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More "Loafer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked hard at him. He too had been a fighting man, but it was not his reputation for gameness that restrained the ruffian. Wadley was a notch too high for him. He could kill another bad-man or some drunken loafer and get away with it. But he had seen the sentiment of the country when his brother had wounded the cattleman. It would not do to go too far. Times were changing in the Panhandle. Henceforth lawlessness ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... bent his ear to listen. "Job, let's see it. Is it in there—'red like crimson, white as wool'? Oh, no, my sins are too red for that! Listen, Job, I want to tell you. I am dying a poor lost sinner, but I was not always a street loafer, kicked and cuffed by the world. Hear me, my boy! Would you believe that I was once a mother's blue-eyed boy in old New Hampshire? Oh, such a mother! She's up where the angels are now. I can feel the soft touch of her hands that ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... all right, my lad," Demetrio interrupted kindly. "You complain and complain, but you aren't no loafer, you work and work." Then, aside to Camilla: "There's always more damned fools in the valley than among us folk in the ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared, she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection, with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... he didn't overhear our conversation about the galleon," suddenly exclaimed Frank, who had been struck by a sudden apprehension that perhaps this was no ordinary loafer or burglar, but some man who had got wind of Bill's discovery and meant to turn ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and never enter it again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford and her grandson for the insult offered them by your vile accusations. If it were not for soiling my hands, I would throw you down ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the esteem of his men. The story had got noised about that while we lay in camp just before Fair Oaks, a loafer about his headquarters addressed insulting language to a woman who was employed in doing certain domestic work and who followed up the army. The general heard the vile talk of the fellow from his tent. He hastily made his appearance, ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... did not seem surprised at this request, and he gave over the money to the young loafer, with the words, "When I promise, I pay down on the nail; but remember Toto Chupin, you'll come to grief one day. Good-night. Our ways lie ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... fall into the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... would have thought of making such an offer to an English loafer, and no English loafer would have had the wit to so neatly earn ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... over fallers. He ant have to vork, yu see; But, yu bet, he ant no loafer, And he yust digs in, by yee! "Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me, "Making living ant no trick. And the hardest yob ban easy Ef yu only ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... a vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to him. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers. We're free men. We run our own government, and we run ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... two-storied buildings on either side; so we must all go! I'll send servants a few days before to drive all that herd of Taoist priests out, to sweep the upper stories, hang up curtains, and to keep out every single loafer from the interior of the temple; so it will be all right like that. I've already told our Madame Wang that if you people don't go, I mean to go all alone, as I've been again in very low spirits these last few days, and as when ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... leads to miserable results. When a bootblack gets to be seventeen, he finds that his career is at an end— it does not produce money enough—and he has acquired lazy, listless habits, which totally unfit him for any kind of work. He becomes a loafer, a vagrant, and perhaps worse. To save boys from this fate, the society labors most earnestly to induce them to go to the West; and it is stated that the desire of the boys to secure western homes increases year by year. Up to the present time about seven hundred have been ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... restlessness of spirit will produce a revolt against itself. The essence of greatness is unconventionality, and restlessness is now becoming conventional. In education, in art, in literature, in politics, in social life, we lose ourselves in denunciations of the dreamer and the loafer. We cannot bear to see a slowly-moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, advancing quietly on its discerned path. Instead of being content to perform faithfully and conscientiously our allotted task, which is the way in which we can ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... want to know how Drink really acts on the inner life of this nation you must actually live among the forlorn folk who drink Circe's draught, and you must live as their equal, their friend, their confidant. I am a Loafer, and not one of the gang at The Chequers would ever dream of regarding me as anything but an equal. My friend Donkey Perkins, the fighting man, curses me with perfect affability and I am on easy terms with about one hundred costermongers. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... it. What was this loafer's case or anybody's case compared with mine? Besides, I had given him ...
— Options • O. Henry
... was true of him as with those devils that are called wicked, but in whom one discovers good qualities when one associates with them. And I am disposed to think that injustice has been done Putois. Madame Cornouiller, who, warned against him, had at once suspected him of being a loafer, a drunkard, and a robber, reflected that since my mother, who was not rich, employed him, it was because he was satisfied with little, and asked herself if she would not do well to have him work instead of her gardener, who had a better reputation, but ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... asked. "If it's some corner loafer, Edie—" Edith had gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the tortured ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thump of relief. In the first place, Mrs. Williams's lodger must be a respectable person, and no dangerous loafer or pickpocket; in the second place the refined cultured tones of the stranger pleased her ear. Phillis had a craze on this point. "You may be deceived in a face, but in a voice, never!" she would say; and, as she told Nan afterwards, the moment that voice greeted ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... a visit from a ragged and barefooted, but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will's coffee-house, of the place. He told us many charming snake-stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn it ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... on my face, and then come home to find you loafing by the fire as if you were a house cat—purring and rubbing against my legs when I come in," he snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along with a stick. I used to get some work out of you ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... present guise. The Iakiminskaia, for instance, saw him oftenest as a petty merchant; the Piatnitskaia as a Jewish or Tatar trader; the Basmanaia as a soldier, or petty officer off duty; other quarters as a member of a workingman's artel, a university hanger-on, or a loafer, as the neighborhood demanded. To-day, however, being himself, he directed his steps towards the fashionable part of the town, passing from the shopping district into the old Equerries' quarter lying behind, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and then added dreamily, "a long time, a very long time ago, and met some fairly decent people. And I no more believe that Mr. de Vere comes from a good family than I do that Nathaniel Burrowes, a low, broken-down New Orleans wharf-loafer, comes from one of the 'first families in Virginia' that American newspapers are always blathering about" "What is wrong with him, Mr. Blount?" "Nothing from your point of view—everything from mine. And, so far as I am concerned, I don't mean to have anything to do with these two English ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... in half a dozen villages, where he was the life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heart of it is the effect on the man who is actually fighting. Take the case of him who before the war was either working in a factory, who was a clerk in a business house, or who was nothing at all beyond the veriest loafer and bar-lounger. To begin with, he was perhaps purely selfish. The foundation of his normal life was self-protection. Whether worthless or worthy, whether hating or respecting his superiors, the private gain and comfort ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... up there. I was born amongst the mountains. I looked after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in winter. They used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Albert Pringle, Insurance Agent; Mister Peter Snagget, Grocer; Mister Alphonso Pumper, Rate Collector; Mister Bill 'Iggins, Publican; Mister Walter Weed, Clerk; Mister Jeremiah Ramsmouth, Local Preacher; Mr. 