"Menial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the Indian women, they are far from complaining of their lot. On the contrary, they would despise their husbands could they stoop to any menial office, and would think it conveyed an imputation upon their own conduct. It is the worst insult one virago can cast upon another in a moment of altercation. "Infamous woman," will she cry, "I have seen your husband carrying wood ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... more heard of, he was supposed to have undergone the same fate. Simnel, apart from his followers, was too contemptible to be an object either of apprehension or resentment on the part of the king. He was pardoned, and, it is said, made a scullion in the royal kitchen, from which menial office he was afterwards advanced to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... resolution on her part. She fixed her residence in Italy, where she gradually learned to neglect the caution which she had observed in England, till, after a year or two, reports arose of her intimacy with a servant whom she had raised from a menial situation to that of the chief officer of her household, and whom she admitted to a familiarity of intercourse which others besides her husband thought quite incompatible with innocence. He sent agents into Italy to inquire into ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... on the battle-field,—in some respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but not till the history of its inception, progress, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither—but as I am, I cannot—my heart would leap from ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... fleet, and each with lightening oars? Treasons to God and country are the rowers. They are the Gold and Hireling Brain, that gloat On conscience body with face down, afloat. Why hail they Greed, to run on menial chores From deck to deck, or to and from all shores? Why? To ensure the payment of ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... tinctured by a faint smile at the message, which the footman delivered without any suspicion that the view in question meant the view of Heine himself. But then that admirable menial had not the advantage of her comprehensive familiarity with Heine's writings. She crossed the blank stony courtyard and curled up the curving five flights, her mind ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... indignation strong, The fatal secret 'scap'd Sir Lanval's tongue: 'Yes!' he declar'd, 'he felt love's fullest power! Yes!' he declar'd, 'he had a paramour! But one, so perfect in all female grace, Those charms might scarcely win her handmaid's place; Those charms, were now one menial damsel near, Would lose this little light, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... copy Miss Lin's example." But before the words had issued from his mouth, he luckily scrutinised her a second time, and found that the girl's features were quite unfamiliar to him, that she was no menial, and that she looked like one of the twelve singing maids, who were getting up the plays. He could not, however, make out what roles she filled: scholars, girls, old men, women, or buffoons. Pao-yue quickly put out his tongue and stopped his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... dinners, which had cost her forty or fifty francs without the wines, and did not fulfil her social hopes, hopes that are as hard to realize in the provinces as in Paris. She sent away her cook, took a country-girl to do the menial work, and did her own cooking, ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... their children. They deliberately impair their health, wear themselves out, make all sorts of sacrifices, to send a worthless boy to college. They take in washing, go out house-cleaning, do the hardest and most menial work, in order to give their boys and girls an education and the benefit of priceless opportunities that they never had; yet, how often, they are rewarded only with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... many wise and brave remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken the fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to nature by observation and experiment, and given themselves up to the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... plenty of work to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conducive ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... phrase of Napoleon, "he had missed his destiny." His parents had been country people of some substance, but misfortune falling upon misfortune had reduced them to poverty. Finally, the father had become insane; the mother had been glad to obtain a menial situation in the very asylum where her husband was confined; and there was nothing better to be done for the son than to apprentice him to a shoemaker. Some talk there was amongst the neighbours of raising a subscription ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... lowliness, endeavors to remove from thee and me the strain which His love dare not pass over. He never loses the print of the nail; He never forgets Calvary and the blood; He never spends one hour without stooping to do the most menial work of cleansing filthy souls. And it is because of this humility He sits on the Throne and wields the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... mulatto slave of Murillo, is said to have become enamored of art while performing the menial offices of his master's studio. Like Erigonus, the color grinder of Nealces, or like Pareja, the mulatto of Velasquez, he devoted his leisure to the secret study of the principles of drawing, and in time acquired a skill with the brush rivalled by few of the regular scholars ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... was speedily aggravated by a fresh severity. Four days afterward an order was sent down which commanded the removal of all their attendants, with the exception of one or two menial servants. Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, was driven away with the coarsest insults. The Princess de Lamballe, that most faithful and affectionate friend of the queen, was rudely ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... person named Ling who commands the bowmen had but recently been elevated to that distinguished position from a menial and degraded occupation (for which, indeed, his stunted intellect more aptly fitted him); and being in consequence very greatly puffed out in self-gratification, he became an easy prey to the cunning of the rebels, and allowed himself to be beguiled into a trap, paying for ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Egyptian character is the position accorded to their women, who, as in all Mohammedan countries, are considered to be soulless. From infancy employed in the most menial occupations, they are not even permitted to enter the mosques at prayer-time, and until recently the scanty education which the boys enjoyed was denied to their sisters. It is no wonder, therefore, that these often beautiful ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... vital spark may be, so in our great cosmical laws we can say in what their power resides, though we know not really what they are. Whether mind be but a sublimated form of matter, or, what amounts to the same thing, matter a menial kind of mind, or whether, which seems less likely, it be a something incomparable with substance, of one thing we are sure, the same laws of heredity govern both. In each a like chain of continuity leads from the present to the dim past, a connecting clue which we can ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... glance, and watch the sign to hate. Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye, His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly; Now drops at once the pride of awful state, The golden canopy, the glitt'ring plate, The regal palace, the luxurious board, The liv'ried army, and the menial lord. With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd, He seeks the refuge of monastic rest. Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings, And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings. Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace repine, Shall Wolsey's wealth, with Wolsey's ...
