Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Beast of burden   /bist əv bˈərdən/   Listen
Beast of burden

noun
1.
An animal such as a donkey or ox or elephant used for transporting loads or doing other heavy work.  Synonym: jument.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Beast of burden" Quotes from Famous Books



... veriest scapegoat and victim of the cruellest and crabbedest of human dispositions. Truly, it has ever been born unto sorrow, bearing all its life long a weight of abuse and contumely which would break the heart of a less sensitive animal in a single week. From the beginning it has been the poor man's beast of burden; and "pity 'tis 'tis true," poor men, in all the generations of human poverty, have been far too prone to harshness of temper and treatment towards the beasts that serve them and share their lot of humble life. The ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... and mechanically, like some beast of burden, and when it was finished my father signed to him to get up, saying the words at ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... could not exist in this northern land of snow. The reindeer is our horse, our beast of burden. On him we feed. He gives us our clothing, our shoes, our gloves; his skin is our blanket and our bed; his sinews our thread. On the march a herd of reindeer is easily managed. We keep them together without much trouble, and in winter they remain where we leave them to get the moss; but ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... pace, instead of a scramble, became in places a wild glissade, and no beast of burden but a mountain pack-horse could have kept its footing ten minutes. Dark pines rose up from beneath them and faded back of them, here and there a scarred rock or whitened boulder flitted by, and then Millicent's sight was dimmed by a whirling haze of snow. How long ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... a married man whose wife made friends with Dinah. The lawyer had now no rival to fear but Monsieur Gravier. Now Monsieur Gravier was the typical man of forty of whom women make use while they laugh at him, whose hopes they intentionally and remorselessly encourage, as we are kind to a beast of burden. In six years, among all the men who were introduced to her from twenty leagues round, there was not one in whose presence Dinah was conscious of the excitement caused by personal beauty, by a belief in promised happiness, by the impact of a superior soul, or the anticipation ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... chained up and kept in the court of the palace aforesaid. A donkey laden with firewood was driven in, and 'either from fear, or by a miracle,' as the chronicle says, at once assailed the lion with the utmost ferocity, and kicked him to death, in spite of the efforts of a number of men to drag the beast of burden off. Of the two hypotheses, the wise men of the day preferred the supernatural explanation, and one of them found an ancient Sibylline prophecy to the effect that 'when the tame beast should kill the king of beasts, the dissolution of the Church should begin.' ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... excited. Miners lay in wait for Billy with a "greenhorn," or new-comer, whom they would put up to challenge the animal by some indiscreet gesture. In this way hardly a cartload of "pay-gravel" ever arrived safely at its destination, and the unfortunate M'Ginnis was compelled to withdraw Billy as a beast of burden. It was whispered that so great had his propensity become, under repeated provocation, that M'Ginnis himself was no longer safe. Going ahead of his cart one day to remove a fallen bough from the trail, Billy construed the act of stooping ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... his milking after dark, worked sixteen hours a day, had nothing to eat except what could not be sold by his employer. He was a German plebeian, with no chance ever to improve his condition. He was ignorant, stupid, a mere beast of burden. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... you won't starve much longer, nor wear moccasins either.' The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord—the first white man she had ever seen—the first man whom she had known to treat a woman as something better than a mere animal or beast of burden. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... on the camel, by Captain Yaldwyn and other officers of the Indian Army, we learn that this beast of burden has been often utilized by the British in Afghanistan, and the supply of camels raised in that country has generally been augmented by drafts from India, although the last mentioned do not thrive under ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough

... houses they go to. They look picturesque and pretty, perhaps, outside, sometimes; but within they are mere hovels. The man receives only enough for his labor to feed and clothe him for his work. He becomes, therefore, a mere beast of burden, and his home is only a hut to feed and ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... and drugs, especially in senna leaves, occupy many. Unlike the true Arab, the Ababda do not live in tents, but build huts with hurdles and mats, or live in natural caves, as did their ancestors in classic times. They have few horses, using the camel as beast of burden or their "mount'' in war. They live chiefly on milk and durra, the latter eaten either raw or roasted. They are very superstitious, believing, for example, that evil would overtake a family if a girl member should, after her marriage, ever set eyes on her mother: hence the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... very meagre report; but I know of old that if you do not choose to speak no god could drag a syllable from you. As regards myself I should do myself an injury by being silent, for my heart is like an overloaded beast of burden and talking will relieve it. Ah! Publius, my fate to-day is that of the helpless Tantalus, who sees juicy pears bobbing about under his nose and tempting his hungry stomach, and yet they never let him catch hold of them, only look-in there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... him. But, Madam, you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when you thought that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he is, or how he is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes yoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... last of waiting, patiently, humbly, resigned like the beast of burden which awaits the slaughterhouse. Beasts of burden! Are we not that, all we who with brow bent under humiliation, injustice, thankless toil; with the heart embittered by tedious deception and tedious despair, miseries ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... The principal beast of burden is the carabac or water buffalo, which is used for ploughing rice fields, as well as drawing heavy loads on sledges or ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... And have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Bosor, who loved the reward of unrighteousness, but had a rebuke for his transgression, the dumb beast of burden speaking with man's voice and reproving the folly of the prophet. Here he brings in an illustration from the fourth book of Moses, xxii.