"Sweeper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your lip! Why didn't you come out when you was ordered, instead o' keeping us awake all night? You're no better than my own barrack-sweeper, you white-'eaded old polyanthus! ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... two bronzed Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white kaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours. Between them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent carpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... emphatically, no. Make what he likes of himself. A crossing sweeper, if he fancies that. Buy him a crossing and a broom, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... into their bellies. Blood is drawn from the guts to the brain. Though the picture be the veriest mess, the light and movement cause the beholder to do a little reptilian thinking. After a day's work a street-sweeper enters the place, heavy as King Log. A ditch-digger goes in, sick and surly. It is the state of the body when many men drink themselves into insensibility. But here the light is as strong in the eye as whiskey in the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... it—but d'you think he'll believe? Never! Never!] "Our food is cooked for us according to our creeds—Sikh, or Brahmin, or Mussulman and all the rest—When a man dies he is also buried according to his creed. Though he has been a groom or a sweeper, he is buried like some great land-owner. Do not let such matters trouble you henceforth. Living or dying, all is done in accordance with the ordinance of our faiths. Some low-caste men, such as sweepers, counting upon the ignorance of the doctors ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... North American continent with a dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's habits. Mr. Harrington Surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early forenoon. So much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon by engagements then, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the other he clutched at one of the branches. He caught it, and the next moment was unexpectedly ducked overhead in the icy water. He came up gasping, and then understood. The tree was what in the voyageur's nomenclature is known as a "sweeper." Still held by its roots it bobbed up and down with the current, and the extra strain of his weight and the girl's had sunk it deeper in the water. It still moved up and down, and he had not finished spluttering when a new danger asserted ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... London simply because, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to be the only place in the wide world where our poor little talents could earn us a few shillings a week to live on. Music and literature! but I fancy the nearest crossing-sweeper did better, and could afford to give himself a more generous dinner every day. It occasionally happened that an article sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so many rejections to ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... cook steal a moiety of everything that passed through his hands—every one in that black underworld stealing, lying, back-biting, cheating, intriguing (and all meanwhile strictly and stoutly religious, even the sweeper-descended Goanese cook, the biggest thief of all, purging his Christian soul on Sunday mornings by Confession, and fortifying himself against the temptations of the Evil One ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the wind; a black cat sat in a patch of sunshine on the path washing itself; somebody opened a lower window, and there was a noise of sweeping, presently made indistinguishable by the chorale sung by the sweeper, no doubt Marie, in a pious, Good Friday mood. "Lob Gott ihr Christen allzugleich," chanted Marie, keeping time with her broom. Her voice was loud and monotonous, but Anna listened with a smile, and would have liked to join in, and ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... straw, with a red-turbaned, blue dungaree-clad, supple Oriental of the coolie class. Jim Gubo, with liberal display of ivory, assured the Baas, in defiance of the Baas's own eyes and the organ in juxtaposition, that the work had been regularly done. Rasu the Sweeper, with many oaths and protestations, assured the Presence that such neglect as was apparent was owing to the incapacity of the hubshi and his myrmidons, Rasu's own share of the labour and that of his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... live in us. Well, I can't bother. If Maurice were a crossing-sweeper, and his grandmother had been an evilly disposed charwoman, who could never get any one to trust her to char, I'd marry him ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the soul made clean, and fit for the King of glory to inhabit. Indeed, this was a most instructive emblem. O that my heart might be thus cleansed, thought Christian, and then I verily believe I could bear my burden with great ease to the end of my pilgrimage; but I have had enough of that fierce sweeper, the Law. The Lord deliver ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I'd like to be the sweeper in that establishment. But still I don't get you. Where do ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... a little street sweeper, you know, Barefooted, and ragged as one could be; But blue were his eyes as the far-off skies, And a brave-hearted laddie was Tommy Magee. But it chanced on the morning of Valentine's Day Our little street sweeper felt lonely and sad; "For there's no fun," thought he, "for ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... decomposition. As usual, none of the natives would defile themselves by touching the dead body. I accordingly gave orders that one of the elephants should drag it about a mile down wind away from the camp. Lord Mayo was brought to the spot, and the sweeper, being of a low caste, attached a very thick rope to the hind legs of the ox; the other end being made fast to the elephant's pad in such a manner as to form traces. The elephant did not exhibit the slightest interest in the proceeding, and everything was completed, the body ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... phonograph records. You say a thing to a man that calls up Record No. 999873 and he puts it in for you, starts his motor and begins to make it go round and round for you. He just tumtytums off some of his subconsciousness for you. Whether he is selling you a carpet sweeper or converting your soul, it is his body that is using his brain and not his brain that is using ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... into the Strand, mingling with all the noise and bustle of a crowded street, where by turns were to be discovered, justling each other, parsons, lawyers, apothecaries, projectors, excisemen, organists, picture-sellers, bear and monkey-leaders, fiddlers and bailiffs. The barber and the chimney-sweeper were however always observed to be careful in avoiding the touch of each other, as if contamination ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... element, and sang and danced with great success, for the arrack was in his veins, and at such times he could be the antipodes of his morose self. His dancing was much applauded. But there was Bhuggoo, the sweeper, from the city, who had a reputation for dancing, and was in great request at weddings in consequence, and he danced against Piroo, and so elegant and ingenious were his contortions that he was voted the better. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... another was in a yet more deplorable condition; another was nodding over a hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, and oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon enquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is. The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them, about ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... force was divided into three columns. The center column was led by the Vindictive, with the Brigadier second and the Iris in tow, followed by the five blocking ships and the paddle mine-sweeper Lingfield, escorting five motor launches for taking off the surplus steaming parties of the blocking ships. The starboard column was led by the Warwick, flying the flag of Admiral Keyes, followed by the Phoebe and North Star, which three ships were to cover the Vindictive from ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... have to consider wives and kids as well as V.C.s. The problem of getting the Fleet through or of getting submarines through is a problem of clearing away the mines. With a more powerfully engined type of mine-sweeper and regular naval commanders and crews to man them, the business would be easy. But as things actually stand there is real cause for ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... SWEEP, SWEEPER. The name given at Yale and other colleges to the person whose occupation it is to sweep the students' ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisions, [25] and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Every profession has its unpresentable aspects, which ought not to be seen by out-siders. Think of a sculptor's studio and of the sculptor himself when he is modelling a large figure or group in the clay. He might be a bricklayer or a road-sweeper if you judge by his appearance. This is the tomb I ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... themselves loop hounds. They know everybody by their first name and sometimes they've got all of $6.50 in their pocket at one time. And if you're out some evening with a friend—a regular fella, they pop in the next day and say, 'Hello, Peewee, who was that street sweeper I see you palling with last night? Oh, he wasn't! Well, I had him pegged either as a street sweeper or ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... drawled out in cool, hard tones: "I might remark that that young lady is, I might persoom to say, a friend of mine, which I'm prepared to back up in my best style, and if any blanked blanked son of a street sweeper has any remark to make, here's ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... Lascar, to Flag Street, the quarter of punch-houses;—but in Cossitollah all castes and vocations are met, whether their talk be of gold mohurs or cowries; here the Sahib gives the horrid leper a wide berth, and the Baboo walks carefully round the shadow of Mehtur, the sweeper. Therefore, reader, Cossitollah is by all means the street for you to draw profound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... use a patent sweeper daily in rooms which are occupied for sewing and other work, and she says that she does not find it necessary to give her rooms more than a light sweeping oftener than once in six weeks. Of course it would be different if ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... was exceptional. He had never before seen such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his savoury, and hurried the maid as she swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper. When she had left the room, he filled his glass with wine ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... street sweeper, who had been leaning on his broom at the curb ever since the onlookers had reached the sidewalk, decided to move on at last. With infinite slowness his foot came up. He poised, swung