— English Satires • Various
... the libation vase or bouquet. The eldest son carries the net or lassoes the bull, and recites the prayer while his father successively presents to the god each object prescribed by the ritual. A priest may occasionally act as substitute for the prince, but other men perform only the most menial offices. They are slaughterers or servants, or they bear the boat or canopy of the god. The god, for his part, is not always alone. He has his wife and his son by his side; next after them the gods of the neighbouring homes, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... thirteen great dioceses, and these he subdivided into one hundred and sixteen provinces. He separated the civil from the military functions of governors. He installed eunuchs in his palace, to wait upon his person and perform menial offices. He made his chamberlain one of the highest officers of State. He guarded his person by bodies of cavalry and infantry. He clothed himself in imposing robes; elaborately arranged his hair; wore a costly diadem; ornamented his person with gems and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... decaying monarchy. At first they were only robbers. They soon rose to the dignity of conquerors. Half the provinces of the empire were turned into Mahratta principalities, Freebooters, sprung from low castes, and accustomed to menial employments, became mighty Rajahs. The Bonslas, at the head of a band of plunderers, occupied the vast region of Berar. The Guicowar, which is, being interpreted, the Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns in Guzerat. The houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to silks and laces shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport, his card of admission, his surety of welcome—the lost rag-doll of the daughter of the house dangling under ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... time on very intimate terms with his housekeeper, a handsome young woman of the name of Hannah Montgomery, who had been his servant of all work. Her familiarity with her master, who, it 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 ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... said the Prince, "I command no longer; the repentant have to do with God, and not with Princes. But if you will let me advise you, go to Australia as a colonist, seek menial labour in the open air, and try to forget that you have ever been a clergyman, or that you ever set eyes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very early on the day of the sale looking enthusiastic. I, equally enthusiastic, applied myself to the menial tasks usually performed by Elizabeth. We had just finished a lunch of tinned soup, tinned fish and tinned fruit (oh, what a blessing is a can-opener in the absence of domestics!) when she reappeared. My heart leapt at the sight of a parcel in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... Bork at the ducal court of Wolgast. But old Kuessow told me that for a long while she was the whole talk of the court and town, many wondering, though they knew well her light behaviour, that she should give herself up to perdition at last for a common groom, no better than a menial compared to her. But I find the old proverb is true for her as well as for another, "The apple falls close to the tree; as is the sheep, so is the lamb;" for had her father brought her up in the fear of God, in place of encouraging her in revenge, pride, and haughtiness, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... and having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial household duties; and to this he added the practices of immoderate fasting, perpetual silence, downcast glances, veiled countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... only deputies, etc., but even their menial servants, are allowed to lord it over us. What is this but to have the curse of Canaan with a witness on us? To be the servant of servants, the most ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... their lives desolate and joyous, without hope, without spirit, without ambition. Laws were passed against them, one at Bordeaux as late as 1596,—many earlier; by these they were even denied the rights of citizens; they could not bear arms, nor engage in any trade save wood-working or menial occupations, nor marry out of their race; they were obliged to wear a scarlet badge on the shoulder, in the shape of a goose's foot; they were not to go barefoot in towns lest they contaminate the streets, and the penalty was branding with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... whose condition was servile or semi-servile—the Roman and German personal slaves, the Roman coloni and the German lidi—were concurrently absorbed by the feudal organisation, a few of them assuming a menial relation to the lords, but the greater part receiving land on terms which in those centuries were considered degrading. The tenures created during this era of universal infeudation were as various as the conditions which the tenants made ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... things were changed! What an unbearable woman Aunt Agnes was! What a horror was Mrs Macintyre! Had not those two between them simply swept four of the Flower Girls out of sight, and all the Precious Stones; and, in addition, had not Dumpy Dad and Aunt Cecilia undertaken some kind of menial work with regard to Dundree and Ardshiel? It was solely and entirely because of Ardshiel that Dumpy Dad was going to be an agent. It was entirely on account of Ardshiel that Aunt Cecilia was going to stoop to be a sort of nursery-governess. Well and cleverly had those wicked women, Aunt Agnes ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... menial Boy, From room to room assiduous fly, And busy hands extend; Our numerous fires are quivering bright, And, rolling from their pointed ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... on that night before the magistrates, but all was dark; although suspicion attached to a negro named Aaron, who had occasionally been employed in menial services by the family, and had been in the house immediately before the murder. The circumstances were such as to leave every man in utter perplexity as to the presumption for and against him. His mode of defending himself, and his general deportment, were marked by the coolest, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... rest of my fine family was a foundling. This led to a detail of the whole matter; and Lady D——, having conversed for a little with Phebe, took such a liking to the girl that she proposed having her continually about her person, as a kind of superior waiting-maid, half menial and half companion, and to remove her from under our roof on the instant. Although this was an offer too good and too opportune to be negatived, yet we could not think of parting with our darling Phebe on so short a warning; and, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the paper without a word, and obediently went to look for the coat; it was not the first menial work he had done in his life. He brought it and laid it on the counter; meanwhile, the strange gentleman who had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, said laughing: "I haven't got any silver; you can keep this." And he threw down half a sovereign, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Birney Holds not the tyrant's rod, Nor binds in chains and fetters, The image of his God; No vassal, at his bidding, Is doomed the lash to feel; No menial crouches near him, No Charley's[3] ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... of the colonel's quarters I had become accustomed to my menial duties, lightened as they were by the natural kindliness of my master, but the thought of appearing in public as a common slave revolted every fine instinct within me. Yet there was nothing for it but ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that a sudden attack by Farnese might be the result. Sir John was not aware however, of the minute and scientific observations then making at the very moment when Mr. Garnier was entertaining the commissioners with his witty and instructive conversation—by