-xxiv. When the children of Israel had journeyed out of Egypt and had come into ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... masses of men are compelled to build and manufacture; the ruling and propertied classes soon perceive that a day of rest is absolutely requisite. Without it the laborer wears out too rapidly—like the horse, the ox, or any other beast of burden. The day is therefore decreed for economic reasons. It is only placed under the sanction of religion because, in a certain stage of human development, there is no other sanction available. Every change in social organisation ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... stately Indian file, marched two youths, also armed; then appeared a birchen traineau, drawn by the squaw who had the honour of being wife and mother respectively to the preceding copper-coloured men, and who therefore was constituted their beast of burden. A girl and a child—future squaws—shared the toil of pulling along the family chattels, unaided by the stalwart lords of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the Seaman I have shown that riding men as asses is a facetious exaggeration of an African practice, the Minister being generally the beast of burden for the King. It was the same in the Maldive Islands. "As soon as the lord desires to land, one of the rhief Catibes (Arab. Khatib a preacher, not Katib a writer) comes forward to offer his shoulder (a function ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... contained in a big leather sack that lies like a bolster across the animal's back. I am afraid he is not so mindful of Neddy as he ought to be, and that some of our own costermongers could teach him a lesson or two in the humane treatment of his patient beast of burden. Leaving Peru and South America, and travelling to the northern continent, we are introduced in No. 4 to a water-carrier of Mexico. Notice how he carries the water in two odd-shaped vessels suspended from his head by means of a broad band. In No. 5 will be observed ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... presents—carts carved out of wood, or a wooden sword; but he was so rough and uncouth a man that their elders were not pleased that he should speak with them; and indeed most people spoke of him as of one who could be trusted indeed to do hard toil punctually like a beast of burden, but whose mind was not wholly sound, but like that of a dog or ox. But he did his duty so faithfully, and was moreover so strong and fearless, if there was any troublesome comer to deal with, that he was held to be ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with Sainte-Marie, or that of the Arabian origin with Beaumont. There only remains to explain in this place the term knight (chevalier), but it is well known to be derived from caballus, which primarily signifies a beast of burden, a pack-horse, and has ended by signifying a war-horse. The knight, also, has always preserved the name of miles in the Latin tongue of the Middle Ages, in which chivalry is always called militia. Nothing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... hear its existence mentioned, so it cannot be of much account. The streets are thronged with barefoot women and ragged lads with their threepenny loads of turf. The patient ass, with his straw harness and creels, is the prevailing beast of burden everywhere I have travelled since I entered Enniskillen with ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... rose to the occasion with such a succession of quips and jests, such schoolboy tricks and merry whistlings, as could not fail to be infectious. He was not much use, so far as arranging the work was concerned; but, as he himself expressed it, he played the part of beast of burden, dragging tables into the library, fitting them together to take the place of stalls, and undertaking a dozen onerous duties. With the best will in the world, however, it was impossible to make the room larger than it was, or to prevent an amount of crowding which left ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... recollect the plight in which I was when I was stopped,—for stopped I was, as shortly and as sharply, as the beast of burden, with a bridle in its mouth, whose driver puts a period to his career. I was wet,—intermittent gusts of rain were borne on the scurrying wind; in spite of the pace at which I had been brought, I was chilled to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... a sermon on "Genesis," the instances of Abraham and Abimelech and other Old Testament worthies, as justifying slavery and the treatment of a slave as a beast of burden. "Sheep, cattle, men-servants and maid-servants, they were all possessions," says Luther, "to be sold as it pleased them like other beasts. It were even a good thing were it still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk" (Saemmtliche Werke, vol. xv. p. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... be able to lay not only my heart but my brute strength at her feet. I shall be allowed to be her beast of burden, to carry her whither she would; and so with my body her to worship more than most husbands have a chance of ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... who had dealings with Quereno knew, therefore, by his name what manner of man this was, and dealt with him accordingly. Juan Quereno was himself a muleteer, and in even such a humble capacity as scrambling behind a beast of burden over a rocky range of mountains and through a stream or two, a man may make for himself a small reputation in his small world. Juan Quereno was, namely, a Government muleteer, and carried the mails over nineteen chaotic miles of rock and river. When the mails were delayed owing, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... I thought it expedient to take Fanny, which, though a somewhat stubborn little beast of burden; yet so bent was I on seeing the sweet spring-like hedges and banks, that I agreed to endure Fanny; and at the given time on her I mounted, and after much persuasion, got her under-weigh: the boy George bringing up ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... the other two would be left by themselves at the mercy of the world. In a few years' time the boy would be like Bert White, in the clutches of some psalm-singing devil like Hunter or Rushton, who would use him as if he were a beast of burden. He imagined he could see him now as he would be then: worked, driven, and bullied, carrying loads, dragging carts, and running here and there, trying his best to satisfy the brutal tyrants, whose only thought would be to get profit out of him for themselves. If ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... weak in the head. They set her down as "not exactly." At the end of a year she brought her husband a fine boy. It happened that the child was born just about the time of year the tin-merchants visited St. Michael's Mount; and the father—who streamed in a small way, and had no beast of burden but his donkey, or "naggur"—had to load up panniers and drive his tin down to the shore-market with the rest, which for him meant an absence of three weeks, or a fortnight at ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... said her husband, "has joys of his own which seem to him great, and cause him as much pleasure as a king would find in the magnificence of his palace. And then do you not think that the beast of burden, which suffers blows and hunger, and works itself to death, suffers just as much from its miserable fate? The dumb creature might demand a future life also, and declare the law unjust that excludes it from the advantages of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... fashion, on two poles tied to a horse and trailing on the ground behind. In general, however, recourse must be had for transportation purposes to the faithful horse and the patient donkey. In the northern part of the Republic the ox is often used as a beast of burden and sometimes for riding, furnishing an odd spectacle. The ox is guided by a string tied to a ring in his nose, but neither the configuration of his back nor his gait are to be recommended for ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... the dresses where they had fallen. The ladies always had a kindly, ever-caressing smile or word for little Marie. They were actually, in a way, fond of her, as people are fond of a pretty little domestic beast of burden, and Marie herself adored them. She loved them from afar, and one of her great reasons for wishing to stay for her wages was to buy some finery after the fashion of Charlotte's and Ina's. Marie ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... outgrowing all superstition about that. We have not the slightest respect for it as such, and it is just as well to remember this in all our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we cannot master it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... as a beast of burden or for shooting from in thick jungle, carries on its back only a "pad"—a heavy, straw-stuffed mattress reaching from neck to tail and fastened on by a rope surcingle passing round the body. On this pad, if passengers ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... of money. One must live? ... certainly,—but one is not bound to live in foolish luxury for the sake of out-flaunting one's neighbors. Better to live simply and preserve health, than gain a fortune and be a moping dyspeptic for life. But unless one toils and moils like a beast of burden, one cannot even live simply, some will say! I don't believe that assertion. The peasants of France live simply, and save,—the peasants of England live wretchedly, and waste! Voila la difference! As with nations, so with individuals, —it is all a question of Will. 'Where ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Campbell's brilliant reply we extract the following: FREDERICK DOUGLASS, "the beast of burden," the portion of "goods and chattels," the representative of three millions of men, has been raised{328} up! Shall I say the man? If there is a man on earth, he is a man. My blood boiled within me when I heard his address tonight, and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... N. carrier, porter, bearer, tranter^, conveyer; cargador^; express, expressman; stevedore, coolie; conductor, locomotive, motor. beast, beast of burden, cattle, horse, nag, palfrey, Arab^, blood horse, thoroughbred, galloway^, charger, courser, racer, hunter, jument^, pony, filly, colt, foal, barb, roan, jade, hack, bidet, pad, cob, tit, punch, roadster, goer^; racehorse, pack horse, draft horse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... road; and the animal between the shafts was beginning to puff, as though well tired out. But often some of the boys had only too gladly jumped down, and climbed hills, so as to make things easier for the beast of burden, for which possibly Ebenezer may have been thankful, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... hitch me out in front of the store to a hitching post like any other beast of burden," returned Neale, following in her footsteps out of ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... he had returned home, they all jeeringly asked him whether he had given way to love, and he avowed that he had ravished the maid. When he was next asked where he did it, and what had been his pillow, he said that he had rested upon the hoof of a beast of burden, upon a cockscomb, and also upon a ceiling. For, when he was starting into temptation, he had gathered fragments of all these things, in order to avoid lying. And though his jest did not take aught of the truth out of the story, the answer was greeted with shouts of merriment from the bystanders. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... become a cowherd, and now a beast of burden for the foreign lady he had seen, and her friend whom he had not seen, was indubitably genuine. He was pleased with the adventure—if not as pleased as his initiated companion. For the next few hours the hunter was free, it seemed. He said that he had been out since early ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... they had done the contrary, they ought to complain of themselves and not of me. While I was standing there and talking, one of them, named Gherardo Guasconti, their cousin, having perhaps been put up to it by them, lay in wait till a beast of burden went by. [1] It was a load of bricks. When the load reached me, Gherardo pushed it so violently on my body that I was very much hurt. Turning suddenly round and seeing him laughing, I struck him such a blow on the temple that he fell down, stunned, like ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... carried most of what they had, and they each took with them a bundle of about twenty-five pounds; but they made no progress, all the creeks they followed to the southward ran out into earthy plains and their one solitary beast of burden being knocked up, they had ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... government all the peoples of the world find shelter and protection—save the African (who was formerly used as a beast of burden and now as a football, to be kicked by one faction and kicked back by the other) and the industrious Chinaman, who was barred out by the over-obsequiousness of the Congress of the nation, in deference to the Sand-Lot demagogues of the Pacific ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... were not being consulted, his intelligence even was not being appealed to. It was the assistance of his arms that the common interest demanded. In short, he had to resign himself to his vocation of beast of burden. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... retained in that the main work of cleaning is done by women. But, for that matter, it seems to the casual observer as if the bulk of all the work here were performed by the supposedly weaker sex. Certainly woman is here the chief beast of burden. In every direction she may be seen, in rustic garb, struggling cheerily along under the burden of a gigantic basket strapped at her back. You may see the like anywhere else in Germany, to be sure, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... wool. This creature is also a species of camel, though different in shape. Cavier regarded the paco as a variety of the llama; so also the vicugua. The llama is generally used as a beast of burden, while the former are used chiefly for their flesh ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... reaching so much as the very first step of that throne that lures them on and hangs always just before them, like a bundle of hariali grass held by a crafty rider on a stick before the nose of the deluded beast of burden that carries him along. Thine is only the phantom of a sun that will presently go down and disappear, leaving the true sun, thy father, still in ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... extensive and rapid travel over the snow in the Arctic regions by means of dog sleds, the extremely limited transportation by dog travail (or sledge) in the Sioux province, and the use of the llama as a beast of burden throughout the Peruvian highlands, land travel was on foot, and land transportation on the backs of men and women. One of the most interesting topics of study is the trails along which the seasonal and annual ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... saw, as he turned his face toward her, that his heavy hair had fallen low across his forehead, giving him a youthful look that became him strangely. At the instant she softened in her judgment of the unknown woman at the cross-roads. "Why, she thought I was some queer beast of burden, I reckon," he returned, "some new farm animal that made her a little curious. Well, whoever she may be, she walked as if she felt herself a princess." Cynthia snorted. "Her habit fitted her like a glove," was her comment, to which ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... of the day was now strong on the land; the porters sweated under their loads, and Adams, loaded like them, knew for once in his life what it was to be a slave and a beast of burden. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... not only the babe slung upon her back, but the bag of food, and even her husband's gun and pipe; while the man stalks along in his pride, with nothing but his spear in his hand, or at most a light basket upon his arm; for he considers his wife as his beast of burden. At night the woman has to build her own shelter, for the man thinks it quite enough to ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... packs are in the canoe, and I'll be hanged if I'll make a beast of burden of myself at this ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... indirectly; for without commerce and manufacture, no one would pay him interest upon his capital, no one could use it. So the bourgeois certainly needs workers, not indeed for his immediate living, for at need he could consume his capital, but as we need an article of trade or a beast of burden,—as a means of profit. The proletarian produces the goods which the bourgeois sells with advantage. When, therefore, the demand for these goods increases so that all the competing working-men are employed, and a few more might perhaps be useful, the competition among the workers ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... an unprofitable end: he who hoarded wealth and did not spend it, and he who acquired science and did not practise it:—However much thou art read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant. He is neither a sage philosopher nor an acute divine, but a beast of burden with a load of books. How can that brainless head know or comprehend whether he carries on his back a library ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... use, abuse. aca here, hither. acabar to finish, end; —— de, to have just... acallar to quiet, hush. acampar to encamp. acariciar to caress. acaso perhaps, by chance. acceder to accede. accion f action, battle. acelerar to accelerate. acemila beast of burden. acento accent. aceptar to accept. acercar to bring near; vr. to approach. acero steel. acertado fit, proper. acertar to hit the mark, succeed, happen. acetre m. small bucket. achacoso infirm, sickly. achicar to diminish. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... pad of naked feet; and the darkness swallowed him. Following came another, also laden; and another, with a squat stone jar upon his shoulder; and yet another, each giving out every ounce of power within him, straining like a beast of burden beneath the yoke, that those in the great house might be served perfectly and without fault. They passed; and from the kitchens came a rattle of crockery, a hiss of burning fat, the shrill voices of ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... science of war is knowledge of the economy of men's powers, of their physical possibilities and limitations, of their response to fatigue, hope, fear, success and discouragement, and of the weight of the moral factor in everything they do. Man is a beast of burden; he will fail utterly in the crisis of battle if there is no respect for his aching back. He is also one of a great brotherhood whose mighty fellowship can make the worst misery tolerable, and can provide him with undreamed strength and courage. These are among the things that need to be studied ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Taylor Burns stands in the slave mart at New Orleans and hears the Auctioneers' hammer, for he was sold like a beast of burden by Greene Taylor, brother of his mistress. Greene Taylor, however, had to refund the money and return the slave to his mistress when ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... lies with which we seek to impose upon ourselves. Despite all our democratic talk, work is among us in general a disgrace, for the labourer is a dependent, an exploited servant—he has a master over him who can order him, and can use him for his own purpose as he can a beast of burden. No ethical theory in the world will make master and servant equally honourable. But here it is different. To discover how great the difference is, one need merely attend a social reunion in Freeland. It is natural, of course, that persons belonging to the same circle of interests ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... what is a high salary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work! That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more to me than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tier now myself,—what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'" ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... belongs to the same family with the camel, is a native of some parts of South America, and is used as a beast of burden. He is capable of carrying from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds, and on the steep places where he is usually employed, will walk with his load twelve or fifteen miles a day. When lamas get ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... to a strong, self-centred power whose presence alone inspires serenest trust. Hawthorne, standing in St. Peter's, saw only the gorgeous coloring; proportions, immensity, and sacredness were as nothing to the harmonious brilliancy of this expanded "jewel casket."[9] Stevenson, thinking of the beast of burden best suited to carry his great sleeping sack, discarded the horse, for, as he says, "she is a fine lady among animals."[10] The description of a horse which follows this statement emphasizes the fact that ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... found in all philosophy, true or false, and such symbolism was cultivated as an occult art in the early history of civilization when picture-writing developed into conventional writing, and symbolism is an interesting subject for study, but it has been made a beast of burden to carry ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell

... sunk into a beast of burden. I trudge on with my mind torpid—I take whatever comes to me, and go on mechanically. Oh it cows me, it wears me down! I have learned to bear anything—anything! A man might kick me and ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... animation, equine, canine, bovine, and human, that ever civilian beheld—mules, asses, horses, colts, cows, sheep, pigs, goats, raccoons, chickens, and dogs led by negroes blacker then Erebus. Every beast of burden was loaded to its capacity with tents, baggage, knapsacks, hampers, panniers, boxes, valises, kettles, pots, pans, dishes, demijohns, bird-cages, cradles, mirrors, fiddles, clothing, pickaninnies, and an occasional ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... mouth, than that I ought to hear myself called liar, without cramming the epithet down the speaker's throat with the spike of my battle-axe. The lie is to a man the same as a blow, and a blow degrades him into a slave and a beast of burden, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... no more. His story is more tragic than any tragedy. Would to God it may warn those who come after to be wise in time, to take the same—I ask no more—care of their body, which is their servant, their beast of burden, as ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... As a beast of burden, the camel is better than for purposes of draft. He can carry from six hundred to eight hundred pounds, if the load be properly placed on his back; but when he draws a cart the weight must be greatly diminished. In crossing Mongolia, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... before, hand in hand, speaking little, Nadia looking about on every side; twice a day they halted. Six hours of the night were given to sleep. In a few huts Nadia again found a little mutton; but, contrary to Michael's hopes, there was not a single beast of burden in the country; horses, camels—all had been either killed or carried off. They must still continue to plod on across ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... work himself to death to become worse off. A proverb of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among his bad qualities he has the good one of applying to himself all the criticisms and censures he prefers to live miserable and indolent, rather than play the part of the wretched beast of burden. ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... battle they come sweeping down to feed upon the slain. Indeed they prefer dead to living food, and must be endowed with a wonderfully keen sense of sight or smell, the former is thought most likely, as no sooner does a beast of burden drop in the deserts exhausted on the sands, than vultures begin to make their way towards the carcase. Whence they come none can tell, and the only probable suggestion is that they hover at a height beyond the ken of human ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... is treacherous, and it comes to me now that maybe I have delayed my work too long. For the mind of age does not move with the nimbleness of a young colt, but rather with the labored efforts of a beast of burden whose limbs are stiff from a life of toil. But this I know, that there is a period in my existence which the years cannot dim. I have lived it over again and again, winter and summer, summer and winter, here in my quiet ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... horse, it is not because he has any desire to be the horse, but the driver. He is willing to be horse for a time, in order that he may be allowed to be driver for a still longer time. A large boy was playing horse with a smaller one, the latter acting as the beast of burden. This continued for some time, when the smaller, either discovering that a horse is larger than a man, or that it is more noble to be a man than ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... of South America has attracted so much attention as the llama, as it was the only beast of burden the Indians had trained to their use on the arrival of Europeans in that country. So many strange stories were told by the earlier Spanish travellers regarding this "camel-sheep," that it was natural that great interest should attach to it. These ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the modern railway engine. They present so many natural obstacles to the opening-up of the country, according to the standard we Westerners lay down, that one would hesitate to prophesy any mode of traffic here other than that of the horse caravan and human beast of burden. Nature seems to look down upon man and his earth-scouring contrivances, and assert, "Man, begone! I will have none of thee." And the mountains turn upwards to the sky in silent reverence to their Maker, whose work must in the main ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... plantain are to the savages of more genial climates. Not only are those animals meat and raiment, but they are canoes, sledges, weapons, tools, windows, and fire; while they support the dog, who is the indispensable ally and beast of burden of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... alone and without aids, as the traveller has to climb alone when he nears the summit of the mountain. No beast of burden can help him there; neither can the gross senses or anything that touches the gross senses help him here. But for a little distance ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... a bushel of wheat, which was all he had left, for a hundred denarii, he forbad him to be relieved by any body, when he came to be in want himself; and accordingly he died of famine. When sitting in judgment, a cause being brought before him about some beast of burden, the ownership of which was claimed by two persons; the evidence being slight on both sides, and it being difficult to come at the truth, he ordered the beast to be led to a pond at which he had used to be watered, with his head muffled up, and the covering being there removed, that he ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... unmoved, "if I am ignorant, it is not for lack of your teaching; and as for being the beast of burden to which you refer, I have heard it said that you were once in love yourself. Meanwhile, I have told you this, because there will perhaps be trouble, and I did not intend you ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... used up in the most prodigal manner possible, as those in command had not the inducement of treating the rowers well, from that economic standpoint which causes a man to so use his beast of burden as to get the best work from him. In the galley, when a slave could row no more he was flung overboard and another ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... four legs, and was evidently a beast of burden. At least, it carried a saddle on its back. Piled atop the saddle was a conglomeration of which looked to Hector—at first glance—like a pile of junk. He went over to the animal and examined it carefully. The "junk" turned out to be a long spear, various pieces of armor, a ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England. The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's house (when he is away from home for preference), ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... a jaded beast of burden, Agnes, if always full laden with the present, and the actually existent. Happily, like Pegasus, it has broad and strong pinions—can rise free from the prisoner's cell and the rich man's dainty palace. Free! free! How the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... he had laid by a little sum, which enabled him to help his friends, especially Lessing, out of financial embarrassments. Business cares did, indeed, bear heavily upon him, and his complaints are truly touching: "Like a beast of burden laden down, I crawl through life, self-love unfortunately whispering into my ear that nature had perhaps mapped out a poet's career for me. But what can we do, my friends? Let us pity one another, and be content. So long as love for ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Act granting to His Majesty duties on licences to hawkers, pedlars, and petty chapmen, and other trading persons; L10 to be the cost of a license to a person travelling on foot; L10 for every horse, ass, mule, or other beast of burden; L5 for every other beast; L50 for a decked vessel; L40 for every boat; and for every non-resident of the province L50 a year; an Act providing a salary of L500 a year for a Provincial Agent in Great Britain, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... puberty. The gelding, on the other hand, develops into an animal that is in every respect a neuter. Physically this animal develops a body almost identical with that of the female of the same species. Temperamentally the gelding is a patient, plodding, beast of burden, and though under good grooming he may show considerable life, while under the control of his driver, he seldom shows any interest in other members of the horse family, either male or female, and in the pasture or on the ranch his neutral sex temperament is ever apparent. While he may contend mildly ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... the invigorating exercise of boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume . . . all that he might come to this! . . . that he might be interred just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden! ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... took his own wardrobe. Even in a place like this one collects rubbish, just as at home, and one had to choose just what he required to take away; in some cases this was very little, for each had to be his own beast of burden. Still, with our needs reduced to the minimum, we looked rather like walking Christmas-trees. The distance to Rest Gully was about a mile and a half, through saps and over very rough cobble-stones, and our household goods and ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... hundred swine. Lower Egypt contained the great pasture lands, and was the abode of the herdsmen—a lawless race, and, therefore, an abomination to their more civilized countrymen. The ass was the beast of burden. The horse was bred for the war-chariot—that great attribute of ancient power. The breed was small but fine and peculiar to the country. They were kept in stables along the Nile, and hence they do not appear in the landscapes. Horticulture was extensively and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... not spare her. A highly gifted young man like Rafael Kaas, with such excellent prospects in every way, must not, when little more than twenty, burden himself with a middle-aged wife and a number of children. He was far from rich, he had told her so himself; his life would be that of a beast of burden, and that too, before he had learned to bear the yoke. If he had to work, to feed so many people, he might strain himself to the uttermost, he would still remain mediocre. They would both suffer under this, be disappointed and discontented. He must not pay so heavy a price for an indiscretion ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... thrillingly round the room on his precarious back, had dug our heels into his unyielding sides, and had scratched our hands on the tin tacks that secured his mane to his stiffly-curving neck. Later, with increasing stature, we came to overlook his merits as a beast of burden; but how frankly, how good-naturedly, he had recognized the new conditions, and adapted himself to ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... to observe all the terms of the contract, and in the absence of express agreement his obligations should be ascertained by reference to what is fair and equitable. Where a man has either given or promised for hire for the use of clothes, silver, or a beast of burden, he is required in his charge of it to show as much care as the most diligent father of a family shows in his own affairs; if he do this, and still accidentally lose it, he will be under no obligation to restore either it ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... excessive enforcement of discipline. His first measure was to remove incentives to idleness, by a general order that no one should sell bread, or any other dressed provisions, in the camp; that no sutlers should follow the army; and that no common soldier should have a servant, or beast of burden, either in a camp or on a march. He made the strictest regulations, too, with regard to other things.[154] He moved his camp daily, exercising the soldiers by marches across the country; he fortified it with a rampart and a trench, exactly as if the enemy had been at hand; he placed ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... is employed as a beast of burden, the bales being slung at each side, and the water-skins suspended below the belly. When the animal is employed for this purpose, a kind of pack-saddle is used, somewhat similar in shape to that which has already been described in the history of the one-humped ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... now lost that dealt with the adventures of the Greeks before Troy or on their homeward journey. Man and his doings! always the same old story, and woman always to be treated either as a toy or as a beast of burden, or at any rate as an incubus. Why not sing of woman also as she is when she is unattached and free from the trammels and persecutions of this tiresome tyrant, this insufferably ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... him, 'What ails thee and where is the ass?' And he answered, 'Thou knowest not what was this ass; but I will tell thee.' So he told her the story, and she exclaimed, 'Woe worth us for God the Most High! How could we have used a man as a beast of burden, all this while?' And she gave alms and asked pardon of God. Then the man abode awhile at home, idle, till she said to him, 'How long wilt thou sit at home, idle? Go to the market and buy us an ass and do ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... hireling, whose sole function was drudgery, who had no other prospect until death, was to give as little to his employer as possible. In order to keep the necessary labourer submissive, it was a matter of public policy to keep him uneducated and as near the condition of a beast of burden as possible, and in order to keep his life tolerable against that natural increase which all the moral institutions of his state promoted, the labourer—stimulated if his efforts slackened by the touch of absolute misery—was forced to devise elaborate rules for restricting the hours ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... reason, I am terribly busy. I have all the preoccupations in the world. My committee—it is not all smooth, my committee. Everything and everybody depends on me. And in the committee I have enemies too. The fact is, I have become a beast of burden. I dream about it. And there are others in worse case. We shall soon be in the third year of the war. We must ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... she is still not much more than a beast of burden, given to man to ease his lot. She carries heavy burdens to market, while her lord rides; she may not walk at his side, but a few paces to the rear; neither may she sit at table in the presence of strange men. The kiss with which men salute each other is not allowed to her, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... taste until the despot had leisurely finished, unless it were to pick some of the bones which he condescendingly threw to her, as, at a distance from him, she sat with the girls and dogs. Thus she was treated as a slave, or drudge, or beast of burden. Then when sickness or old age came on, and she became unable to work and toil and slave, she was without mercy put out of existence: the usual ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... him to the impossibility of permanent triumph in Italy. He winnowed his army, dismissing all his soldiers except such as were distinguished by their bravery, their strength, and their intelligence. In order that his march might be swift, he caused all the superfluous baggage to be destroyed. Every beast of burden that could be dispensed with was slain. His prisoners were disposed of after the same fashion. In a modern general such an act would be utterly without excuse. But it was strictly in accordance with the laws of ancient warfare, and Spartacus probably felt far more regret at sacrificing his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mountain. Where there is a will, however, there is generally a way; and although the pony could not drag the cart up, he could go up himself, being very sure-footed and quite willing to be turned into a beast of burden for the nonce. The heavy tarpaulin, therefore, was fastened on his back, and, with Angus leading and Hannah following with the basket of provisions, and the two girls making up the rear, the little cavalcade started forward. Oh, how hot it seemed, and oh, how tired Molly got! ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... Mazeppa was strapped upon the desert steed—the hands all roaring with laughter, Jim said, while the mate struggled in vain with his captors and the giant tortoise hissed its objections at the liberty taken with it in thus converting it into a beast of burden without leave or license! ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... as a beast of burden. In Ladakh it is harnessed to carts, and made to draw ploughs, but in other places it is usually loaded with packs. In Thibet a clumsy wooden pack-saddle is laid upon the yak's back, and the packs are fastened upon each side of it. Though at ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of water sufficient for ten or twelve days; his broad and yielding foot is well adapted for a sandy country; and, by a singular motion of his upper lip, he picks the smallest leaves from the thorny shrubs of the desert as he passes along. The camel is therefore the only beast of burden employed by the trading caravans which traverse the desert in different directions, from Barbary to Nigritia. As this useful and docile creature has been sufficiently described by systematical writers it is unnecessary for me to enlarge upon his properties. ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park

... siren whistle of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool, sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from the storehouses the fragrant picos of hemp would be piled on, and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... look at him in the very moment of intensest bustle, on the arrival of the cars. The shriek of the engine as it rushes into the car-house is the utterance of the steam fiend, whom man has subdued by magic spells and compels to serve as a beast of burden. He has skimmed rivers in his headlong rush, dashed through forests, plunged into the hearts of mountains, and glanced from the city to the desert-place, and again to a far-off city, with a meteoric progress, seen and out of sight, while his reverberating ...
— The Old Apple Dealer (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... except perhaps for the first year of courtship and marriage. Courtship began by the young man throwing sticks at the girl[10] who pleased his fancy, and if she responded he asked her in marriage. But not long after she had become a mother she sank into the position of a household drudge and beast of burden. For example, amongst the Beaver Indians, an Athapaskan tribe of the far north-west, it is related by Alexander Mackenzie that the women are permanently crippled and injured in physique by the hardships they have to undergo. "Having few dogs for transport in that country, the women alone perform ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... a liar. For when the ambassadors asked him why he had not chosen a horse rather than an ass for his journey, he answered that his saddle horse was in the pasture. Then the ass interrupted him, saying, "Am not I thine ass upon which thou hast ridden all thy life long?" Balaam: "I use thee as a beast of burden, but not for the saddle." The ass: "Nay, upon me has thou ridden since thine earliest day, and thou hast always treated me with as much affection as a man treats his wife." Balaam had now to admit that the ass ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... was manning a galley that was to convey the Infanta to Naples. He owed this to his vigorous constitution which had successfully withstood the infections of that mephitic place of torments, and to the fine thews which the officer pummelled and felt as though he were acquiring a beast of burden—which, indeed, is ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... I could not tell whether he was man, woman, or beast. A sort of cap or wide cloth band went across his head, concealing his forehead. His huge pack loomed over his shoulders, and as he walked, using two paddles as canes, he seemed some anomalous four-footed beast of burden. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... is it that figures 687-689 [same as our plate LXVIII, 42] serve as a seat for the Chac? Now Chac [he refers to the long-nose god] is not really a god of water, but of rain; the rain-producing storm cloud is his vehicle; the storm bird is his beast of burden on which ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... master's household. This also was the loyalty demanded of the Greek and Roman domestic,—before there had yet come into existence that inhuman form of servitude which reduced the toiler to the condition of a beast of burden; and the relation was partly a religious one. There does not seem to have been in ancient Japan any custom corresponding to that, described by M. de Coulanges, of adopting the Greek or Roman servant into the household ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... classes than to the peasant, who is slower to express himself, and combines in a curious way a firm belief in the omnipotence and wisdom of his social superiors with a rooted distrust of their intentions regarding himself. He is like a beast of burden who flinches from every approach, expecting always a kick or a blow. On the other hand, his affection for the animals who share his daily work is one of the most attractive points in his character, and one ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... end was here. This people which the world had once loved and honoured was now bred a beast of burden, a domesticated race, saddled and trained to bear upon its back the House of Hohenzollern as the ass bore Balaam. But the German ass wore the blinders that science had made—and saw ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... come forth like a groveling gnome. His face would be grimy, his hands gnarled with striking, his digging-clothes covered with candle-grease: and his body would reek with salty sweat and the rank, muggy odor of powder fumes. And he would crawl back to his cave like an outworn beast of burden, to sleep while she sang ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... encountered a cart of faggots, drawn by a hound so lean that stroking him might have hurt a dainty hand. I was shocked—angry, till I noticed his fellow beast of burden pushing the cart from behind. Such a scarecrow of an old woman! There was little to choose between them. I walked with them a little way. She lived near Waterloo. All day she gathered wood in the great forest, and starting at three o'clock each morning, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... all its other characters would be equally amenable to selection. The small size of the ass in England and Northern Europe is apparently due far more to want of care in breeding than to cold; for in Western India, where the ass is used as a beast of burden by some of the lower castes, it is not much larger than a Newfoundland dog, "being generally not more than from twenty to thirty inches high." (2/45. Col. Sykes Cat. of Mammalia 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... Pizarro. He stood by and listened while a native described a mighty potentate, many days to the south, who reigned over the mountains and the sea, who was rich in gold, and who possessed a four-footed beast of burden, the only one yet encountered, which was taken at first for a camel. He waited many years for his opportunity. Then, with 168 armed men, and with aid from an associate who risked his money in the business, he started for the Andes and the civilised and prosperous monarchy ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... here, a beast of burden slow, Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings; Here play'd, a tiger, rolling to and fro The heads and crowns ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... designation of "The Industrious Fleas." He had there seen many fleas, occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, but occupied, he was bound to add, in a manner which no man of well-regulated mind could fail to regard with sorrow and regret. One flea, reduced to the level of a beast of burden, was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a particularly small effigy of His Grace the Duke of Wellington; while another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden model of his great adversary Napoleon Bonaparte. Some, brought up as mountebanks and ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... of Resurrection, as commonly understood, does not explain why one man is born with a sinful nature and another with a virtuous one. It contents itself with saying as Luther said: "Man is a beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes God rides him and sometimes Satan." But why God should allow Satan to ride His own creature nobody can tell. At any rate, man must suffer eternally for the crimes which he ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda

... humanity and through good sense, there is, doubtless, a desire to relieve the peasant, and pity is felt for him. But, in practice, through necessity and routine, he is treated according to Cardinal Richelieu's precept, as a beast of burden to which oats is sparingly rationed out for fear that he may become too strong and kick, "a mule which, accustomed to his load, is spoiled more by long repose than ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... individuals,—just as there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the whole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the other,—nevertheless every man, simply because he is a human being, has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of burden. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... dwellers in such a land the Bible story was neither vague nor remote. They knew its setting because their own surroundings were the same. They practised the shepherd customs; the ass was their own beast of burden; the tending of vines and fig-trees and olive-orchards was a part of their daily lives. And so, naturally, the older noel writers without any thought of anachronism, and the modern writers by poetic instinct made complete their translation of the story of the Nativity into their vernacular ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier



Words linked to "Beast of burden" :   pack animal, work animal, sumpter



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com