forward, then, the universal paralysis ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... him with equal tenderness when he has failed, and at all times spurring him to live up to the ideal his wife has set for him. To stay aloof from his work inasmuch as it would annoy him, yet to be adviser emeritus, whether the matter involved hiring a new sweeper-out or moving the whole plant to the end of the world. Someone who ministered to the needs of the strong man's very soul in unsuspected, often unconscious and unthanked fashion; such a trifle as a rose-shaded lamp for tired eyes; a funny bundle ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... still to be found within the sound of Bow Bells and Westminster. Those of the Strand and Fleet Street, of the Borough, Bermondsey, Southwark southward of the river, and Bloomsbury in the north, form that debatable ground which is ever busy with hurrying feet. The street-sweeper, though, has mostly disappeared, and the pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than were the Halls of Hampton ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Mountjoy with the deepest awe. It was not at first borne in upon her to believe that Captain Mountjoy Scarborough, an officer in the Coldstreams, and the acknowledged heir to the Tretton property, had vanished away as a stray street-sweeper might do, or some milliner's lowest work-woman. But at last there were advertisements in all the newspapers and placards on all the walls, and Mrs. Mountjoy did understand that the captain was gone. She could as yet hardly believe that ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... must learn to be sweeper to all the beasts of the jungle, and you must serve them for twelve years." So for twelve years King Burtal cleared the grass and kept the jungle clean for all the creatures in it—cows, sheep, goats, tigers, cats, bears. Sometimes he stayed in one part of the jungle, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... character for sanity is of no further use to you," said Paul. "Tell them to anyone you can get to believe you—tell the crossing-sweeper and the policemen, tell your grandmother, tell the horse-marines—it will amuse them. Only, you shall tell them on the other side of my front door. Shall I call anyone to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... better, there was some lamentation. In temperament they were mere children requiring a father. But of one venerable and aged man I would like to record a few things. He was a gaunt, tall, grey-bearded fellow as thin as a stick-insect, and he performed the most menial of all services, being a sweeper by caste. But what he did was done with passionate devotion. He had seen service in France and spoke a few curious French words. Troops on active service in France certainly are taught some strange phrases. All day he toiled with his kerosene tins and brushes and when he ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... is only a 'sweeper,' children, His deeds all unnoticed, unknown; Yet I think he is one of the heroes God sees and will mark ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... lay in the center of the table. Other knives were thrust into belts or held in the hands of the men. A fat man in the yellow sarong of a cook stood frozen in the act of handing a knife to a tall one-eyed sweeper. ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... importance to a poet of an intellectual insight into all-important pursuits and "seemly arts." But it is not by the mere intellect that we can take in the daily occupations of mankind: we must sympathize with them, and see them in their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, qua chimney-sweeper, is not very sentimental: it is in himself that he is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... which I do not use, and rum, which I do not drink. He accepted sweetmeats from me. And he called me a name that would make the sahib gulp, a word that I suppose he had picked up from a barrack-sweeper on the Bengal side of India. Then he slapped me on the back, and after that sat with his arm around me while the entertainment lasted. When we left the tent he swore roundly at a newcomer to the front for not saluting me, who am not entitled ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the arbitrariness of things. The thirteen passed pitilessly on. Mr. Curtenty freed the gander from the coiling wire, and picked it up, but, finding it far too heavy to carry, he handed it to a Corporation road-sweeper. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... I returned early to the "Hotel La Perla." Its entire force was waiting for me. This consisted of Juan, a cheery, slight fellow in a blue undershirt and speckled cotton trousers of uncertain age, who was waiter, chambermaid, porter, bath-boy, sweeper, general swipe, possibly cook, and in all but name proprietor; the nominal one being a spherical native on the down-grade of life who never moved twice in the same day if it could be avoided, leaving the establishment ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the same time to mention, that Hugh rarely made use of a crossing on a muddy day, without finding a half-penny somewhere about him for the sweeper. He would rather walk through oceans of mud, than cross at the natural place when he had no coppers — especially if he had ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... however, discovered that he had translated from the French a "Rambler" of Johnson's, which had been but a month before taken from the English; and thinking it right to make him his personal excuses, he went next day, and found our friend all covered with soot like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the 'Alchymist,' making aether. "Come, come," says Dr. Johnson, "dear Mur, the story is black enough now; and it was a very happy day for me ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... our people have thus come up from the bottom. The head of the factory started as a machinist. The man in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a patternmaker. Another man overseeing one of the principal departments started as a sweeper. There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. Everything that we have developed has been done by men who have qualified themselves with us. We fortunately did not inherit any traditions and we are not founding any. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... heroes of our tale had been originally—before his promotion—a chimney-sweeper, it may be only appropriate to offer a passing word on the genial subject of soot. Without speculating on its origin and parentage, whether derived from the cooking of a Christmas dinner, or the production of the beautiful colors and odors of exotic plants ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... shakes his head and says firmly, "An old man, seventy-five come Martinmass knows more o' life than a young chap, stands ter reason"; besides, his epitome of the town life he knows nothing of was a just one as far as it went; and his own son is the sweeper of a Holborn crossing, and many other things that he should not be; but that is the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... of perspiration was out over her face, sparkling forth again after each mopping. A box arrived from a jeweler's and one from a department store. They were a pie knife and a table crumber in the form of a miniature carpet sweeper. The usual futilities with which such occasions can be cluttered and which have shaped the destinies of immemorial women into a tyranny of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... water, and its windows lit up for an Easter ball, and its reception-rooms thronged by its own exclusive set, and one of its charming and accomplished daughters melting a select party to tears by her pathetic recitation about a little crossing sweeper. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... said Elizabeth, 'that Knecht Ruprecht is the German terrifier of naughty children, the same as the chimney-sweeper in England, or Coeur de Lion in Palestine, or the Duke of Wellington ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went up, and was so won over by Miss Galindo's merry ways, and sharp insight into the mysteries of his various kinds of business (he was a mason, chimney-sweeper, and ratcatcher), that he came home and abused his wife the next time she called the duck the name by which he himself had ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quite as much as the applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in St. Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... After the hard day's shearing, passing the joke along: The 'ringer' that shore a hundred, as they never were shorn before, And the novice who, toiling bravely, had tommy-hawked half a score, The tarboy, the cook, and the slushy, the sweeper that swept the board, The picker-up, and the penner, with the rest of the shearing horde. There were men from the inland stations where the skies like a furnace glow, And men from the Snowy River, the land of the frozen snow; There were swarthy Queensland ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... partner's washing, scrubbing, mending, and cooking, and saw no degradation in it, was somewhat inconsistently irritated by menial functions in men, and although he gave extravagantly to waiters, and threw a dollar to the crossing-sweeper, there was always a certain shy avoidance of them in his manner. Coming from the theatre one night Uncle Billy was, however, seriously concerned by one of these crossing-sweepers turning hastily before them and being knocked down by a passing carriage. The ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... ingratitude that the son of Costantin should be set apart for their priesthood, be made an Englishman, a grand khawajah, whilst Iskender was offered employment—mark the kindness!—as a scullion and a sweeper in their house—Iskender, who had been their favourite ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... be freer and more natural than the streets outside. A man goes by gesticulating as though he practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country road. A street sweeper, patched to his office, tunes his slow work to fit the quiet surroundings. Boys skate by or cut swirls upon the pavement in the privilege ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... ran to the thornbush where Darzee was singing a song of triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag's death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had thrown ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... "I would rather trust a crossing-sweeper with an appreciation of music than a man who comes from a public school." We agree. The former is much more likely to have been a professional ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... half anger, half ecstasy, Pinchas galloped toward the fiddling and banging orchestra. A harmless sweeper in his path was herself swept aside. But her fallen broom tripped up the runner. He fell with an echoing clamour, to which his clattering cane contributed, and clouds of dust arose and gathered where erst ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... indeed, I'm loath— Life's deemed a mawkish dish of broth, Without thy aid, old sweeper; So mawkish, few will put it down, Even from the