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More "Loafing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to write about his trip. He could not help doing that, and he began "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" as soon as he landed in Hartford. They were quite what the name would signify—leisurely, pleasant commentaries on a loafing, peaceful vacation. They are not startling in their humor or description, but are gently amusing and summery, reflecting, bubble-like, evanescent fancies of Bermuda. Howells, shut up in a Boston editorial office, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... broad, pleasant window of the post-office, under the "NO LOAFING HERE!" sign, half a dozen of us discussed it while we waited for the noon mail. There seemed to be a half-formed belief that Potts might adroitly be made to perceive advantages ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... had to work in all types of weather, good as well as bad. Although the master or the overseer were not as cruel as some he had heard of they tolerated no looseness of work and in case a person was suspected of loafing the whip was applied freely. Although he was never whipped, he has heard the whip being applied to his mother any number of times. It hurt him, he says, because he had to stand back unable to render any assistance whatever. (This happened before ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... up like mushrooms. Literally thousands of boys who have heretofore wasted the glorious summer time loafing on the city streets, or as disastrously at summer hotels or amusement places, are now living during the vacation time under nature's canopy of blue with only enough covering for protection from rain and wind, and absorbing through the pores of their ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... for us that the old schoolhouse is going to be shut up next Wednesday," said Snap. "Just think of two months of loafing." ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... great many soldiers who were robbed, sometimes they received bruised heads just by loafing in the ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... gets its name because of the fact, that beneath the deck which is full of traps readily raised are the electric storage batteries of anywhere from 60 to 260 cells according to the size of the boat. This room is commonly used as the loafing place for the crew, being regarded as very spacious and empty. In it are nothing but the electric stove, the kitchen sink, the various lockers for food and all the housekeeping apparatus of the submarine. Mighty trim and compact ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... post office), and a church, shops for automobile supplies, two garages, a drug store, and a candy store; eight or ten cottages filled the interstices. Men were working in the fields, but those in Huntersville proper seemed to be exhausted with loafing. Campers going in and out of the woods needing shelter for a night, and people demanding meals between trains, kept the dismal looking hotel ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "No loafing on the bridge, old man. Move on; move on, now!" at which David started, looked all around him, and then moved on as commanded. His back, always bent, and his gait, always decrepit and shuffling, were now pitiably so, and he had a long, long journey before him; but, thanks be to Him ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... happy. Red-skirted, scarlet-bodiced women everywhere, too, all moving and carrying something. Galantuomini loafing at most of the corners, smoking clay pipes with cane stems, and the great Jew shopkeeper's nose just visible from a distance as he stands in the door of his dingy den. Dirtier and dirtier grow the cobble stones as you go on. Brighter ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... God knows I meant more than right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she must be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Bear have run back down the slope to leap into saddle, for the earth begins to quiver and shake under the bounding hoofs, and with another moment all the valley will wake to the ringing battle-cry. "My God!" mutters little Sanders, lunging along after his major, "why ain't I with my own instead of loafing here?" ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the purposes of these people he was again upon the right trail. The uplifted curtain was immediately lowered, and, if any signal had thus been conveyed, there was no other evidence visible. A little later one of the two better dressed fellows loafing on the pier, a rather heavily built man, with closely clipped red moustache, and a scar over one eye, slowly crossed the deck, and entered the cabin. He came forth again a moment later, asked some question of the workmen below and then clambered back carelessly over the rail, joining ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... a visit during September, the doctor put the question off with irrelevant excuses; they had had too many people; September was his time for a rest; young Long should be getting down to hard work, not loafing in a comfortable cottage. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... parents have been enabled to control indirectly the associations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-community, to have them in a measure under observation without in the least restricting their freedom. The habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, have been avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has been given to their development, and much social morality has been taught in the often complicated modus vivendi with others that ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... were loafing along, everything drawing well, and everybody but the doctor on deck to enjoy the sun. I was in the crow's-nest for my pleasure. Below me on the deck Captain Selover roamed here and there, as was his custom, his eye cocked out like a housewife's for disorder. He found ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of lightness prevailed, there was not a moment of loafing. These men were engaged in a grim, deadly task, and every once in a while I would catch a black, purposeful look in a man's eyes that made me realize that, under all the light talk and laughter there was a perfect realization ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... I added, "when we should amble grey-headed, sans everything, out of the mad old world? I imagine Miss Belle Treherne would scarcely fancy that. . . . Still, we can be friends just the same. Our wives won't object to an occasional bout of loafing together, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rigged up a tackle to try and draw the carcass out. We were all ready at daylight and the crowd was bigger than ever. Say, if you want to count the idle people in New York just get up a free show at any hour of the day or night and they will all come. There must have been over a thousand loafing about the street all night. We were just getting ready to make a try for the horse when the idlers outside gave a cheer, and I saw an express wagon loaded with nets and ropes and all sorts of animal catching stuff drive up. Tody Hamilton, Barnum's press agent, had caught on to the possibilities ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... there, sir," said a convalescent Tommy, pointing to the grey cruisers flying the tricolour. "They've been bottled up there, since the submarines appeared off Helles and sank the Majestic and t'other boats. There's only destroyers loafing around Cape ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... may; also for paying what's called, I think, premeums for putting Pore Boys or Pore Gals as aprentisses to warious trades, so as to lern and laber truly to get a good living when they growd up, insted of loafing about in dirt and hignorence; likewise for allowing little pensions to poor old women as is a striving all their mite and main to keep themselves out of the hated Workhouse; and there are seweral other similar good purposes as the good Citizens of old left their money ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... his boyhood were spent in Hannibal, which he calls "a loafing, down-at-the-heels, slave-holding Mississippi town." He attended only a common school, a picture of which is given in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Even this schooling ceased at the age of twelve, when his father died. Like ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... given the man some satisfaction, at least, for it furnished him another target for his pointless shafts; and he fairly outdid himself in politely damning whoever might presume to think anything at all of him; with the net result that two Mexicans, who were loafing near enough to hear, grinned with admiring amusement. The woman stood a little apart from the others. Coldly indifferent alike to the man's cursing and coughing and to the daughter's ejaculations, she appeared to be looking at the mountains. ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... a vessel by which I can return to the Eastern Gulf squadron, father," said Christy one morning, with more earnestness than usual. "I begin to feel guilty of neglect of duty while I am loafing ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... stuff when your country's talking her great heart out for men to stand by 'er! Gawd! If I was a man—If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough to live under it's good enough to fight ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... had been berries enough for the bears and for the Indians. Now that the salmon run was heralded in the Columbia by the little fish scouts, all of the scattered members of the Flathead tribe not otherwise engaged coagulated from their several loafing grounds and headed for Memloose Island to pay their annual respects to the ghost ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... their roofs are of red tile which look like red clay drain pipes cut in two and so laid that they overlap each other. The residences are usually built around a narrow court, and their floors are of marble, tile or stone. This court often contains plants and flowers, and it forms the loafing place of the family in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a sufficiently discourteous message came back; and the mighty personage, after loafing about for an hour or two, retired and wrote an article in which he described the people of the Black Country as savages, and revived a foolish old libel or two which at one time had currency concerning them. The old nonsense about the champagne was there, for one ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... cito dat. O truest proverb! One fresh man on Gallipoli to-day was worth five afloat on the Mediterranean or fifty loafing around London in the Central Force. At home they are carefully totting up figures—I know them—and explaining to the P.M. and the Senior Wranglers with some complacency that the sixty thousand effective ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... may even decide not to vote to-day at all. Miller has some strong supporters. He appeals tremendously to a certain class of labour—and that class exists, you know, Dartrey—which loves the excitement and the loafing of a strike, which feels somehow or other that benefits got in any other way than by force are less than they ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went down to dinner. Julio would have his a little later, not because we're too good to eat with the help but because, around 1830, the help is too busy setting up the next paper to eat with us. The dining room, which is also the library, living room, and general congregating and loafing place, is as big as the editorial room above. Originally, it was an office, at a time when a lot of Fenris Company office work was being done here. Some of the furniture is original, and some was ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... telephone and got up from the desk, stretching. He left the orderly-room and walked across the hall to the recreation room, where the rest of the boys were loafing. Sergeant Haines, in a languid gin-rummy game with Corporal Conner, a sheriff's deputy, and a mechanic from the service station down the ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... is, it was dug down to a depth of perhaps four feet and built up about the same with sand-bags, making it possibly eight feet from the bottom of trench to top of parapet. It was quite dry and clean and comfortable and proved that the Buffs and Surreys had not been loafing during the summer. I'm afraid we did not properly appreciate it at that time, but as I look back over all the time that has passed since, I am compelled to admit that it was the finest bit of trench ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... the colonel said, "will half a dozen of you see to the wine. Get hold of some of those fellows loafing about there and make them roll out as many barrels as will supply a pint to every man in the regiment, ourselves as well as the men. O'Grady, take Lieutenant Horton and Mr. Haldane and two sergeants ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Razoumikhin. "The fact is that up to yesterday he has been almost unconscious. Would you believe it, Porphyrius? Yesterday, when he could hardly stand upright, he seized the moment when we had just left him, to dress, to be off by stealth, and to go loafing about, Heaven only knows where, till midnight, being, all the time, in a completely raving condition. Can you imagine such a thing? It is ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... always at my back; times a day; came with most wonderful request two days ago; wants me to get him a—guess? Baby! Wife's died last week, and he is now loafing another. ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... me into his cabin, and with a large map of the polar regions on his table, to which he often referred, he said: 'Son, I've been hunting for a current; there's plenty of 'em in the Arctic ocean, but the one I want ain't loafing around here. You see, son, it's currents that carries these icebergs and floes south; I didn't tell you, but some days when we were in those floes, we lost as much as we gained. We worked our way north through the floe, but not on the surface ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... know much about it, excepting that a score or more of tough characters have come down in the past two months. They settled on a mangy plantation up the coast, north of Davao, but they aren't working: just loafing around all day. They seem to be waiting for something—or somebody. The natives are scared, and the whites don't feel any too good about it either! You know we are scattered all over the Gulf—everybody a mile or more away from his neighbors—and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... making an ass of yourself. While the other fellows have been improving themselves you have been loafing around public-houses. Good night," and Penrose left ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... glorious life of loafing," came the instant answer. "The hours with the stars and the flowers, under the green trees with the whisperings of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers and their thoughts. Beauty, music, all the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... should have been, but I was the only midshipman on the poop, though the ship carried twelve of us, six to a watch. The other five were doubtless loafing about under cover somewhere. I stood close beside the chief mate to windward, holding to the brass rail that ran athwart the break of the poop. This officer was a Scotchman, a man named Thompson, and I suppose no better seaman ever trod a ship's deck. He was talking to me about getting home, asking ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... A month's loafing in the Hollow. Nothing doing and nothing to think of except what was miserable enough, God knows. Then things began to shape themselves, in a manner of speaking. We didn't talk much together; but each man could see plain enough what the others was thinking of. Dad growled out a word ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth! With what fresh delight, in keeping with the scene, we compared our favorite authors and capped each other's quotations! Rare Walt Whitman told Mr. Conway that his forte was "loafing and writing poems." Well, we loafed too, and if we did not write poems, we startled the birds, the sheep, the cattle, and stray pedestrians, by reciting them. I returned home with that pleasant feeling of fatigue which is a good sign of health—with tired ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... launched, and christened the Beginning; with a spare topmast from the Duke as a mast, and an odd mizzen-topsail altered for a sail. Four swivel-guns were mounted upon her deck, and, as she pounded out of the bay, loud cheers greeted her from the decks of the Duchess, which was loafing outside, watching for a merchantman to ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... in 33 hours. The rest of the detachment made 90 miles and our having the extra thirty to our credit was an accident. On the 31st Hardie sent out the scout and two troopers, of which Tyler was one, to get a trail and as I had been resting and loafing for three days, I went out with them. We left at eight after breakfast and returned at seven, having made thirty miles. When we got in we found that a detachment was going out on information sent in while we were out. Tyler was in it and so we got fresh horses and put out at nine ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... by, nor aught cared I; Such things are not in my way: I turn'd me to the tinker, who Was loafing down a by-way: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... house as the pile-driving. When this began, early in the summer, he took Mrs. Lapham every day in his buggy and drove round to look at it; stopping the mare in front of the lot, and watching the operation with even keener interest than the little loafing Irish boys who superintended it in force. It pleased him to hear the portable engine chuckle out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in carrying the big iron weight to the top of the framework above the pile, then seem to hesitate, and cough once or twice in pressing the weight against the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... replied Leopold; "my stomach is loafing, too. 'Twouldn't be fair to make it work and do nothing myself. Just as much obliged. Some other day. Don't forget the book," he cried, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... passions and blasphemous against God. The other one, having spent a term in our Illinois State University at Champaign, married a beautiful neighbor girl and moved to Missouri. Here he lived off the money of his father's estate, practicing his early-learned habits of drinking, gambling, and loafing. He moved from State to State until, finally left in poverty, he tended bar in a saloon. While visiting with relatives in his old neighborhood a few years ago he stole a watch and some money from his own nephew, and ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the sea. He said he knew a yacht, just the very thing—one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking lot of lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away from the romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself. We knew that yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before. It smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no ordinary sea air can hope to ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... boss saw him loafing clear over the corn, The next the boy heard was a shout; And he wished for a moment he never was born To mow ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... sailors are, my dear sir. Let me just show you by an instance. One day in dock at home, while loafing on the forecastle head, I noticed two respectable salts come along, one a middle-aged, competent, steady man, evidently, the other a smart, youngish chap. They read the name on the bows and stopped to look at her. Says the elder man: 'Apse Family. That's the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... am getting tired of loafing about here. I think I ought to go home for a while. My ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the fighting, little doughboy," came another voice from the dark gun pit. "This is a tray forte sector. If you don't get killed the first eight days, the orders is to shoot you for loafing. You're marching over what's called 'the road you ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... indifference as to the individual character, worth, and welfare of their men. On the part of the men the greatest obstacle to the attainment of this standard is the slow pace which they adopt, or the loafing or "soldiering,'" marking ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... elsewhere, experimental classes at the Lincoln School and at the Horace Mann School, at various "play" schools in this country and in England, all show more continuous application of the children to whatever they happen to have in hand, longer periods of intense activity, and no sign whatever of loafing or shirking. The activities selected by the children themselves involve just as much "discipline" as anything that can be ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... pouring around the house, and I let her hand loose—it was hard to do it, too—and then she was gone, and we rode on to the ford. We stopped when we got to the stream to let the horses have their turn at drinking, and as I sat loafing in the saddle, with my mind pretty full of what had just passed, my eyes were all over. Every cavalry officer, and especially an aide-de-camp, gets to be a sort of hawk in active service—nothing can move within range that he doesn't see. So as I looked about me I took in among other ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... not quite," she said. "But he has earned the right to hold the valley's flower entirely—whoever she may he. It's a pity, Mr. Weston, you have not been doing so, too, instead of loafing around the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... country is famous. The resources of a desert cattle-station are very limited, but everything which was possible was done for the two white boys, and they spent a very restful and enjoyable week and a half, loafing round the homestead. It was not much of a place to look at, but Sax and his friend thought it was wonderful. They had travelled across the desert for a month in order to reach that little collection of buildings, ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... senhor, but the way they are spoken—and the man who speaks them. One man may growl, but you like him. Another may speak smoothly, but you itch to strike him. Is it not so? I am Pedro Andrada, a seringueiro who should be tapping trees instead of loafing here. But my partner and I have just come in from a long trip into the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once noble race. They are fettered by 'rheumatiz' and the disordered liver. They move like boats dragging their anchors. To make life ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... mother's voice, sternly, "thou good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing indoors at this hour of the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... order came into force, he had fulfilled his obligations regularly enough—until the year before last, by which time his leg really disabled him. It had fortuned, however, that one afternoon on the Quay, loafing around less on the chance of a job (for odd jobs are scarce at Polpier) than to wile away time, he had encountered Dr Mant, the easy-going practitioner from St Martin's. Dr Mant fancying an excursion after the mackerel, at that time ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... dozen or fifteen of the most glaring faults displayed and read a new line-up. With the exception of Clint, Hall, Carmine and Tyler every fellow was new. "And now," said Mr. Detweiler, "let's see what you can do this half. Do something, anyway! Stop loafing! If you can't play football, wave your arms and make ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... student again, loafing along the arcades after dinner, eager for novelty, careless of draughts. Little by little he lost himself in dim reveries. His cigar never left his lips. The ash grew longer and longer yet, a lovely white ash, slightly swollen at the tip, dotted with little ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... up at the Devil's Chimney and I couldn't make you reply to my calls I ran off to get help and a rope. I intended to ride your mare back to camp, but when I got to where the mare had been tethered I found her gone and this bay loafing around in her place. I got on the bay, but, instead of riding to camp, the animal ran away with me and brought me here. These fellows were mighty rough on me, and that man was going to split my head open when you came along in ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... "What a set of loafing swine you are!" he coolly remarked. "It's not to the point that I'm no better, but if any of you feel insulted, I'll be happy to make what ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the hole, and saw, following steadily one after the other, four of the great beasts, with the little, squat driver seated on the neck of the last; and after they had passed, loafing carelessly along as if he were too important and disdained to be driven, came the Rajah, muttering as if to himself, and walking straight up to the big stable door before going on to ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... and went down the hall and out of the door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before, and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In five minutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he was loafing before he dressed to go out, the young man's curious behavior came into his ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... The whole square seemed loafing and lolling—the white world perched on stoops and chairs, in doorways and windows; the black world filtering down from doorways to side-walk and curb. The hot, dusty quadrangle stretched in dreary deadness toward the temple of the town, as if ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... this work was pushed rapidly forward. There were also trenches to be made in advance of the original firing-line, for the purpose of connecting up advanced points and removing dangerous salients. At such times there was no loafing until we had reached a depth sufficient to protect us both from view and from fire. We picked and shoveled with might and main, working in absolute silence, throwing ourselves flat on the ground whenever a trench rocket was sent up from the German lines. Casualties ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... gentleman's family; or they could keep a small school; or earn a trifle by drawing up conveyances, or by keeping the accounts of the lord of the manor. In some cases they acted as private chaplains, getting their victuals for their remuneration, and sometimes they were merely loafing about, and living upon their friends, and taking the place of the country parson if he were sick or past work. Then, too, the smaller monasteries had one or more chaplains, and I suspect that the canons at Castle Acre always would keep two or three chaplains in ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... to do for a living? He must give up religion and politics, and take to some other pursuit. Loafing or living on his neighbors was now impossible, as he was in disgrace with many; and besides, he had a wife and family to support. Peddling was so common, that nothing could now be made in that line; and besides, it took some ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... you going to do with yourself or make of yourself?" she asked Tyrrel one evening when they were sitting together. "I do hope you'll find some kind of work. Anything is better than loafing about clubs and such ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... wonder! Watch him slaving away out there. And he must of been working hard all day, even with me not here to keep tabs on him. Just look at the size of that pile of wood he's done up, when he might easy of been loafing on the job!" ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... thar? Angels. He could never have walked in that storm; They jest scooped down and toted him To whar it was safe and warm. And I think that saving a little child, And fotching him to his own, Is a derned sight better business Than loafing ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... of them. All the same—I think not," he said slowly; then made a clumsy attempt to modify the blank refusal. "You see, though I've taken this extra leave, I don't mean to spend it in loafing. We've had our fill of that. As soon as I get to town, I shall start reading ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... exclaimed Old Hundred. "They go everywhere and carry everybody. They spoil the country roads and ruin the country houses and villages. Where they go, cheap loafing places, called waiting-rooms, spring up, haunted by flies, rotten bananas and village muckers. They trail peanut shells, dust and vulgarity; and they make all the country-side a back yard of the city. Let's take ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... had not the slightest intention of failing. There were no horses in the stable at Merton Grange, and consequently no helpers loafing about the yard. There stood the big car, and on a shelf all the necessaries for setting the machine in motion. In an incredibly short space of time Venner had backed the Mercedes into the yard; he turned her dexterously, and a moment later was ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... rapture.] — And I'll have your words from this day filling my ears, and that look is come upon you meeting my two eyes, and I watching you loafing around in the warm sun, or rinsing your ankles when ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... breaking down a fence; (3) flipping cars; (4) picking up coal from railroad tracks; (5) carrying a concealed "dagger," and stabbing a playmate with it; (6) throwing stones at a railroad employee. The next three were called vagrancy: (1) Loafing on the docks; (2) "sleeping out" nights; (3) getting "wandering spells." One, designated petty larceny, was cutting telephone wires under the sidewalk and selling them; another, called burglary, was taking locks off from basement doors; ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... have run agin each other since you've been here," he said with an assurance that was nevertheless a trifle forced "but I reckon we're both busy men, and there's a heap too much loafing goin' on in Gilead. Captain Jim told me he met you the day you arrived; said you just cottoned to the 'Guardian' at once and thought it a deal too good for Gilead; eh? Oh, well, jest ez likely he DIDN'T say it—it was only his gassin'. He's a queer ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... dews stay late on the cabbage-leaf, And the red, red beet forsakes the ground; And lovers' wanderings grow more brief, And fewer loafers are loafing around. ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... more of it, Minnie," he said. "I've come home rich—that is, rich for this town. Your work is ended. They told me at the store about your son loafing on you all these years while you took in washing. But how about the money in the bank? ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... things about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a lot o' pirates aboard of it," said the mate fiercely, as he turned and regarded the crew, "a set o' lazy, loafing, idle, worthless——" ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... proof. But in the face of all that, the very look of that high oriel window convinces the imagination, and we enter into all the sorrows of the imprisoned dame. We conceive the burthen of the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned her sick head against the mullions, and saw the burghers loafing in Maybole High Street, and the children at play, and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. We conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind threw up to her some snatch of song, and her heart grew hot within her, and her eyes overflowed at the memory of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the victoria step from loafing in front of a jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of the things Maw Hoover used to get mad at me for doing. Whenever she saw me reading a book it seemed to make her mad, and she'd say I was loafing, and find something for me to do, even if I'd hurried through all the chores I had so that I could get at the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... steps, loafing a few moments before jogging out to Bannister Field for a strenuous scrimmage under the personal supervision of Slave-Driver Corridan, the Gold and Green football squad had gathered. It was from these stalwart gridiron gladiators that the caustic criticism ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... the spirit with which he takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop- haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... with loafing, sleeping in the park, and leaving the gate open, were discharged, with a caution to take care how they interfered with corporation rights in future, or they would get their corporation ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... not always loafing in front of the undertaker's shop. Sometimes we were quite active. Many windows and street lamps were smashed. And we derived great joy from being pursued by the "cops"—especially by a certain fat one, for whom we made life ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... idle now to inquire too closely into the springs of Philip's resolve to take service under a foreign flag. Perhaps the irksome state of affairs at Las Flores, where there was no mean between loafing and soldiering, was intolerable to a spirited youngster. Perhaps San Benavides, constantly riding in from the front, irritated him beyond endurance by his superior airs. Or it may be that a growing belief in Iris's determination to sacrifice herself by redeeming her bond made him careless as ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... he, "she is loafing about the streets with some young puppy who has nothing of his own but a cigarette and a walking-stick, and they both borrowed. I'll have a talk with her when she comes in, and we'll see if she tells me ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Here one might count on finding Swen Brodie at such times as he favoured Coloma with his hulking presence; here foregathered his hangers-on. An idle crowd for the most part, save when the devil found mischief for them to do, they might be expected to be represented by one or two of their number loafing about headquarters, and King realized that his visit to Loony Honeycutt was not likely to pass unnoticed. What he had not counted on was finding Swen Brodie himself before him ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... hours away. After all, however, our Governor represented our King, and I was personally horrified, intending to correct Israel's position with a round turn, and show him that we are especially enjoined to obey "Governors and Rulers"—as better also than the sacrifice of loafing. But the Governor forbade it, quietly unpacked, put his things away, and stayed aboard. Israel subsequently cultivated the habit of remaining in bed on Sundays—thereby escaping being led into temptation, as even Governors ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... worked in the course of the day at the manufacture of their rude fishing tackle, constructed chiefly of their clothing, the hooks being nothing more than a rough sort of pin bent to the right shape. This done, they spent the rest of the day in loafing and lolling about, although Paul took a half hour for the thorough exploration of the island, which presented no unusual features beyond those that he had already seen. After that he came back to the little cove and luxuriated, as the others were doing. It was the ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the time we thought some powerful chief had removed the ban against recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as usual—one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. In the other, which was the covering boat and which lay off shore ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to make a poet or a musician or an artist. [That's so; all abominable scamps take to some artistic pursuit as an excuse for loafing.] His fancies take hold of him very strongly. [They do—they do; "shee wheels go wound," for instance.] He has not Budgie's sublime earnestness, but he doesn't need it; the irresistible force with ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... other answered, "Bah!" Children screamed and darted out of the way, and men and women started back, scowling and muttering; when a blockade of wagons and push-carts forced them to stop, the children gathered about and jeered, and a group of hoodlums loafing by a saloon flung ribaldry at them; but Oliver never turned his ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... be all-powerful and all-wise. At any rate, it would improve the character of the people. "Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping, and loafing, and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better homes, better work, better food, better lives, and ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the house. Better have a hundred hens comfortable and laying than double the number crowded and loafing. ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... Just when I got in I tripped over some ribs of beef lying in the doorway, and before I had time to say I preferred my beef without any boot-blacking, I fell head-first against an immense sirloin on the parlour table. Mrs. MOSER called all the men who were loafing around, and all the boys and girls, and they carved away at the sirloin for five hours without being able to get my head out. At last an old gentleman, who was having his dinner there, said he couldn't bear whiskers served up as a vegetable with his beef. Then they knew they'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... scorn for my scanty belongings was well bestowed. The sofa, which appeared to affect her aesthetic sense most keenly, was certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the carpet?—Well, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Bowen that evening, he ought to go in some decent shape. It was perhaps providential that he had failed to find her at home in the morning, when he had ventured thither in the clumsy attire in which he had been loafing about her drawing-room for the past week. He now owed it to her to appear before her as well as he could. How charmingly punctilious she always ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me. As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... arbiter. I have found it always the same, though arriving with no crowd, by a conveyance of my own, when no other expectant guests were following me. The great man has listened to my request in silence, with an imperturbable face, and has usually continued his conversation with some loafing friend, who at the time is probably scrutinizing my name in the book. I have often suffered in patience, but patience is not specially the badge of my tribe, and I have sometimes spoken out rather freely. If I may presume to give advice to my traveling countrymen how to act ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... watch-dog," said Stafford to himself. "Now, what on earth am I to do? I suppose they'll spring on me—the collie, at any rate. It's no use running; I've got to stop and face it. What a confounded nuisance! nuisance! But it serves me right. I've no business to be loafing about the place." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of all. But he was even more afraid of work than he was fond of drink. Whenever want pressed too hard, he worked a few days; but, as soon as he had earned ten francs, good-by! Off he went, lounging by the road-side, talking with the wagoners, or loafing about the villages, and watching for one of those kind topers, who, rather than drink alone, invite the first-comer. Trumence boasted of being well known all along the coast, and even far into the department. And what was most surprising was that people did not blame him much for his idleness. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen, Boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind, Good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night, To think that these are so much and so nigh to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... commotion arose after breakfast! What a cautious stamping out of fire and razing of tents! What a startled flutter of birds above and bugs below! What an excited barking on the part of Rex, who after loafing industriously for a week or so, felt called upon to sprint about and assist his mistress with a dirt-brown nose! What a trampling of horses and a creaking of wheels as the great green wagon wound slowly through the shadowy forest road and took ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... you a piece of news, and to ask advice," he said; "but before doing so, I may tell you, in answer to your question, that the Sabbath here is devoted to drinking, gambling, and loafing about." ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... they had caught Mickey," he muttered, with a feeling of inexpressible relief; "for, if they had, they wouldn't be loafing around there." ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... "Pooh! Loafing blackguards, with scarcely an exception! Well, I was going to tell you: Glazzard comes from my own town, Polterham. We were at the Grammar School there together; but he read AEschylus and Tacitus whilst I was grubbing over Eutropius and ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... for his eyes fell upon a dozen villainous-looking fellows, several of whom he recognized as having seen loafing at the Overland stations, and who were ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... secret disease that drained his vitality away. If I met him now I should think him a pitiful little creature and be extremely sorry for him. Then I felt only a wondering aversion. He sniffed horribly, he was tired out by a couple of miles of loafing, he never started any conversation, and he seemed to prefer his own company to mine. His mother, poor woman, said he was ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to see; but I heard no complaints. There was no tearing of hair and no gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow. The men who were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters, looking at the still rising river, but each seemed to be personally indifferent to the matter. When the house of an American is carried down the river, he builds himself another, as he would get himself a new coat when his old coat became unserviceable. But he never ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... The men who have made a success of their lives are men who started out right when they were boys. They studied while at school, and when they went to work, they didn't expect to be paid wages for loafing half the time. They weren't always on the lookout for an 'easy snap' and they forged ahead, not waiting always for the opportunities that never came, and bewailing the supposed fact that times are no longer what ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Bobby retorted. "It's Dickson who keeps loafing round. Here, go on," he added, as, turning his horse round, he hit Dickson's with ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... it out on the ground. "This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to feel like work, for the first time ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... himself wishing that he had learned a trade. It would have been better in the long run. But no one had told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have listened if they had. It had been so easy. Big money—sharp, glorious fights—periods of rest and loafing in between—a following of eager flatterers, the slaps on the back, the shakes of the hand, the toffs glad to buy him a drink for the privilege of five minutes' talk—and the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind finish, the referee's ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... that aeroplanes have been invented, flying is not thought so wonderful as once it was. But loafing along through the air in a biplane or a monoplane at eighty or a hundred miles an hour is a very tame business when you compare it with racing the day round the world on a Cloud horse. And Neville is very probably the only person who has ever ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... At once. Loafing must stop. And, mark you, I demand a more respectful tone from you, or I shall report your case to the colonel. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Berrington," he interrupted reassuringly, "I know everything, and more than you know, but I rather feared that you might see through this disguise. I have been loafing about Paddington station for nearly an hour. The lady I expected to see arrived just after seven, and took up her position under the clock. Then I saw you and the lad arrive; I saw you recognize the woman; I saw you put yourself out of sight behind the pile of trunks, and talk earnestly ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... I was looking after Ismay. Miss Landis buys the collar and a ticket for London; Ismay buys a ticket for London; I trail. Then Miss Landis makes another purchase—a razor, in a shop near the hotel where I happen to be loafing." ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... political spoils, not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption among the Negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce the vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
... an idle, loafing, thieving, swearing, disreputable young man, who lived, when out of gaol, with the low prostitutes of Little Bourke Street. Was taken in hand by our Prison Gate Brigade Officers, who got him saved, then found him work. After a few months he expressed a desire ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... what you can—sooner than serve His Majesty. Well, well, there's no compulsion—not yet; but you should think over it. Come and see me, if you like, when you've done your time, and we'll see what can be done. That'd be better than loafing about and picking up tins ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... At the door, a loafing trapper, smoking a pipe, greeted him by name. The factor, even in this wilderness, maintained some show of his rank, and demanded a guard to his dwelling. No doubt the diplomatic and silent Tee-ka-mee was inside. McTavish waited until the sentry had announced his presence, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... with these police horrors and not do something to help. To-morrow I begin life as a salesman in Clarke & Stebbin's. The salary is not great, but every little helps and I don't dislike the business. But father does. He had rather see me loafing about town setting the fashions for fellows as idle as myself than soil my hands with handling merchandise. That's why we quarreled. But don't worry. Your name didn't come up, or—or—you know whose. He hasn't an idea of why I want to ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... the pauses. In recent years the store circle has degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk on matters ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... to get back. Loafing round the hotel is dreary and my job's not getting on. Although I'm ordered to lie off, this won't count for much. I'll be made ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... perfectly happy with a quiet peace that was as new to his mind as it was foreign to his experiences. It never occurred to him that there might be other calls upon his time than loafing across ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... an American!" he sneered; "Berlin and hell are full of that kind of American. You come loafing about Colette with your pockets stuffed with white bread and beef, and a bottle of wine at thirty francs and you can't really afford to give a dollar to the American Ambulance and Public Assistance, which Braith ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... is in the early fierce stages of revolt against the stuffiness of life at Grange Court, meets Smith over some boys' club work, and, finding brains and dreams in him (a formidable contrast to her loafing brother), falls into passionate first-love. Smith is just as badly if more soberly hit, and recognising the impossibility of the situation (quite apart from demonstrations by the alarmed Broughtons) decides to take his tape and shears to his London house of business. The date of all this being ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... and died on the sea-bottom, successive generations piling higher on the skeletons and lifework—or the life-loafing, for they were lazy atoms—of those that went before. At last the coral reef crawled upward until in uncharted waters it was tall enough to smash a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... to the side and looked over. The canoe was loaded down to the gunwale with the weight of fish—fish that the lazy, loafing Apian natives caught but rarely. The old man passed up two or three more, took a glass ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... "I will go in first and see who is here, Tom. There are usually a lot of loafing Indians about these forts, and though it is safe enough to leave our traps, out on the plain, it will not do here. We must stay with them, or at any rate keep them in sight; besides, these two horses would be a temptation to any redskin who ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... fabulous sum paid for the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and went on with their ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... as if he'd got born into this wicked world with a bald spot, gray side-whiskers and a pair of gold-rimmed specks. He made me feel sad—not that he weren't cheerful enough, but his rig was that of a parson, and a parson naturally reminded me of matrimony, and there was only one thing worse than loafing around Jim Creek, and that was matrimony. 'Yes,' I says to myself, lookin' at that nice, clean old gentleman, 'he little knows the trouble he's made in this world. And yet,' thinks I, willing to be square, 'I don't know as you could have kept 'em apart, ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a chance in one of the cellars of Jones's big packing plant. He saw a foreman passing the open doorway, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... remuneration even for these. Among the thin populations and in the remote regions are thousands of weekly papers—and you may spell the weekly either with a double e or an ea—where there are two men and a boy, one of whom does a little writing and much scissoring, loafing among the corner groceries and worse, begging for subscribers, button-holing for advertisements, and occasionally and indiscriminatingly thrashing or being thrashed by the "esteemed contemporary" or the "outraged citizen;" the second of whom sets ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... success in raising small fruits, and his literary output has been by no means meagre. I might also mention that in youth he was something of a champion at swinging the scythe, and few could mow as much in the course of a day. But certainly labor is no fetich of his, and he has a real genius for loafing. In another man his leisurely rambling with its pauses to rest on rock or grassy bank or fallen tree, his mind meanwhile absolutely free from the feeling that he ought to be up and doing, might be shiftlessness. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... only form of excitement which is keener than the stir and tumult of the theatre. When Devine won three hundred pounds on one Derby he was a lost man. He pitted his wits against the bookmakers'; he took to loafing about with those flash, cunning fellows who appear to spend their mornings in bars and their evenings in music-halls; he lost his ambition, and he began to lead a double life. In the end he took to presenting himself at the theatre in various ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... time like this—loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and—and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... 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 ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... drawn by an elderly horse devoid of ambition or ideals. His head was sunk in dejection. He was gray at the temples, and slouched in the shafts in a loafing attitude, one forefoot negligently crossed in front of the other. He aroused himself reluctantly and with apparent difficulty when Merton Gill seized the reins and called in commanding tones, "Get on there, you old skate!" ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... "I thought it was funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... had married her she was a Miss Benton, of St. Louis, "niece of Oliphant, that queer old fellow who made his money in the Tobacco Trust," and hence with no end of prospects. Edwards had been a pleasant enough fellow, and Oliphant had not objected to his loafing away a vacation about the old house at Quogue. Marriage with his niece, the one remaining member of his family who walked the path that pleased him, was another thing. She had plenty of warning. Had he not sent his only son adrift as a beggar because he had married a little ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... into its depths of suggestion as one looks into a clear but very deep lake; one can see far down, but not to the bottom of it, which remains mysterious. He invites his own soul, but there is no loafing. Indeed his mind seems preternaturally active, as in a combination ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... mass interests that are so abundant in nature, the activities that give the country boy such an advantage for the real enjoyment of life over the city lad. Two weeks or two months in camp, they are too valuable to be wasted in loafing, cigarette smoking, card playing or shooting craps. To make a camp a profitable thing there must needs be instruction; not formal but informal instruction. Scouting, nature study, scout law, camp cooking, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... old; and what could I do? What I should have liked would have been some nice place where I could do light work, and stand a chance of learning a good business. But beggars mustn't be choosers. I couldn't find such a place; and I wasn't going to be loafing about the streets, so I went to selling newspapers. I've sold newspapers ever since, and I shall be twelve ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... main-rigging. They gave me a meaning look, which I did not at all relish. Then, as I stood in the galley, while the cook dished up, I noticed that the stranger raised his hand to a tall, lanky, ill-favoured man who was loafing about on the wharf, carrying a large black package. This man came right up to the edge of the wharf, directly he saw the stranger's signal. It made me uneasy somehow. I was in a thoroughly anxious mood, longing to confide in some one, even in the crusty cook, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... not to be occupied in reading books, papers, letter writing, needlework, etc. Loafing or wasting time away ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... and started across to see Akeley. The latter had also started across to see the colonel, and they met on the way. And during all this time the native runner with the message to Colonel Roosevelt was loafing the morning away in our camp. What the message might be, of course, we didn't know, but we hoped that it was nothing of importance. It was only when the colonel and his party reached our camp that ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... two returned to camp. The rivermen were loafing in camp awaiting Larsen's reappearance. The jam was as before. Larsen walked out on the logs. The boy, seated on the clump of piles, gave a shrill whistle. Immediately from the little mill appeared the brown-bearded man and his two companions. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... lot might have been thrown. With others of his associates, whatever he thought of them and their ways, he was friendly and tolerant, if not sociable; it was in connection with these that the gossip circulated of his "loafing about with hard drinkers." Dr. Loring describes them to the life as "a group of men all of whom had remarkable characteristics, not of the best many times, but original, strong, highly-flavored, defiant democrats, with whom he was officially connected, who made ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... to dinner. Julio would have his a little later, not because we're too good to eat with the help but because, around 1830, the help is too busy setting up the next paper to eat with us. The dining room, which is also the library, living room, and general congregating and loafing place, is as big as the editorial room above. Originally, it was an office, at a time when a lot of Fenris Company office work was being done here. Some of the furniture is original, and some was made for us by local cabinetmakers out of native ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... pleasantly; so that they got on very well together, and everybody was satisfied—especially Jim, who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... more to do with the house and domestic affairs; he turns the care for them over to his wife, who is obliged to procure provisions as well as she can and cook them. The husband devotes himself to drinking, eating, smoking, loafing, and sleeping, and takes no more concern about the affairs of his family than if he had none at all. If he goes out to fish or hunt, it is rather to amuse himself than to help his wife and children.... Even the care of his ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... event, when he had forgotten all about it, he was loafing in his room one morning after breakfast, smoking an eccentric pipe from his collection, and comforting himself over his decision once more that German teachers and grammars ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... leaping. Whatever the purposes of these people he was again upon the right trail. The uplifted curtain was immediately lowered, and, if any signal had thus been conveyed, there was no other evidence visible. A little later one of the two better dressed fellows loafing on the pier, a rather heavily built man, with closely clipped red moustache, and a scar over one eye, slowly crossed the deck, and entered the cabin. He came forth again a moment later, asked some question of the workmen below and then clambered back carelessly over the rail, joining his companion ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... streets and the crowd. O, my darling, thank God I have found you! I only knew yesterday that you had left Paris; and some happy instinct brought me here. I felt sure you would come to Austin. I arrived late last night, and was loafing about the streets this morning, wondering how I should discover your whereabouts, when I turned a corner and saw you going into St. Gudule. I followed, but would not disturb your orisons, fair saint. I was not very far off, Clarissa—only ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... 1914.