|
|
|
More "Able-bodied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his troops, the inhabitants ridiculed his presumption, and were good enough to warn him of the hopelessness of his enterprise: a garrison composed of the halt and the blind, without an able-bodied man amongst them, would, they declared, be able successfully to resist him. The king, stung by their mockery, made a promise to his "mighty men" that the first of them to scale the walls should be made chief and captain of his host. We often ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... his excursion to Palachocolas. There he found a fort erected at the lowest passage of the river, and forty-five miles from Savannah. Returning from this visit, as he entered Ebenezer he found eight of the most able-bodied men at work, with their minister Gronau, in constructing booths and tents against the arrival of the families. In furtherance of their labors, he laid out the town, and directed the carpenters, who had arrived also in ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... partly from the zealous spirit of the age, partly from the personal regard universally paid him, prepared a force, which seemed equal to the greatness of his enterprise. The king, on the other hand, issued out writs, requiring the attendance of all his military tenants at Dover, and even of all able-bodied men, to defend the kingdom in this dangerous extremity. A great number appeared; and he selected an army of sixty thousand men; a power invincible, had they been united in affection to their prince, and animated ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 'Not much. They've been digging trenches all day about four miles back. It's too sickening. Pity we don't do like the Boches—conscript all the able-bodied civilians and make 'em do all this trench-digging in rear. Then we might be fresh for ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... are to contemplate, the expenses of this entertainment. They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe three hundred; and three hundred dollars is more than the year's income of many a person in this room. There are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold cellars with a quarter of an inch of water on the floor—men who for six or seven months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning—and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in a ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... towards America, and away from England. To the New World, where are more Irish than in Ireland (so they say) the poorer classes look with steadfast eye. To them America is the chief end of man, the earthly Paradise, the promised land, the El Dorado, a heaven upon earth. Every able-bodied man is saving up to pay his passage, every good-looking girl is anxious to give herself a better chance in the States. Nearly all have relatives to give them a start, and glowing letters from fortunate emigrants ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... stout able-bodied fellow, a fresh importation from the emerald isle, dressed in breeches open at the knees, long worsted stockings, rucked down to the ankles, and a great-coat with at least three capes, while a high-crowned black hat, the top of which opened ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... renewed in a much more oppressive form. Not only every laborer, but every member of a laborer's family above the age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages of an able-bodied man for at least several ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was a military muster at Salem. Every able-bodied man, in the town and neighborhood, was there. All were well armed, with steel caps upon their heads, plates of iron upon their breasts and at their backs, and gorgets of steel around their necks. When the sun shone ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Militia appear to follow naturally after remarks on fire-arms. According to the most reliable information which I have been able to obtain, every able-bodied male between 18 and 40 years of age is liable to militia service. Those who do not serve are subject to a fine, varying in different States, from 3s. upwards; which sum helps to pay those who do duty. The pay of a private while on duty is about 10s. a-day, and that of officers in proportion. Formerly, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... generals then marched on to besiege Ju-ning Fu. The presence of the emperor gave energy to the defenders, and they held out until every animal in the city had been killed for food, until every old and useless person had suffered death to lessen the number of hungry mouths, until so many able-bodied men had fallen that the women manned the ramparts, and then the allies stormed the walls. The emperor burned himself to death in his palace, that his body might not fall into the hands of his enemies. For a few days the shadow of the imperial crown ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... maiden of twelve summers, removing her elegant hat and passing her tapery fingers lightly through her fair tresses, "how sad it is—is it not?—to see able-bodied youths and young ladies wasting the precious summer ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... the horrible consequences of parting with their wits in this manner. Before the drinking commenced, they appointed a few able-bodied Indians who were to remain sober and take care of the rest. They then deprived themselves of all their dangerous weapons—tomahawks, clubs, guns, arrows, and knives, and ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of the people, affecting not only the features, but the frame. Five feet two inches on an average,—pot-bellied, bow-legged, abortively featured, their clothing a wisp of rags,—these spectres of a people that were once well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, stalk abroad into the daylight of civilization, the annual apparition of Irish ugliness and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... reason with George) they cannot. And figures prove to us, that, in the time consumed by five symphonic numbers, the startling number of four hundred and fifty hogs could be (and are daily) slaughtered, scraped, disembowelled, hewn, and packed. While forty or fifty able-bodied musicians are discoursing Beethoven's rambling "Eroica," it were possible to dispatch and to dress a carload of as fine beeves as ever hailed from Texas; and the performance of the "Sakuntala" overture might be ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... and egg party was joining in the fray. A stout yet still fairly able-bodied gentleman in white and black checks enquired: "What's the fellow up to? Ain't there no police here?" and it was evident that once more public opinion was rallying to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... son. But one of these days, you mark my words, Mr L. Murchison will travel to Elgin Station with flags on his engine and he'll be very much surprised to find the band there, and a large number of his fellow-citizens, all able-bodied shouting men, and every factory whistle in Elgin let off at once, to say nothing of kids with tin ones. And if the Murchison Stove and Furnace Works siren stands out of that occasion I'll break in and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... forth in silence and secrecy, with all the vigorous and able-bodied forces under his command, leaving the weary, the sick, and the infirm to the mercy of their enemies. The long column succeeded in making good their retreat, without exciting the suspicions of the Scythians. They took the route which they supposed ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Opera-house) could brisker be, There gathered a gloom around their glee— A shadow which came and went so fast, That ere one could say "'Tis there," 'twas past— And, lo! when the scene again was cleared, Ten of the dancers had disappeared! Ten able-bodied quadrillers swept From the hallowed floor where late they stept, While twelve was all that footed it still, On the Irish side of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... slight inclination. Sir Henry's inner mind decided against him—at once—instinctively. What was a stout fellow, who at any rate looked as though he were still of military age, doing with nonsense of this sort, at four o'clock in the day, when England wanted every able-bodied man she possessed, either to fight for her or to work for her? At the same time the reflection passed rapidly through his mind that neither the man nor the name had come up—so far as he could remember—before the County Tribunal of which ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was simple but practical. There was, it seemed, a marshy tract at a considerable distance from the capital which needed draining and reclaiming—a work which the more able-bodied of the Gnomes could carry out under strict control. So the majority were deported to the Maerchenlands, the remainder being employed in the Royal Kitchens as supernumerary and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... knees supplicating the Creator for him? Who knows? We may have London in flames again, and a conflagration more fatal than the last, thou obstinate wench, before thou art a week older, and every able-bodied man called away from plough and pasture to serve the King, and desolation and famine where plenty now smiles at us. And is this a time in which to refuse a valiant and wealthy protector, a lover as honest as ever God made; a pious, conforming Christian, of unsullied name; a young ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... millions of dollars. But even this is inadequate to the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the able-bodied white men ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... villages were not great, so that he would find no great difficulty in purchasing provisions. The dress he had brought with him was not altogether unfavourable for such a purpose, as he could easily pass as a sub-officer, whose duty it was to inquire whether the villages had each sent all their able-bodied men to the war. The only drawback to it would be that, if instructions for his arrest had been sent down to the villages along the road, as well as those by the river, they would have probably been directed to specially ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... plunder and rapine, drive into open space every living being they can muster, the two leaders step forward, and with critical decision inspect the extent and quality of their capture. Of the latter there are none but able-bodied, for the sufficiently hideous reason already set forth. These are drafted into gangs according to age or sex, and yoked together like oxen, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... a crew of ten, or at the most twelve, able-bodied and carefully picked men, with a full equipment for five years, in every respect as good as modern appliances permit of, I am of opinion that the undertaking would be well secured against risk. With this ship we should sail up through Bering Strait and westward along the ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... got a capital part for you in the farce,[66] not a difficult one to learn, as you never say anything but "Yes" and "No." You are called in the dramatis personae an able-bodied British seaman, and you are never seen by mortal eye to do anything (except inopportunely producing a mop) but stand about the deck of the boat in everybody's way, with your hair immensely touzled, one brace on, your hands in your pockets, and the bottoms of your trousers tucked up. Yet ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... belonged to a firm at Carbonear, and employed, one way and another, all the people in the place, in number less than two hundred. The women worked at the fish-curing, along with the children and some old men, but the able-bodied men belonged mostly to the Labrador fleet, or manned a two-three small vessels that made regular voyages to the Island of St. Jago to fetch home salt for the pickling. My mother, besides working at the factory, kept a boarding-house ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... earth; it somehow took one's thoughts back to civilisation and crowded cities, and one felt that it was not just very certain if one would see such things again; and how little it would take to wipe us out, like gnats squashed on a vast window-pane! In the morning we sent the able-bodied man away to hunt, but his interest in us soon overcame his desire for game, and he returned, and presently made himself useful by carrying roots of bushes for our fire, for wood was hard to get, and the nearest tree hardly in sight. I presented the buck with ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... All able-bodied men are compelled to work and each year to give a few days' labor to keep the excellent roads in good repair; but they reap the reward of their industry and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... custom of the youthful miners of Cornwall to test their strength by racing up the almost interminable ladders by which the mines are reached. This tremendous exertion after a day of severe toil affected them of course very severely, and in some cases seriously. Many an able-bodied man has by this means brought himself to a premature end. Among others, David Trevarrow excelled and suffered. No one could beat him in running up the ladders; but one day, on reaching the surface, blood issued from his mouth, and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Burnap, or you are a dead man," repeated the soldier, who evidently had some scruples about depriving the infant Confederacy of an able-bodied recruit. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... imagination only, as there is nothing for the most gallant to stride here but Husky dogs), in making examination of the men below decks, got to their enquiries a technical reply that staggered them. One able-bodied seaman, busied with between-decks blubber, proved to be a medical man with degrees from two colleges. He subsequently made at the request of the Police a searching report on the state of health of the island community, adding suggestions for its improvement. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... heights about Neisse, for the first time. Directly on sight of whom, Commandant Roth assembled the Burghers of the place; took a new Oath of Fidelity from one and all; admonished them to do their utmost, as they should see him do. The able-bodied and likeliest of them (say about 400) he has had arranged into Militia Companies, with what drill there could be in the interim; and since his coming, has employed every moment in making ready. Wednesday, 11th, he locks all the Gates, and stands strictly on his guard. The inhabitants are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... women old before their time, hurrying from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of home and livelihood. Adelle recalled one of her first talks with the stone mason, in which he had crudely told her that her yearly income represented the total wages of four or five hundred able-bodied men and women, such as these, who worked from ten to sixteen hours a day for three hundred days each year, when they could, and all told earned hardly what she drew by signing her name to slips of paper as income from her ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... take no interest in all the pleasant rocks and bushes strewed over the country by the beneficent hand of Providence. He shacks along on his little old cayuse, with his mind occupied on how many things he can't do next, and he gits plumb disgusted. But suppose there's a chance of an able-bodied enemy, aided and abetted with a gun, a-hidin' behind each and every one of them rocks and bushes? Don't life take on an interest? I bet you money! The imaginations of that man's mind gets started up. Life becomes full of chances. The man, he's interested in his life because the other feller wants ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... answered the stranger; "you are the stoutest and one of the most able-bodied men I ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... his head and looked at Laverick incredulously. He was more than half inclined to believe that this was a practical joke. Were they not standing on the pavement in Chancery Lane, and was not he an able-bodied policeman of great bulk and immense muscle! Yet his companion did not look by any means a man of the nervous order. Laverick was broad-shouldered, his skin was tanned a wholesome color, his bearing was the bearing of a man prepared to defend himself at any ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... outbreaks whilst I was in Nicaragua, and the whole country was in a state of civil war for more than four months, nearly all the able-bodied men being drafted into the armies that were raised, but I believe there were not a score of men killed on the field of battle during the whole time; the town of Juigalpa was taken and retaken without any one ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... their women stolen until they again took up their march to the north. From the hundred that had formerly called Uglik "Father," there now remained only a score of women and children, a half dozen youths, and five able-bodied ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... direct employment of the great mass of the able-bodied people by the state, has an unavoidable tendency to paralyse industry, and to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... stronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth century. The practice of impressing able men for the royal navy was as old as the reign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an odious institution of long standing—a terror not only to rogue and vagabond but to every able-bodied seafaring man and waterman on rivers, who was not exempted by some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and carried to the navy not only its victims but the germs of fever which infested public places of detention. But the press gang harvested ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the next morning, he must save them ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... a garrulous, gossipy set, as every one knows. They are able-bodied, not particularly fond of fish, and inclined to seek the neighborhood of man, rather than to come out here away from him. They make very good American rooks. So I am led to think it is their love of "neighboring" ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... for yourself," said the inner keeper. "The committee refuse in any circumstances to issue passes to able-bodied men. If you are able to work, you can earn your fare: plenty of work for willing hands. No use in arguing the matter, sir," he continued resolutely: "you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... weapons, the position of the White Kendah was serious indeed. As I think I have said, in all they did not number more than about two thousand men between the ages of twenty and fifty-five, or, including lads between fourteen and twenty and old men still able-bodied between fifty-five and seventy, say two thousand seven hundred capable of some sort of martial service. To these might be added something under two thousand women, since among this dwindling folk, oddly enough, from causes that I never ascertained, the males out-numbered the females, which ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... we lacked completely the practical experience necessary for adapting the military apparatus of our small force of regular soldiers to the requirements of a great national army. We felt that we could with the aid of money and common-sense transform a large group of able-bodied men accustomed to healthy exercise into a serviceable and even a victorious army, but we made a great mistake. The commissariat and sanitary service and especially the military train-corps would have to be created out of nothing. When in June the governor of one State reported that his infantry ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... must also be informed that a double-sleigh load of able-bodied men followed close behind the one in which Miss King was taken home. What this movement meant, I am not able very satisfactorily to conjecture. I venture the opinion, however, that the good folks supposed their victim would jump out ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... While he stuffed his pump-gun I smoked and thought. 'Unless you go slow, Mr. Larkin,' says I to myself, 'you'll get into plenty of trouble. Here you are, mixed up with something that you don't sabe pretty well. A rough canyon, two hound dogs and an able-bodied bear is a combination that you can work, but when you throw in a college boy and a gun that winds up like a clock and shoots till the cows come home, the situation looks kind of misty.' I didn't think much of the pump-gun, but for all I knew it might go off at ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... community of fruit growers the usual Japanese labor was not available; but when the fruit ripened, the banker, the butcher, the lawyer, the garage man, the druggist, the local editor, and in fact every able-bodied man and woman in the town, left their occupations and went out, gathered the fruit, and sent it ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... have a pretty fierce smell, but I didn't put much faith in it. I'd been in opium joints, an' I knew that a Chinaman would FATTEN on a smell 'at would suffocate a goat; an' when it comes to vigorous an' able-bodied odors, a billy-goat ain't ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... intonation, are much safer from the infliction of gallantries at the hands or lips of mortal men than those whose attributes are more pleasing; and it is safe to assert that many a male monster has been rooted to his seat in street-cars by the coldly intellectual eye of some not altogether able-bodied feminine person. The recent victories all along the line of women over men in examination-rooms, and their more or less successful ventures in the fields of law, medicine, and newspaper enterprise, would be more appalling to man and encouraging to the progressionists, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... it out a hundred miles or more on the trail. You can try it that far and see how you like it. I'll furnish you your board. There are always plenty of bedrooms on the ground floor and in one of the wagons on rainy nights. You can take a shift driving a team now and then, and every able-bodied man has to do guard duty some of the time. You understand the dangers of the situation by this time. Here comes my man," he added, as the horse-dealer appeared, leading a string of mules up ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... and Cairo, Ill., as well as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields; "superintendents of contrabands" multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and ask him to give her the house which he had caused to be erected in Wineland, but he made her the same answer [as that which he had given Karlsefni], saying, that he would lend the house, but not give it. It was stipulated between Karlsefni and Freydis, that each should have on shipboard thirty able-bodied men, besides the women; but Freydis immediately violated this compact, by concealing five men more [than this number], and this the brothers did not discover before they arrived in Wineland. They now put out to sea, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... THE IDEA that it is nice to be 'weak' and 'delicate,' but they cannot get a more false idea! God meant women to be strong and able-bodied, and only by being so can they be happy and capable of imparting happiness to others. It is only by being strong and healthy that they can be perfect in their sexual nature; and it is only by being perfect in this part of their being ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... are two able-bodied men, and I always carry a brace of pistols—don't you?" spoke up the advocate, his professional zeal kindling at the prospect of stealing a march on ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... seem determined that so meritorious an action shall not escape the observation of those around if, for example, they have occasion to remove a stone to a little distance, which perhaps might be carried by two able-bodied men, a whole swarm gather about it, and, after a vast deal of palavering, lift it up among them, every one struggling to get hold of it, and bear it off yelling and panting as if accomplishing some mighty achievement. Seeing them on these occasions, one is reminded of an ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with so scanty a garrison in time of war, under the exclusive laws. But, on the other hand, suppose this bill to be passed into law by this day month; declare war if you like the next day; and I assert that you will have no difficulty, within six weeks, to raise in that country 50,000 able-bodied, and what is better, willing-hearted, men, who will traverse the continent, or find their way to any quarter of the globe to which you may choose to direct their arms. The passing of this bill is worth to the British empire more, far more, and I ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in debt to Solomon for these wise sayings, and for the pains he took to have them preserved. The words which head this form a picture. It is harvest-time, and the old folks have been depending on their able-bodied son getting in all their corn, but they are doomed to disappointment. He sleeps when he should work. When others are toiling he is snoring, and his corn rots in the field because he does not carry it ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... three days of that singular condition which is no longer life and yet not death, I isolate the patient and, though this is not really essential to success, I give him a douche which will represent the shower so dear to the able-bodied Mollusc. In about a couple of days, my prisoner, but lately injured by the Glow-worm's treachery, is restored to his normal state. He revives, in a manner; he recovers movement and sensibility. He is affected by the stimulus of a needle; he shifts his place, crawls, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... among the mountains of freight the work went forward faster than ever. But the night had served to point the anger of the strikers, and the dock owners, becoming alarmed for the safety of their property, joined with Emerson in establishing a force of a dozen able-bodied guards, armed with clubs, to assist the police in disputing the shore line with the rioters. The police themselves had proved ineffective, even betraying a half-hearted sympathy with the union men, who were not slow to ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... out of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting: "One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had a huge camp-fire tended by the Bishop's numerous children. Near by was a smaller fire over which the good man's four wives, able-bodied, glowing, and cordial, cooked the supper. In little ways they sought to lighten his sorrow or to put his mind away from it. To this end the Bishop contributed by pouring him drink from a large ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... he thought that," cried Bessie. "No doubt everybody thought that, but it wasn't entirely Teddy's fault. If there is anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. Teddy was egged on to all sorts of indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the bell-boys up. If he'd stand on his head on the cashier's desk, the cashier would laugh first, and then, to get rid of him, would suggest that he go into ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... been clamouring about. Now the Government have sent up a military patrol, I believe. But they say it isn't strong enough, and all the able-bodied men on the Leura are enrolling as specials. No doubt, that's what been keeping the Boss. You may be sure if there's fighting to be done—black ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... peace as well as of war so to organize or class the militia as would enable us on any sudden emergency to call for the services of the younger portions, unencumbered with the old and those having families. Upward of three hundred thousand able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 26 years, which the last census shews we may now count within our limits, will furnish a competent number for offense or defense in any point where they may be wanted, and will give time for raising regular forces after ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... everywhere: not merely are they the domestic servants, but they are the hands in the factories, they run innumerable little shops, they unload the ships, they work the mines, they cultivate the farms. Possibly there are more able-bodied male slaves in Attica than male free men, although this point is very uncertain. Their number is the harder to reckon because they are not required to wear any distinctive dress, and you cannot tell at a glance whether ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... influence and counsel soon found themselves left far behind. In a short time he had become alcalde; his prestige outgrew the limits of the city, spread over the whole district, and eventually reached the capital of the province itself. He got able-bodied men exempted from military service; he winked at corruption in the city councils that backed him, although the perpetrators deserved to go to prison; he saw to it that the constabulary was not too energetic in running down the roders, the "wanderers," who, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to cover as much likely country as we could, and to let the dogs have a good time. As I have before indicated, they were thoroughly doggy dogs, and interested in everything—except able-bodied lions. None of the stick-at-your-heels in their composition. They ranged far and wide through all sorts of cover, seeking what they could find in the way of porcupines, mongoose, hares, birds, cats, and whatever else should interest any healthy-minded dog. If there happened to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... because the audience evidently did not appear to