cottage to the crown, Without ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... saucers stacked on the pantry shelves, the cups hung neatly on the appointed hooks in the cupboard, and the silver put away in the sideboard drawer. Then Mrs. Fletcher turned her attention to the tidying of the house. She made innumerable circles and criss-crosses with the carpet sweeper over the parlor rug, and was dusting the big rocker by the bay window when a chance glance up the street revealed two small figures playing far at one end of the strip of macadam. Her son, without doubt, was one of them. No one else wore a cap tilted back at quite so ridiculous ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... his life the back of an anarchist that must have been the whole extent of his connection with the underworld. He was, however, a man who liked to talk with all sorts of people, and he may have gathered those illuminating facts at second or third hand, from a crossing-sweeper, from a retired police officer, from some vague man in his club, or even, perhaps, from a Minister of State met at some ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... household equipment which keep causing unnecessary pain, labor, and irritation: that leaky faucet, that worn-out washing machine, that broken light switch, that asthmatic vacuum sweeper, that torn rug, that decrepit snow shovel, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... She no longer wants to be the beast of burden of the house. She considers it sufficient work to give many years of her life to the rearing of her children. She no longer wants to be the cook, the mender, the sweeper of the house! And, owing to American women taking the lead in obtaining their claims, there is a general complaint of the dearth of women who will condescend to domestic work in the United States. My lady prefers art, politics, literature, or the gaming tables; ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... little beast, but a slug-like crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws lacking strength or direction—a kitten that ought to have been in a basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... consulting my expense account for May that during that month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an economical character. We have three different kinds of smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning polish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, a potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... himself with giving a plain Answer to every Article that Trim had laid to his Charge, and appealed to his Neighbours who remembered the whole Affair;—and as he knew there was never any Thing to be got in wrestling with a Chimney-Sweeper,—he was going to take Leave of Trim for ever.—But, hold,—the Mob by this Time had got round them, and their High Mightinesses insisted upon having Trim tried upon the Spot.—Trim was accordingly tried; and, after a full ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... their superior that entire reliance might be placed on their fidelity, and that they knew of three or four other men in Leyden "as firm as trees and fierce as lions," whom they would engage—a fustian worker, a tailor, a chimney-sweeper, and one or two other mechanics. The looseness and utter recklessness with which this hideous conspiracy was arranged excites amazement. Van Dyk gave the two brothers 100 pistoles in gold—a coin about equal to a guinea—for their immediate reward as well as for that of the comrades to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the awful Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He next entered a street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last, some consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He now saw the crossing-sweeper of the district (off duty till church came out) smoking a pipe under the covered way that led to a mews. He detected, through half closed shutters, a chemist's apprentice yawing over a large book. He passed a navigator, an ostler, and two costermongers wandering wearily backwards ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... In the old days all five sitting-rooms had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper languidly. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... know," I answered; "I know there is the sort of idea that it is funny, but somehow it does not strike me more with reference to woman than to ourselves. I mean it does not seem more incongruous than that a man like yourself and an offal sweeper belong to ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... making its way over the long sloping roof in front of them. In the summer, when the sparrows built their nests in the tall chimneys on either side, and were perpetually flying to and fro, twittering, caressing, quarrelling—this was quite a society. When a chimney-sweeper once thrust out his black face from one of these chimneys, and shouted aloud to testify the accomplishment of his ascent, it was an event that brought a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... shop was as truly in a state of slavery as the negro who at that time was working in the fields of Georgia or Carolina. In a sense, of course, it may be said that every one who works for his living, from a Cabinet Minister to a crossing-sweeper, is a slave, for he has to conform to certain rules, and unless he works he will be deprived of many advantages which he wishes to acquire, and may even be reduced to a state of starvation. But speculations of this sort may be left to the philosopher and the sociologist. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... and sage, Hark to the roar of War! Poet, professor and circus clown, Chimney-sweeper and fop o' the town, Into the pot and be melted down: ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... '"The chimney-sweeper's daughter Sue As I have heard declare, O, Although she's neither sock nor shoe Will curl and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... have it," he began with a laugh, which despite the weariness and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had forced itself to his lips, "I have been sweeper and man-of-all-work at the Temple for the past few ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... allurements. She was now Lady Bountiful: having looked after the simple cares of her household she was now ready to cast her eyes abroad, and relieve in so far as she might the distress around her. The first object of charity she encountered was an old crossing-sweeper. She addressed him in a matter-of-fact way which was intended to conceal her fluttering self-consciousness. She inquired whether he had a wife; whether he had any children; whether they were not rather poor. And having ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... amount of remuneration and perquisites to be received by the latter (among which regulations I find the following: "Let no man receive anything who has not purchased the office he holds"); the order of precedence of everybody, from the dean of the Sacred College to the last sweeper who enters the conclave with their Eminences,—all subject to minute rules, which would require, one would imagine, a lifetime to make one's self master of, and which, curious as some of them are, it is impossible to find place for here. We must ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the third on my list, was a lad, some twelve years old. His, father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office, as student at law, errand-boy, cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble science ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... understanding this distinction, "that I was not at home when you called upon me. Pray, how do you like my dress? I assure you I think it's the prettiest here. But do you know there's the most shocking thing in the world happened in the next room! I really believe there's a common chimney-sweeper got in! I assure you it's enough to frighten one to death, for every time he moves the soot smells so you can't think; quite real soot, I assure you! only conceive how nasty! I declare I wish with all my heart it would ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... now, and in spite of the darkness, wasted very little time in reaching the ravine. All was very quiet. The Turkish guns, which had been firing probably at some mine-sweeper, were silent again. The only sounds of war were an occasional boom far to the south where the British and French faced the Turks entrenched on the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... and found that there were indeed five thousand there—five thousand sheep and several Arab shepherds. On the opposite bank John had a machine-gun, with which he sniped those who approached the water. He killed mules, and wounded several bhisties[28] and a sweeper. There were also people sniping with rifles, and the Indian regiments had casualties. On our side, the cavalry brought in a prisoner. We had the young gentleman caught at night, and one other; the 19th Brigade took a fourth prisoner. So we abandoned the battle, had breakfast ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... says an inscription found in this very theatre [300:1], though not yet set up at the time when the 'town-clerk' spoke. So again, where the same speaker describes the city of Ephesus as the 'neocoros,' the 'temple sweeper,' or 'sacristan of the great goddess Artemis,' we find in these inscriptions for the first time a direct example of this term so applied. Though the term 'neocoros' in itself is capable of general application, yet as a matter of fact, when used of Ephesus on coins and inscriptions (as ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... live, the height of my ambition, small though it be, is only to find my place, though it were but as a sweeper of chimneys. If I dare wish—if I dare choose, it would be only this—to regenerate one little parish in the whole world . . . To do that, and die, for aught I care, without ever being recognised as the author of my own ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered—'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the first crossing-sweeper or match-seller she chanced across after a successful sitting at bridge. This afternoon she had come out of the fray some fifteen shillings to the bad, but she gave two pennies to a crossing- sweeper ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... American, the sweeper of Broadway, if there be such a citizen, believe in this perfection of equality amongst men as a fundamental axiom of the rights of man? Place a black sweeper of crossings in juxtaposition, and the question will very soon solve itself. Why, the free and enlightened ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... and your time is all your own; ergo, you're the very man for this business. The thing is to be done: accept that for a certainty. It's only a question of time. Indeed, when you look at life philosophically, what is there on earth that is not a question of time? Give the crossing-sweeper between this and Chancery-lane time enough, and he might develop into a Rothschild. He might want nine hundred years or so to do it in; but there's no doubt he could do it, if you gave ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the rest of the tradesmen jealous, as well as Bull and