—Our place has got to be the local diplomatic corner grocery, where all the village loafers come to do their heavy loafing. They bring in all the fantastic rumours that are abroad in the land, and discuss them with all solemnity. In the last day or so we have had it "on the best authority" that the Queen of Holland has had her consort ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... and dress parades, five or six hours a day were consumed in company, regimental and brigade drills. The men were worked hard, and, by this time it was generally understood that learning to be a soldier was no loafing business. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... later in the evening that the woman came along to give chin-music through the window. I am bound to say," added the captain generously, "that no one I can place my hand on saw his lorship loafing about the hotel after dark. But what of that? He may have laid his plans, and arranged for the corpse to be found later, in that blamed ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... loafing around; but he was not idle. His activities brought nothing palpable to light, still he was building up the inner life in a manner of which Stoffel had ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... absence of more general excitement and crops and agricultural methods filled in the pauses. In recent years the store circle has degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk on matters ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... credulous multitudes with responses from Delphi, we have a Congress which can enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough to satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. Instead of loafing round Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk words into a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to the remotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we said those words in jest or earnest. All these mysteries made common and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... else to do. They fought their way to the rambling boarding house, there to join the loafing group in what passed for a lobby and to watch with them the lingering death of day in a shroud of white. Night brought no cessation of the wind, no lessening of the banks of snow which now were drifting high against the first-story windows; the door was only kept in working order ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... his arrival down-town he telegraphed the joyous news to Jack Starlett, in Washington, to prepare for an old-fashioned loafing bee. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... if uttered in Philadelphia, would undoubtedly have been answered by a direction to the chocolate factory on Race Street. But in Camden every one knows about Walt. Still, the colored men said nothing beyond returning my greeting. Their race, wise in simplicity, knows that loafing needs no explanation ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... and the capitan stopped to say a few words to two of his vagabonds. One of these immediately hurried off in the direction of the river. The other was still loafing outside the cafe ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... nor aught cared I; Such things are not in my way: I turn'd me to the tinker, who Was loafing down ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted—the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting—the hostages ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the frost was hard and the days short, we were absolutely idle—idle to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day; even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good Paramor—he was really a most excellent fellow—became unhappy as far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I suggested, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... to telling anybody else in this town that that poor convict ought to be drinking and will have to do it again; because it might get to his ears, you know, and if it did it might break him down, and then he'd go to lying and stealing and loafing and fighting again, and there is no knowing whose chicken-coops and wood-piles would have to suffer. Yours might be one of the first ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... not idle words. He is an admitted expert at loafing, but all the same he has brought wounded in under fire and saved their lives. Without any ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is the dominie of a high-priced school, that they get most of the losses and few of the profits of industry. They get a living wage when times are good. When times are bad they lose the one thing they've got to sell, and that's their day's work; when a loafing day is gone there's nothing to show for it, and no way to make it up. Maybe that's as it should be, but the worker can't see it, especially if the boss can still buy gasoline and tires when the plant is idle. Oh, yes, laddie, I know the working man is headstrong. I'll tell you privately, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... gleam of the sidelights of a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a 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 Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called "good" what they saw in him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else call it so. "Goodness" ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... idleness has come to an end and loafing has been trampled out, then many a one, who now thinks that mental work is mere chattering, will learn through his novitiate at the desk, that thinking hurts. If he does not feel himself equal to this kneading and rummaging of the brain, he will ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you for loafing in your own room while other people are getting supper. No existent domestic sound in the whole twenty-four hours is as soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... enjoyed some days of careless loafing about Canea. I have intimated my slight experience of Turkish towns; and if the critic should think it worth while to remark that I should have seen Constantinople and Cairo, Smyrna and Salonica, before attempting to describe one, I admit the justice of the criticism, and pass over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... for a time when there was no work and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day after day. Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... start something! I'd like to get away somewhere and do things. I'm tired of loafing around in white flannels all day and keeping my hands clean. And I'm tired of dabbing whitewash on my shoes! Didn't you fellows ever think that you'd like to get good and dirty and not have to care? Wouldn't you like to put on an old flannel shirt ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place—and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb thought of those first conferences which had preceded the sale, and recalled Allison's accentuation of the natural beauties of the spot, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... sub," said another. "I used to poke around the Great Barrier Reef, skindiving out the air lock or loafing on the surface. You wouldn't believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum you can't come down ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... On the Gym. steps, loafing a few moments before jogging out to Bannister Field for a strenuous scrimmage under the personal supervision of Slave-Driver Corridan, the Gold and Green football squad had gathered. It was from these stalwart gridiron gladiators that the caustic criticism of T. Haviland ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... "a Friday, an unlucky day,—a week, about, before 'The Conquest' sailed. It might have been two o'clock. I had eaten nothing; I had not a cent in my pockets and I was walking along the boulevards, loafing, and thinking how I could ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... stay the winter in it. But before the cold weather comes on they are going to send up a darky to look after me. I only hope I won't have to wait on him,—awful lazy nigger! He used to be a porter of ours. Loafing around these woods with a gun on his shoulder, pretending to hunt, will be just about his size. He's out of a job now, and comes cheap. I couldn't afford to pay him wages all the time, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... with which he takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop- haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... better conditions. I'm tired loafing such long hours. I'd like a little leisure in ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... are taken on the frontier, by the loafing population from the States, to persuade the young soldiers to desert; and that, too, without any adequate prospect of benefit, but merely out of hatred, intense hatred, to England; for they soon leave the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... sea, you old money-grabber. There's a sight for your soul. Did you ever think of the beauty of it? Such a day!—no wonder you're loafing. Oh! I beg your pardon, Madam. I ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... selfish. You guess I haven't acted as I ought to help push our boat along. You reckon I've become a sort of saloon-loafing bum. Guess you sort of think I'm just about the limit. Well, maybe I'm nothing to shriek about. However, I've told you all I feel. I've told you what you're going to feel—later. Meanwhile it's up to me to help you all I know. Tell me the whole thing, ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... myself," the latter explained. "But I'm loafing this summer. I'm in town only because there's talk that St. Mark's ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... far out of sight of land in the morning and loafing south before the trade wind, with a heavy ground swell kicking them along from behind. Harrigan saw the Mary Rogers plainly for the first time. She was small, not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand tons, and the dingiest, sootiest of all tramp freighters. He had little ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Apex!—could, even for a moment, cause consternation in the Driscoll camp? He had always said he "saw things big"; but no one had ever believed he was destined to carry them out on the same scale. Yet apparently in those idle Apex days, while he seemed to be "loafing and fooling," as her father called it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had always felt in him. Her heart beat faster, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were the loafing places. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... emptiness. It would prepare me far better for to-morrow work than pondering Johnny's defections, or his grades, whether high or low, or marking silly papers with marks that are still sillier. I like Walt Whitman because he was such a sublime loafer. His loafing gave him time to grow big inside, and so, he had big elemental thoughts that were good for him and good for me when I think them ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the lieutenant, "what sort of way is this to use me? Here I've been loafing about here for hours, and you haven't sent or brought me word ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... it's all smooth enough for him," said Collin, grinding his heel. "I was bad enough, but I didn't do anything sneaking mean, the way he did. But he isn't going to suffer for it; not a bit. His father's got money, and Dolph can go on loafing around town and getting other fellows into trouble. He'll never ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a girl than into a tough from loafing on the streets, Pat," said the General heartily, as he rose from his chair. "I'll tell Mrs. Brady ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... worked hard enough. At least he turned out a good deal. But that was spasmodic—night and day for weeks, and then loafing for weeks more. That's how he always got into trouble: loafing ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... removed the ban against recruiting. The morning of the fifth day our two boats went ashore as usual—one to cover the other, you know, in case of trouble. And, as usual, the fifty niggers on board were on deck, loafing, talking, smoking, and sleeping. Saxtorph and myself, along with four other sailors, were all that were left on board. The two boats were manned with Gilbert Islanders. In the one were the captain, the supercargo, and the recruiter. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... such habits as drinking and loafing around saloons and clubs and abusing the family have been checked on account of the gardener's time and attention being occupied ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Charles Rogers, charged with loafing, sleeping in the park, and leaving the gate open, were discharged, with a caution to take care how they interfered with corporation rights in future, or they would get their ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was a laceration of the nerves... Defiance of common sense was too tempting. Stavrogin and a wretched, half-witted, crippled beggar! When you bit the governor's ear did you feel sensual pleasure? Did you? You idle, loafing, little snob. Did you?" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... been loafing on your job, old man, and it won't do—it won't do at all. You should have put a stop to these things. What right have these girls to interfere in a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Spanish bull-dog, Bouncer, loafing outside the hotel door at Inchnadampf. He greeted Merton in a state of suppressed glee; the whole adventure was much to the taste of the scion of Rostalrig. Merton handed him Mr. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... many such centres of contemplation along the West Coast of Scotland. Few places are better loafing-ground than a pier, with its tranquil "lucid interval'' between steamers, the ever recurrent throb of paddle-wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles, splash of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... life as are available are being utilized to the utmost by the Soviet Government. Such trains as there are, run on time. The distribution of food is well controlled. Many industrial experts of the old regime are again managing their plants and sabotage by such managers has ceased. Loafing by the workmen during work hours has been overcome. ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt
... generally held by Indians. They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work with the others; so they drive him out. When beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares the fate ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... of the market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red shirts and helmets on—they never stirred officially in unofficial costume—and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as Bog Hollow) because he thought it a literary thing to do. He used to take a book along with him when he drove over to Redfield for supplies; sometimes the wagon would be two hours late coming home, with old Ben loafing along between the shafts and Andrew lost in ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... One day we were loafing along, everything drawing well, and everybody but the doctor on deck to enjoy the sun. I was in the crow's-nest for my pleasure. Below me on the deck Captain Selover roamed here and there, as was his custom, his eye cocked out like a housewife's for disorder. He found ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... time we were here? You lectured me for loafing, and shooting woodpeckers. There were other things, but you couldn't recall them at the moment. I've been doing some right stiff thinking ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... and turned away, looking forward to where two or three men were loafing about on the forecastle, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... for their entertainment. Presently he came out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub which met the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay, the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England, "improving his mind," as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last traveller, which he had hunted out ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... judgment, that he ordered his carriage and drove off there and then to his bank, while I went down to the harbour, arranged about a boat, and having done so, proceeded up to the town, where I purchased a false beard, an old dungaree suit, such as a man loafing about the harbour might wear, and a slouch hat of villainous appearance. By the time I got back to the house Mr. Wetherell had returned. With great delight he conducted me to his study, and, opening his safe, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... called out Peter Polk, striding up as Randy was going to the lower deck. "What are you loafing ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... came home to the paternal mansion an ignorant but amiable and inoffensive young man, with a small, fluffy moustache, and no particular bent in life beyond smoking short pipes, and loafing about the premises with his ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... century. Every man to the age he lives in—it must be so. The old phrase, "Drunk as a sailor," meant, in most men's minds, drunk as a man-o'-war's man. I was born and brought up in a great seaport—Boston—and my earliest memories are of loafing days along the harbor front and the husky-voiced, roaring fellows coming ashore in the pulling boats from the men-o'-war; fine, rolling-gaited fellows, in from long cruises and flamingly eager to make the most of their short ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... a large Tartar population in Chengtu, and the Manchu quarter is one of the most picturesque parts of the city, with the charm of a dilapidated village set in untidy gardens and groves of fine trees. Loafing in the streets and doorways are tall, well-built men and women, but they had a rather down-at-heel air, for their fortunes were at a low ebb when I was in Chengtu. The military service they once rendered had been displaced by the new ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Phin Drayne, loafing about town, and with his pocket money nearly cut off by his father, had formed the acquaintance of Stevens, who, besides being a junkman, was a very fair locksmith, though about the latter trade ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... schools are doing a great work for the elevation of the colored people. In a silent, unobtrusive way, these schools are leavening the thought and life of the race. The status and progress of the Negro are too commonly gauged by the deeds of the loafing and criminal element. The honest, law-abiding Negro who has a home, is getting a little property, has a small bank account, and is educating his children to useful citizenship, attracts little or no attention. But a race that has in a generation since chattel slavery gotten property worth ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... for himself, and at Mrs. Jones's he found his wife's brother-in-law seated in the bar of the public-house,—that everlasting resort for American loungers,—with a cigar as usual stuck in his mouth, loafing away his time as only American frequenters of such establishments know how to do. In England such a man would probably be found in such a place with a glass of some alcoholic mixture beside him, but such is never the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... ultimately got such an excellent place in the next world. They don't care much about Lazarus in this, because their souls have not such a natural affinity with his when he is hanging about anyone's doorstep, or loafing round street-corners with oranges to sell or a barrel-organ. Sometimes they give him the crumbs that fall from their tables, and sometimes they don't, because they are afraid he will take advantage of it to steal ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... as yours, Harry, my boy," he said; "and I don't believe that there's a heartier man within fifty miles. No, my lad, I'm not jaundiced. There's no real prosperity here. The people are a lazy, loafing set, and never happy but when they are in hot water. There's the old, proud hidalgo blood mixed up in their veins; they are too grand to work—too lazy to wash themselves. There isn't a decent fellow in the neighbourhood, except one, and his name is ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... new order of things in football as childish amusement, and unworthy of free-born Britons. "Give us," they said, "the exciting runs, the glorious tackling, the manly maul, and the beautiful dropped goal, and we will meet you a bit of the way, but not otherwise. We don't believe in loafing about the field at times, when only one or two of the side are engaged; we want to be active." "Well," said the Conquerors (one of whom had been offered a place in the Twenty in the Rugby match between ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... to do with yourself or make of yourself?" she asked Tyrrel one evening when they were sitting together. "I do hope you'll find some kind of work. Anything is better than loafing about clubs and ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... never do," said Jack, finally; "we have too much on hand this morning to be loafing here. First we'll get the dishes out of the way, and then arrange programme for the work. By noon I expect to ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods and the darkness. However, the legend went forth on the roads, even unto Kingston, and was told among the rollicking Romanys of 'Appy Ampton; for there are always a merry, loafing lot of them about that festive spot, looking out for excursionists through the months when the gorse blooms, and kissing is in season—which is always. And he who seeks them on Sunday may find ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... rode out with Pasquale to review the troops. It was an entirely informal proceeding. The youthful army was happily engaged in loafing and in play. A bugle blew. There was an instant scurry for horses. They swung into line, stood at attention, and at a second blast charged yelling across the plain, serapes ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... done, we started for Taos, for it was now almost time to start out for the winter's trapping. On our arrival at Taos we found Johnnie West, who had been loafing around for two months, and who was anxious to get at work again. Uncle Kit hired him to go with us to South Park to trap the coming winter, that being the place he had decided upon for the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... had lain heavily upon Nicky-Nan's conscience: but with time he had forgotten it. Since the new order came into force, he had fulfilled his obligations regularly enough—until the year before last, by which time his leg really disabled him. It had fortuned, however, that one afternoon on the Quay, loafing around less on the chance of a job (for odd jobs are scarce at Polpier) than to wile away time, he had encountered Dr Mant, the easy-going practitioner from St Martin's. Dr Mant fancying an excursion ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... thridded another sound—the whine of a loafing tramp slowly pleading along the house ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... gin-palace, with shops on either side, hung to the roof with carpets, or brooms, or umbrellas, plastered with advertisements, and blazing with gas. While in the street between streamed the ever-moving crowd of East London folk, jostling, chattering, loafing, doing their business or their pleasure, and made perpetually interesting, partly by their frank preoccupation with the simplest realities of life: with eating, drinking, earning, marrying, child-rearing; still more, perhaps, by the constant ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a favourite "loafing place" for the New Salem boys and young men. Among these, were some of the roughest fellows in the settlement. They were known as the "Clary