the unobtrusive menial who had accompanied the Secretary to Ostend. In order that those observations might be as thorough as possible, rather than with any view to ostensible business, the envoy of Parma now declared that—on account of the unfavourable state of the tide—he had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... drayman and I resented the menial duty of sliding those heavy filecases down four flights of stairs; but at a time like this, I thought philosophically, a man has duties he cannot shirk; besides, Le ffacase was old, I could afford to humor him even if ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... exhibition of this prejudice was seen among the lower classes of white people, largely Irish and Germans, who, devoted to menial labor, competed directly with the Negroes. It did not require a long time, however, for this feeling to react on the higher classes of whites where Negroes settled in large groups. A strong protest arose from the menace of Negro paupers. An attempt was ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... and seldom return without having been successful; indeed, John was, next to Malachi, the best shot of the party. It was, therefore, very annoying to Percival that he should always be detained at home doing all the drudgery of the house, such as feeding the pigs, cleaning knives, and other menial work, while his younger brother was doing the duty of a man. To Percival's repeated entreaties, objections were constantly raised by his mother: they could not spare him, he was not accustomed to walk in snow-shoes. Mr Campbell ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... become traders or husbandmen. Consequently they sometimes grow rich, and it will also sometimes happen that Brahmans become poor. That fact works its usual consequence, and rich Sudras sometimes employ poor Brahmans in menial occupations. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... distinctions between them. Some of them, possessed of mere patches of land, lived a life little different from that of the peasants (p. 167). Still others entirely lost their land and became attached, even as menial servants, to the households of their richer neighbours. (Thus Gerwazy was a servant, though not quite a menial, of the Pantler.) The great land owners (or magnates), by gathering around them hordes of gentle-born, landless dependents, were able to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... actual slaves. The greater part of this servile class were villeins or farm laborers (S150). They were bound to the soil, and could be sold with it, but not, like the slaves, separately from it. They could be compelled to perform any menial labor, but usually held their plots of land and humble cottages on condition of plowing a certain number of acres or doing a certain number of days' work in each year. In time the villeins generally obtained the privilege of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... during their lifetime have been at once so much admired and so much abused as Pope. Some writers, destined to oblivion in after-ages, have been loaded with laurels in their own time; while others, on whom Fame was one day to "wait like a menial," have gone to the grave neglected, if not decried and depreciated. But it was the fate of Pope to combine in his single experience the extremes of detraction and flattery—to have the sunshine of applause and the hail-storm of calumny mingled on his living ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... quarrelling in the fish market on the bank just below the bridge. As he looked on with interest a hand was laid on his shoulder. Turning, he saw a man, partly in the dress of a chu[u]gen, partly in that of a menial attendant of one of the larger yashiki (nobleman's mansion). Scars of burns on his hands and arms, patches of rice flour and bran, showed that he was a cook. His eye was severe and his manner abrupt as he rebuked Densuke. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... legally. It remained to study her socially. In the factory where I worked men and women were employed for ten-hour days. The women's highest wages were lower than the man's lowest. Both were working as hard as they possibly could. The women were doing menial work, such as scrubbing, which the men refused to do. The men were properly fed at noon; the women satisfied themselves with cake and pickles. Why was this? It is of course impossible to generalize on a single ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... hand at anything, if he can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the freedom of his mind. These are a few of the pet terms of Khalid. And in as much as he can continue to repeat them to himself, he is supremely content. He can be a menial, if while cringing before his superiors, he were permitted to chew on his pet illusions. A few days before he burned his peddling-box, he had read Epictetus. And the thought that such a great soul maintained its purity, its integrity, even in bonds, encouraged and consoled him. "How can they ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... her strength, her nursing, her mother-love to our soldiers. For her to be a soldier's nurse meant something very different from wearing a white apron, a white cap, sitting by a moaning soldier's bed, looking pretty. It meant days and nights of untiring toil; it meant the lowliest office, the most menial service; it meant the renouncing of all personal comfort, the sharing of her last possession with the soldier of her country; it meant patience, and watching, and unalterable love. A mother, every boy who fought for his country was ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... to loving), as if their modesty had been washed away in the bath. Those who have not become utterly destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip themselves in order to show audacity in lust, casting off fear in consequence of the wicked custom. The ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... He must not sell her, or otherwise dispose of her services during the unexpired period of her servitude, because "he had dealt deceitfully with her." In case of betrothal to his son, as in the other, she was not to be reduced to her former rank as a menial, but to be treated in every respect as a daughter. Even when the affection of the man to whom she was betrothed waned, he was to yield to her all the rights and privileges which belonged to her as his wife; and, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... to be employed in such a menial undertaking, the officer concluded to lay the true state of the case before him, who, he naturally enough thought, could, above all others in that territory, devise some plan that would result in rescuing Brevoort and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... beauty, As moonlight dies in gloom, As Slavery's menial duty Is Honor's certain tomb; As Hari's name and Hara's Spoken, charm sin away, So Poverty can surely ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in the middle of the room were ranged, with religious regularity, all the most esoteric examples of periodical literature in our language, from "The Iron-Trades Review" to "The Animals' Guardian." With one careless movement he destroyed the balanced perfection of a labour into which some menial had put his soul, and then dropped into a gigantic easy-chair near the fire, whose thin flames were just rising through the interstices of great black ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... very firm idea of her own standing as a princess. Had she not earlier in the day impressed Maizie? And now, was this stranger, even though she were a queen, to demand menial service of one of royal blood? Suzanna thought not. So she said firmly, ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... duty of obedience and the sin of pride and of passion. To obey was to live. We must obey God, our parents, and our superiors. There was a whole hierarchy of respect, outside of which existence was unrestrained and disorderly. So, after each fit of passion, that she might learn humility, some menial labour was imposed upon her as a penance, such as washing the cooking-utensils, or wiping up the kitchen floor; and, until it was finished, she would remain stooping over her work, enraged at first, but ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... and the poor creature's eyes streamed with tears as she invoked a fervent blessing on the head of her lovely protectress. While passing up the grand staircase, amid the wondering gaze and suppressed titter of many a pampered menial, she instructed her how to proceed; and having received a hasty account of all, and desired her not to be faint-hearted, she turned to the simpering master of ceremonies to tell him of her "dear delightful freak;" there was ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... occasionally submitted. Yet I was not displeased with the proposal. I spurned at the idea of any such submission, but the character of his lordship seemed changed: and changed it certainly was, though I then knew not why, or to what. Nor was it supposed that I was to act as his menial. I therefore expressed my sense of his lordship's civility, and owned the situation would be acceptable to me, as I was not at present encumbered with riches, and living in London I found was likely to prove expensive. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... King Augeas and without telling him anything of the demands of Eurystheus, pledged himself to the task, the latter measured the noble form in the lion-skin and could hardly refrain from laughing when he thought of so worthy a warrior undertaking so menial a work. But he said to himself: "Necessity has driven many a brave man; perhaps this one wishes to enrich himself through me. That will help him little. I can promise him a large reward if he cleans out the stables, for he can in one day clear little enough." ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... He suddenly turned his back upon them all. He had played before as though to amuse himself. He played now with the complete, almost passionate absorption of the artist. His head was uplifted, his eyes half closed. He was no longer the menial, the fugitive from justice. He was playing himself into another world, playing amidst a silence which, considering his audience, was amazing. They crouched across the table and watched him. Long Jim stood like a figure of stone. The interruption ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into which they looked, very meanly furnished. An elderly man, in the dress of a menial, was reading a tattered paper by the light of a guttering candle. He leaned back in his wooden chair with his feet upon a box, while a bottle of white wine stood with a half-filled tumbler upon a stool beside him. The sergeant thrust his needle-gun ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Madam," said I, "Sister Denise is thus distressed because she, being a De La Pole, is set to scrubbing and such like menial work." ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... the confines of a prison. Fleeing to parts unknown, his absence relieved the neighbourhood of a responsibility. For a time, he roamed among farmers and drovers in the mountains of Tennessee; again he did menial labour, often forced to the direst necessity to live. One day, when nearly famished, he met a slave-driver, conducting his coffle towards the Mississippi, to whom he proffered his services. The coarse driver readily accepted them; they proceeded on together, and it was not long before ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... door between was open. The office boy knocked at Merton's outer door, and the sound of that boy's strangled chuckling was distinctly audible to his employer. There is something irritating in the foolish merriment of a youthful menial. No conduct could be more likely than that of the office boy to irritate the first client, arriving on business of which it were hard to exaggerate the delicate and ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... way—unlike himself? And in what manner had he gathered that he was different from them? His nurse, it is true, was not a pleasant person, and had an injured and resentful bearing. In later years he realised that it had been the bearing of an irregularly paid menial, who rebelled against the fact that her place was not among people who were of distinction and high repute, and whose households bestowed a certain social status upon their servitors. She was a tall woman with a sour face and a bearing which conveyed a glum endurance of a position beneath her. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fixed itself in her mind was the familiar tone of the coachman towards Dorrimore. It was more that of an equal than of a menial. This impression confirmed her suspicion that she was trapped. Dorrimore had doubtless enlisted the services of a confidential friend rather than trust to a servant whose blabbing tongue might serve ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... military service. A reward of 2000 francs was offered to anyone who could supply incriminating evidence against the doctor, but this was offered in vain. The Jews, by the way, were told that while they would be removed from menial positions in the hospitals they "would be tolerated" as doctors—and nearly a hundred of these doctors died on ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... dressed his hair. Royal apparel agreed but ill with his condition after three days of sackcloth and ashes. As luck would have it, Esther had issued the command that the bathkeepers and barbers were not to ply their trades on that day, and there was nothing for Haman to do but perform the menial services Mordecai required. Haman tried to play upon the feelings of Mordecai. Fetching a deep sigh, he said: "The greatest in the king's realm is now acting as bathkeeper and barber!" Mordecai, however, did not permit himself to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... pay implicit obedience to their superiors; modesty in demeanour, as becoming their age, was strictly required before their elders; and they had to perform many offices which would now be deemed menial. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of American women find themselves, because of the present organization of society and industry, almost unable to contribute to the family income except by going away from home, or in doing the most menial and severe labor as household workers from one end of the year to the other. I shall at present, however, only point out that in hundreds of thousands of homes in the country an opportunity of gaining a very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... that was soon taken from him, even in the market place. After a few months his mother died and his father sacrificed his last remaining possessions for drink. He insulted and even attacked his son, bidding him leave his house, and the poor boy was compelled to render the most menial service to all. For ten long years this condition lasted, yet ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... by birth is a Brahmana but who is destitute of the occupations of his order, is in vain. The gift to one that has married a girl after the accession of puberty, to females, to one that sports with snakes, and to one that is employed in menial offices, is also in vain. These sixteen kinds of gifts are productive of no merits. That man who with mind clouded with darkness giveth away from fear or anger, enjoyeth the merit of such gift while he is in the womb of his mother. The man who (under ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I was the ship's drudge. At everybody's beck and call, I was employed from morning till night in all kinds of menial offices. It was a hard life, and the treatment meted out to me was rough; but having got the better of my first rage and indignation, I resolved to make the best of my situation and to show no sullenness; besides I honestly wished ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... done, what a success upon the whole her life would have been. She who had begun her career as a cottage-girl, a small quarry-owner's daughter, had sunk so low as to the position of laundress, had engaged in various menial occupations, had made an unhappy marriage for love which had, however, in the long run, thanks to Jocelyn's