of gin, Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin. To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still, Despite your cradling in a tub for swill. Your peasant manners can't efface the mark Of light you drew across the Land ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... clutching her Bridegroom's sleeve. Up from the gravelly, pick-and-shovel labor of the new-made grave it lifts its weirdly magnetic eyes to the Widow's tears. Down from some petted Princeling's silver-trimmed saddle horse it smiles its electrifying, wistful smile into the Peasant's sodden weariness. Across the slender white rail of an always out-going steamer it stings back into your gray, land-locked consciousness like the tang of a scarlet spray. And the secret of the face, of course, is "Lure"; but to save your soul you could not decide ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... began to assemble at two in the afternoon in the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men, women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had given a lump of sugar while drinking his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... bedchamber, which, for most purposes, was Lady Hester's principal apartment, we shall now subjoin. It bore no resemblance to an English or a French chamber, and, independent of its furniture, was scarcely better than a common peasant's. The floor was of cement. Across the room was hung a dirty red cotton curtain, to keep off the wind when the door opened. There were three windows; one was nailed up by its shutter on the outside, and one closed ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... must have been inside. The aeroplane was damaged by a heavy rifle- and shell-fire, but Lieutenant Marix managed to get back to within twenty miles of Antwerp, and to return to the city by the aid of a bicycle which he borrowed from a peasant. Squadron Commander Spenser Grey, starting at 1.20 p.m., flew to Cologne, where he found a thick mist and failed to locate the airship sheds. He dropped his bombs on the main railway station in the middle ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Paradise ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... extremities in figures of goats and other animals made of the same material. The tents of the soldiers, were conical in form, and each was maintained in its position by a forked pole placed inside. They contained the ordinary requirements of the peasant—-bed and head-rest, table with legs like those of a gazelle, stools and folding-chairs; the household utensils and the provisions hung from the forks of the support. The monuments, which usually ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... have favored the extreme prevalence of bestiality: (1) primitive conceptions of life which built up no great barrier between man and the other animals; (2) the extreme familiarity which necessarily exists between the peasant and his beasts, often combined with separation from women; (3) various folk-lore beliefs such as the efficacy of intercourse with animals as a cure for venereal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... extinguisht but by bloud. Oft have I leveld, and at last have learnd, That perill is the cheefest way to happines, And resolution honors fairest aime. What glory is there in a common good, That hanges for every peasant to atchive? That like I best that flyes beyond my reach. Set me to scale the high Peramides, And thereon set the Diadem of Fraunce, Ile either rend it with my nayles to naught, Or mount the top with my aspiring winges, Although my downfall be the deepest hell. For this, ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... of Great-Britain wages no War with the Industrious Peasant, the sacred Orders of Religion, or the defenceless Women and Children: To these in their distressful Circumstances His Royal Clemency offers Protection. The People may remain unmolested on their Lands, inhabit their Houses, and enjoy their Religion ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... ago. To-day the two islands, which together have not half the area of Surrey, grow 32,000 metric tons of cacao a year, or about one-tenth of the world's production.[6] The income of a single planter, once a poor peasant, has amounted ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... the unmeritedness of being despised. For just as the higher a man's position is, the more undeservedly he is despised; so the lower it is, the less reason he has for despising. Thus a nobleman is angry if he be insulted by a peasant; a wise man, if by a fool; a master, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... things engaged their attention as they slowly made their way along. Obstacles were frequently met with, but cleverly avoided by these expert riders. Many times Rod called a temporary halt in order to speak with some peasant who chanced to look more than ordinarily intelligent, and, he imagined, ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... from their wearing a white shirt, or camise, over their dress, to enable them to distinguish each other in their night attacks; and that this was not the case, is partly countenanced by the fact that in the course of the insurrection a body of peasant royalists took the field, who designated themselves the "White Camisards," in contradistinction from the others. Others say the word is derived from camis, signifying a roadrunner. But whatever the origin of the word may be, the Camisards was the name most ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Boers. These military republics have been for ten years cherishing vast ambitions, and for five years, enriched by the gold mines, they have been arming and preparing for the struggle. They have neglected nothing, and it is a very remarkable fact that these ignorant peasant communities have had the wisdom and the enterprise to possess themselves of good advisers, and to utilise the best expert opinion in all matters of ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... illustrates the depths of ignorance and superstition that are occasionally to be found among Italian peasant immigrants. Another actual experience may demonstrate the mediaeval treachery of which the Sicilian Mafiuso is capable, and how little his manners or ideals have progressed in the last five hundred years ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... letter. It was very affectionate—full of longings to be coming home again, even though she allowed that their present life was very bright and interesting. I was just laughing at a description of Pert and Quick going to market on their own account, and how they bargained with the old peasant women, when a slight sound—was it a sound or only a sort of feeling in the air?—made me look up from the open sheet before me, ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... about the castle, the 'tschiko' shepherds, who had come on horseback to greet the Prince, drank plum brandy, and drank with their red wine the 'kadostas' and the bacon of Temesvar. They had come from their farms, from their distant pusztas, peasant horsemen, like soldiers, with their national caps; and they joyously celebrated the return of Zilah Andras, the son of those Zilahs whose glorious history they all knew. The dances began, the bright copper heels clinked together, the blue jackets, embroidered with yellow, red, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... in any dreamings as to festive meetings between Burns and Nicol in this humble shed; for we felt that here there was no certain ground to go upon. Enough that we could be assured of Burns and Nicol having been together here; two most singular examples of the peasant class of their country, and one of them an unapproached master of his country's lyre, whose strains have floated to the ends of the earth, and promise to last ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... not venture from our hiding-place till the duke was out of sight, and by the delay we lost a good half-league in our race. I asked Yolanda if she knew how far it was to the next point of contact, She did not know, but I learned from a peasant that the river made a great bend, and that our road gained nearly a league over the other before each again touched the river. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Society in releasing the farmers from the bondage of the "Gombeen" man who has for so many years been the curse of Irish agriculture. The "Gombeen" man is alike trader, publican, and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official Nationalist influence. By lending money to the peasant proprietors at exorbitant rates, by selling inferior seeds and manures and by carrying on his transactions with the farmers chiefly in kind, the "Gombeen" man has grown fat upon the poverty and despair of the farmer. It is not surprising that he views the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Roman Catholic Church; Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM); Confederation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN); Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce (CONCANACO); National Peasant Confederation (CNC); Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT); Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC); Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM); Confederation of Employers of the Mexican Republic ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... down her work presently and came out to them, and the three sat silently watching the moon rise beyond the hills. It was as though a veil had been withdrawn to show the glimmer of distant streams, the white walls of peasant dwellings set among their vines, the belfry tower of an old Carthusian monastery belted in by tall dark cypresses, and the twisted shadows thrown by the gnarled trunks and outstanding ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... anywhere, excepting an occasional peasant plodding along a muddy road, sheltering himself under the characteristic flat and bony ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... tell you something of what two very different people have reported, both of whom knew more about it, I believe, than Herodotus. One of them speaks from his own experience, for he visited the country; the other from the testimony of a young peasant girl who came back from it for a month's visit to her friends. The former was a great Italian of noble family, who died more than five hundred years ago; the latter a Scotch shepherd who died not forty ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... frequently speak of the mail-bag being carried off by wild beasts." So great was the damage done by these depredations, that "the company offered a reward for each tiger's head, sufficient to maintain a peasant's family in comfort for three months; an item of expenditure it deemed so necessary, that, when under extraordinary pressure it had to suspend all payments, the tiger-money and diet allowance for ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... woman, only for warranted good blood. Is that to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family, or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest regenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from the soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds; ill-fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another half-century ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... abstractions, but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seen his bruise; perhaps she knew how he had got it. Her excitement—had he smashed up his official superior at the custom house? That would be an impossible thing, I told myself instantly; as well might a nobleman cross swords with a peasant. Perhaps the stare of the waitress had reminded him of his bruise, and he might have felt disinclined to show himself with it in a company of gossiping strangers. Still, that would scarcely account ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... of living, and the dearness of labor, which was as high as 1s. 8d. to 2s. per