I didn’t come out to Australia to be a navvy or a ploughman; I could have found similar situations at home.
We had six months’ work at it last summer; during most of the time I did navvy work, wheeling my barrow up and down a plank like the others.
The British navvy was in great request--in fact the day that Kent and Brown discovered England was this worthy's natal day.
The navvy workmen, who have made the railways and docks of England, are a hard-working but a rather thriftless set.
He had worked for him and for other contractors many years; and while they had been making their fortunes, the navvy who had worked for them had fallen so low as to be found dying in a ditch.
The first time I went to Belfast, I thought it would be lovely to be a tram-driver 'til I saw a navvy tearing up the street .
The navvy turned round on his bed and said-- "Good-bye, mate.
The clerk's wife was chattering; the great navvy lay in the corner, still as a block of stone.
The navvy was alone; the little clerk had his family round him, his wife and his two children, a baby in arms and a little boy three years old.
They could not even ballast as the English navvy does, continuously working at filling for the whole day.
The Danish railways brought the British navvy again into comparison with his foreign rivals.
The English navvy was found to be the first workman in the world.
Smith happened along in time to drive the spike home, it would have been hammered in by the navvy on the job.
The navvy took the place of the Indian, pick and shovel and theodolite the place of bow and musket, and a lower freight {31} by a cent on a bushel of wheat became the ammunition in place of the former glass beads or fire-water.
During the railway-making period the navvy wandered about from one public work to another, apparently belonging to no country and having no home.
But the head navvy merely hitched up his trowsers and said, "Why, Soondays hain't cropt out here yet!
That Tim Goddard stole all my clothes, and no good may they do him; last time as I went to gaol I gave them him to kep, and he went off for a navvy meantime; so there I am.
Navvy or none,' said the colonel, 'he has just the longest head and the noblest heart of any man I ever met.
He felt weak and sore, and the pain of his smashed knuckles warned him that, even if he could find a job at navvy work, it would be a week before he could grip a pick handle or a shovel.
He had done a few days' navvy work when he could get it, and he had run around the Domain in the early mornings to get his legs in shape.
He was good for nothing now except navvy work, and his broken nose and swollen ear were against him even in that.
Thus there was profit of the affair, though the navvy sank out of sight.
It was Archbishop Magee who, when Bishop of Peterborough, encountered a drunken navvy one day as he was walking through the poorer quarters of that town.
The navvy staggered out of a public-house, diffusing a powerful aroma of gin all round him; when he saw his Chief Pastor he raised his hand in a gesture of mock benediction and called jeeringly to the Bishop, "The Lord be with you!
Don't see none," replied the navvy who possessed the binoculars at that moment.
Most were of stolid English navvy type, dirty uncouth men whose gross irregular features told of low birth and evil life.
He recalled the words of the navvy on the London dock, "Everything is unreasonable at sea.
Mick, having finished the rest of Abner's beer, retired mechanically to the society of his first friend, the big navvy in corduroys, who was now too drunk to realise what money he was spending.
The other two went off together, Mick singing a song in which thenavvy joined though he did not know the tune.
Mick was walking arm in arm with the navvy in a state of unstable equilibrium.
Another navvy supported Lea, who was in a fainting state, and others carried torches.
Then my mother, who had not walked at all for many weeks, was compelled to walk more than a mile to Sestri, in pitch darkness and pouring rain, dragged by a navvy on one side and me on the other.
We had unusual opportunities of seeing the real life of a navvy while we lived in the shanty.
Next to us, in reality under the same roof, was the store, containing everything a navvycould want--from hats and boots to pickles and tobacco.
I'll pay him for that," the navvy growled viciously.
Our friends all went down to the Winchester Assizes to give evidence, and the navvy was duly convicted of the death of Rebecca Taylforth and condemned to death.
The navvy started to his feet with an oath and then fell back into his chair, staring round him vacantly, at a loss as to where he might be.
I have before me an account by a Highland officer of the relation between a navvy and a regular battalion in the Ypres salient.
Between the British navvy battalions, many of them elderly men past military age, or else unfit in some way for the fighting line, and their comrades in the trenches, there were generally the friendliest relations.
Peter could and did occasionally work like a navvy without feeling that his Imperial dignity was thereby impaired.
In its style and arrangement it looks more like the hut of a navvy than the residence of a Tsar, but it was quite in keeping with the character of the illustrious man who occupied it.