management, much improved her position, was at last to see her daughter secure what she herself had just missed ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... see if we were really there, and some who didn't know us sent word to us or walked by to look at us, as if we were performing animals. The name of Jardine was paged through the corridors and billiard-room and cafe until we had a personal acquaintance with every menial in the hotel. It cost us a good deal to get ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... the purse-proud, common-place people of the world. But there is a higher motive still, which has its origin in that love of independence which springs up spontaneously in the breasts of the high-souled children of a glorious land. They cannot labour in a menial capacity in the country where they were born and educated to command. They can trace no difference between themselves and the more fortunate individuals of a race whose blood warms their veins, and whose name they bear. The want ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... pride that apes humility. Is that the way you teach your flock to 'leave all, and follow me'?" I started up suddenly, saying to myself, "I will seek this man in his palace, and see whether I shall be kindly received and consoled, or be repulsed by a menial." ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... judging from her dispassionate language to the angel, we should infer that she was naturally of a more patient disposition than her mistress, and is in this view worthy of the imitation of young women whom Providence consigns to the same menial state. How many would have been clamorous and peevish, hasty in censuring their mistress, and forward in vindicating themselves! They would have obtruded the story of the fancied injuries they had sustained upon every occasion, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... of absence for this jaunt. So, from sunrise until dusk, he worked with will, to gain the wished-for leave. Never before did buckles shine as did the buckles of the squire entrusted to his polishing. Never did menial tasks cease sooner to be drudgery, because of the good-will with which he worked. And when the day was done, so well had every duty been performed, right willingly the squire did grant him grace, and forthwith Ederyn sped ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... public cab, denotes menial labor, with little chance for advancement. If it is a wagon, you will remain in poverty and unfortunate circumstances for some time. If you are driven in these conveyances by others, you will profit by superior knowledge of the world, and will always find some path through difficulties. If you are ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... change things, that he'll not approve of Martha, or the way dinner is made, or my habits in dishwashing or bedmaking or marketing or something that will—well, put me right in the role of a paid chambermaid, a servant, a menial with no more to say about the running of the house, ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... his own way,—not of blood, but of breeding; and while he had faithfully served the "aristocrats," as his father had done before him, he did not limit that service to their prosperity, but in their greatest need descended to menial offices, and forgot that he could dance and ride and fence almost as well as his young master. But a bullet from a barricade put an end to his duty there, and he hated utterly the democratic rule that had overturned for him both past and future, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of the year, he became dissatisfied with his employer because he was forced to perform "some menial services in the house."[10] He wished his employer to know that he was not a household servant, but an apprentice. Further difficulties arose, which terminated his apprenticeship in Middlebury. Returning to Brandon, he entered the shop of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... conductor, one of those train-crew aristocrats who are always afraid that someone may ask them to put up a car-window, and who, if requested to perform such a menial service, silently point to the button that calls the porter. Larry wore this air of official aloofness even on the street, where there were no car-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his run he stepped indifferently from the train along with the passengers, his street ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down the evil ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... them. And the child grows up with, say, a nine-year brain in a thirty-year body, and becomes an easy tool for any criminal he meets. Our prisons are one-third full of feeble-minded convicts. Society ought to segregate them on feeble-minded farms, where they can earn their livings in peaceful menial pursuits, and not have children. Then in a generation or so we might be able to ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Dean himself became the stranger's teacher, and all sorts of odd jobs about the ranch, from cleaning the pig pen to weeding the garden, were the text books. The man balked at nothing. Indeed, he seemed to find a curious, grim satisfaction in accomplishing the most menial and disagreeable tasks; and when he made mistakes, as he often did, he laughed at himself with such bitter, mocking humor that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... apartment on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street. His family consisted of himself, Mrs. Garfunkel, three children and a Lithuanian maid named Anna, and it was a source of wonder to the neighbors that a girl so slight in frame could perform the menial duties of so large a household. She cooked, washed and sewed for the entire family with such cheerfulness and application that Mrs. Garfunkel deemed her a treasure and left to her discretion almost every domestic detail. Thus Anna always rose at six and immediately awakened Mr. Garfunkel, ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... poet is not one whom they can hire by money and flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional verses, their purveyor of table wit; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties let no such union be attempted. Will a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... it, but she had loved it when he had seemed to her a superior being; coercion from one who only yesterday had been under the dominion of nerves and nurses was intolerable to her. She was at heart a courtier, would do menial service to a king, and refuse common civility to an inferior. She knew how St. Christopher had felt at seeing his satanic captain tremble at the sign of the cross; and though, unlike the saint, she had no intention of setting out to discover the stronger lord, she knew ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Further, nothing apparently is disgraceful but what is sinful. Yet man is ashamed of things that are not sins, for instance when he performs a menial occupation. Therefore it seems that shamefacedness is not properly about ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... is not the worst; my father deceives himself in the hopes of the very child he has brought into the world; he suffers his house to be the seat of drunkenness, riot, and irreligion, who seduces, almost in my sight, the menial servant, converses with the prostitute, and corrupts the wife! Thus I, who from my earliest dawn of reason was taught to think that at my approach every eye sparkled with pleasure, or was dejected as conscious of superior charms, am excluded from society, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... contrast to what is called the British Household, composed of the great officers of state. "You are not ignorant," says Harris, writing to William Eden, "that the great officers of the court are merely titular, and never allowed to have any authority annexed to their office. This is given to some menial servants, who are constantly about the king's person, and his treasurer was a Russian named Deiss, in whom his Majesty placed more confidence than he appears to have deserved; since for maladministration, or some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... menial, "royal Pandu's righteous son, Lost his game and lost his reason, Empress, thou art staked ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... tells me of several of the menial servants of the court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and knights of the Garter the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the more gallant and splendid. "My lord," said the king, "I have heard much of your hospitality, but the truth far exceeds the report. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen, whom I see on both sides of me, are no doubt your menial servants." The earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was too narrow for such magnificence. "They are most of them," subjoined he, "my retainers, who are come to do me service at this time, when they know I am honored with your majesty's presence." The king started a little, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... preparin' manure for fuel; it wuz made into lumps and dried. The wimmen wuz workin' away all covered with chains and bangles and rings; Josiah looked on 'em engaged in that menial and onwelcome ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... than muscle, yet when these two met in a gold mine it fared ill with mind. Classical and mathematical scholars joined their forces with navvies to dig gold; and nearly always the scholars were found after a while cooking, shoe cleaning, and doing generally menial ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he was almost insupportable. The low bows, and the still humbler expressions of the Prussian Ambassador, the Marquis da Lucchesini, were hardly noticed; and the Saxon Ambassador, Count von Buneau, was addressed in a language that no well-bred master ever uses in speaking to a menial servant. He did not cast a look, or utter a word, that was not an insult to the audience and a disgrace to his rank. I never before saw him vent his rage and disappointment so indiscriminately. We were, indeed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... live, and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon mere life, upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that available for activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they also unfit for the latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile. The true life is possible only in the degree in which the physical necessities are had without effort and without attention. Hence slaves, artisans, and women are employed in furnishing the means of subsistence in order that others, those adequately equipped ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... sate on steed; Behind him, in a round, Stood knight and squire, and menial train; Against the leash the greyhounds strain; The horses paw'd the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... desire to become an inmate of the White House. I have heard so much of Mr. Lincoln's goodness that I should like to be near him; and if I can enter the White House no other way, I am willing to go as a menial. My dear Mrs. Keckley, will you not recommend me to Mrs. Lincoln as a friend of yours out of employment, and ask her to take me as a chambermaid? If you will do this you shall be well rewarded. It may be worth several thousand dollars ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... themselves ill, a week after their arrival in the country, and continued so uniformly during their stay; yet on their return to London or Bath immediately lost all their complaints, and this repeatedly; which I was led to ascribe to their being in their infancy surrounded with menial attendants, who had flattered them into the exertions they then used. And that in their riper years, they became torpid for want of this stimulus, and could not amuse themselves by any voluntary employment; but required ever after, either to be amused by other people, or to be flattered ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his necessities, and it was while turning the crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial drudgery. Born at an Umbrian village during the first Punic war, not far from the year when Regulus was taken, [Footnote: See page 133.] he came to Rome at an early age, and after he began to write, produced a score or more of ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... they be six and we but two. As for that, said Sir Dinadan, let us not spare, for I will assay the foremost; and therewith he made him ready. When King Mark saw him do so, as fast as Sir Dinadan rode toward them, King Mark rode froward them with all his menial meiny. So when Sir Dinadan saw King Mark was gone, he set the spear out of the rest, and threw his shield upon his back, and came, riding to the fellowship of the Table Round. And anon Sir Uwaine knew Sir Dinadan, and welcomed him, and so ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... life with her stepmother. Noble as she was she was yet forced by the vindictive old woman to rise in the early hours of the morning, even two or three hours before daylight in winter, to light the fire and sweep the house and perform other menial work. One evening as she was breaking the ice in the well in order to draw water for the household she was interrupted by a cavalier ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... nether garments, and was now sure the news of what had so recently befallen him had not reached New York. There now came on board four flabby men, dreamy of countenance, and whose dilapidated garments bespoke them persons of menial occupations. But as neither St. Paul, nor Alexander the Great, nor Henry Ward Beecher, (who, I take it, is as great a man as either of them, and will leave more portraits of himself than both,) never dressed according ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... wife. He has no idea of making a friend and adviser of one whom he looks upon merely as his head-servant. He has the same objection to any sort of learning in women which many people have to the education of the poor: he thinks it must render them averse from the performance of those menial duties of life, for which, he imagines, they were exclusively created. It was his good fortune to meet with a woman exactly suited to his disposition. She understood "the whole art of cookery," the four rules of arithmetic, and could read the New Testament without much ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... a sonorous blast, but dropped it hastily, it being answered almost simultaneously by an ancient menial left in charge. Their own servants were coming on by coach, and they were much comforted by perceiving that this provident person had prepared a substantial repast, combining supper and tea, in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... American who hates their nation. It was really an added pang to go, on their account, but the carriage was waiting at the door; the 'domestique' had already carried our baggage to the steam-tram station; the kindly menial train formed around us for an ultimate 'douceur', and we were off, after the 'portier' had shut us into our vehicle and touched his oft-touched cap for the last time, while the hotel facade dissembled its grief by architecturally smiling in the soft ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... how intimate was soon to be my association with the Berts and 'Arries and 'Erbs of the world. I was to be their servant, to wait upon them, to perform menial tasks for them, to wash them and dress them and undress them, to carry them in my arms. I was to see them suffer and to learn to respect their gameness, and the wry, "grousing" humour which is their ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... none of the natives of the country should be employed as servants, or allowed to perform any menial duties whatever. For these purposes the people were required to depend on captives taken in war and enslaved. One reason why he made this rule was to stimulate the people on the frontiers to make hostile excursions among their neighbors, in order to supply themselves ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... pointed a decisive forefinger in the direction in which I thought the count was concealed. The obsequious menial took our cards, bowed low, and invited us to enter ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... reflection of the reception-room; and whatever be the whims, the caprices, the littleness of the Great Man, they are speedily assumed by his inferiors, and the dark temper of one casts a lowering shadow on every menial by whom ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... living? It has been intimated more than once that the higher training of Negroes has resulted in sending into the world of work, men who could find nothing to do suitable to their talents. Now and then there comes a rumor of a colored college man working at menial service, etc. Fortunately, returns as to occupations of college-bred Negroes, gathered by the Atlanta conference, are quite full—nearly sixty per cent. of the total ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... go like an invader! No, Daring, the Invitation's friendly, and as a Friend attended only by my menial Servants, I'll wait upon the Council, that they may see that when I could command it, I came an humble Suppliant for their Favour.