Merchant

"Another disadvantage, terrible, in my opinion: The merchant is obliged to please. The worker gives his time, the manufacturer his merchandise for a certain amount of money; there you have a simple contract, and one which doesn't require that you lower yourself. Neither one nor the other needs to resort to flattery. He isn't obliged, often with a broken heart and with tears in his eyes, to be agreeable and gay all of a sudden, like that woman at the counter. The worried merchant, mortally occupied with the bill that falls due tomorrow, has to smile, has to lend himself by a cruel effort to the prattle of the elegant young woman who has him unfold a hundred items, talks for two hours and leaves without buying anything."

("Autre désavantage, terrible, à mon avis: Le marchand est obligé de plaire. L'ouvrier donne son temps, le fabricant sa marchandise pour tant d'argent; voilà un contrat simple, et qui n'abaisse pas. Ni l'un ni l'autre n'a besoin de flatter. Il n'est pas obligé, souvent le coeur navré et les yeux pleins de larmes, d'être aimable et gai tout à coup, comme cette dame de comptoir. Le marchand inquiet, mortellement occupé du billet qui échoit demain, il faut qu'il sourie, qu'il se prête, par un effort cruel, au babil de la jeune élégante qui lui fait déplier cent pièces, cause deux heures et part sans acheter.")

Jules Michelet, The People (1846).

Ventriloquist

Someone who performs the art of ventriloquism, being able to give the illusion of throwing his or her voice or making inanimate objects speak.

"As the ancient ventriloquists, when exercising their art, seemed generally to speak from their own bellies, the name was abundantly significant."

Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797).

Tacitus on Plunderers

Someone who uses fear or violence to steal a person's property.

"The people of Oeea, who were inferior in numbers, had summoned to their aid the Garamantes, a wild race incessantly occupied in robbing their neighbors. This had brought the Leptitani to extremities; their territories had been ravaged far and wide, and they were trembling within their walls, when the Garamantes were put to flight by the arrival of the auxiliary infantry and cavalry, and the whole of the booty was recaptured, with the exception of some which the plunderers, in their wanderings through inaccessible hamlets, had sold to more distant tribes."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD).

Conquerors and Inflation in Ancient Rome

“After having defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 B.C., Octavian transports to Rome the treasure of the Egyptian kings. Suetonius evokes in a few words the consequences that the sudden arrival of this treasure had on the Romans’ financial life. ‘When the treasure of the Egyptian kings was brought to Rome,’ he wrote, ‘Octavian furnished such an abundance of coins that, interest rates having fallen, property values rose considerably.’”

Jean Andreau, Banking and Business in the Roman World (1999).

Bricklayer

A mason. Someone who builds such structures as roads, houses, and bridges out of bricks.

"Listening to them fulminate against tops and bras, Jan thought of the small wooden object called a level that his grandfather, who had been a bricklayer, would routinely set on the surface of a wall as it went up. Under a tiny plate of glass in the middle of the instrument was a drop of water with a bubble in it which, according to its position, would tell whether the bricks were even or not. The Clevis family could serve as a spiritual air bubble. Offer them any idea, and they would provide a perfect indication of whether it was the best of all possible progressive ideas."

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1978).

Newsboy

A boy who hawks newspapers in the street or delivers them to people's houses.

"A news-boy had stopped in his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver."

William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers (1860).

Mate

An officer on a ship who sees that the orders of the commander are carried out. If the master is absent or incapable, the next in command.

"So, by and by, I ran away. I said I would never come home again till I was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it. I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time being, but I had comforting day-dreams of a future when I should be a great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of these mates and clerks and pay for them."

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).