appreciate or take kindly to the company from the California Theatre, and secondly on account of the rising wind which was beginning to blow up pretty fresh, and the tent was not sufficiently able-bodied to stand too much of a pressure from outside as well as from within. Consequently we rang down the curtain rather prematurely on the last act. It is nothing more than candid to allow that the audience was not as ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... could muster but about fifty able-bodied men, so sadly had fever and lack of proper food ravaged the garrison, the old soldier, who held the fighting qualities of the savages in great contempt, deemed this number amply sufficient for his purpose, and marched forth confidently at their head. They met with no enemy until they had ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... seem, few had a keener sense of their position, or could be so readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord Downy had cursed his fate, which had not made him an able-bodied porter, or an independent labourer in the fields, rather than that saddest of all sad contradictions, a nobleman without the means of sustaining nobility—a man of rank with no dignity—a superior without the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" [Our author afterwards explains the learned education of the maiden.] But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, and who now came to bring us word how things stood there. I therefore called to her directly, "Emergas amici," whereupon she came skipping joyously out, and sat down again by ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... never worn a busier or more prosperous appearance. With such a large population there should have been no reason for conscription, but when conscription was deemed requisite, there ought to have been no exemption on the ground of wealth. Every able-bodied drafted man ought to have been obliged to serve, without the privilege of a substitute, and no money payment should have secured release from service. The obligation to defend the country rests upon all, but if there is any distinction, the rich man has more interest ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of Flamboyant Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror; Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... mind can judge of my feelings, struggling between inclination and duty. However, notwithstanding my wish to be in London, I obediently answered my benefactors that I would go in the vessel, and not leave them; and from that day I was entered on board as an able-bodied sailor, at thirty-six shillings per month, besides what perquisites I could make. My intention was to make a voyage or two, entirely to please these my honoured patrons; but I determined that the year following, if it pleased God, I would see Old England ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... Tax Commissioners' Act, passed in the first year of the reign of his present majesty, measures, when unrolled, upwards of nine hundred feet, or nearly twice the length of St. Paul's Cathedral within the walls; and if it ever should become necessary to consult the fearful volume, an able-bodied man must be employed during three hours in coiling and uncoiling its monstrous folds. Should our law manufactory go on at this rate, and we do not anticipate any interruption in its progress, we may soon be able to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... specially detailed from the ranks to care for the freedmen at Fortress Monroe, he afterward founded the celebrated Port Royal experiment and started the Freedmen's Aid Societies. Thus, under the timid Treasury officials and bold army officers, Pierce's plan widened and developed. At first, the able-bodied men were enlisted as soldiers or hired as laborers, the women and children were herded into central camps under guard, and "superintendents of contrabands" multiplied here and there. Centres of massed freedmen arose at Fortress Monroe, Va., ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... neighbour. "Well, I'm off tomorrow, Leonard. Don't mention it to my folks, but if I can't get into the army, I'm going to enlist in the navy. They'll always take an able-bodied man. I'm not coming back here." He held out his hand and Leonard took it with ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... days before James was sufficiently recovered to be embarked—a delay which probably cost him his kingdom, for there can be no doubt that, on landing, he would have been joined at once by all the great clans, and by no small proportion of the able-bodied men of ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... In the case of able-bodied men smoking is associated with loss of lung capacity amounting ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... constant companion, and the Gordon girls, those indomitably jolly creatures, as occasional visitors; but as Miss Kate, the elder, expressed herself, "Laramie is nothing but one big hospital now. The women and children are the only able-bodied men in it." Nellie was kind and civil, and tried to be cordial to them, but they were "smart" enough to see she had no heart for rattling small talk and crisp comments on matters and things at the post, and much preferred to be left alone to her undisturbed confidential ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... not be eliminated, but its expression transformed and directed toward evils that need all its antagonism. To be angry aright is a good part of moral education, and non-resistance under all provocations is unmanly, craven, and cowardly.[11] An able-bodied young man, who can not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of honor, and is generally a milksop, a lady-boy, or sneak. He lacks virility, his masculinity does not ring true, his honesty can ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... try to discriminate between an old epic belief in able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile shades, in the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious truth, and with modern instances, "men are never so inconsistent ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... overseer, makes a snug income, and spends a good part of his winters in Baltimore and New York. He laughs when you ask him if he regrets slavery. Nothing would induce him to take care of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, furnishing perhaps thirty able-bodied men, littering the house with a swarm of lazy servants, and making heavy drafts on the meat-house and corn-crib, and running up ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... which it may be long before my views are included in any party programme—I say I shall always maintain that real security is not possible without citizen service, and that the training of every able-bodied man to be capable of taking part, if need be, in the defence of his country, is not only good for the country but good for the man—and would materially assist in the solution of many other problems, social and economic. But being, ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... the Royal Eagle, the Tiger, the Big Snake, the Little Snake, the Frog, the Alligator, and many others belonging to the Datus, who, on occasions like these, are bound to call on their servants, and a certain number of able-bodied men living in their kampongs, to man and fight in their boats. This is their service to the Government. The rajah supplies the whole force with rice for the expedition, and a certain number of muskets. The English ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done, and done immediately, to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty—to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... our prize long enough to attach a medal to his neck and send him away with our date, location, and name. If kept an hour or more on the deck of a ship these birds become seasick, and manifest their illness just as an able-bodied landsman, exhibits an attack of marine malady. Strange they should be so affected when they are all their lives ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... "you're a white man. I'll square things up with Captain Wilson. He can have the use of that sausage skin of a butler on the voyage home. I hope he'll just set those able-bodied wasters of footmen to shovel coal in the stokehole. I shan't say a word if he corrects the women with a rope's end every time they're seasick. I'm a humanitarian, Smith, opposed to executions and corporal punishment on principle, in a general way; but I'm not a hide-bound ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... potent, puissant, valid. resistless, irresistible, invincible, proof against, impregnable, unconquerable, indomitable, dominating, inextinguishable, unquenchable; incontestable; more than a match for; overpowering, overwhelming; all powerful, all sufficient; sovereign. able-bodied; athletic; Herculean, Cyclopean, Atlantean[obs3]; muscular, brawny, wiry, well-knit, broad-shouldered, sinewy, strapping, stalwart, gigantic. manly, man-like, manful; masculine, male, virile. unweakened[obs3], unallayed, unwithered[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... is the ability of the negro to bear these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. And this in a country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... informing him that, during the month of July previous, his plantation had been utterly ravaged by an expedition of British and Tories (Virginians who sided with England in the war) under Lord Dunmore. His buildings had all been burned; his wharf demolished; his livestock killed; and every one of his able-bodied slaves of both sexes had been carried off to Jamaica to be sold. The enemy had also destroyed his growing crops; cut down his fruit trees; in short, nothing was left of his once prosperous and valuable plantation but ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... days of David Williams and Mr. Michaelis seemed very remote—and spent some time and consideration in arranging it. Her costume was workmanlike and that of an hotel manageress in the morning; yet distinctly set off her figure and suited her character of an able-bodied, intellectual woman. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... our success inspired an overweening confidence, it also begat increased desire to enter the military service; and, but for our want of arms and munitions, we could have enrolled an army little short of the number of able-bodied men ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... is fit and wears no uniform is instantly suspected of espionage. I am grinding no axe. I am advocating nothing or attacking nothing. I am merely stating as a fact that, suspicious and contemptuous as we had been in Flanders of every able-bodied man who was not helping to defend his country, it seemed grotesque to us to find so many civilian men in the streets of the country to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... could not hold it long. Secretly, steadfastly, and swiftly they had, therefore, during the long wintry nights, been constructing a half moon of solid masonry on the inside of the same portal. Old men, feeble women, tender children, united with the able-bodied to accomplish this work, by which they hoped still to maintain themselves after the ravelin ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... always in touch with his own social world, and he had leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank, gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they reached port again. A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of evangelical habits. Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers, and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where the pleasures were not always secret; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all. But the wicked speerit that's in ye, Peter McGuffie, made ye swim out where the river was running strongest and an able-bodied man wouldna care to go. And what for did ye forget yirsel and risk yer life?" But for the first time there was no bravery left in Peter to answer; his wickedness was beyond excuse, as he ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... exclaimed. "Here I am complaining, and just look at her! A stout, able-bodied man that will grumble over a mistake or two with a sight like that before his eyes ain't worth the powder and lead that it would take to kill him. Look what she's took on her young shoulders, and goes about with a constant smile and song on her red lips. Yes, Dixie Hart ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... set out from Tadoussac, the Montagnais arrived at Quebec, to the number of sixty able-bodied men, en route for the war. They tarried here some days, enjoying themselves, and not omitting to ply me frequently with questions, to assure themselves that I would not fail in my promises to them. I assured them, and again made promises to them, asking ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... other kinds of provision in the same proportion. The islanders brought much of their fruits to us in their little canoes, which are long and narrow boats, like troughs, hollowed out of single trees; but their cattle we bought on shore. I observed the people to be straight, well-limbed, and able-bodied men, of a very dark tawny colour. Most of the men, and all the women, were entirely naked, except merely enough to hide their parts of shame. Some few of the men wore long garments, after the fashion of the Arabs, whose language they spoke, and were likewise ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... doctor's hope was not mere pretending, something assumed but not felt. Yes, he knew it. And, for the first time since the accident which wrecked the Old Colony train and his own life, he began to think that, perhaps—some day, perhaps—he might again be a man, a whole, able-bodied man among men. When he submitted this thought to the cold light of reason, it was transparent and faint enough, but it was there, and it was one cause ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... can find enough to do," he said; "the Shakers need an able-bodied man; they only have those ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... utilizing all the land possible and that every one is fully supplied with food. But when we consider the great masses of people in the slums of all cities who are always underfed and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hundreds of able-bodied men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems that there is a possibility of keeping all of the present farmers at work, if not of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there will be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... very much excited about a new constitution and a change of government. I don't think the country in France (the small farmers and peasants) are ever much excited about the form of government. As long as the crops are good and there is no war to take away their sons and able-bodied men, they don't care, often don't know, whether a king or an emperor is reigning over them. They say there are some far-off villages half hidden in the forests and mountains who still believe that a king and a Bourbon ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... now they did not care, and it was a hard thing to find work, especially when a man grew old, and stiff about the joints. Now the Boards of Guardians would not give any relief unless the applicants were ill, or not able-bodied, and even then they were often required to break stones, and he was very much inclined to throw his spade in that old pond and go to the Union with the "missis" and all the lot for good. He had the rheumatism bad enough. It would serve them ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... "bummers" who come to Long Island in the winter for free quarters, and as soon as the weather is fine for out-door tramping in the summer, they go away to escape work in the institution, coming back again in cold weather, It would certainly be very easy to devise a law to make this impossible. No able-bodied person who is able to work, ought under any circumstances to be sent to the almshouse. People who are able to work and support themselves, and do not do so under their own direction, ought to be sent to the work-house, and compelled to do ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... are purely accidental and contrary to my principles. We shall wipe the floor of the mill-pond with the scalps of able-bodied British tars! I see Professor Edison about to arrange for us a torpedo-hose on wheels, likewise an infernal electro-semaphore; I see Henry Irving dead-sick and declining to play Corporal Brewster; Cornell, I yell! ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... a characteristic of our western aborigines, and which we instinctively accepted as a sufficient guarantee of their friendliness and good faith. Contrary to our preconceived idea of northern savages, they were athletic, able-bodied men, fully up to the average height of Americans. Heavy kukh-lankas (kookh-lan'-kas), or hunting-shirts of spotted deerskin, confined about the waist with a belt, and fringed round the bottom with the long black hair of the wolverine, covered their bodies from the neck to the knee, ornamented ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 'business as usual,' but other things too: pleasure, luxuries, eating, clothes; everything as usual. I reckon that conscription is bound to come, and before the Hun gets put in his place nearly every able-bodied man in these islands will be forced ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... been very busy, dividing his attention pretty evenly between Mildmay and the finest specimen of the slain mammoths, the latter of which he had succeeded in nearly half-denuding of its skin. With the assistance of his two able-bodied friends this task was completed by dinner-time; and by the corresponding hour next evening not only was the enormous hide undergoing the first stage of preparation for the taxidermist, but the indefatigable ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... we counted the boats, the whole able-bodied population of Spaakenberg issued from small, peak-roofed houses to see what monster made so odd a noise. By twenties and by thirties they came, wonderful figures, and the air rang with the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... opportunity for remunerative employment, and the distribution of a portion of the congressional relief fund in this way was in entire harmony with the fixed policy of the commission to avoid pauperizing the people by giving money or food outright to able-bodied persons, and to afford them relief by furnishing them opportunity to work for a good wage. A further reason why the expenditure of money from this fund on the Benguet Road was appropriate is found in the fact that the region opened up is destined to play a very important part in the cure of ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... and numbers of soldiers who are discharged because disabled in the camps during winter. Thus McClellan's bloodless strategy deprived several thousands of their health, without in the least hurting the enemy. And daily I meet numbers of able-bodied Africo-Americans, who would make excellent soldiers. I decided to try to form a regiment of the Africo-Americans, and, after whipping the F. F. V.'s, establish, beyond doubt, the perfect equality of the ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... indicated in the foregoing sketch of his occupations, and as perceptible to the summer boarder who watches his work from the piazza, although arduous and exacting, may be quite compatible with a happy life; and, when we estimate the promise of the occupation as offering a pleasant livelihood, no able-bodied man need be deterred by it. But when we add this long list of contingencies, and consider the ceaseless anxiety that they bring, we may well hesitate before adopting such a life for ourselves or desiring it for our children. No true estimate of the developed character ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... not enough to do in this house for two able-bodied women—and I'm one! Rose taught me how to make coffee yesterday, and toast and eggs are easy. Just look at that coffee! Real amber? It's an improvement for looks on what you've been brewing for yourself in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Julfa such is not the case, and the ancient style of dress is so far maintained. One is struck by the great number of women in the streets of Julfa and the comparative lack of men. This is because all able-bodied men migrate to India or Europe, leaving their women behind until sufficient wealth is accumulated to export them ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... entire able-bodied population was soon called into military service, so that almost the whole church was in the army. At the North the churches at home hardly seemed diminished by the myriads sent to the field. It was amazing to see the charities and missions of the churches sustained with almost undiminished supplies, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of your State, and Commander-in-Chief of its army, I call upon every able-bodied man of the State, without regard to age, to enlist in its service. I command him who can obtain a weapon to march with our armies. I ask him who can repair or forge an arm to make it ready at once for ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... every able-bodied man and attack the city of the Fung, say, on the night of the great festival when they are off their guard. I would blow in the gates of the city of Harmac, and storm it and drive away the Fung, and afterwards ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the same moment, in order that the birds and other pests may not have the opportunity of turning their whole force upon the several parts in turn. The men now build on each patch a small hut, which is occupied by most of the able-bodied members of the roomhold until harvest is completed, some fourteen to twenty weeks after the sowing of the PADI, according to the variety of grain sown. They erect contrivances for scaring away the birds; they stick bamboos about eight ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... as long as rents are maintained at their present level. Were it possible for an English government to offer free grants of land as the Canadian government does, or even to fix rents and provide for the purchase of land as is the case in Ireland, multitudes of able-bodied men, wearied with the fierce struggle for bread in cities, would avail themselves of the opportunity; but under the present conditions of farm-tenure those who know the country best, know that, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... fine ranch and lots of cattle and a comfortable home. He would plan these things sometimes in an expansive mood, whereupon Marthy would stare at him with her hard, contemptuous look until Jase trailed off into mumbling complaints into his beard. He was not as able-bodied as she thought he was, he would say, with vague solemnity. Some uh these days Marthy'd see how she had ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... anything near the truth, it may be said that a restoration of order would serve his Excellency very badly indeed. In point of fact he received something like eight shillings for every "head" of "recruited labour." He also received a commission from the same interested syndicates which exported able-bodied labourers, a commission amounting to six shillings upon every case of square-face, and a larger sum upon every keg of rum that came ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... laughed, "for lazy able-bodied persons." And she was gone in the darkness, to sit by ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... of Unorganized Labor.—A static assumption excludes enforced idleness on the part of able-bodied men. The changes which throw such men out of employment are not taking place, and there is no reserve of efficient but idle labor. In the actual state, which is highly dynamic, such a supply of unemployed labor is always at hand, and it is neither possible nor normal that ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... been at dead fault," was his sudden address, as he returned, to one of the party. "You assured me that old Snell and his two sons were the whole force that he carried, while I find two stout, able-bodied men besides, all well armed, and ready for the attack. The old woman, too, standing with the gridiron in her fists, is equal of herself to any two men, hand ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... numerous and profligate in Persia as vagrant monks used to be in Spain and Italy, became such a pest that one of the first acts of his successor, Mahomed Shah, was to direct that no beggars should be tolerated except the lame, the sick, and the blind, and that all able-bodied men appearing in dervish garb were to be seized for military service. The profession fell out of fashion then, and there are now comparatively few mendicant dervishes to be seen. Those that still wear the 'ragged robe' do not all appear to follow the rules of poverty, ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... to the people, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies of produce light, so causing that the fields shall be ploughed deep, and the weeding well attended to, and that the able-bodied, during their days of leisure, shall cultivate their filial piety, fraternal duty, faithfulness, and truth, serving thereby, at home, their fathers and elder brothers, and, abroad, their elders and superiors, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... will be offered for sale on Monday, September 10, at 12 o'clock, being the entire stock of the late John Graves. The negroes are in excellent condition, and all warranted against the common vices. Among them are several mechanics, able-bodied field-hands, plough-boys, and women with children, some of them very prolific, affording a rare opportunity for any one who wishes to raise a strong and healthy lot of servants for their own ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... the army of Christiern, and marvelled that it did not come. All servants, old men, monks, burghers, and prostitutes they sent away, that there might be fewer mouths to feed. Each day, too, their numbers were diminished through the desertion of able-bodied men who escaped through the gates or over the walls and made their way by one means or another to the Swedish camp. There being no longer possibility of driving off the enemy by force, they felt that their only ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... buy substitutes; but they need not have done so, for the law contained a provision intended, as Lincoln recorded, to safeguard poorer men against such a rise in prices. They could escape by paying 300 dollars, or 60 pounds, not, in the then state of wages, an extravagant penalty upon an able-bodied man. The sums paid under this provision covered the cost ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... almost speaking distance from each other, where sentinels kept watch for French frigates or privateers. Redoubts and towers were within musket-shot of each other, with watch-houses between, and at intervals every able-bodied man in the country was obliged to leave his trade to act as sentinel, or go into camp or barracks with the militia for months at a time. British cruisers sailed the Channel: now a squadron under Barrington, again under ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... drive the redskins into the arms of the British, the War Department had withheld its consent. Now that the ban was lifted, the people could expect the necessary measures to be taken for their defense. In no part of the country was the war more popular; nowhere did the mass of the able-bodied population show greater eagerness to ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... out of which France especially gathered a cause of triumph and indignation. What in some degree diminishes the triumph is, that while sailors were pressed in England, soldiers were pressed in France. In every great town of France, any able-bodied man, going through the streets on his business, was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a house called the oven. There he was shut up with others in the same plight; those fit for service were picked out, and the recruiters sold them to the officers. In 1695 there were thirty ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... not rush out of the hotel instantly to get into the fray. They did what a score of other able-bodied men of Bear Cat were doing—went in search of adequate weapons with which to oppose the bank robbers. Bear Cat was probably the best-equipped town in the country to meet a sudden emergency of this kind. In every house, behind the door or hanging ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... returned with a large troop of Indians, men and women, among the latter of whom were many of the wives and attendants of the Inca. The Spaniards had met with no resistance; since the Peruvian warriors, though so superior in number, excellent in appointments, and consisting mostly of able-bodied young men, - for the greater part of the veteran forces were with the Inca's generals at the south, - lost all heart from the moment of their sovereign's captivity. There was no leader to take his place; for they ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... counseled himself, in resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one; she seemed a woman of imagination, originality, and an able-bodied temper. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... war. In Switzerland and other States an attempt is made to secure national defence by a system of militia, and to take account of political possibilities. The great European States maintain standing armies in which all able-bodied citizens have to pass a longer or shorter period of military training. England alone keeps up a mercenary army, and by the side of it a territorial army, whose ranks ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... pastoral peoples affect the whole tribe. All the able-bodied men are combatants, and all the women and children constitute the spoils of war in case of defeat. This fact is important, since the purpose of primitive conflicts is to enslave and pillage, rather than to acquire ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... three days, which will convey a correct ides of the character of the mate. One afternoon, while all hands were busily employed in heaving in the slack of the cable, a boat, pulled by two stout, able-bodied men, came alongside. One of the men came on board, and addressing the mate, said he had a letter which he wished to send to Liverpool. The mate looked hard at the man, and replied in a gruff and surly tone, "We can't receive any letters here. The ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... than 15,000 drachmae for a slave. After the great conquests of the Romans, in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Greece, and the Orient, the market went down by reason of the multitude of human beings thrown upon it. An able-bodied, unlettered man could be bought for the price of an ox. Such were the men of Spain, Thrace, and Sardinia. Educated slaves from Greece and the East brought a higher price. We learn from Horace, that ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... board the Yarmouth man-of-war up the Baltic; it will not, therefore, be improper here to relate the occasion of that voyage, which was as follows:—He and his friend, Coleman, being at Plymouth, and appearing to be able-bodied men, some officers seeing them there, thought them extremely fit to serve his majesty, therefore obliged them to go on board the Dunkirk man-of-war: but they not liking this, Coleman pricked himself upon the wrists, between his fingers, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... think you had. From all that Harry tells me, I judge what with hunting up fashions and fabrics and corset-makers and all the rest of it, you have done the work, daily, of about two able-bodied men." ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... was not altogether free from anxiety. It was true that his ships were repaired, but many of his men remained on land to recover their strength, and but a small number of able-bodied seamen remained on board with him. The roadstead being lined with coral, great precautions were necessary to save the cables from being cut, but in spite of them, at new moon, a sudden tempest arose and broke the ship loose. The anchors ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... (added Socrates) that a corps of young able-bodied Athenians, accoutred with lighter arms, (33) and holding our natural mountain rampart in possession, would prove at once a thorn in the enemy's side offensively, whilst defensively they would form a splendid bulwark ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... pocket which bulges out so prominently?' 'What did your father do with that hundred guineas which he received on Monday from Jacob Jonson?' And, as his 'swallow' was enormous—as the Doctor would believe more fables in an hour than an able-bodied liar would invent in a week—naturally there was no limit to the slanders with which his 'Lives ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... but I felt like that young hawk at Glenfaba—do you remember it?—the one that was partly snared and came dragging the trap on to the lawn by a string caught round its leg. I had to cut it away, I had to, I had to! But you mustn't feel one single moment's uneasiness about me. An able-bodied woman like Glory Quayle doesn't starve in a place like London. Besides, I am provided for already, so you see my bow abides in strength. The first morning after my arrival Mrs. Jupe told me that if I cared to take ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... been so long unused to anything like warlike preparations that we find it difficult to arouse ourselves to a realization of the fact that every able-bodied man is liable to be called upon to render active service for his country; and when a war is raging within our borders, of whose termination the only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that it can be reached only through fearful suffering and destruction of life and property, is it not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... to the pavement, and, accompanied by the cook, drew off and left him to his fate. Their last glance showed them a stout, able-bodied seaman, with his head and arms confined in a jersey, going through contortions of an extraordinary nature to free himself, and indulging in language which, even when filtered by the garment in question, was of a singularly comprehensive and powerful description. He freed ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Utrecht the country improves; we had hitherto travelled sometimes on Dyke tops, sometimes in Dyke bottoms which only required the efforts of a few able-bodied rats to let the water in upon us. It is quite surprising to see on what a precarious tenure Holland is held. Take but a Dyke away, overturn one dam, and see what discord follows—and this does sometimes happen. In 1809 the Ice broke through near Gorum ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native assurance of her eye—which had something at all times of a jovial sea-captain, with his foot ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... the Spaniards found that they waged war upon an unarmed mob, made up for the most part of aged people, women and children, and their commander, Bernal Diaz, a merciful man if a rough one, ordered that the onslaught should cease. Indeed he did more, for when all the able-bodied men, together with such children as were sufficiently strong to bear the fatigues of travel, had been sorted out to be sold as slaves, he suffered the rest of that melancholy company to depart whither they would. And so they ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... took refuge inside the strong palisades, the able-bodied men formed up ready outside, all well-armed; and looking a thoroughly determined set, as they were marched in, guard set, and ammunition ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... younger warriors of the Western Creeks, in what is now Alabama, had been incited to hostilities by Tecumseh, and in the following spring began depredations which culminated in the capture of Fort Mims and the massacre of its inhabitants on August 30, 1813. The horrors of an Indian war brought every able-bodied settler in the adjoining States to arms. Before the end of the year seven thousand whites had invaded the Indian territory and had killed about one fifth of the Creek warriors. The hero of the war was General Andrew Jackson, who at the head of an army of Tennessee militiamen won a decisive ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... perceptible to the summer boarder who watches his work from the piazza, although arduous and exacting, may be quite compatible with a happy life; and, when we estimate the promise of the occupation as offering a pleasant livelihood, no able-bodied man need be deterred by it. But when we add this long list of contingencies, and consider the ceaseless anxiety that they bring, we may well hesitate before adopting such a life for ourselves or desiring it for our children. No true estimate of the developed character ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... namely, landing from the steamers and transportation to the front. The hospital corps had supplies on the vessels at Siboney, but as everything could not possibly be landed and carried forward at once, preference was given to ammunition and rations for able-bodied soldiers rather than to tents, blankets, and invalid food for the wounded. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the hospital-corps men had even on the transports everything that they needed in order to enable them to take proper care of the eight hundred or one thousand wounded who ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... any able-bodied Terran who tries to board that ship," von Schlichten promised. "Get this through your heads, all of you. We are going to break this rebellion, and we are going to hold Ullr for the Company and the Terran Federation." He looked around him. "Now, get back to work, all of you," he told the group ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... Montgomery had as yet less than one hundred and fifty); but to hold it, and also to make forays up the river, certainly required a larger number. We came in part to recruit, but had found scarcely an able-bodied negro in the city; all had been removed farther up, and we must certainly contrive to follow them. I was very unwilling to have, as yet, any white troops under my command, with the blacks. Finally, however, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... even recklessness, could have conceived such a plan. The harbor was defended by a fort of no mean power. There was always one British armed vessel, and often more, lying at anchor under the guns of the fort. Two hundred of the people of the town were able-bodied men, able to bear arms. How, then, were the Yankees, with their puny force, to hope for success? This query Rathburne answered, "By ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... prisons. The great fire in September; the scarcity of provisions; and the cruel conduct of the Provost Marshal all combined to produce intense sufferings among the men, most of whom entered into captivity, strong, healthy, young, able-bodied, the flower of the ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... have been at dead fault," was his sudden address, as he returned, to one of the party. "You assured me that old Snell and his two sons were the whole force that he carried, while I find two stout, able-bodied men besides, all well armed, and ready for the attack. The old woman, too, standing with the gridiron in her fists, is equal of herself to any two ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... leper (twenty-sixth chapter of the second book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the Sepulchres of the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots pleaded that they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy near them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds, perceptible and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the latter kind, who could tell whether they were free ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... pioneers dead. Three uninsured, dependent families. Joshua provided for them, but the critical newspapers overlooked that point. One editorial observed that Joshua Lake would get a rocket to the Moon and back if it took every able-bodied man in the country. The project would have died right there if Joshua had needed money. No bank in the nation would have loaned him a dime. Fortunately he was not ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... farm-hand is a delusion and a snare. He has no interest except his wages, and he is a breeder of discontent. If the hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men who are working for scant wages in cities, or inanely tramping the country, could see the dignity of the labor which is directly productive, what a change would come over the face of the country! There are nearly six million farms in this nation, and four millions of them would be greatly ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the people seemed at its coldest. Defeats in the field and Copperheadism at home combined in their dispiriting and deadly work. Voluntary enlistment almost ceased. Thereupon Congress passed an act "for enrolling and calling out the national forces." All able-bodied citizens between twenty and forty-five years of age were to "perform military duty in the service of the United States, when called on by the President for that purpose."[50] This was strenuous earnest, for it portended ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... often as the story comes up for discussion. He has a good deal of personal liking for Egremont, but to see 'the idealist' in the mud he finds altogether too delicious. His wife feels exactly in the same way, though she expresses her feeling differently. And Dalmaine—if I were an able-bodied man I rather think I should have kicked Dalmaine downstairs before this. 'Lo you, what comes of lofty priggishness!'—that is his text, and he enlarges on it in a manner worthy of himself. And the amazing thing is that it never occurs to these people to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... morning of 1901—the militiamen slaughtered while drunk, and the Kaffir drivers tied to the blazing waggons. The curtain rose again, and, five minutes later, I saw that he was weeping in sympathy with the stage misfortunes of two able-bodied young men who had to eat 'inferior Dorset' butter. My sympathy with the militiamen and the Kaffirs was 'pure,' whereas his was overlaid with remembered race-hatred, battle-fury, and contempt for British incompetence. His sympathy, on the other hand, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... leave one stone on another if they get possession of the town, and they'll impress all the able-bodied men and all the big boys into ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... disease germs which attack a delicate one, so unquestionably have thousands of mental and moral weaklings been retarded from their best development by books that left no mark on healthy children. In spite of the probability that there are to-day alive many able-bodied men who cut their first teeth on pickles and pork chops, we do not question society's duty to disseminate proper ideas on the care and feeding ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... national religion, and each furnished with a Cabinet selected by the monarch—Governments which can make war without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies, through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent armies involving the creation ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... are seventy thousand sleeping rooms and dining halls built after such extensive plans as to entertain, at one time, twenty-five thousand guests. All this is to accommodate the vast throngs that take their sacred pilgrimage once in a year under an arrangement by which one tenth of the able-bodied go each thirty-nine days, which corresponds ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... cried Bessie. "No doubt everybody thought that, but it wasn't entirely Teddy's fault. If there is anything in the world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied child, it is hotel life. Teddy was egged on to all sorts of indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the bell-boys up. If he'd stand on his head on the cashier's desk, the cashier would laugh first, and then, to get rid of him, would suggest that ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... country back of us, a constant and merciless conscription was going on, sweeping in all able-bodied men between fifteen and sixty years of age. Of course many refugees and occasional deserters came within ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... voyage. In this part of their devotions, the crew of Mr. Hunt proved themselves by no means deficient. Indeed, he soon discovered that his recruits, enlisted at Montreal, were fit to vie with the ragged regiment of Falstaff. Some were able-bodied, but inexpert; others were expert, but lazy; while a third class were expert and willing, but totally worn out, being broken-down veterans, incapable ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... sovereign, cash. But he has to do all the bringing part of it on his own. Consequence is, you see boats rowing out to the ship, carrying men who have overstayed their leave; and, when they get near enough, the able-bodied gentleman in custody jumps to his feet, upsets the boat, and swims to the gangway. The policemen, if they aren't drowned—they sometimes are—race him, and whichever gets there first wins. If it's the policeman, he gets his sovereign. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... Manpower Training and Development Act, to stop the waste of able-bodied men and women who want to work, but whose only skill has been replaced by a machine, or moved with a mill, or shut ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... convinced the Pilgrims that it was necessary to adopt very efficient measures that they might be prepared to repel any attack. All the able-bodied men, some twenty-five in number, met and formed themselves into a military company. Miles Standish was chosen captain, and was invested with great powers in case of any emergency. Rude fortifications were planned ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... "Say, we're five able-bodied men risking our necks to oblige him! You can get married a damn sight easier than this if you go about it right—I've done it lots of times." Not understanding the significance of Slosson's allusion ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... but let me assure you that if we fail to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel and if you on the other hand are spirited out of this fortress by that mysterious adventurer we shall undoubtedly shoot or guillotine every able-bodied man and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... as the man. She was not at all strong, and, moreover, the constant presence of a sense of injury at the hands of life filled her very soul with a subtle poison, to her weakening vitality. She was a child hurt and worried and bewildered, although she was to the average eye a stout, able-bodied, middle-aged woman; but David had not the average eye, and he saw her as she really was, not as she seemed. There had always been about her a little weakness and dependency which had appealed to him. Now they seemed fairly ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the situation keenly. There was no way out of it, the girls could not get to a town even in the able-bodied cars, for Cora would no more leave her Whirlwind there in the darkness than she would have left Bess or Belle. Then, when it was proposed that one of the boys stay to guard the machine, and the others of ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... Appius Claudius and Mucianus died, the commissioners were partisans of Tiberius—his brother Caius, M. Fulvius Flaccus, and C. Papirius Carbo. [Sidenote: Its beneficial effects.] In the year 125, instead of another decrease in the able-bodied population, we find an increase of nearly 80,000. It seems probable that this increase was solely in consequence of what the allotment commissioners did for the Roman burgesses. Nor, if the Proletarii and Capite Censi were not included in the register ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... dress he had brought with him was not altogether unfavourable for such a purpose, as he could easily pass as a sub-officer, whose duty it was to inquire whether the villages had each sent all their able-bodied men to the war. The only drawback to it would be that, if instructions for his arrest had been sent down to the villages along the road, as well as those by the river, they would have probably been directed to specially look for one clad in such attire. However, it would be open ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... Congress, under which this body of people of color are understood to have been raised during the late war, uses no other terms of description as to the recruits than that they shall be 'effective, able-bodied men' (act 24th December, 1811), 'for completing the existing military establishment,' and act 11th January, 1812, 'to raise an additional military force,' of 'free, effective, able-bodied men' (act December 10, 1814), 'making further ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... and the tail-end of a monsoon kept my two guests prisoners for a week. The presidente of the town had issued a bandilla that all able-bodied men were wanted to enlist in the constabulary. Accordingly came awkward natives to the house, where the interpreter examined them; for all the Spanish that the genial captain knew—and he had lived ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... continued Mrs. Hopper, regarding me with a proprietor's pride, as I removed my hat and hung it on a nail driven in the wall. I smiled as I reflected that I, too, should doubtless be looked on with suspicion as a fit subject for a straight-jacket, if I, an able-bodied young woman, should sit "out o' doors" with my writing, while ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... boys," suggested Harry. "If that fellow is within fourteen rows of apple trees of the truth and this village is deserted by all the able-bodied men, we won't have much chance of getting gasoline or food ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'Natural Enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men; Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... continued, 'that the brig is short about a dozen hands, and I want you to pick up a few likely lads here. I understand there are a number of able-bodied seamen skulking about the public-houses, where they will likely remain as long as their money lasts. I should like to secure as many of them as possible, and then capture a few stout landsmen to make up the number; but, in the first place, I want you to go and ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... clanship was at that time, so strong—to which must be added the wish to secure the adherence of stout, able-bodied, and, as the Scotch phrase then went, pretty men—that the representative of the noble family of Perth condescended to act openly as patron of the MacGregors, and appeared as such upon their trial. So at least the author was ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the belt of trees, the company of recruits became visible, consisting of the able-bodied inhabitants of the hamlets thereabout, more or less known to Bob and Anne. They were assembled on the green plot outside the churchyard-gate, dressed in their common clothes, and the sergeant who had been putting them through their drill was the man who nailed up the proclamation. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... river to the house of Inspector Cypriano. After an infinite deal of trouble, I succeeded in persuading him to furnish me with another Indian. There are about thirty families established in this place, but the able-bodied men had been nearly all drafted off within the last few weeks by the Government, to accompany a military expedition against runaway negroes, settled in villages in the interior. Senor Cypriano was a pleasant-looking ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the following anecdote of Kao Tsu, the first Han Emperor: "Wishing to crush the Hsiung-nu, he sent out spies to report on their condition. But the Hsiung-nu, forewarned, carefully concealed all their able-bodied men and well-fed horses, and only allowed infirm soldiers and emaciated cattle to be seen. The result was that spies one and all recommended the Emperor to deliver his attack. Lou Ching alone opposed them, saying: "When two countries go to war, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... correspondence with their countrymen at home and in France, and that there was danger that the peace of England would be disturbed. The thanes were therefore bidden to prepare for another struggle, to gather sufficient arms in readiness for all the able-bodied men in their district, and to call out their contingents from time to time to practise in ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... noted) to forty feet in length, is a very respectable monster indeed, as times go; and his huge snapping teeth, which measure nearly two inches long by one and a half broad, would disdain to make two bites of the able-bodied British seaman. But the naturalists of the 'Challenger' expedition dredged up in numbers from the ooze of the Pacific similar teeth, five inches long by four wide, so that the sharks to which they originally belonged must, by parity ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... legions levied terrific toll upon the lives of their enemies who pressed onward, up or down the rivers and through tropical swamps and forests. Inch by inch he contested their entry upon Paraguayan soil. When the able-bodied men gave out, old men, boys, women, and girls fought on with stubborn fury, and died before they would surrender. The wounded escaped if they could, or, cursing their captors, tore off their bandages and bled to death. Disease wrought awful havoc in all ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... is necessary to find work, and I think there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in looking after rabbits, feeding poultry, minding bees, and, in short doing all those little odd jobs about a place which must be attended to, but which will not repay the labour of able-bodied men. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Tyrrhenian shores. Settling at Agropoli to the south of the Bay, these Oriental freebooters found little difficulty in effecting a landing on the Poseidonian beach, and in raiding the weakened and almost defenceless city. Able-bodied men and young maidens were forcibly carried off to the pirates' nest at Agropoli, or perhaps even to the distant coast of Barbary, to be sold into perpetual slavery. Alarmed beyond measure by this raid, the remaining inhabitants ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... disciplined, a powerful instrument in the hands of a leader like General Lee. Nevertheless, it had reached about the highest degree of its strength. The merciless conscription in the South had swept into its ranks nearly all the able-bodied men, and food and forage were becoming so scarce in war-wasted Virginia and other regions which would naturally sustain this force, that a bold, decisive policy had become a necessity. It was believed that on Northern soil the army could be fed, and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... clothes, put the studs in my shirts, selected my neckties, and saw that my shoes were polished, was a rather convenient person to have about. Hephzy fumed a good deal at first; she declared that she felt ashamed, an able-bodied woman like her, to sit around with her hands folded and do nothing. She asked her maid a great many questions, and the answers she received explained some of ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the school that war was to be made upon Juno, and that every able-bodied boy must be ready when called out by the General. The minute they were dismissed, which, at this season of the year, took place at three o'clock, no interval being given for dinner, because there was hardly any afternoon, the boys gathered in a knot ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... were no illicit sexual relations on the planet. In fact, no Martian in his right mind would have relations with the native crop of females, and they in turn felt the same way about the males. Laws had to be passed requiring all able-bodied ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... the mark, not so much of fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly the owner of the face was the sacristan's daughter; and, but for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan: 'He was laughing in the church,' words which were answered only by a look ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... foreigners, and all that is required before they are taken on is that they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy. They do not have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs that require great physical strength—although they are rapidly lessening; we have other jobs that require no strength whatsoever—jobs which, as far as strength is concerned, might be attended to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... to hear you, Nevil,' said Cecilia, beaming: 'Papa thinks we have a miserable army—in numbers. He says, the wealthier we become the more difficult it is to recruit able-bodied men on the volunteering system. Yet the wealthier we are the more an army is wanted, both to defend our wealth and to preserve order. I fancy he half inclines to compulsory enlistment. Do speak to him on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consisted of five tents, situated near Rushden, within two miles of the pleasant town of Higham Ferrers. He did not reconnoitre the camp till about mid-day, having been informed that by this time, it was probable, the able-bodied persons of both sexes would be drawn off to a feast and a fair, in different situations, not very distant. It proved so; there were only two women, three children, and an infant remaining in the tents; which were ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... experience. I generally buy a good many beasts in spring in Morayshire, and sometimes winter a lot or two there. Until within a few years we had no railway conveyance, and the cattle all came by road. Before the time appointed for lifting the cattle, I sent across three or four able-bodied men who were acquainted with the dressing of the feet. Beginning their operations at the most northern point of the county, and going from one farm to another where the cattle were wintered, they dressed every hoof of every ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... and he soon became more tyrannical and cruel. Among the slaves on the plantation, was one by the name of Randall. He was a man about six feet high, and well-proportioned, and known as a man of great strength and power. He was considered the most valuable and able-bodied slave on the plantation; but no matter how good or useful a slave may be, he seldom escapes the lash. But it was not so with Randall. He had been on the plantation since my earliest recollection, and I had never known of his being flogged. No thanks were due to the master or overseer for ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... or gaily to the trenches. In Flanders a man who is fit and wears no uniform is instantly suspected of espionage. I am grinding no axe. I am advocating nothing or attacking nothing. I am merely stating as a fact that, suspicious and contemptuous as we had been in Flanders of every able-bodied man who was not helping to defend his country, it seemed grotesque to us to find so many civilian men in the streets of the country to which we ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... for one human being to place himself in that