'Ookey Snagg, Loafer; Mister William Guppy, Potman—place them beside Hybrias, Goat-herd; Damon, Shepherd; Phydias, Writer; Nicarchus, Ploughman; Balbus, Bricklayer; Glaucus, Potter; Caius, Carter; Marcus, Weaver; Aeneas, Bronze-worker; Antonius, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... know. You see, that's the proper place for them. They belong to a Loafer class. They are no better mentally or morally than any of the other loafers in that division; neither are they of any more use. Of course, when we consider them in relation to the amount they consume of the things produced by others, they are not so harmful ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the rail; lashed chests went sliding down the gangway—mighty few of both at that. "The rest is having a cruise off the Cape," explained Knowles enigmatically to a dock-loafer with whom he had struck a sudden friendship. Men ran, calling to one another, hailing utter strangers to "lend a hand with the dunnage," then with sudden decorum approached the mate to shake hands before going ashore.—"Good-bye, sir," they ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other methods; no other code. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... am going, with an extra hand to bail her— Just one single long-shore loafer that I know. He can take his chance of drowning while I sail and sail and sail her, For the Red Gods call me ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... drudge, while the housekeeper—Major Norton being a widower—was busy about her own special work, and would have wondered at Joe if he had sought her company. I make this explanation because I do not wish it to be understood that Joe was a common village lounger, or loafer. ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... she got," said Miss Lady determined to press the matter home. "Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she will ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... fortunately raised me out of the position of a mere lodger, a household excrescence, tolerated only for the sake of certain shillings a week. It has provided me with a niche of my own, which I occupy—at sea the mate on a mackerel hooker, on shore a loafer 'ready to lend a hand,' and in the house a sort of male Cinderella. It is far pleasanter, I find, to be a small wheel in the machine than to remain seated on a mound of pounds, shillings and pence—beflunkeyed, as if in a ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the prisons. It is just likely that the colonel will commit a small offence, with the object of getting himself three months in gaol—there's no hiding-place like gaol, you know, Stafford. The real danger is that he may not actually tramp or assume the guise of the real low-down loafer. He may have the sense to become a poor but honest workman, travelling third-class from town to town in search of work. Then he will present the greatest difficulty." He saw the look of doubt on the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... and rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any one else who did. It was the rule that the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... seen the miserable loafer in months," she said. Her voice was heavy, not unlike that of a man. For some reason she shuffled uneasily in her chair. The book dropped into ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you, with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... jury meets on the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery prolonged, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... reach 10,000. Possibly the Viceroy sent the men because he did not feel strong enough to defy Peking altogether, because failure to help the court would [Page 240] have excited popular reprobation, and also in order to get rid of a considerable part of the dangerous 'loafer' class. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... the finest appreciation of Carlyle—a man whom every critic among English-speaking races had picked to pieces and discussed and reconstructed a score of times—was left to be uttered by an inspired loafer in Camden, New Jersey. I love to read of Whitman dropping the newspaper that told him of Carlyle's illness, and walking out ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... No, spit on it! Make it a shame and a reproach until a worker who wears it will not dare to show his face among decent working people. Honor the uniform! Honor that which gives a free license to kill, if the victim happens to be a worker? Honor that which stands for oppression, for the loafer against the worker, for the master against the slave? Honor that which causes a worker to become a traitor to his class, to forget his ties of blood, and for pay to deliver himself over body and soul to his natural ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... languid in the village, and if any occurred at all it would be on the loafer's bench at one or the other side of the bridge. When cooler weather came the group of local wits gathered in Riverboro, either at Uncle Bart's joiner's shop or at the brick store, according to fancy. The ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... meeting in Union Street, and such were his frequent thoughts. None would have taken him for what he was; few who passed him by would have guessed what his earlier years had been. The old gray check suit, frayed at the edges, close buttoned and shabby, was just such a suit as any loafer out of Union Street might have worn. His hollow cheeks betrayed his poverty. He walked with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders slightly bent, his eyes roving from face to face as he numbered the wayfarers and speculated upon their ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... such lofty ideas of his duty, inspired a sort of respect in them all. His fits of ill-temper, his obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his brusque manner, were not surprising in such a house as that. Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as a loafer, dared not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to do, with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening, leaning, motionless, out of the attic window overlooking the yard, until night fell; for she knew that during the rest of the day he was hard ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Piedmontese street porter. His idleness, his habit of absolute vacuity, was even worse; his desire to shine before the frivolous women, the inane young men of Turin, nay, merely to have himself, his well-cut coat, his well-frizzled hair, the horse he rode or drove, noticed by any chance loafer in the street, was another almost incredible obstacle; and, worst of all, there was his degrading serfdom to a woman whom he knew he neither loved nor respected, and who had never loved, still less respected, him. But Alfieri, once awakened out of that strange ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... hiker, backpacker, Alpine Club; peregrinator^, wanderer, rover, straggler, rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling^; vagrant, scatterling^, landloper^, waifs and estrays^, wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab^, Wandering Jew, Hadji, pilgrim, palmer; peripatetic; somnambulist, emigrant, fugitive, refugee; beach comber, booly^; globegirdler^, globetrotter; vagrant, hobo [U.S.], night ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... are vividly described year after year. The philanthropist is condemned, who, by his gifts, encourages an employee's family to spend what they do not earn, and to shun work. Yet the idleness of the tramp, street loafer, and professional mendicant is a negligible evil compared with the hindrance to human progress caused by the idleness of the well-to-do, the rich, the educated, the refined, the "best" people. It is as much a wrong ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... eventless journey that followed his faith was sorely tried; nor was it justified until the train paused some time after midnight at Mogul Serai. There, before Amber and Doggott could alight to change for Benares, their compartment was invaded by an unmistakable loafer, very drunk. Tall and burly; with red-rimmed eyes in a pasty pockmarked face, dirty and rusty with a week-old growth of beard; clothed with sublime contempt for the mode and exalted beyond reason with liquor—a typical loafer of the Indian railways—he flung the door open and himself ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my gun and blow you ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... control over herself utterly.] You'll spy on me, will you, you shabby loafer! You'll peep at me while I'm eating my supper, and count the dances I choose to give that boy over there, will you! And then you'll break into my house, and insult my friends behind their backs, and insinuate ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... and her skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, and at the call of the skipper one of them condescended to throw the loop overboard, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... narrating the same for his brother's edification,—"Bless you, sonny, nary you mind what thet ne'er-do-well Nat Slater sez. I'd half a mind to tell you thet yesterday, when I seed you so thick with him! Jerusalem, mister, he's a coon thet's bin allers a loafer all his life, stickin' to nuthin' even fur a dog-watch, an' as shifty as one o' them sculpens in the creek thaar! You jest wait an' make yourself comf'able haar till bye-em-bye, an' I reckon we'll fix you up ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... could use me." He still spoke lightly, hiding the things which he was feeling, his recurrent self-contempt. "I don't suppose, that I know enough to run a ditch straight. I've been rather a rum loafer." ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... ruined his constitution. On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to be ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... his self. this is only one I will do any kind of work if any company pass in up their I can pay half of my fare. I am motherless and fatherless I dont care when I go I am gone trust in the lord if you yill help me the Lord will pay you I am with donfident I am not a loafer If my fare is advance up their it a written contract that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... coach will reach the town And they'll all come out, every loafer grown A lion to handcuff a man that's down. What's that? Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat! I'll give it a head to fit it pat. Thank ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... given to him on the same principle that dubbed the neighborhood he haunted the Pig Market—because pigs are the only ware not for sale there. Denny never robbed anybody. The only thing he ever stole was the time he should have spent in working. There was no denying it, Denny was a loafer. He himself had told Schultz that it was because his wife and children put him out of their house in Madison Street five years before. Perhaps if his wife's story had been heard it would have reversed that statement of facts. But nobody ever heard it. Nobody took the trouble to ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... manner of some aged, experienced and eloquent orator, "the fact is, the use of liquor, and its abuse, are two very different things. A man (here he drew himself up) can drink like a gentleman, or he can swill like a loafer, or a beast. Now I prefer the gentlemanly portion of the argument, and therefore we'll go up and take a gentlemanly drink. I shall be happy, young man, to initiate you into the divine joys and ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Charlton by his green flavor. When these discordant acids shall have ripened in the sunshine and the rain, who shall tell how good the fruit may be? We may laugh, however, at Albert, and his school that was to be. I do not doubt that even that visionary street-loafer known to the Athenians as Sokrates, was funny to those who looked at him from a great ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... only yesterday, indeed, that Rupert Brooke, Francis Ledwidge, Alan Seeger and Joyce Kilmer made the memory of the soldier poet lasting. And it cannot be justly charged that the draft carried the poet, along with the street-loafer, into the fray, an unwilling victim. From Aeschylus and David to Byron and the recent war poets, the singer may find plenty of names to substantiate his claim that he glories in war as his natural element. [Footnote: For poetry dealing with the poet as a warrior see Thomas Moore, The Minstrel ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... little cracks was that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer with his hands ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... in many directions,' said the Nilghai, still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. 'Never mind. We had both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and as you're only a loafer it didn't matter.' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... "Now, git, you loafer!" he was saying in tones that left no doubt in the minds of his friends that Happy was hot under the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... of the loafer, the bum, the man who's too lazy or weak-willed to put out any more effort than is absolutely necessary to stay alive? Well, my goodness, the poor chap can't help it, can he? It isn't his fault, is it? He has to be helped. There is always something he is both capable ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... the Panama Canal, without gettin' anywhere. I've always held that Spotty Cahill was about the most useless and undeservin' human being that ever managed to exist without work; but to hear Pinckney talk you'd think that long-legged, carroty-haired young loafer was the original party that ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... didn't wish to sell the lots off right away to any loafer as might bid,' said Scadder; 'but had con-cluded to reserve 'em for Aristocrats of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel? Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this table over on you now you'd ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... diagnosis, and asked one student after another what kind of an operation he would perform. The peasant misunderstood it altogether, and as he was half stupefied he cried out involuntarily: "The old donkey is asking one loafer after another what to do. Nobody knows anything, and yet they are going to operate ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... commercial platitude. The man who is ambitious and industrious turns his trick of writing into purely literary channels, and becomes a novelist. The man who is not ambitious and not industrious, and who does not relish the prospect of becoming a loafer in Strand wine-shops, writes advertisements. The gold-bearing area is always growing. It's a Tom Tiddler's ground. It is simply a question of picking up the gold and silver. The industrious man picks up as much as he wants. Personally, I am easily content. An occasional nugget satisfies ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... days that child's gone without eating," he said, with keen self-reproach, "and here you've let her suffer to save yourself a trip to the Island. You're a hulking big loafer, you are," he ran on, muttering, "and after her coming to you and taking notice of you and putting her face to yours like an angel." He slipped off his shoes and picked his way cautiously down ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... "Hermy's ma were a lady, same as Hermy is; so were her pa, I mean a gentleman, of course. But Hermy's father died, an' then her ma, poor soul, goes an' marries a good-lookin' loafer way beneath her, a man as weren't fit to black her shoes, let alone take 'em off! And Arthur's his father's child. Oh, a good enough b'y as b'ys go, but wild, now and then, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... loafer, and it takes nerve to be a soldier. It's a job for the bravest kind of a man," retorted Jud ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... the days when Adolf Schmitt had his "cash grocery" on the premises, and used to stand in the doorway with his white apron on, shaking his fist as Tom scurried down the street and calling, "I'll strafe you, you young loafer!" ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... execute the law. Yet although by this means the armies might be kept full, the new men were very inferior to those who had responded voluntarily to the earlier calls. Every knave in the country adopted the lucrative and tolerably safe occupation of "bounty-jumping," and every worthless loafer was sent to the front, whence he escaped at the first opportunity to sell himself anew and to be counted again. The material of the army suffered great depreciation, which was only imperfectly offset by the improvement of the military machine, whereby a more effective ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... Comte's travelling coach was once more ready for departure. Pierre had been given his orders to make due haste for Lyons, and to drive a unicorn team of three horses instead of a regulation four, whereupon he had muttered a string of oaths which would have caused a Paris wine-shop loafer to blush. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to let him live without working. I have him placed now. I know his type. I could show you a thousand men in this city in exactly the same position. They don't starve and they don't work. This young man of yours is a loafer." ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... course not," agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. Best to keep ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... all you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday suit. Where ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... were attacked by Indians; suppose they never got across all that great stretch of country; suppose Esau and I were lost in the woods, to starve to death, or drowned in the river, and so on, and so on; till toward morning sleep would come, and I began dreaming about that long-haired dark Yankee loafer, who had got hold of me, and was banging my head against the ground, and trying to kill me, till I opened my eyes the next morning and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been seen with ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... were packed in straw and had the grower's initials chipped in the rind, others were not so distinguished, and at intervals the roughness of the thoroughfare bumped one off. If the fall did not break it quite in two, a stray loafer pulled it so and tore out a little of the sweet and luscious heart, leaving the remainder to the ants and fowls. The latter were running about on friendly terms with the dogs, which they equalled in variety and number. Droves of small ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... trifling fellows, white and black, around the depot, butt them when he could, and be ridden by them when he couldn't. He had long since lost his situation at the sheep fold, having proved rather an attraction to dogs, who are fond of low company, than a protection to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a loafer, kicked and cuffed about by the public and half starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... earned the reputation of being the most charitable city in the world. Its share in the production of an immense loafer class formed one sad aspect of London's charity when I first came to know the city. Another was the opposition of vested interests—the opposition of the individual to the welfare of the mass. One found it everywhere. An instance I call to mind (it happened to be brought ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... ready, there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and bride's-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken,—the men in their ordinary loafer's or laborer's attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care; nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining themselves ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me to move on, as if I were a common loafer," he said, with a soft chuckle. "I'm used to it, however. They ran me out of Meshed for taking snapshots; they banished me from Damascus, and they all but kicked me out of Jerusalem—I won't say why. But where have you kept yourself? Why have you avoided ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... craftsman, handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, loafer, shirker. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... he came aboard, except that he never knowed what a real bed was afore. These things take me. We spend hundreds of thousands on the merest wastrels in the slums, and the finest class that we've got are left neglected. I would rather see every racecourse loafer from Whitechapel and Southwark blotted out of the world than I would lose ten ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... your money, you're a grouch; if you spend it, you're a loafer; if you get it, you're a grafter, and if you don't get it, ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... get some men out of town to work with me on it. But they get lonely. Don't like working on a ranch. Besides, they had a scrap with me. I wouldn't have 'em loafing around the job. Rather have no help at all than have a loafer helping me. So they quit. Then I tried to get my cowhands to give me a lift, but they wouldn't touch a hammer. Specialists in cows is what they say they are, ding bust 'em! So here I am trying to do something and doing nothing. How can ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... will be if the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bona fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... ain't." Hegner turned a glance of contempt on Smith. "He's a bum an' a loafer, He won't learn an' he won't try to work. Why, Braun, who'd ought to be in bed instead of at a lathe, turns out half as much again as him. How can I jack the other men up if I let him lag behind? An' this morning I told him I'd had enough of his soldierin' an' what I thought he was good for. He ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... gatherings sometimes seem as if they would never break up, and though the persons in the piece mean no harm, they are nearly as noxious to sleep as the loud musical water-side rough or public-house loafer. Dogs, too, like men, seem to feel it incumbent on them to howl more than usual in hot weather, and to bay the moon with particular earnestness in July. No enemy of sleep is deadlier than a dear, good, affectionate dog, whose owners next door have accidentally shut him out. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... to run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of boots while ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... here to lie about a veranda waiting for a job. I sit and wait in my office. Nobody. What did they suppose? That I was going to sit there like a dummy with the Consul-General's cable before me? Not likely. So I looked up a list of them I keep by me and sent word for Hamilton—the worst loafer of them all—and just made him go. Threatened to instruct the steward of the Sailors' Home to have him turned out neck and crop. He did not think the berth was good enough—if—you—please. 'I've your little records by me,' said ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... his earnings, but steals upon him in the night and robs him into poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... "Quodlibet" (1628), has the following epigram on a "loafer" of the day, whom he dubs "Sir Pierce Penniless," from Naish's clever pamphlet, and ranks with the moneyless loungers of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... East End loafer,—a bullet head, closely cropped; dull round eyes, and fat nose, also rounded; a thick neck, and fat cheeks, in which were plainly to be seen the overdoses of beer and spirits he had drunk since he was ten or ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer" wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep had ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame waited on ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... liked the careless life. For to tell you the truth, I'm not worth much, Henry. I'm a loafer by instinct, and—" ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... this pathetic prediction, and Bangs sadly shook his head and concluded his toilet, meditating gloomily the while on the unpleasant idiosyncrasies of every one he knew. To see Devon turn suddenly into a loafer upset all his theories as well as all ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively small fraction of the whole. Our city criminal, our city loafer, is generally ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... approaches it from the gentler human side. In "The Carbuncle," only, we find something of that weird, uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his peculiar qualities is "The Ghost's Visit on the Feldberg,"—a story told by a loafer of Basle to a group of beer-drinkers in the tavern at Todtnau, a little village at the foot of the mountain. This is, perhaps, the most popular of Hebel's poems, and we therefore translate it entire. The superstition that a child born on Sunday ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... best things on earth, just to chuck it all and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, and my instincts tell me to stay right ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this house, you loafer or I'll call the police. No one by that name ain't here. Now, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... like M. Tripeaud!" exclaimed Jacques. "I hate him—and shall I tell you why? Because it is as much his fault as mine, that I have become a good-for-nothing loafer. I don't say it to screen myself; but it is the truth. When I was 'prenticed to him as a lad, I was all heart and ardor, and so bent upon work, that I used to take my shirt off to my task, which, by the way, was the reason that I was first called Sleepinbuff. Well! I ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is only half as dear as First-Class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment- rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. This is why in hot weather Intermediates are ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... resigning from the Liberty Girls, became—so she calmly stated—a "loafer." She wandered around the streets of Dorfield in a seemingly aimless manner, shopped at the stores without buying, visited the houses of all sorts of people, on all sorts of gossipy errands, interviewed lawyers, bankers and others in an inconsequential way ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... there was absolute silence in the room. From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner. Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... acquaintance of that precious companion of yours. I gave him a bit of my mind last night, and told him pretty emphatically what I thought of him. Why, man, have you entirely lost possession of your senses, to let a leech like that loafer drain you dry? I will give you this drink now, one after breakfast, and one after dinner; then you must eat something, for I do not believe that during the last three days you have taken enough to keep a pigeon alive. If you find that in trying to sober ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the one that's getting it. Listen, Elizabeth, and I'll try to explain—you look as if you had some sense, so maybe you can understand. Nannie couldn't; she has no brains. And Blair wouldn't—I guess he has no heart. But this is how it is: Blair has always been a loafer—that's why he behaved as he did to you. Satan finds some mischief still, you know! So I'm cutting off his allowance, now, and leaving him practically penniless in my will, to stop his loafing. To make him work! He'll have to work, to keep from starving; and work will make ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the grammar and the high school, if Mother asked me to sleep near her and Father was not there. Then also I could urinate only with great difficulty. And now when I was living with my mother, I had the most severe excited attacks. There was no other reason for I was neither a loafer nor a drunkard. I have laid myself down in my mother's bed and been unwilling to get out. That is very significant. And if at any time I went away from home I at once felt so miserable that I must go back. I was ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... negro funeral with a hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched the cortege go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as to make the corpse sit up in ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... has to say!" cried Nancy Ellen. "I'm saying my say right now. This is a disgrace to the whole Bates family. We may not be much, but there isn't a lazy, gambling, drunken loafer among us, and there won't be so far as ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of that fellow, if I had him in the business with me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer 'round—I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sharp and short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him and give it to the man that can do most with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.' And served him right, too, say I, impudent, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... who roped that boy is a loafer!" answered Tad bravely, taking a couple of paces forward and facing the crowd. "You wouldn't dare do that to a man, especially if he had a gun as you have. Why didn't you try it on Luke Lame ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... professed loafer, in some East End hospital or other, and on his last day clamoured "for a parson," because his conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. "Wanted somebody to tell him it was all right," growled my old ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... sharp angle in his mouth, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged breeches, and his bare feet in the mud of the road, gave the final touch to his representation of an out-of-work, ill-conditioned, and supremely discontented loafer. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... in our midst; item (for 'particle, extract, or paragraph'); is being done, and all passives of this form; jeopardize; jubilant (for 'rejoicing'); juvenile (for 'boy'); lady (for 'wife'); last (for 'latest'); lengthy (for 'long'); leniency (for 'lenity'); loafer; loan or loaned (for 'lend' or 'lent'); located; majority (relating to places or circumstances, for 'most'); Mrs. President, Mrs. Governor, Mrs. General, and all similar titles; mutual (for 'common'); official (for 'officer'); ovation; on yesterday; over his signature; ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... one o'clock in the morning, and the men on the night shift were taking their midnight spell off. Bunt was back at his old occupation of miner, and I—the one loafer of all that little world of workers—had brought him a bottle of beer to go with the "chaw"; for Bunt and I were ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... and hear me out. If you think you're going to let this loafer ruin your own life and the lives of your ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... in about a quarter of an hour, he found the lady alone and apparently asleep. She had a very handsome umbrella by her side, and therefore he kept within eye-shot of her on this side and on that, lest some park-loafer should seize so good a chance of thieving. He thus passed her two or three times. The last time, he remarked that she had slipped a little to one side, and that her umbrella had fallen to the ground. ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... that ees just go out. 'Is name ees Handy Gor-don." He rolled his great expressive eyes. "'E's cra-zee man. Also wot you call loafer: 'e do not work wen 'e wish not to. But, mon Dieu, 'ow 'e can play, that man!" He made a suave, swelling gesture with his hands and arms and heaved up his great bulk gracefully. "'Ow 'e can play! ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scallywag," Mr. Mason declared, "and if you call him names like loafer and scallywag ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain Giles . . . thought or said was below any decent man's contempt, and I did not propose to take ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... passed his examination successfully, and the townsfolk crowded together on both sides of the street to look at him as he rode to his father-in-law's house. Old and young, women and children gathered to enjoy the show, and some idle loafer called out in ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... encountered Leonard's huntsman, an impertinent, bony, jowly loafer whom he had never been able to endure. The fellow barred ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... said, "that I have anything to say in my own behalf. I guess what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. I am a back number, I am out of date; I was a loafer and a blackguard. He told you I had no part or parcel in this city, or in this world; that I belonged to the past; that I ought to be dead. Now that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city, and to this world—and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... square miles, with a narrow entrance at the "Heads." There are sharks in it, so that bathing is carried on in parts that are fenced off. There used to be a reward offered by the Government for every shark-skin above 2ft. long. There is a tale of an old loafer round the Harbour called "Paddy Lynch," who having caught a shark of 1 ft. 11 in., stretched its skin the required inch. He is now commonly accosted by the question "Who stretched the shark?" The Public Library is probably one of the largest and completest of its kind to ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... up their time and keeping themselves amused without either bodily or mental effort. The boy who smokes habitually will find it much easier to waste his time in day-dreams and gossip, and tends to become a loafer ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... to sing rhythmic songs and shout rhythmic cries at football matches. It praises action and sniffs at speculation. It exalts morals and depresses intellect. It suspects the solitary person, the dreamer, the loafer, the poet, the prig. This atmosphere, of course, exists in English universities. It is imported there from the Public Schools. But it is not all-pervading. Individuals and cliques escape. And it is those who escape that acquire culture. In America, no one escapes, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... of an honest one! The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the Island, or that came to port. How old are you—twelve? I'll turn everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll be a man, and I'll be only too glad to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stopping at the Chittaninny Tavern to meet a man who will have a sum of cash ready for him there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he makes up his mind that a well-lighted city ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my gun and blow ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... excuse that sounded genuine from its very simplicity. Another sister of hers lay ill in an isolated hut, alone and uncared for, except by the teacher's wife, and occasionally by a poor pa outcast who had negro blood in her veins, and a love for a white loafer. God help her! All of which sounds strange, considering that Maoris are very kind to each other. The schoolmistress sent August one night to stay with the sick Maori woman and help her as she could, and gave her strict instructions to come to the cottage first thing in the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... he isn't busy. I'm not the only loafer here, it seems," added Bannon, nodding toward where the indistinct figures of a man and a woman could be seen coming slowly toward them along the narrow strip of wharf between the building and the water. "Never mind," he added, as ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "Fatty" ran up and down the station platform. "Where is that bundle of Omaha papers, you Irish loafer?" he shouted, shaking his fist at Jerry Donlin who stood upon a truck at the front of the train, up- ending trunks into the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... misinterpretation of his motives. One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes. To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing for the school and apparently had none of the instincts which should be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... to show his face among decent working people. Honor the uniform! Honor that which gives a free license to kill, if the victim happens to be a worker? Honor that which stands for oppression, for the loafer against the worker, for the master against the slave? Honor that which causes a worker to become a traitor to his class, to forget his ties of blood, and for pay to deliver himself over body and soul to his ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... over the possibility of our being rich unawares. We hastened thither, but apparently many had had the same idea. There was not a bench vacant. The same was true in Independence Square and in Franklin Square. We will never make a good loafer. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... inspired a sort of respect in them all. His fits of ill-temper, his obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his brusque manner, were not surprising in such a house as that. Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as a loafer, dared not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to do, with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening, leaning, motionless, out of the attic window overlooking the yard, until night fell; for she ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that if you once begin drinking you'll get full, and five minutes afterward every loafer in the village will know ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... to tell you something, John, before I go. I don't know just how to make you understand. But I—I'm not the loafer you ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... if the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bona fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their management ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... called you," said Sir William boldly, "a disreputable drunken loafer who never did an honest day's work in his life." Which had the merit of truth, and, he ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... the clapper of the college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel? Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this table over on you now you'd ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... M. le Comte's travelling coach was once more ready for departure. Pierre had been given his orders to make due haste for Lyons, and to drive a unicorn team of three horses instead of a regulation four, whereupon he had muttered a string of oaths which would have caused a Paris wine-shop loafer to blush. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery prolonged, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... lavender silks wore a peculiarly cynical smile. Loafers sat up and followed the stage with eager eyes far as they could see it and said, "By Gawd—whose gurl is that?" Oh, Mr. Bat Brydges intended every bar room buffer and loafer in the State should know, 'whose girl' that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he had; but his lights were smutty ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... a Service which prowls forth and achieves, at the lowest, something of a victory. How far-reaching a one only the war's end will reveal. It returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of the long-shore loafer, after issuing a bulletin which though it may enlighten the professional mind does not exhilarate the layman. Meantime the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. A few frigid and perfunctory-seeming contradictions are put forward against ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... The drunken loafer who has not earned a living for years is consulted by the Constitution on questions like the training and upbringing of children, the national settlement of religion in Wales and elsewhere, and as to the best method of dealing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... some of th' border riffraff idears 'bout takin' over. But mosta us now ain't wavin' no flag. Iffen Kitchell has got him some diehards backin' him—" Nye shrugged again. "Git 'long there, you knock-kneed, goat-headed wagon-loafer!" He pushed on to haze ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... 'Where's that bailer, you loafer?' but first I'll whang him back. I had to finish the bailing out with my sou'wester. I sings out to Andie Howe in the boat here to hand me one of the bailers in the boat. 'I'm usin' my hat,' I hollers, 'and Joe's using his sou'wester,' thinkin' that would fetch him all right. 'Well, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... what impressed us most—we almost laughed to see her—was the lubber of the fleet. She was twice the tonnage of most of us, and early in the run across she had brought anguish to our souls by the way she lagged. "You bum, you loafer, you old cart-horse, why don't you move up?" our soldiers used to yell across at her. She had not then enough men in her steam department to keep her engines warm, so she reported. But now she had steam ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... went on, "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man of him and he's gone out and got ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... mercy can walk unattended and unharmed through our "Reservation" at midnight. She can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the White-chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is stilled and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen creatures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and men steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove their hats as a tribute to noble womanhood. The very atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in mouth, or with shouldered rifle on the track of a deer, you would say that such a life was eminently agreeable to him. Every man is made for something; and you would say that he was cut out for a wandering frontier loafer, who gets his subsistence by doing the least possible work in the easiest possible manner, and hunting and fishing. A horse and wagon, or extemporized log cabin, for a shelter; tools enough for the simplest tilling of the soil, and furniture for ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... also two-storied buildings on either side; so we must all go! I'll send servants a few days before to drive all that herd of Taoist priests out, to sweep the upper stories, hang up curtains, and to keep out every single loafer from the interior of the temple; so it will be all right like that. I've already told our Madame Wang that if you people don't go, I mean to go all alone, as I've been again in very low spirits these last few days, and as when theatricals come off at home, it's out of the question for me ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... ado, enlisted every man with any sort of a claim to being a tracker—and this included pretty much every loafer interested in a drink or a fight. He assembled a noisy crew at the barn and despatched them singly with orders to scatter and watch the trail points outlying the town. But birds of this feather were hard to keep scattered. Urged both by prudential and social reasons, they tended continuously ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... leading the blind, generally fall into the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept nothing back. He now ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... desk, and in the daytime he displayed an aversion for the streets, which was more than his partner did, for the industrious Tom, undergoing quite as remarkable an alteration of habit, became, all at once, little better than a corner-loafer. His favorite lounging-place was a small drug-store where Carewe Street debouched upon Main; nevertheless, so adhesive is a reputation once fastened, his air of being there upon business deceived everyone ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... discount. He was looked upon as a tender-foot who knew nothing about the gold regions. But a flannel-shirted, roughly-dressed miner was the lion. He could tell something about the gold regions. The governor appointed a loafer fellow, in the early days, Port Warden. Nobody wanted it, and he was indorsed by one firm. As the city grew very rapidly the office soon became valuable. Somebody told the governor what kind of a man he had appointed ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn it seemed ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Convert may be earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, entirely ignorant of the fact that he is a millionaire by birth, for it was his father's intention never to disclose this secret to him, preferring that he should spend his time as a useful laborer, rather than a moneyed loafer, living without work. Whether he resembles me at this age or not, I cannot say. Perhaps not, for my hair has become prematurely white from sin and worry. Then again, he may wear a beard, while my face is clean shaven. But no matter where he is, what he ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... it, said the master, but a bad man didn't make the others good, and even if many a farmer was a drunkard or even a scoundrel, that didn't make Uli any better if he was a loafer and other things besides. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... jerk of his handkerchief. "We never doubted you, Alexandra. We never questioned anything you did. You've always had your own way. But you can't expect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property by any loafer who happens along, and making yourself ridiculous ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... appetizing face and all sort of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... appearance, disliked to part with so good a friend; he accordingly stood outside and puffed away like a steamer, at the same time keeping an eye on the driver; when all was ready, he scrambled in, and we drove off. What an example, for a clergyman to stand in a public street and puff a cigar like a loafer or a blackguard! ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain Giles . . . thought or said was below any decent man's contempt, and I did not propose to take the slightest notice ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... welfare and comfort through weary months of trench-warfare; neither, when you have experienced a working-man's courage and cheerfulness and reliability in the day of battle, can you turn round and call him a loafer and an agitator in time of peace—can you? That is just what the Bandar-log overlook, when they jabber about the dreadful industrial upheaval that is coming with peace. Most of all have they overlooked the fact that with the coming of peace this country will ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... low places. But the Baron Giraud did not make one proud of the human race. This was a man who handled millions with consummate skill and daring, and by a certain class of persons he was almost worshipped. Personally, a 'longshore loafer who can handle a boat with the same intrepidity is to me a pleasanter object, though skill of any description ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... about her Ned when she wouldn't let him play games to home; she said she didn't care so much about it herself, but thought the neighbors would blame her; and Ned got to goin' away from home for amusement, and is now a low gambler and loafer. I wonder whether she would ruther have kep her boy safe, or made the neighbors easy ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... how Drink really acts on the inner life of this nation you must actually live among the forlorn folk who drink Circe's draught, and you must live as their equal, their friend, their confidant. I am a Loafer, and not one of the gang at The Chequers would ever dream of regarding me as anything but an equal. My friend Donkey Perkins, the fighting man, curses me with perfect affability and I am on easy terms with about ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... moment there was absolute silence in the room. From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner. Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail the record of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... poor old friend keep ringing in my head to this day, whenever I think of him; and I can repeat them every one. It was some few years after our intimacy had ceased, and when I only knew that he had degenerated into a Fleet Street loafer of the most dilapidated type, that I caught sight of him one day outside a theatre. It was the theatre which was for some years a gold-mine to one Morton Morrison, of whom you may never have heard; but he was a public pet in his day, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... to my shop," came the reply, "an' I'll send for the police. An' I'll put you through, too. Oh, I know you, but you can't make no rough- house with me. I don't want nothin' to do with the likes of you. You're a loafer, that's what, an' I ain't asleep. You ain't goin' to do no spongin' off me just because I'm marryin' your sister. Why don't you go to work an' earn an honest livin', eh? ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in this town, mother," Fred replied with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "I should be worse than a loafer to remain idle while you were working, and by keeping my eyes open that crowd can't ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... with the mere accident of birth for their claims to distinction, without energy and industry to maintain their position in society, are sadly at discount in a country which amply rewards the worker, but leaves the indolent loafer to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Don Marquis's more racy stories which I recollect is of a loafer in a country town who had the habit of dropping into the store every day at the time the free cheese was set on the counter, and buying very little in return. When the time came for the privilege to be withdrawn the loafer ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... and a chicken coop. The log structures resembled those he had read about. In one of them lived Arthur and his wife. The wife did the cooking. Arthur did nothing at all but sit in the shade and smoke a pipe, and this in spite of the fact that he did not look like a loafer. He had no official connection with the place, except that of husband to Mrs. Arthur. The other member of the community was Davidson, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Agent; Mister Peter Snagget, Grocer; Mister Alphonso Pumper, Rate Collector; Mister Bill 'Iggins, Publican; Mister Walter Weed, Clerk; Mister Jeremiah Ramsmouth, Local Preacher; Mr. 'Ookey Snagg, Loafer; Mister William Guppy, Potman—place them beside Hybrias, Goat-herd; Damon, Shepherd; Phydias, Writer; Nicarchus, Ploughman; Balbus, Bricklayer; Glaucus, Potter; Caius, Carter; Marcus, Weaver; Aeneas, Bronze-worker; Antonius, Corn-seller; Canidius, Charioteer—and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... SUPPOSED to do consider'ble many things. Stand watch and watch with me, and scrub brass and clean up around, and sweep and wash dishes and—and—well, make himself gen'rally useful. Them was the duties he was supposed to have. What he done was diff'rent. Pesky loafer! Why?" ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of him, and excess ruined his constitution. On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... easy to see how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively small fraction of the whole. Our city criminal, our city loafer, ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... while that of reminiscence has begun, realise too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasures than the other — that action, indeed, is only the means to an end of reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart supreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goes straight to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly been spent in those subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... a large extent their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... gave a great thump of relief. In the first place, Mrs. Williams's lodger must be a respectable person, and no dangerous loafer or pickpocket; in the second place the refined cultured tones of the stranger pleased her ear. Phillis had a craze on this point. "You may be deceived in a face, but in a voice, never!" she would say; and, as she told Nan afterwards, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... strenuous muscular work A larger allowance of grub We need than is due if we shirk Exertion, and lounge in a pub; For the loafer who rests in a chair Everlastingly puffing at "cigs" Can live pretty nearly on air, So I gather at least from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... type is found in some feebleminded and some high mentalities. This unfortunate discharges energy at a low rate is slow in action and often intermittent as well as hypokinetic. The loafer and the tramp are of this type. Around the water front of the seaports one can find the finest specimens who do odd jobs for as much as will pay for lodging and food and drink. Perhaps the order of the desired rewards should be reversed. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... absolutely. It was true of him as with those devils that are called wicked, but in whom one discovers good qualities when one associates with them. And I am disposed to think that injustice has been done Putois. Madame Cornouiller, who, warned against him, had at once suspected him of being a loafer, a drunkard, and a robber, reflected that since my mother, who was not rich, employed him, it was because he was satisfied with little, and asked herself if she would not do well to have him work instead of her gardener, who had a better reputation, ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... the power-house till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... can build up. Seventy per cent. Of the young men of this land do not darken the church door. They are not interested in moral improvement or moral education. Eighty-five per cent. Leave school under 15 years of age; prefer the loafer's honors ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... does this not only by wasting the body, the physical basis of the mind, but it does it through habits of intellectual idleness, which the user of tobacco naturally forms. Whoever heard of a first-class loafer who did not e-a-t the weed or burn it, or both? On the rail train recently we were compelled to ride for an hour in the smoking-car, which Dr. Talmage has called "the nastiest place in Christendom." In front of me sat a young man, drawing ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... save me from ruin and help me to know the best things on earth, just to chuck it all and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Hegner turned a glance of contempt on Smith. "He's a bum an' a loafer, He won't learn an' he won't try to work. Why, Braun, who'd ought to be in bed instead of at a lathe, turns out half as much again as him. How can I jack the other men up if I let him lag behind? An' this morning I told him I'd had enough of his soldierin' ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... America all insects, especially Coleoptera. Bummer,(Amer.) - A fellow haunting low taverns; applied during the late civil war in the United States to hangers-on of the army. Probably a corruption of the German bummler(loafer). Bumming - From Bummer. Bushwhackers - Guerillas. Bust his shell - Broke his head. Butterbrod,(Ger.) - Buttered bread. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal world of worths as such, to have any perception of life's meaning on a large objective scale. Only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolvent tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value in the twinkling of an eye, giving to foolishness a place ahead of power, and laying low in a minute the distinctions ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... long since earned the reputation of being the most charitable city in the world. Its share in the production of an immense loafer class formed one sad aspect of London's charity when I first came to know the city. Another was the opposition of vested interests—the opposition of the individual to the welfare of the mass. One found it everywhere. An instance I call to mind (it happened to be brought sharply home to me) struck ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... in another boy in the group, laughing. "I'll be the goat. What is the difference between a soldier and a loafer?" ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... feeble little cracks was that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer with ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation. It is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation. Evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil. Destroy the latter and the former ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... seem as if they would never break up, and though the persons in the piece mean no harm, they are nearly as noxious to sleep as the loud musical water-side rough or public-house loafer. Dogs, too, like men, seem to feel it incumbent on them to howl more than usual in hot weather, and to bay the moon with particular earnestness in July. No enemy of sleep is deadlier than a dear, good, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... thereby show something more of the really comic side of Jack when he is on the rampage against constitutional government. There were occasions when the pride of the British tar was not abashed at being called a dockyard loafer, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... in Marlehouse and saw Grantly on horseback waiting at the curb till someone should turn up to hold his horse while he went in. He had ridden in to cash a cheque for his mother. The main street was very empty and no available loafer ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... bride's-maid, were sitting within the choir; but when the clergyman was robed and ready, there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and bride's-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken,—the men in their ordinary loafer's or laborer's attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care; nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining themselves to their mates with the idea of making ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... noddings put a poy, hey!" he snorted. "I show you, ain't it! You pig loafer!" And he ran Pold up against a partition and got the iron bar directly under the rascal's throat so that the fellow was in ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... general favorite in half a dozen villages, where he was the life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other ne'er-do-weels. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Next came the two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying out, the other thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run just at sundown, when the day's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cup was ever stolen from the public fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... halls. Their course of life leads to miserable results. Upon reaching the age of seventeen or eighteen the bootblack generally abandons his calling, and as he is unfit for any other employment by reason of his laziness and want of skill, be becomes a loafer, a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... The loafer raised his hulking body and leered over him; the young man got upon his feet, half ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... public-house loafer," said the mate, meeting her eye angrily, "and about as bad as they make 'em; but I s'pose you'll have ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... even now there's a great deal here that I've never read, and I add to it continually. The worst of it is," he said, laughing, "that we can't afford it. It's very hard on Mary and the wife, but I'm a rotten loafer, and that's ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... the total would reach 10,000. Possibly the Viceroy sent the men because he did not feel strong enough to defy Peking altogether, because failure to help the court would [Page 240] have excited popular reprobation, and also in order to get rid of a considerable part of the dangerous 'loafer' class. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... foolin' his money away on the 'double O,' and sittin' in tuh stud games with permiskus strangers, and gettin' ready tuh be a hobo—all I kin say is, he'd better brace up and try tuh deserve one. A feller that ain't got a wife is a no-account loafer and bum, and he ought tuh git kicked! This man had one, but he went and left her. Even then he done better than ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... a month or more; then Mollynoo sez he: "Come aisy, Jumm, yeh loafer, little hell 'n' all to view. A job most illegant is on, cut out fer you 'n' me. The damnedest, dirtiest fighter on the Continent is you, Bar one, yeh gougin' thafe, 'n' ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... was witnessed by Philo Gubb and Max Bilton. The Judge knew both witnesses. Gubb was the eccentric paper-hanger who thought he was a detective because he had taken a correspondence course, and Bilton was a jaundiced loafer, commonly called Mustard. The good old man sighed and was about to put the will back in the envelope when he noticed three letters at the bottom of the sheet. They were "P.T.O." Now "P.T.O." is an English abbreviation that means "Please Turn ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... specially trained for a race of troops may go along into the field. Only the man versed in statecraft should be allowed to participate in the talk about the results of war. Not he who has out yonder proved an unworthy diplomat, nor the dilettante loafer sprayed with the perfume of volatile emotions. Manhood liability to military service requires manhood suffrage? That question may rest for the time being; likewise the desire for equality of that right shall ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was impossible upon their favoured soil. The militia was considered an archeological absurdity. The regular troops, admirable as was their work upon the frontier, were far from being a source of national pride. The uniform was held to be a badge of servitude. The drunken loafer, bartering his vote for a dollar or a dram, looked down with the contempt of a sovereign citizen upon men who submitted to the indignity of discipline; and, in denouncing the expense of a standing army, unscrupulous politicians found a sure ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... She had clean blood in her veins, she was good-looking, she had a quick wit, she was an excellent horse-woman—what then? If she wasn't so "well bred," that was a matter of training and opportunity which had never quite been hers. What was he himself? A loafer, "a deuced unfortunate loafer," but still a loafer. He had no trade and no profession. Confound it! how much better off, and how much better in reality, were these people who had trades and occupations. In the vigour and lithe activity of that girl's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... something coming, Hugh," he hastened to say. "What you saw gave you a sort of idea, didn't it? You reckon right now that there may be a way to frighten this lazy loafer, so that of his own free will he'll cut stick and clear out. Well, perhaps after all something like that would be the best way to get rid of him. I don't believe the people in this civilized section of country would ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... money, you're a grouch; if you spend it, you're a loafer; if you get it, you're a grafter, and if you don't get it, you're ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... of him, stock, lock, and barrel; and he puts a clean frill shirt on every day. A Whig, Sir,' says he, 'is a gentleman every other inch of him, and he puts an onfrilled one on every other day. A Radical, Sir, ain't no gentleman at all, and he only puts one on of a Sunday. But a Chartist, Sir, is a loafer; he never puts one on till the old one won't hold together no longer, and drops ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
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