Grove Boys," and they were always ready for a fight, in which they would, sometimes, prove themselves to be bullies and tormentors. When, therefore, Offutt ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chain-making district. Edge, the sights I saw there were not good for any man to see and remain quiet. Women work at the fires when pregnant, and fuddle themselves with beer at night; the men are a shiftless lot, who spend their lives hand-in-hand with poverty and think only of beer, "baccy," and loafing. You know I'm no prohibitionist, but I hate to see beer the goal of men's ambitions. In one school there was a class with forty "backward" children. That's the kinder word, Edge, but the real one is "imbecile." Think of it—forty human destinies that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... their little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to see; but I heard no complaints. There was no tearing of hair and no gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow. The men who were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters, looking at the still rising river, but each seemed to be personally indifferent to the matter. When the house of an American is carried down the river, he builds himself another, as he would get himself a new coat when his old coat became unserviceable. But ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of Pulaski there was a large beer-garden, known as Dominick's headquarters. He received half the profits in return for making it his loafing-place, the seat of the source of all political honor, preferment and privilege in the third, sixth and seventh congressional districts. I found him enthroned at the end of a long table in the farthest corner of the garden. On one side of him sat James Spencer, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... partially concealing the face. Men, women and children, all in bare feet, squat in the sand or sit hunched up against the sunny side of their houses. Beyond any other Orientals I have seen, these Egyptians have the capacity for unlimited loafing under circumstances that would drive an American insane in a few hours. Flies swarm over them; passing donkeys or camels powder them with dust; the fierce sun beats down on their heads; but all these things they accept philosophically as an inevitable part of life, as something decreed by fate ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... last year he and Miss Nell had made their first pilgrimage to Valley Mead. It was just such a day as this, warm and lazy, with big white clouds loafing off there in the west. He wondered if the peach trees were in bloom now, and whether the white violets were coming up along the creek-bank. How happy and contented Miss Nell always seemed in the country! She had never known before what the outdoor life was like. How he would ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... symbolic or realistic by turn. Some of her figures are creatures of the imagination, winged and iridescent, like the 'Spirit of Hope.' Again, she paints good, honest Dutchmen, loafing about the docks. Sometimes she has recourse to poetry and quotes Emerson for a title.... If technically she is not always convincing, it is apparent that the artist is doing some thinking for herself, and her endeavors ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... plowin' all my life and in the hot days I cuts and saws wood. Then when I gets outer cotton pickin' I put each boy on a load of wood an' we sell wood. Then we clear land till next spring. I don't find no time to be loafing. I never missed a year farming till I got the Brights disease an' it hurt me to do hard work. The last years we got $3 a cord. Farmin' is the best life there is when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... enlarged his list of victims by killing, in a very justifiable encounter, a bad man from the Panhandle by the name of Grant, who had been loafing around in his country, and who, no doubt, intended to kill the Kid for the glory of it. The Kid had, a few moments before he shot Grant, taken the precaution to set the hammer of the latter's revolver on an "empty," as he whirled it over in examination. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... tile which look like red clay drain pipes cut in two and so laid that they overlap each other. The residences are usually built around a narrow court, and their floors are of marble, tile or stone. This court often contains plants and flowers, and it forms the loafing place of the family in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... a splendid kind of thrade, For thim that goes to London for't, and gets their tickets paid! I'm loafing on the road myself, an' sorra know I know What way I'll live the winter through, an' where on earth ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the yacht, which Monkey had sailed up to the wharf at the head of the harbor, as he had been instructed to do. Bobtail sent word to his mother that he should be gone two or three days, and went on board. But his passengers did not appear, and he waited impatiently for them. Captain Chinks was loafing about the wharf, and Bobtail concluded that this was the reason they did not come. The captain was evidently curious to know who were to go in the Skylark. After waiting half an hour, a boy brought a ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... more amusing than a short sojourn at a popular summer hotel among the mountains or by the sea, with its constant round of drives, rides, tennis and golf matches, picnics, "germans," bathing, boating, and loafing, all permeated by flirtation of the most audacious and innocent description. The focus of the whole carnival is found in the "piazza" or veranda, and no prettier sight in its way can be imagined than ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Wulf and Grendel, three fellows, tall as trees, were also loafing round. They were the three Kings: Top had turned his big jacket and blackened his face; Grendel wore a white sheet over his back and blew the horn; and Wulf had a mitre on and carried a great star with a lantern on a stick. So they dragged along the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... have a tambourine which he must not jingle. But the shady charm of the garden compensated for the repression of noisy instincts. After months of tramping in the broiling sun, free and perfect as it was, the easy loafing life seemed sweet. We went little into the gay town itself. For my part I did not like it. Aix-les-Bains consisted of a vast Enchanted Garden set in a valley, great mountains hemming it round. Skirting the Enchanted ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... been raised on an English farm and from childhood he had learned the ways of work animals and how to make them comfortable. So, for the ease of their feet, the cattle shed and its attached, roofed loafing pen had earth floors. All soil removed from the silage pits, dusty sweepings from the threshing floors, and silt from the irrigation ditches were stored near the cattle shed and used to absorb urine from the work cattle. This soil was spread about six inches deep in the cattle stalls ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... rain had ceased, the day gave promise of being bright and warm, they had a small supply of biscuit and bacon left, and then, as Chouteau said, it was a comfort to have no orders to obey, to have their fill of loafing. They were prisoners, it was true, but there was plenty of room to move about. Moreover, they would be away from there in two or three days. Under these circumstances the day, which was Sunday, the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... narrative certainly requires explanation. Kalisch seems to think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard "in the field" he became incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions, and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud gives ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill, one September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down in a hurry, and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the girl who had made ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... loaf; who do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains around the necks of those of us who are trying to ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... further a source of displeasure to Shyuote, who above all things disliked work. He had not come down to the fields to toil. What he sought for was a friendly chat with his father, a few hours of lounging and loafing near him. Disappointed and pouting, he bent over the work assigned, while the two men went on with their task as well as with ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Downing vehemently. "I don't like it. I tell you I don't like it. It is not for me to interfere with one of my colleagues on the staff, but I tell you frankly that in my opinion it is an abominable waste of time for a boy. It gets him into idle, loafing habits." ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside Mottie on the bony horse. "Two of a kind," was passed round the circle of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hour or two loafing about the schooner and swearing under his breath as he regarded the shore, where the crew was going ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... it, for his eyes fell upon a dozen villainous-looking fellows, several of whom he recognized as having seen loafing at the Overland stations, and who were considered ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... runs right along the edge of the water. It was an awful grand sight, but the waves didn't seem to have strength enough to move, only gave out a lazy sob once in a while, as if they were tired of carrying so many loafing ships about that hadn't spirit enough to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... lesson of self-control, and developed a spirit of self-help. The parents have been enabled to control indirectly the associations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-community, to have them in a measure under observation without in the least restricting their freedom. The habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, have been avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has been given to their development, and much social morality has been taught in the often complicated modus vivendi with others that has been evolved. Finally, this may perhaps ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... intelligent soldier, by treating him as a depraved child, as a rightless slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be classed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertisement for the dwindling Army is the soldier. To think ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... He learned to attend to its little wants with deft fingers, listening with a smile to the kindly banter of the women. His manner changed to Ada and her mother; he was considerate, even kind. Then he began to drop in on Monday or Tuesday instead of loafing with the Push at the corner. Ada was at the factory; but Mrs Yabsley, sorting piles of dirty linen, with her arms bared to the elbow, welcomed him with a smile. He remarked with satisfaction that a change had come over the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the sort here, let me tell you," snapped the unreasonable old man. "I can't afford to do business at cost just to please a lot of harum-scarum boys, who want to spend days loafing in the woods when they ought to be earning an honest penny ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... system of management to adopt and the method of applying it, and further their indifference as to the individual character, worth, and welfare of their men. On the part of the men the greatest obstacle to the attainment of this standard is the slow pace which they adopt, or the loafing or "soldiering,'" marking time, as ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
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