humiliating relation to another, to become a draft animal, to be forced to lower himself to the level of an ox or an ass. It must have an insidious, demoralizing effect, too, upon the persons who ride in these little vehicles. I am not yet used to seeing able-bodied young foreigners, especially men, being pulled about by thin, tired, exhausted coolies. I feel ashamed every time I enter a rickshaw and contrast my well-being with that of the ragged boy between the shafts. I suppose I shall get over this feeling, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... separated by the breadth of the grating— otherwise they would fly at one another's caps—sat all day long, suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits. For everybody else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding somebody. This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... had been to Norway, to Harold Hardraade, and asked him why he had been fighting fifteen years for Denmark, when England lay open to him. And how Harold of Norway had agreed to come; and how he had levied one half of the able-bodied men in Norway; and how he was gathering a mighty fleet at Solundir, in the mouth of the Sogne Fiord. Of all this Hereward was well informed; for Tosti came back again to St. Omer, and talked big. But Hereward and he had no dealings with each other. But ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... batteaux-men, to be employed on the lakes; and gives notice to the officers of seven British regiments, dispersed on the recruiting service, to rendezvous in Boston. Captain Hallowell, of the province ship-of-war King George, invites able-bodied seamen to serve his Majesty, for fifteen pounds, old tenor, per month. By the rewards offered, there would appear to have been frequent desertions from the New England forces: we applaud their wisdom, if not their valor or integrity. Cannon of all calibres, gunpowder and ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said the Keneu, thoughtfully. "Consider this, and be not larger fools than necessary. Dick is—or rather was—an able-bodied man of moderate attractions and a certain amount ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... census as freeholders—more than one in every eight. Only 4772 are returned as plantation laborers, and of these probably a third are Chinese; 2115 returned themselves as mechanics, which is a very large proportion of the total able-bodied population. I believe that both freeholders and mechanics find employment on the plantations ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... said Captain Sybil, "that if the public school had been common through the South this war would never have occurred. Now things have reached such a pass that able-bodied men must report at headquarters, or be treated as deserters. Their leaders are desperate men, of whom it has been said: 'They have robbed ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... that he only wished his friends could have the same good fortune, for his expectations were more than realised. (Cheers and laughter.) It is well to remember that the men who will succeed here, as in every young community, are usually the able-bodied, and that their entry on their new field of labour should be when the year is young. Men advanced in life and coming from the old country will find their comfort best consulted by the ready provided accommodation ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... but to try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves, taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his head tied ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... that they are British subjects, and are loyal to the British Crown, more especially during this present crisis. That being so, I am prepared to raise, if you deem it necessary, a native levy of 5,000 able-bodied men to proceed to German South-West Africa, provided the Government is prepared to fully equip this force for the front. I should, of course, be prepared ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with Bascomb, the master, in charge, his duty being to see that no unwholesome fruit or poisonous berries were eaten unwittingly. Next, the sick having been temporarily disposed of, there followed the strong and able-bodied, who took ashore with them spars, tackles, and spare sails, with which to rig up temporary tents; and soon the greensward was dotted with busy men, who, in the intervals of their labour, drank coconuts or eagerly devoured bananas, prickly pears, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... some shrieking, some roaring aloud. The most general was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life; and, indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter anguish.... I stood on a pew seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman; but in a moment, while he seemed to think of nothing less, down he dropt with a violence inconceivable. The adjoining pews seemed shook with his fall. I heard afterwards the stamping of his feet ready to break the boards as he lay in strong convulsions at the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... good divine commemorated by Mrs. Stowe. Lorania's friends were all fond of her, she was so good-natured and tolerant, with a touch of dry humor in her vision of things, and not the least a Puritan in her frank enjoyment of ease and luxury. Nevertheless, Lorania had a good, able-bodied, New England conscience, capable of staying awake nights without flinching; and perhaps from her stanch old Puritan forefathers she inherited her simple integrity so that she neither lied nor cheated—even in the ...
— Different Girls • Various
... war at all, so far; everything goes on just the same—not only 'business as usual,' but other things too: pleasure, luxuries, eating, clothes; everything as usual. I reckon that conscription is bound to come, and before the Hun gets put in his place nearly every able-bodied man in these islands will be forced to ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... anybody—everybody. Praise only the very young, the very old and the halt; abuse all able-bodied adults, and laugh at any one in whom you see anything ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... effectual co-operation in the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done, and done immediately, to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty—to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... another—she strove to refrain from the vibration, which she believed would occasion the strange and magnificent apparition to become invisible." But whether the eye winked or not, there they were—substantial able-bodied fellows; what could it mean? Had Colonel Mitchell discovered a new system for protecting the country by fortifying the tops of mountains which an enemy never comes near? Could it be some awkward squad sent to be drilled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... which France especially gathered a cause of triumph and indignation. What in some degree diminishes the triumph is, that while sailors were pressed in England, soldiers were pressed in France. In every great town of France, any able-bodied man, going through the streets on his business, was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a house called the oven. There he was shut up with others in the same plight; those fit for service were picked out, and the recruiters sold them to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... low, having only three feet of water in the channel. Twenty-five able-bodied negroes were taken from a neighboring plantation, stretched in a line across the river, and ordered to wade against the current. By keeping their steamer, which drew only twenty inches, directly behind the negro who sank the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... their faces wore an expression of bold, frank honesty, which is not a characteristic of our western aborigines, and which we instinctively accepted as a sufficient guarantee of their friendliness and good faith. Contrary to our preconceived idea of northern savages, they were athletic, able-bodied men, fully up to the average height of Americans. Heavy kukh-lankas (kookh-lan'-kas), or hunting-shirts of spotted deerskin, confined about the waist with a belt, and fringed round the bottom with the long black hair of the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... for them, with a touch of sarcasm. "So far," she said, "the population Maumsey, appeared to be quiet exceptionally able-bodied." ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... people, in the average, are habitually idle because (as they say) they can find no employment. They look for work where it can not be had. They seem to be, or they are, unable to do such as abundantly confronts and solicits them. Suppose these to average but one million able-bodied persons, and that their work is worth but one dollar each per day; our loss by involuntary idleness can not be less than $300,000,000 per annum. I judge that it is actually $500,000,000. Many who stand waiting to be hired could earn from two to five dollars ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the millions of intelligent, able-bodied Americans, who could crush the tribe of Rockefeller as elephants crush snakes, rise with each sun and dig and delve and suffer that a Rogers may wallow in wealth and an Armour gain a greater income ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... could brisker be, There gathered a gloom around their glee— A shadow which came and went so fast, That ere one could say "'Tis there," 'twas past— And, lo! when the scene again was cleared, Ten of the dancers had disappeared! Ten able-bodied quadrillers swept From the hallowed floor where late they stept, While twelve was all that footed it still, On the Irish side of that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... forests from a land of safe refuge. There was, besides, distrust of each other; and fear, though no love, of General Walker. He was said to have the iron will and reckless courage of the true man of destiny. At one time, so they told us, a large body of fresh, able-bodied men, just arrived in Nicaragua, refused to join the filibusters on account of some disappointment about the amount of promised wages. General Walker led out his crowd of yellow men, whom the newcomers might have knocked down with the wind of their fists, and so overawed them by this display ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... done a stroke of work in his life. Nor, for that matter, had his towering, able-bodied brothers. They took the not unnatural stand that it wasn't necessary. Were they not the sons of the very rich Mr. Van Winkle? Wasn't he accountable for their coming into the world and wasn't he therefore responsible ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned, and I accepted each inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from on high. There be several sorts of success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, but I question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human scope. Like California's fish, he ran at me head-on and leaped against the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... went over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and, getting up, surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the meeting, much superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to the large man, and the three or four other able-bodied persons who had rallied to them from among the audience, were taking every advantage of their superiority; and it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they thumped and maltreated their opponents. The sight of their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... get the primacy in steel. Human character was of concern only as it made better steel and more of it. They took the red ore where they could get it richest in iron and cheapest, and they took red-blooded labor where they could get it strongest—sinewed, clearest-eyed, and cheapest. "There are no able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and fifty years left in my native town," said a Servian workman in the mills. "They have all come to America. The agricultural districts and villages of the mid-eastern valleys of Europe are sending their strongest men and youths, nourished ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... business disaster. "War prices" for grain fell rapidly, the markets were stocked with more manufactured goods than impoverished Europe could absorb, while the English labor market was glutted by the influx of several hundred thousand able-bodied soldiers and sailors in quest of industrial employment. As early as 1821 Mr. Huskisson, a cabinet colleague of Mr. Canning, had endeavored to lighten the burden of British manufactures by reducing the import duties ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... hands had been with me for three years or upward, and the rest were highly recommended. They are, almost without exception, young, able-bodied, and active—fit in all respects for enduring hardship and privation, or the more dangerous reverse of self-indulgence, and willing to follow the fortunes of the Royalist and her commander through all the various shades of good or ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... capital part for you in the farce,[66] not a difficult one to learn, as you never say anything but "Yes" and "No." You are called in the dramatis personae an able-bodied British seaman, and you are never seen by mortal eye to do anything (except inopportunely producing a mop) but stand about the deck of the boat in everybody's way, with your hair immensely touzled, one brace on, your ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... summer Sunday, as St. Ange well enough knew, for every able-bodied man in the place had that day signed a contract with the Boss of Camp 7 for the lumber season; and the St. Angeans never ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... imposed would be cheerfully paid. But there would be no State, except that created by the invader; and the problem of conduct for those living the life described would arise when the State so set up issued its ordinances requiring every able-bodied man to ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... soldier. August came, the wheat was ripe for the sickle. Her husband was gone, the neighbors also. Six miles away was a family where she thought it possible she might obtain a harvest hand. Mounting the mare, taking the babe in her arms, she rode through the forest only to find that all the able-bodied young men had gone to the war. The only help to be had was a barefoot, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... each of whom becomes a collector about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-laborers, and metayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring all their time to earn their own living. In Auvergne, where the able-bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are taken;[5217] in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village has four collectors in petticoats.