Frog; they hearing of the quarrel, were glad of an opportunity of joining against old Lewis Baboon, provided that Bull and Frog would bear the charges of the suit. Even lying Ned, the chimney-sweeper of Savoy, and Tom, the Portugal dustman, put in their claims, and the cause was put into the hands of Humphry ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Say that the holidays are drawing nigh, And that to-morrow's sun begins the week, Which will abound with store of ale and cake, With hams of bacon, and with powder'd beef, Stuff d to give field-itinerants relief. Then I, who have within these precincts kept, And ne'er beyond the chimney-sweeper's stept, Will take a loose, and venture to be seen, Since 'twill be Sunday, upon Shanks's green; There, with erected looks and phrase sublime, To talk of unity of place and time, And with much malice, mix'd with little satire, Explode the wits ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... be defiled. According to the old rule, if a Brahman touches a man of an impure caste, as a Chamar (tanner) or Basor (basket-maker), he should bathe and change his loin-cloth, and if he touches a sweeper he should change his sacred thread. Now, however, educated Brahmans usually wear white cotton trousers and black or brown coats of cloth, alpaca or silk with the normal allowance of buttons, and European shoes and boots which they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... he flung the purse out of the window to a sweeper in the courtyard, and said to his grandson, 'Then they do not teach you ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... his pressure, and discharge their pollen on him. Now, in the beach pea, and similarly in the vetches, the style is hairy on its inner side, to brush out the pollen on the visitor who sets the automatic sweeper in motion as he alights and moves about. So perfectly have many members of this interesting family adapted their structure to the requirements of insects, and so implicitly do they rely on their ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ships in the harbour, and at Spithead, and the ponds dragged in the neighbourhood, to no effect, it was concluded that the Gipsies had stolen him. The boy was found a few years afterwards, at Kingston-upon-Thames, apprenticed to a chimney sweeper. He had been enticed away by a person who had given him sweet-meats; but not ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... their ignorance and degradation, and feeling with them. These sometimes exercise the most menial employments: I knew one noble lord who had been a facchino, and I heard of another who was a street-sweeper. Conte che non conta, non conta niente, [Footnote: A count who doesn't count (money) counts for nothing.] says the sneering Italian proverb; and it would be little less than miraculous if a nobility like that of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the woman, Jenny, we found her in her poor little cottage, nursing a vagrant boy called Jo, a crossing-sweeper, who had tramped down from London, and was tramping he didn't know where. Jenny, who had known him in London, had found him in a corner of the town, burning with fever, and taken him home to care for, Seeing that he was very ill, and fearing her husband's anger at her having harbored him, when it ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... bless my heart, the last voyage I had a fellow who was always writing to the Earl of Lollipop, and signing himself his son. The men called him My Lord. He was made to black down the rigging, notwithstanding, and polish up the pots and pans. He was found at last to be a chimney-sweeper's son." ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... Besides the general ugliness, the household presented the picture of misery, for the 'scopatore santissimo' and his numerous family were obliged to live on two hundred Roman crowns a year, and as there are no perquisites attached to the office of apostolic sweeper, he was compelled to furnish all needs out of this slender sum. In spite of that Momolo was a most generous man. As soon as he saw me seated he told me he should have liked to give me a good supper, but there was only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... nothing, but she looked round the untidy rooms, where everything that would hold it had a linen cover with a Cluny-lace edge—all of them soiled and wrinkled. She watched Tufik, chanting about the plains of Lebanon and shoving the carpet-sweeper with a bang against her best furniture; and, with Hannah's salad in mind, she sniffed a warning odor from the kitchen that told of more Syrian experiments with her digestion. Tish surrendered: that morning she wrote to Hannah that Tufik was going back to Syria, and to come and bring ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... carpet-sweeper wheels often become so badly worn and streched that they fail to grip the carpet firmly enough to run the sweeper. To remedy this, procure some rubber tape a little wider than the rims of the old wheels, remove the old rubber tires and wind the tape on the rims ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... in great part an old-fashioned French city. The France that survives there and all through the province is not the France of to-day, but the France of before the great Revolution. The stranger seeking his way through the streets had better, in most cases, question the first crossing-sweeper he meets in French, and not in English. The English residents are all expected to speak French. But the English residents and the French live on terms of the most cordial fraternity. Little quarrels, local quarrels of race and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy |
