quill-driving

They lifted their heads from their quill-driving to look at the poor woman as she went by.

Mrs. Day's Daughters Mary E. Mann

You're one of our breed, Armstrong -- yellow dog of the yellow dog quill-driving tribe -- and your comrades haven't the gentlemanly instinct of the Constantinople cur.

Despair's Last Journey David Christie Murray

But all this is good fun enough, compared to the quill-driving in Grahamstown.

The Autobiography of Liuetenant-General Sir Harry Smith, Baronet of Aliwal on the Sutlej, G. C. B. 1903

Even if I had been able to write a good hand and keep accounts I couldn't have brought myself to think that quill-driving and counting other people's money was a fit employment for a man.

Cashel Byron's Profession George Bernard Shaw 1903

But the day of reckoning was at hand, and soon there would be nothing left of the great philosopher but a quill-driving buffoon.

Casanova's Homecoming Arthur Schnitzler 1896

Vernon's friends and kinsmen enjoy, by her being born one of their Helots; but spare me the utterance, my good friend, and let us try whether we shall agree better on the second count of my indictment against fortune, as that quill-driving puppy would call it.

Rob Roy 1887

But, first of all, I must tell you that I am a clerk in the Admiralty, where our chiefs, the commissioners, take their gold lace as quill-driving officials seriously, and treat us like forecastle men on board a ship.

Original Short Stories — Volume 05 Guy de Maupassant 1871

But, first of all, I must tell you that I am a clerk in the Admiralty, where our chiefs, the commissioners, take their gold lace as quill-driving officials seriously, and treat us like forecastle men on board a ship.

Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1871

And you're a confoundedly clever fellow into the bargain, or you wouldn't be quill-driving for

Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith George Meredith 1868

Rough as the life is, it is a man's life, and a week of it is worth more than a year's quill-driving in an office.

In the Heart of the Rockies 1867