—They are responsible for all claims entrusted to them, their property, their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... resources of his realm were limited. He counted ten able-bodied subjects, but they were monks and not liable to service. The culverins of his uncle were gone, but he had six muskets—a loan from the city—and there were four pounds of powder in the magazine. But this was not of itself sufficient ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... reluctance; indeed, almost only when compelled to leave their villages. Samar has scarcely any other means of communication besides the navigation of the coast and rivers, the interior being roadless; and burdens have to be conveyed on the shoulders. An able-bodied porter, who receives a real and a half without food, will carry three arrobas (seventy-five pounds at most) six leagues in a day, but he cannot accomplish the same work on the following day, requiring at least one day's rest. A strong man will carry an arroba and a half daily ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... arrangement with the laborer, and when, on the following Monday, they turned out to work, the paltry pittance of 12-1/2d. (7-1/2d. sterl.) was all that in the majority of cases was offered for the services of an able-bodied negro, although 2s. 6d. per day (currency), had before been invariably exacted from them, when they were desirous of purchasing the remaining term of their apprenticeship. Of course, the people refused to receive so paltry a remuneration for their labour, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... pervades the whole of society in India, with the consequence that manual labour is universally regarded as degrading, and with the further natural result that a horde of five and a half millions of lazy, wretched, immoral, able-bodied, religious beggars are burdening this land. And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil. It should be further remarked that there are a number of begging castes, in which all work is proscribed and mendicity exalted ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... recruiting posters with their hectic urgings to the manhood of England to volunteer no longer blanketed the hoardings and the walls of private buildings. Conscription had come. Every able-bodied man must now serve at the command of the government. England seemed to have greater dignity. The war was wholly master of her proud individualism, which had stubbornly held to its faith that the man who fought best was he who chose to ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile shades, in the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious truth, and with modern instances, "men are never so inconsistent as in their beliefs about the other world." ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... hope it did! The afternoon's work of three able-bodied men has been marvellously wasted if it didn't. However, I must say ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... here that in later years, and especially since the system of allowances adopted by the Berkshire magistrates at Speenhamland in 1795 had become general, the original policy of relieving only the destitute and helpless, and compelling able-bodied men to earn their own living, had been entirely obscured by the intrusion of other ideas. The result was admirably described in the report of a commission, appointed in 1832, with the most comprehensive powers of investigation and recommendation. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Frenchman, as he took this gentleman to be, replied in the least satisfactory manner possible, and in the short language of some seamen, 'Your footman's an Englishman, sir; has been pressed for an able-bodied seaman, which I trust he'll prove; he's aboard the tender, and there he will remain.' The foreigner, who, notwithstanding the politeness of his address, seemed to have a high spirit, and to be fully sensible of what was due from others to him as well as from him to them, replied ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... acknowledging Sir Henry's slight inclination. Sir Henry's inner mind decided against him—at once—instinctively. What was a stout fellow, who at any rate looked as though he were still of military age, doing with nonsense of this sort, at four o'clock in the day, when England wanted every able-bodied man she possessed, either to fight for her or to work for her? At the same time the reflection passed rapidly through his mind that neither the man nor the name had come up—so far as he could remember—before the County Tribunal of ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... meanwhile, he wondered, was Ling? If he were really sincere in his desire to show his gratitude, the time was at hand for him to do so. The number of able-bodied men on board was growing less every moment; and if Ling could only be persuaded to bring the Englishman his two revolvers, loaded, he and the Korean might be able to obtain possession of the craft, and steer her ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... spends a good part of his winters in Baltimore and New York. He laughs when you ask him if he regrets slavery. Nothing would induce him to take care of one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, furnishing perhaps thirty able-bodied men, littering the house with a swarm of lazy servants, and making heavy drafts on the meat-house and corn-crib, and ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... problems. An attempt was made to utilise the deported in agriculture, in which labour is nowadays exceedingly scarce in Crimea. But the old people and the children are not fit for agricultural work and it would take too long to train the able-bodied women. On the other hand, the largest and more prosperous Crimean towns, such as Simferopol and Sebastopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, and Theodosia, where the deported Jews could easily find employment, are closed to the newcomers. Only the smaller and poorer towns ...
— The Shield • Various
... war-boats got ready to join the English force. There was the Lion King, the Royal Eagle, the Tiger, the Big Snake, the Little Snake, the Frog, the Alligator, and many others belonging to the Datus, who, on occasions like these, are bound to call on their servants, and a certain number of able-bodied men living in their kampongs, to man and fight in their boats. This is their service to the Government. The rajah supplies the whole force with rice for the expedition, and a certain number of muskets. The English ships were left, the Albatross ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... compliance; but they often regained their strength too rapidly, and the whole order and convenience of kitchens and wards would be thrown into wild confusion by a stern mandate from Washington, that every able-bodied man was to go to his regiment. No matter what the exigency of the case might be, these men were despatched in haste. Then came a new training of men, some on crutches, some with one hand, and all far from strong. When the ladies remonstrated at having such men put on duty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... will for a time sway human life, so crazes may run through all animals of a given kind. This was the year when a beef-eating craze seemed to possess every able-bodied Grizzly of the Sierras. They had long been known as a root-eating, berry-picking, inoffensive race when let alone, but now they seemed to descend on the cattle-range in a body and make their diet ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... instruction to the Committee to introduce a clause allowing out-door relief in all cases of able-bodied paupers married previously to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the soldiers were compelled to make in the dreadful contest. But so vast a fund for distribution attracted the inevitable horde of small lawyers and pension agents, who swelled the lists with multitudes of sham veterans and able-bodied "cripples," until many eminent ex-soldiers cried out for a purgation of that which should be a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... adapted to the cultivation of cotton, but, after it was grown and picked, the expense of cleaning it destroyed nearly all the profits of the transaction. The cleaning process was performed by hand, and it was as much as an able-bodied negro could do to clean one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened by this difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire abandonment ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... their time in idleness. The narrow confines of their house would soon grow irksome to five able-bodied boys and men, and every one of them knew it. They went forth with rude wooden shovels, and began to clear paths in the snow—one to a point among the trees where the fallen brushwood lay thickest, another to the edge of the lake, where they broke holes in the ice and ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... another community of fruit growers the usual Japanese labor was not available; but when the fruit ripened, the banker, the butcher, the lawyer, the garage man, the druggist, the local editor, and in fact every able-bodied man and woman in the town, left their occupations and went out, gathered the fruit, and sent ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... ascending the river, found a prairie region far more rich and beautiful than that occupied by the encampment at the mouth of the creek. He sent back two boats, with directions that about thirty of the most able-bodied men should remain to garrison the fort, while the rest, including all the women and children, were to embark, under M. Moranget, for the new location. Early in July another messenger came with instructions for all the remaining garrison to embark, with all the stores they could carry, in the Belle, ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... of those who watched. News of the disaster had been brought to the village by the lightkeeper's assistant, and Ellery and most of the able-bodied men in town had tramped the three miles to the beach, facing the screaming wind and the cutting blasts of flying sand. As they came over the dunes there were times when they had to dig their heels into the ground and bend forward to stand against the freezing gale. And, as ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and in all quarters, after what had now happened, they were seized by a fear and consternation quite without example. It was grievous enough for the state and for every man in his proper person to lose so many heavy infantry, cavalry, and able-bodied troops, and to see none left to replace them; but when they saw, also, that they had not sufficient ships in their docks, or money in the treasury, or crews for the ships, they began to despair of salvation. They thought that their ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... homeward-bound vessels were watched and waited for, all ports were under supervision; and in a day, if need were, a large number of men could be added to the forces of his Majesty's navy. But if the Admiralty became urgent in their demands, they were also willing to be unscrupulous. Landsmen, if able-bodied, might soon be trained into good sailors; and once in the hold of the tender, which always awaited the success of the operations of the press-gang, it was difficult for such prisoners to bring evidence of the nature of their former occupations, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Powel's Valley, the party was reinforced by another body of emigrants to the West consisting of five families and no less than forty able-bodied men; well armed and provided with provisions ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... provision in the same proportion. The islanders brought much of their fruits to us in their little canoes, which are long and narrow boats, like troughs, hollowed out of single trees; but their cattle we bought on shore. I observed the people to be straight, well-limbed, and able-bodied men, of a very dark tawny colour. Most of the men, and all the women, were entirely naked, except merely enough to hide their parts of shame. Some few of the men wore long garments, after the fashion of the Arabs, whose language they spoke, and were likewise of the Mahometan religion, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... stayed there and engaged the Indians in conversation while George was making tracks back over the same road that we had just come to hurry the cavalry up. I learned from them that there were no more able-bodied men left in the cave, and there were some twenty or thirty squaws and children, besides several warriors that were wounded. In about an hour from the time George started back, ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... bushes strewed over the country by the beneficent hand of Providence. He shacks along on his little old cayuse, with his mind occupied on how many things he can't do next, and he gits plumb disgusted. But suppose there's a chance of an able-bodied enemy, aided and abetted with a gun, a-hidin' behind each and every one of them rocks and bushes? Don't life take on an interest? I bet you money! The imaginations of that man's mind gets started up. Life becomes full of chances. The man, he's interested ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the "saeva mephitis" of the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied passengers, one of whom observed, not inaptly, that Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only have taken a salt-water trip in a packet boat. I am inclined ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... when they saw him, would quickly turn him out of the ship again. The first lieutenant, however, important as he looked, seemed pleased with his appearance and manner; the surgeon pronounced him a healthy, able-bodied lad, fit for the service; but he had brought no certificates of parentage or age. Had he his parents' permission to come to sea? he was asked. They were both dead: he had no friends; but he produced a tin case which had been his father's. The contents showed that the owner had ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... in their wake, with Ali and some others aboard her, steering ever in the wake of the carack which continued to be navigated by the Nasrani dog, Jasper Leigh. When Sakr-el-Bahr learnt the value of the capture, when he was informed that in addition to a hundred able-bodied men under the hatches, to be sold as slaves in the sok-el-Abeed, there was a cargo of gold and silver, pearls, amber, spices, and ivory, and such lesser matters as gorgeous silken fabrics, rich beyond anything that had ever been seen upon the seas at any one time, he felt that the blood he ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... have brought back your man—not without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty! He is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering their ignorance of Crown work. Men, bring forward your prisoner!' And the third stranger was led to ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... is, all of the able-bodied women of the gens take part in the cultivation of each household ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
