taskwork

A dull coarse web her small life seems made of; but even from its taskwork, which is undertaken for childhood itself, there are glittering threads cast across its woof and warp of care.

The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete John Forster 1844

-- He who has reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden -- nay, I would say even -- grief to its grave?

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 Various

As soon as possible after coming to the throne, he swept away all privilege and right that had been conceded to the commons, commanded that there should no longer be any of those assemblages on the occasions of festivals and sacrifices that had before tended to unite the people and to break the monotony of their lives; he put the poor at taskwork, and mistrusted, banished, or murdered the rich.

The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic Arthur Gilman

And now she gave justice and laws to her people, and adjusted or allotted their taskwork in due portion; when suddenly Aeneas sees advancing with a great crowd about them Antheus and Sergestus and brave

The Aeneid of Virgil 70 BC-19 BC Virgil

But I have a taskwork to accomplish -- one, I think, which God, by fitting me thereto, has pointed out as mine.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. Various

A well-regulated prison, where the severity of the taskwork, the nature of the diet, the duration and the strictness of the confinement, all admit of apportionment to the offence, seems to include all that is desirable in this matter of punishment.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 Various

Would that I could agree; but I see her in the cities and everywhere, set down to menial taskwork.

Shandygaff Christopher Morley 1923

In the midst of all the hardships of his younger time, as afterwards in the midst of crushing Herculean taskwork, he was saved from moral ruin by the inexhaustible geniality and expansiveness of his affections.

Diderot and the Encyclopaedists Morley, John, 1838-1923 1905

All this without reference to the trouble and expense entailed by an aggregation of the trivial taskwork of signing one's name, addressing envelopes, sticking on stamps, and occasionally paying for them, and not infrequently defraying the extra postage on insufficiently stamped admiration.

Without Prejudice Israel Zangwill 1895

The laborious work of brickmaking was generally assigned to captives as taskwork, and it appears to me highly probable that "the tale" of the brickmaker or his taskmaster might be most readily marked by simply indenting the side of the soft tale brick with the corner angle of a dry one; and that thus the strikingly peculiar character of the cuneiform character was produced (see Fig. 6).

James Nasmyth: Engineer, An Autobiography. Nasmyth, James 1885