recruiting-sergeant

Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein.

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices 2007

No one could have been fitter for the duties of a recruiting-sergeant than Jacques Chapeau; and to his great natural talents in that line, he added a patriotic zeal, which he copied from his master.

La Vend�e 2004

In every town where they stopped she wished to examine the corps de garde, if there was one, and once very narrowly missed introducing Waverley to a recruiting-sergeant of his own regiment.

Waverley 2004

That happened in Portsmouth, and then it was inevitable that, hungry and weak, he should be picked up by a marine recruiting-sergeant marching through the streets with a band.

Hornblower In The West Indies Forester, C. S. 1958

We all know the charming spectacle: peasant youths and maidens, clad in all the wealth of the dramatic wardrobe, are skipping around a Maypole; presently Baptiste and Lisette are discovered kissing behind a pasteboard hedge, and are drawn out with universal laughing, in the midst of which enters the recruiting-sergeant with his squad and whisks off poor Baptiste to the wars.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873 Various

Here were these poor recruits, a few weeks since dragged from their native hearths, constrained by regal power to illustrate themselves by the sword -- when their hearts and characters were formed for domestic cares, and those agricultural labours which sweetened their rustic meal, and only trying to evade their direst enemy -- the recruiting-sergeant of Napoleon!

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 20, No. 570, October 13, 1832 Various

The recruiting-sergeant went out into the highways and hedges to collect the fuel for Lord Kitchener's final operation.

On the Heels of De Wet Lionel James 1913

Jail-bird, pickpocket, thief, drunkard, and loafer, they presented themselves to the recruiting-sergeant, and in due course polluted the uniform which they were not fit to salute from a distance.

On the Heels of De Wet Lionel James 1913

The birds 'instinctive economy would not be benefited by a tax-gatherer, a recruiting-sergeant, a sect or two of theologians, and the other usual organs of human polity.

The Life of Reason George Santayana 1907

Lagroin chafed that he must play recruiting-sergeant and general also.

When Valmond Came to Pontiac, Complete Gilbert Parker 1897