day, whereas 2d. or 3d. was the usual price paid the peasant in silk-growing countries. Governor Wright, in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough, frankly told him that, "till these provinces become more populous, and labor cheaper, I apprehend, silk will not be a commodity, or an article, of any ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... arms rattling. That animating rabble has now ceased. The Chief has lost his formidable retinue; and the Highlander walks his heath unarmed and defenceless, with the peaceable submission of a French peasant ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... a peasant girl from Germany, Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong. And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's. On a summer's day when she was away He stole into the kitchen and took me Right in his arms ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... famed of old, The British wool is growing gold; No mines can more of wealth supply; It keeps the peasant from the cold, And takes for kings the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the gates disguised as a peasant or as a woman—no matter how. Will you do less to save all that makes life dear to an honourable man? Be gone, be gone, I ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... peasant children did for sport they now did for profit as well. It caused the greatest surprise in the minds of the people when they discovered that anybody could want their blackberries and their mushrooms; that money was to be made out of even the gathering of ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... garden dresses; Norman's was much torn from his scramble through the woods. Fanny had on one which her mamma had brought from France, like that of a peasant girl, which was well suited for wandering about the hills ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a crucified contadino. Intent on mastering the art of modelling, and determined above all things to be accurate, the sculptor had forgotten that something more was wanted in a crucifix than the careful study of a robust peasant-boy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of artist, and prefers to be directly a teacher, he robs himself of more than half his strength with those he can move only through the realization of themselves in others. The simple pathos, and the apparent indirectness of such a tale as that of 'Poticoushka,' the peasant conscript, is of vastly more value to the world at large than all his parables; and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,' the Philistine worldling, will turn the hearts of many more from the love of the world than such pale fables of the early Christian life as "Work ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a numerical majority of your fellow-citizens think you are not, making the most beneficial use of your property; if it be generally considered that it would be for the greater good of the greater number to divide your park and garden into peasant properties and cottage allotments, to double the wages of the workmen in your employment, or to subject you and the likes of you to a graduated income tax for the purpose of setting up national workshops to compete with you in your own trade; and, if you do not readily enter ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... heart at liberty to feel and express its sentiments without restraint, and dissatisfied with the pleasures of love, the day comes when these people are very much surprised to find themselves, after having traveled around a long circuit, at the very point where a peasant, acting according to nature, would have begun. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... ordinary ploughman's dress, and it was he who was the occasion of the joke played on Dr. Roebuck, the chemist, by a Scotch friend, who said to him as they were passing Ratho glebe that the parish schools of Scotland had given almost every peasant a knowledge of the classics, and added, "Here, for example, is a man working in the field who is a good illustration of that training; let us speak with him." Roebuck made some observation about agriculture. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... other. Porthos clawed hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all: and Planchet was busily engaged trying to wake up an old and infirm peasant, who was fast asleep in a shed, lying on a bed of moss, and dressed in an old stable suit of clothes. The peasant, recognizing Planchet, called him "the master," to the grocer's great satisfaction. "Stable the ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... believing that he was not entirely unconnected with the death, and subsequent burial, of a gentleman who used to play the harp with his toes; and that neither was he altogether unresponsible for the lonely grave of an unknown stranger who had once visited the neighbourhood, an Italian peasant lad, a ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... Burns, the peasant poet, whose songs did as much to bring back the sunshine into everyday Scotch life as the Reformer's homilies did to banish it, Mr Stevenson writes with sympathy and tenderness. For the work he is full of admiration; for the man, whose circumstances and temperament made his whole life a difficult ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... a word of Fra Gervasio. He was, as I have already written, my father's foster-brother. That is to say, he was the child of a sturdy peasant-woman of the Val di Taro, from whose lusty, healthy breast my father had suckled the first of that fine strength that ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... cavaliers in Santa Fe spent as though hard gold were spiritual gold to be gathered endlessly. One might say, "They go into a garden and shake tree each morning, which tree puts forth again in the night." None seemed to see as on a map laid down Spain and the broken peasant and the digger of the gold. None seemed to feel that toil which or soon or late they must recognize for their own toil. Toil in Spain, toil in other and far lands whence came their rich things, toil in Europe, Arabia and India! Apparel at Santa Fe was a thing to marvel at. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... well These peasant-folk, who told their lives away, From day to market-day, As one should tell, With patient industry, Some ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... obtain splinters of the true cross. The priests manufacture little crosses of wax, on which, as they assure the faithful, they stick splinters of the real one. These little crosses, wrapped up in paper and packed in baskets, are placed ready for distribution, that is, for sale. Every peasant generally takes three: one to put in his room, one in his stable, and another in his barn. The most wonderful portion of the business is that these crosses must be renewed every year, as in that period they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... terrorists had been tried the same military district court, with a different set of judges, had tried and condemned to death by hanging Ivan Yanson, a peasant. ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... I resumed, "is to think how Mrs. Yocomb has been waiting on me and taking care of me. I now feel like the peasant who was taken in and cared ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... that the proposed rebellion had commenced in various districts, and that already several peasant bands had proceeded to acts of violence. Immediately he thought that the castle of the Count of Furstenburg might be attacked, and he accordingly set out to warn him of the danger. Had he been able to write he would have sent ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... not natural that the madman, ignorant of his folly, should attempt things beyond his power? The weak man talks of burdens he can raise, the timid of giants he can confront, the poor of treasures he spends, the most humble peasant, in the height of his pride, calls himself Jupiter. Whether Noirtier understood the young man's indecision, or whether he had not full confidence in his docility, he looked uneasily at him. "What do you wish, sir?" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Russian peasant, living in Semipalatinsk, has foretold that the war will end in August. The wildest excitement prevails not only in Semipalatinsk but in the ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... expel me from the Mothers' Union when I work over time, and Poppsy and Pee-Wee unite in letting me know when I've been foolish enough to pass my fatigue-point. Yet I've been sloughing off some of my old-time finicky ideas about child-raising and reverting to the peasant-type of conduct which I once so abhorred in my Finnish Olga. And I can't say that either I or my family seem to have suffered much in the process. I feel almost uncannily well and strong now, and am a wolf for work. If nothing else happened when our apple-cart ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... both sides of the altar twice, and formed themselves into a half circle on the floor of the church—as choirs used to do at the representations of the Greek plays of old. We were well-nigh suffocated with incense and the strange odour that emanates from a Russian peasant, and had begun to think of those queer little wooden beds in which we were to pass the night—and what a contrast the primitive cell was to that gorgeous glittering church—when we saw our "beautiful boy" beckoning ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the serious consequences which might ensue to Juan should we not soon obtain the assistance of which we were in search. At length my eye fell on a papaw-tree, and what appeared to be a hut just below it. Riding on, we saw a Creole peasant-woman walking along and spinning, evidently near her home. At first, on seeing us, she seemed disposed to fly; but on our calling to her and assuring her that we were friends, she stood still, waiting for ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... FESINCONTRANS; National Confederation of Salvadoran Workers or CNTS; National Union of Salvadoran Workers or UNTS; Port Industry Union of El Salvador or SIPES; Salvadoran Union of Ex-Petrolleros and Peasant Workers or USEPOC; Salvadoran Workers Central or CTS; Workers Union of Electrical Corporation or STCEL; business organizations - National Association of Small Enterprise or ANEP; Salvadoran Assembly Industry Association or ASIC; ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... truth of it seems to be that Hamsun's pilgrimage to the bee hives where modern humanity clusters typically, was an essential violation of something within himself that mattered even more than his literary ambition to his soul's integrity. Perhaps, if I am right, he is the first genuine peasant who has risen to such artistic mastery, reaching its ultimate heights through a belated recognition of his own proper settings. Hamsun was sixty when he wrote "Growth of the Soil." It is the first work in which he celebrates the life of the open country for its own sake, and not ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... a short laugh, which had something of his usual bitterness in it. "Sad? Mayhap! Yet I hardly know. Think you that the poor peasant lad would be sad because he had dreamed that the fairy princess whom he had seen from afar in her radiance, was sweet and gracious to him one midsummer's day? It was only a dream, remember: when he woke she ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... steward, and the price of all the little carvings in wood he sold at Rome, were expended in ear-rings, necklaces, and gold hairpins. So that, thanks to her friend's generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and the best-attired peasant near Rome. The two children grew up together, passing all their time with each other, and giving themselves up to the wild ideas of their different characters. Thus, in all their dreams, their wishes, and their conversations, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