—You may return, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... of family, like our trio), they chose to remember, and to remind the world, that he was the son of a tenant farmer (a Macgregor, at that), that as a boy he had been willing to run errands and to deliver legs of mutton, and that for a time in his youth he had held the menial post of Janitor in the High School ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... have, on other occasions, let the Indian severely alone just so soon as it was ascertained that his power for harm had ceased, and have left him to find his place in the social and industrial scale; to become fisherman, lumberman, herdsman, menial, beggar, or thief, according to aptitude or accident, or the wants of the community at large. True it is that the modes adopted, in fact, in dealing with particular tribes, have generally been due to chance or to the caprices of administration; true, ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... guards. And there was nothing we could do but accept our status. Tarrano was guiding his destiny cleverly. Yet underneath it all, unseen forces were at work. We sensed them. The slaans—submissive at their menial tasks, but everywhere with sullen, resentful glances. Perhaps Tarrano realized his danger; but I do not think that he, any more than the rest of us, realized what the Water Festival ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... was theirs! Two brothers—the one the owner of three hundred slaves, and the first man of his district—the other, a bonded menial, and so poor that the very bread he ate, the clothes he wore, were another's! How terribly on him had fallen the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... think of no bad object to be attained by sending him to Sikes, which would not be equally well answered by his remaining with Fagin; and after meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been selected to perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker, until another boy, better suited for his purpose could be engaged. He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely. He remained lost ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... would compel [the missionaries] to carry their burdens while travelling, or build their mia-mias when halting to camp for the night; in fact, all sorts of menial offices had to be discharged by the missionaries for these noble black men while ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... royal train, And brandished swords and staves amain, But stern the Baron's warning—"Back! 730 Back, on your lives, ye menial pack! Beware the Douglas.—Yes! behold, King James! the Douglas, doomed of old, And vainly sought for near and far, A victim to atone the war, 735 A willing victim, now attends, Nor craves thy grace but for his friends." ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... torn from out my heart The only hope I cherished yet, that thou Living wouldst come hereafter to avenge Thy father's woes and mine. Where must I go? Since I am left of thee and of my sire Bereaved and lonely, and once more must be The drudge and menial of my bitterest foes, My father's murderers. Say, is it well? Nay, nevermore will I consort with these, But sinking here before the palace gate, Thus, friendless, I will wither out my life. Hereat if any in the house be vexed, Let them destroy me; for to take my life Were ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... with a highly indignant scowl, and turning his frown once more upon this most impertinent menial, encountered a look of such comic familiarity, easy assurance, and droll indifference, as it would not be easy to match. The beau started, stared, again pulled himself to a still greater height—as if by the dignity of the attitude to set the other at fault—frowned ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hit her door a resounding thump as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in any kind of work from cleaning a stable up! The menial things are the evasions of work—tricks by which men are cheated out of their ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I was about to black out from stun-gun paralysis, and Martha was headed for the readjustment chamber where they'd reduce her mental activity to the level of a menial, sterilize her, and put her to work in an occupation that no man or woman with a spark of intelligence, ambition, ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... to play with his knife. No matter if it is cracked. So is he, for the matter of that. Go and tell your menial troop to remember to put a little beef in the soup, this noon. I am tired of sipping warm ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the head menial of the castle, "the royal shoemaker, villain, is no clumsy clown from these parts; but he and his wares come from abroad, from Paris. He is, moreover, with the king at present, receiving his reward for the beautiful new pair of shoes in softly-tanned leather, which arrived ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time, but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the day with more ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... mediation, soft'ning wrath supreme, Taught nature to revive, in mercy's beam. Gracious Restorer of a race condemn'd, Tho' by the thankless tribes revil'd, contemn'd. Yet gratitude, and truth, who round Thee fly, With all thy menial angels of the sky, Viewing thy gifts with rapturous amaze, Hail thy beneficence with heavenly praise: All bear eternal witness, that Thou art Justly a Sovereign in the human heart. Man cannot yield too much, when, at thy call To Thee his grateful zeal resigns his all; Whate'er be may ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... They are therefore in a state the most deplorable. Switzerland is filled with gentlemen and ladies of the very first families and rank, who are all starving, but those who have had the good fortune to procure, by disguising their quality, some menial office! ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... with education and well connected take it into their heads to go into service for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,—to procure means for their education, or to help members of their families who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial duties of some household where they are not known, and, having stooped—if stooping it is to be considered—to lowly offices, no born and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You must not suppose she was christened Delilah. Any of our ministers would hesitate to give such a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... companion and friend; fighting in every battle, cleaving to King and Prince in spite of every opposing influence, carrying letters between father and son in the teeth of the enemy, humbling himself as a servant, and performing menial labours, in those latter days of bitterness and outrage, when all courtly surroundings were denied ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the shepherd drew her close to him and turned the determined little face so that he could see her. "Art thou happy here? Remember thou art no slave, though thou hast chosen to be a menial. Thy father wears no iron ring of bondage around his neck. He is a ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... our senses very quickly, and overtaking him ere he reached our garden gate, Dawson and I assured the Don we had no need of any servant, and would be careful that Moll henceforth did no menial office; that we would tax his generosity no more than we could help, etc., to our great humiliation when we came to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... has a capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP and with per capita GDP 70% of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in menial jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by about 4.0% for the past two years, largely because of an investment boom and infrastructure upgrades for the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... briars. He followed, and that night he caught her. He struck her. Do you understand? He beat her with those terrible fists of his and made her his slave. It was she who had to gather the firewood, build the fires, cook, and do all the degrading camp-labor—she, who had never performed a menial act in her life. These things he compelled her to do, while he, a proper savage, elected to lie around camp and look on. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, except on occasion to hunt meat or ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... the moral and personal to the menial characteristics of Mr. Johnson's speeches, we find that his brain is to be classed with notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... allowed in favour of dark purple, because of its association with mourning, but the glaring colour schemes now in vogue were to be deprecated as prejudicial to solemnity. It pained him to see music reduced to the menial position of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... accepted Hooper as more than a distasteful necessity—somebody must wait on him and do him menial service; he was not feared, indeed, for surely such a dog would not dare to be false, but cordially disliked. Beaumaroy won him from the beginning. Whom he conceived him to be Beaumaroy himself never knew, but ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... lopsided stoop of its very, very East Side setting, nor by the appearance of a terrible massive lady who came to the door while I was in quite unproductive parley with an unmistakably, a hopelessly mystified menial, an outlandish young woman with a face of dark despair and an intelligence closed to any mere indigenous appeal. I was to learn later in the day that she's a Macedonian Christian whom the Chataways harbor against the cruel Turk in ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... vague and fanciful traditions. They were few in numbers, barbarous in condition, untamable in nature; they built no cities and practiced no industries: their women planted maize and performed all menial labors; their men hunted and fought. Before we came, they fought one another; our coming did not unite them against a common enemy; it only gave each of them one enemy the more. After an intercourse of four hundred years, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... her neck and cheeks and run like an over-flowing stream into her ears and about her hair. It was evident that, for a second time, Dave had chosen to say nothing to strangers about her presence at the ranch. But that was not what brought the colour. She was addressed as a menial, as a hired helper in the Elden household! Her own honesty told her that even that was not what brought the colour. It was not even the man's insolent familiarity; it was his assumption that his familiarity would ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... master appeared to struggle with deep distaste for the office he was required to perform; and there was even some manifestation of a more principled reluctance, in his hesitating yet humble manner. If Don Camillo noted the air and countenance of his menial at all, he effectually ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body and the vacant mind; The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene, Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies, Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, With the fell poison of a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thought they were a pack of idlers, doing nothing, and earning a menial salary for it. 'Playing from ten to to four, like the fountains in Trafalgar Square,' ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... before the king in the courtyard of his seraglio. He viewed her figure, and beheld a person of a tawny complexion and feeble frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was passing in the royal mind, and said: "It would behoove you, O king, to contemplate the charms of Laila through the wicket of a Mujnun's eye, in order ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used to the darkness. If he demand attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he must assert himself and stand upright. Then the meanest menial can see that he is blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will keep his eyes on the floor and sit still. For amusement he may pick coal lump by lump out of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a little heap in the fender, keeping ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... been reared in the enjoyment of every luxury which wealth can command. How could you bear to suffer privations, to perform menial labors, to be stinted in dress, deprived of congenial society, obliged to refrain from every amusement, because you were unable to afford the expense? How should you like to have a grinding economy continually pressing upon you, in every arrangement of your household, every detail of your daily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... harnessed together, taking a load of country produce to market! I hope, for the honor of the country, it was not emblematic of woman's condition there. But as we saw hundreds of them breaking stone along the road, and occupied at other laborious and not less menial labor, there is too much reason to fear ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... labor. In fact, it is considered disgraceful for a man of Huauhtla to indulge in work. The people of San Lucas, the nearest town, and a dependency, are, on the other hand, notably industrious, and it is they who carry burdens and do menial work for the lordly Huauhtla people. Mrs. de Butrie told us that she tried in vain to get a cook in the village. The woman was satisfied to cook and found no fault with the wages offered, but refused ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... back?" he broke in. "No, I should be sorry to see you again in a menial position, you with your divine gifts of beauty and song. The idea of your getting a new place," he added with a fall into ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this preacher, did behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn, eighteen ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... personal favors of the incoming President. The throng became at last so great, and interfered so much with the comfort of Lincoln's home, that the Executive Chamber in the State House was set apart as his reception room. Here he met all who chose to come—"the millionaire and the menial, the priest and the politician, men, women, and children, old friends and new friends, those who called for love and those who sought for office. From morning until night this was his occupation; and he performed it with conscientious ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... House were stirred up by a like devotion to do menial tasks and fulfil humble offices. Wherefore the clerks and weavers would not avoid the work in the fields, but when called thereto at harvest time they would go forth with the rest to gather in the sheaves of corn. Following the rule of obedience, and acting ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis |
