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More "Cuss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to that article of his wife's apparel which the vulgar will call "stays." In earlier days a husband used to lock his wife in a pair of iron-bound corsets when he went away from home, keeping the key in his pocket, and thus not caring a tinker's cuss if his home were simply overflowing with handsome gentleman lodgers! The poor wife couldn't retaliate by locking her husband in such a virtuous prison, because men never wore such things—which, perhaps, was one or the reasons why they ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... talk with him. He's been up to Boston and never got back till this afternoon, so I cal'lated maybe he hadn't heard about Cap'n Sam's app'intment. And I knew, too, how he does hate the Cap'n; ain't had nothin' but cuss words and such names for him ever since Sam done him out of gettin' the postmaster's job. Pretty mean trick, some folks call ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... well enough," continued Sam; "but I don't take a cent's wuth of stock in thet thar father of her'n. He's in with them sharps, sure pop, an' it don't suit his book to hev Foster hangin' round. It's ten to one he sent that cuss to watch 'em. Wa'al, they're a queer lot, an' I'm afeared thar's plenty of trouble ahead among 'em. Good luck to you, Major," and he pushed back ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... about it afterward. If any one had made an unexpected move just then, there would have been sudden death in that camp. And while the lot of us sat and stood about perfectly motionless, not daring to say a word one way or the other, lest the wrathful old cuss squinting down the gun-barrel would shoot, the policeman took his foot off the empty cause of the disturbance, and deliberately turning his back on Piegan's leveled six-shooter, walked calmly ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... gloomy ideas. I don't say as how I don't hold with Gawd," he explained, with uplifted forefinger and cocked head; "but if ever I thinks of Him, I like to feel that He's in the wind or in the crickle-crackle of the earth, just near and friendly like, but not a-worrying of a chap, listening for every cuss-word as he uses to his old horse, and measuring every half-pint he pours down his dusty throat. No. That ain't my idea of Gawd. But then I ain't ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... smoke him out. The fire was burning rather slowly, Brackett thought, and he stood looking around and waiting for something to happen. While he had his back turned to the den something did happen, and it happened dog-gone sudden. That fire was plenty fast enough for the bear, and the old cuss came out without waiting to be choked. He came out galleycahoo, and the first thing he saw was Brackett leaning on his gun and waiting for the show to begin. He just grabbed Brackett by the back of the neck and slammed him around through the manzanita ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... "The pusillanimous cuss," the latter muttered, "he 's worse than a cur dog. Blamed if he was n't actually afraid of me. A gun-fighter—pugh!" He lifted his voice, as "Reb" paused in the light of the hall beyond and glanced back, a fist doubled and uplifted. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said Tom Platt, with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us. I'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore we quit floggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam Mocatta ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... a few or short were the cuss words they said, Yet, they spoke many words of sorrow; As they steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And thought 'what'll we do for ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... into on the way. Polly shied somethin' terrible jest afore we got to the pike an' I come derned near bein' throwed. An' right there 'side the road was this feller, all in a heap. I went back an' jumped off. He was groanin' somethin' awful. Thinks I, you poor cuss, you must 'a' tried to stop that feller on hossback an' he plunked you. That accounted fer the second shot. But while I wuz tryin' to lift him up an' git somethin' out'n him about the matter, I sees his boss standin' in the road a couple o' rods ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... English firm, a shrewd smile playing about his hard old mouth. Throwing open the door of the office, he walked abruptly in, saying as he did so, in an unmistakable Yankee drawl, "Blankety blank blank it! I knew I could speak English. All I needed was a few good cuss words to ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... he; then added, 'the only way you can ever get that team to pull steady is to get right in and cuss 'em good; ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... them, and she wanted the sergeant to repeat them to her, that she might know for sure he was the man who did it. He stammered and hitched—tried subterfuges. She waited, inexorable. Finally, in desperation, blushing fiery red, he blurted out "a lot of cuss-words." "You know," he said apologetically, in telling of it, "when I am in a place like that I can't ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... it? Wants amputation, a name like that. I call it mean to give a poor, defenceless kid a cuss-word like—what's it? Rutherford? I got it—to go through the world with. Haven't you got something ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... exodus is the most serious economic matter that confronts the people of Mississippi today. And it isn't worth while to sit around and cuss the labor agents either. That won't help us the least bit in getting to a proper solution. We may as well face the facts, even when the facts are very ugly and very much against us. The plain truth of the matter is the white people of Mississippi are not giving the Negro a square deal. And this ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... against his breast. Or was it his heart that was beating? When he put her down she was afraid she was going to cry, so she began to laugh and to say they mustn't lose that 7.30 to London or the "rag" would be rolling up without her and the "stage damager" would be using "cuss words." ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... "Cuss me if I understand him," said Mr. Worington. "He told us to disperse, and that he proposed to remain a prisoner and go ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the Highlands this fall; but cuss 'em, they han't got no woods there; nuthin' but heather, and that's only high enough to tear your clothes. That's the reason the Scotch don't wear no breeches; they don't like to get 'em ragged up that way for everlastinly; they can't afford it; ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... three of us dey stood by me. Captain he vera angry, say we mutinous dogs. I say not mutinous, but wasn't going to see a boy who was only stunned thrown overboard. We say if he did dat we make complaint before consul when we get to port. De skipper he cuss and swear awful. Howebber we haf our way and carry you here. You haf fever and near die. Tree days after we bring you here de captain he swear you shamming and comed to look at you hisself, but he see ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... came over this morning and said he was going to be pardner with Pewt and he wanted his stuff and his half of the iron and nails. I told him he was a mean cuss and he said he woodent be pardner with a feller whitch woodent let him drink and smoke out of the store. he said Pewt wasent so mean as all that. so we divided the stuff and Beany wanted half of what nails and iron i had taken before we were ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... cuss," said the old woman. "They say he was one of Teddy's Rough-riders in the war. He sure can ride and handle a gun. 'Pears like he thinks he's runnin' the whole range," she continued, after a pause. "Cain't nobody so much as shoot a grouse since he came ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Weary stared unwinkingly down at him, uncertain whether to resent this as pure insolence, or to condone it as imbecility. "Mamma!" he breathed eloquently, and grinned at Andy and Pink. "This is a real talkative cuss, and obliging, too. Come on, boys; he's too busy to bother with a little thing ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... meanest man in these parts. He dastn't walk in his own backyard withouten he kept thet log wall betwixt hisself an' ther mounting-side. So long as him an' old Mose Rowlett both lived thar warn't no peace feasible nohow. Cuss-fights an' shootin's an' laywayin's went on without no eend, twell finely hit come on ter be sich a hell-fired mommick thet ther two outfits met up an' fit a master battle in Claytown. Hit lasted nigh on ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Sing, over at Albuquerque, gives them away every time yu gits yore shirt washed," gravely interposed Hopalong as he went out to cuss the cook. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... from him. You see there's some class to old Sol but there isn't much to me. The judge didn't know which of us was lying until I told him that Sol was a trick dog and would the man who was trying to put one over on me run through his tricks to show they had worked together. The cuss turned green and stammered that he wasn't no animal tamer. The judge gave me a chance and we had a great performance in the courtroom. When it was over the judge said he guessed if I'd had Solomon long enough to teach him so much the man, if he was the owner, should ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... sketches to the Saturday Magazine of the New York Evening Post. In 1912-13 he was writing signed reviews for the New York Times Review of Books. 1913-14 he was assistant literary editor of the New York Tribune. His meditations on the reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss." In 1914 the wear and tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better of him: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charming essays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for the moment while ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... right at my back, an' I saw with a kind o' surprise, He gazed at the lake with a heartful of ache, an' the tears irrigated his eyes. An' sez he: "Cuss me, pard! but that there hits me hard; I've a mother does nuthin' but wait. She's turned eighty-three, an' she's only got me, an' I'm scared it'll soon ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... clerk, don't drive me wild!" says the pa'son. "Why the hell didn't I marry 'em, drunk or sober!" (Pa'sons used to cuss in them days like plain honest men.) "Have you been to the church to see what happened to them, or inquired in ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... sure Mike!" assured the impulsive Dextry, "an', see here, Miss—you take your time on explanations. We don't care a cuss what you done. Morals ain't our long suit, 'cause 'there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three,' as the poetry man remarked, an' he couldn't have spoke truer if he'd knowed what he was sayin'. Everybody is ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn't made for a white man to live in. You've got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It's nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... if I would do so, I could come to his house some Saturday night and stay over Sunday. He said that the boy was "a perfect little case to carry on and folks didn't know whether he would develop into a condemb fool or a youmerist." So he wanted a piece of one of them tomfoolery kind for the little cuss to speak the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Twain was writing, it was considered good form to spoof not only the classics but surplus learning of any kind. A man was popularly known as an affected cuss when he could handle anything more erudite than a nasal past participle or two in his own language, and any one who wanted to qualify as a humorist had to be able to mispronounce any ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... stand up under the day's march—he'll likely have too much sense and spirit to be safe. He'll more than likely prance around when you get on and buck you off if he thinks he can get away with it. If you've got a safe horse, one that's scared to death of you, he won't be a good horse—a yellow cuss that has to be dragged through every mud-puddle. These are all Indian ponies, the best that can be got up here, but they're not old ladies' driving mares. Miss Tremont, the best horse in this bunch is my bay, Mulvaney—but nobody can ride him but me. I'd love to let you ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... north was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken and discouraged fruit trees standing here and there among the weeds formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a hard-working cuss, and tollably well fixed." ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... have his men close in on Joe in the middle of the park. Pepper often comes that way to 'Old Brick'—short, you know, for 'Old Brick Dormitory'—with a poor miserable cuss—excuse me, sir—he's trying to get up on to sober legs. There are twenty fellows pledged to do the ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker. 'We're cramping the poor cuss here. What he wants is ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... But first just figure that I'm your older brother or something like that and get rid of the whole yarn. Got to have the ore specimens before you can assay 'em. Besides, it'll help you a pile to get the poison out of your system. If you feel like cussing me hearty when the time comes go ahead and cuss, but I got ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... amounted to much when I knew him; he was just a low-down, ornery cuss every way that you looked at him. But I was al'ays a bit tender-hearted, and I sorter pitied the feller; so a'ter I passed over the ten-spot to him I took him into a restyrong and filled him up with ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... sperits, beein' 'twas onny a fit he had had from bein' a most smothered wud de handful of strah and kippin his laugh down. But Jeems knowed better. 'T[macron a]-uent no use, sir,' he says, says he, to de doctor; 'de cuss of de Pharisees is uppan me, and all de stuff in your shop can't do me no good.' And Mas' Meppom was right, for about a year ahtawuds he died, poor man! sorry enough dat he'd ever intaf[macron e]red wud things dat didn't consarn him. Poor ol' feller, he ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... a suck-cuss hoss," remarked Mr. Sewell, resting his loosely jointed figure against the rail fence as he watched his ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he cried out. "This man ain't tryin' this case fair. I don't know who he is, and I don't keer a cuss; I only know that you app'inted me to defend him, and I'm a-goin' to do it till you tell me to stop. I object, ma'am, to the course he is adoptin'. It ain't fair. He's making a lot of statements the which ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... bring the old man to terms that way; he can't walk very well late years, an' he can't drive my colt. You know what a cuss I used to be about fast nags? Well, I'm just the same. Hobkirk's got a colt I want. Say, that re-minds me: your team's out there by the fence. I forgot. I'll go and put ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... afeared Bart Rufford's likely to move him," drawled Clay, the six-foot Kentuckian who was filing the 195's brasses at the bench. "Which the same I ain't rejoicin' about, neither. That little cuss is shore a mighty good railroad man. And when you ain't rubbin' his fur the wrong way, he treats ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... few cuss words, laughed at himself for getting so serious, shrugged, and with the casualness of hopper with his pockets loaded, moved toward the rec area, which ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... old lady Eford would be out in the yard and I would hear her cuss the pateroles because they didn't want folks to 'buse their niggers. They had to git a pass from their masters when they would be out. If they didn't have a pass, the ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... known too many men think they'd paid a debt when they'd given their bond. I don't want you to think that. If you're goin' to pay me, you'll do it without a bond, and if you ain't, I ain't goin' to sue you; I'm jest goin' to think what a' o'nery cuss you are." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Vidocq over in the corner and gave him a game of talk that I thought would warm his heart, but he listened in dumbness and couldn't see "no sense in believing the maleyfactor was anythin' more'n a derned cuss, nohow!" ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... I'm going to punish all of it I can get my hands on!" He turned toward the door. "And when I'm good and full of it," he added as an afterthought, "I'm liable to come over here and lick you, Lew, just for being such an agreeable cuss. You better leave your mother's address handy." He laughed a little to himself as he pulled the door shut behind him. "I bet he'll keep the frost thawed off the window to-day, just to see who comes up ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... didn't mean to offend thee, Mrs. Ormerod. A'm sorry A spoke. A allays do wrong thing. But A did so 'ope as tha might coom. Tha sees A got used to moother. A got used to 'earin' 'er cuss me. A got used to doin' for 'er an' A've nought to do in th' evenings now. It's terrible lonesome in th' neeghttime. An' when notion coom to me, A thowt as A'd mention un ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... "Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that. And when you got to the grass-country, you just picked up the honey, and the flowers, and a calf, and a lamb, and a mule here and there, 'without money and without price,' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Kind of a mean cuss, I reckon," remarked a newcomer, one day at the saloon, when Jim alone, of the crowd present, declined to drink ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... lady are out buying new togs. I got a letter here that'll astonish them when they get back. It's from that English cuss, Courtney. D'ye ever hear about him? He was hanging about Genevieve all last winter. And this letter says he's coming back, that his grandfather's dead, and he's a lord now, and he's coming back. Do you mind that now, Faraday?" he ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... I'll resky yo' in a minit," he yelled. When he drew nearer and Paul spoke to him, he appeared as tickled as a boy at a monkey show. "Wal, ef yo' aint jus' th' cutes' little cuss I ever seed paddlin' aroun' out here in the ice like ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... nigger who got the "stump" could even sell it for a dime to the other niggers for after all—wasn't it General Toombs' cigar? The General never wore expensive clothes and always carried a crooked-handled walking stick. I'se never heard him say "niggah", never heard him cuss. He always helped us niggars—gave gave us nickles ...
— 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
... yours. Money down on delivery is the only terms. I want to know the money's there, and you want to know the goods are there. The name of the Count Ro-Say-No would be a sufficient guarantee for anybody in the world but a cuss like me. I'm business. In matters of business, gentlemen, delicacy and consideration for high-flown feelings don't enter into my composition, not for a cent's worth. If I was trading with Queen Victoria I should want to know where the ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... that kind of language; anyhow I'll lay a small peece of change that this bird knew less about what he was trying to talk about than you could drive into a turkey gobbler with a peggin' awl. I give in tho, that he was a brave cuss; anybody who stood up and shot "bull" like he did for two solid hours, must have been brave. Everytime I looked at him I thought of that ol saw "Faint heart never kissed the chamber maid." When he finished everyone in the audience was "out" exceptin an ol maid ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, My innard vane pints east for weeks together, My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins: Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, The crook'dest stick ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... told you, Madam; with this addition, which but for him I never shou'd have known). That when the old Fornicator was come home, he had a severe Lecture from his disgruntl'd Lady, who told him he had either been asleep or worse; for that it was near two a Clock. But the old Cuss thinking to pacifie her Anger by convincing her it wan't so late, wou'd needs go look upon his Watch; but quickly finding that altho' the Nest was there, the Bird was flown, put up the Case again, with only saying, ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... don't mean it! Why," he added, decidedly, "he's more stuck on himself than that mean old cuss you was tellin' about this afternoon, and without half ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... than some here and there—hee, hee!' said William Worm, cropping up from somewhere. 'Like slaves, 'a b'lieve—hee, hee! And weren't ye foaming mad, sir, when the nails wouldn't go straight? Mighty I! There, 'tisn't so bad to cuss and keep it in as to cuss and let it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... has this cuss For conquest such a passion He needs must set his cap at us In this exalted fashion?" And then the people gave a cry, 'Twixt joy and apprehension, To see him pass the symbol by ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... surprised at receiving a letter from the frontier, my motive for writing is this. I am a mountaineer—that is a trapper a good many years ago I met with your father Horace Greely on the plains, and greatly admired the old gentleman. The way I came to make his acquaintance is this. A drunken, unruly Cuss seeing that your father appeared quiet and peaceable thought it safe to play the bully at his expence so he commenced to insult and threaten Mr. Greely in a pretty rough manner. Seeing that your father was quiet and peaceable ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... wuz quite another thing; we owned that ary cuss Who'd worked f'r Mr. Dana must be good enough for us! And so we tuk the stranger's word 'nd nipped him while we could, For if we didn't take him we knew John Arkins would— And Cooper, too, wuz ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... don't like us, And they're sure to scold and cuss The tired three, and raise a fuss And a pother About Hopeful here. Heigho! But he's ready, dears, to go. Ah! they little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... foxes, you were telling of a Sunday, smell h-ll right straight away. Here's Archer, and another Yorker with him—leastwise an Englisher I should say—and Squire Conklin, and Bill Speers, and that white nigger Jem! Look sharp, I say! Look sharp, cuss you, else we'll pull off the ruff of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... be willing. I can't get the hang of Henderson. He doesn't seem to care what his wife does. He's a cynical cuss. The other night, at dinner, in Washington, when the thing was talked over, he said: 'My dear, I don't know why you shouldn't do that as well as anything. Let's build a house of gold, as Nero did; we are in the Roman age.' Carmen looked dubious for a moment, but she said, 'You know, Rodney, that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... whom he has conquered, oh my soul? Dirt and Iniquity is their name, evil are their ways, cuss and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... B were still back to back. Then Exhibit B responded: "Miss Morgan, you ast him if he didn't cuss and damn me, and say he was goin' to pound me to death if I ever ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... that I had saved twenty-five cents on it, wouldn't that be meanness itself? Some time ago I had a ham that I couldn't and wouldn't eat, and they wouldn't take it back at the store, so I got some of the Lord's poor brethren to come to dinner, and I palmed it off on them. But I had to cuss myself the whole evenin' to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... electric lights, and hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer—I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to cuss. But that Ophir!—I sure am proud of her now, just as the last time ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... experience. There's no use explaining when I'm asked why I keep on working, because fellows who could put that question wouldn't understand the answer. You could take these men and soak their heads overnight in a pailful of ideas, and they wouldn't absorb anything but the few loose cuss-words that you'd mixed in for flavoring. They think that the old boys have corralled all the chances and have tied up the youngsters where they can't get at them; when the truth is that if we all simply quit work and left them ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... connection reminds me of a remark I heard from a moonshiner—as the distillers of illicit whiskey in the mountain regions of the South are called—who had lately arrived at the penitentiary. He said, "I allus thought this here Jesus Christ was a cuss-word; but these folks say he was some religious guy!" His enlightenment was doubtless due to the first aid to the unregenerate administered by ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... time, I reckon, when I knowed Nigh onto every dern galoot in town. That was as late as '50. Now she's growed Surprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown, Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cuss We didn't know, the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Mr. Castle," he said. "'Tain't time for you to cuss yet. Maybe you won't git to do no reg'lar cussin' a-tall. You see, McKettrick he up and made a little error himself. Regardin' me makin' an error. Yass.... I don't calc'late to make errors costin' upward of a hunderd thousand. No.... Not," he said, "that I got any doubts about the word 'westerly' ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... he muttered between his teeth. "That Sergeant Moore hee's a queer cuss, sure 'nuff, to give away a dog like thees for nothing; and then, by gar, to pay me ten ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... retorted, "I don't give a tinker's cuss what the hotel likes. Anyway, it's decent, which is considerably more'n some of the dresses I've seen. There's a gal with nothin' more'n a bit of muslin she could fold up and put in her mouth. She's got Mother Eve ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... like that. It ain't becoming to one of your position in the church. Them black scowls and blue cuss-words ain't going ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... got me used to it young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else. Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as often as he licked her, and boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and he kind o' knowed it, way down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a comfort to him ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to ride around with yuh an' see what's goin' on," declared Butch Siegrist sourly. "If they're wimmin, yuh can't even give a cuss without lookin' first to see if ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... grin as he dropped into the revolving chair Dick had just vacated. "Dey's well, tank yo' kindly sah." Then as he looked at the young man's careless attitude and smiling face, he burst forth, admiringly: "Dey done tole me as how yo' wor' a cool cuss an' mighty bad to han'le; but fo' God I nebber seed nothin' like hit. Aint ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... a gay and festive cuss of some seventy summers—or some'ers thereabout. He has one thousand head of cattle and a hundred head of wives. (It is an authenticated fact that, in an address to his congregation in the Tabernacle, Heber C. Kimball once alluded to his wives by the endearing epithet of "my heifers;" ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Journalist broke through the laughter. 'Strikes me, Pin-cuss, you're giving us Hamlet without the Prince ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... one day after he had taken a seat, and puffed and blowed for the space of five minutes—"Cuss them stairs; they'll be ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... never like to see a man a-wrestling with the dumps, 'Cause in the game of life he doesn't always catch the trumps, But I can always cotton to a free-and-easy cuss As takes his dose and thanks the Lord it wasn't any wuss. There ain't no use of swearin' and cussin' at your luck, 'Cause you can't correct your troubles more than you can drown a duck. Remember that when beneath the load your suffering head is ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... because he is so big and rough on the outside: but every one in trouble goes to him, and that is because he is so big and kind on the inside. It is a common saying that in cases of trying illness or serious accident a patient would rather "hear the Doctor cuss, than listen to the parson pray." Other physicians there are in Corinth, but every one understands when his neighbor says: "The Doctor." Nor does anyone ever, ever ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... shiftless, o'n'ry cuss! You bet he wusn't anywhere where there was danger of fighting. Why, you might as well hev suspected HIM of being the big chief himself! There ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... philosophical answer. "It's none o' my funeral, and personally I don't give a cuss if they never find him, but there are just s-teen reasons why the Old Man wants to see that young man Rawdon forthwith, and as many for believing ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... objected. "I drawed the line there some years ago, on account of my wife, the way she felt about it, and the children growin' up. I quit when I was workin' round home, and now I don't seem to miss it none. I git along jest as well. Course I have to cuss a little sometimes. But I liked the way you listened to the old man's warblin'. Because talkin' is a man's trade, it ain't to say he hasn't got ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... be prayin' and mebbe H'll git in de fold at las'! Yes, he's gwine to de grabe up yonder By de trees dar on de hill, Where all alone by hisself one day He buried po' massa Will! You see dey war boys togedder; To-day dey'd cuss an' fight; But dey'd make it up to-morrow And hunt fur ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... blight Closes all hearts when Pity craves And turns God's spirit to darkest night! May life's patriotic cup for such Be filled with glory overmuch; And when their spirits go above in pride, Spirit of Patriotism, let these valiant abide Full in the sight of grand mass-meeting—I don't Want you to cuss them, But put them where they can hear politics, And ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... I chuckled to myself at the look of surprise that overspread his face as he took in the fact that they were nothing but section reports. And, though I don't like cuss-words, I have to acknowledge that I enjoyed the two or three that ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Gower faintly. "It can't be right, can it, to say 'cuss words' at us like that? Oh, really, Rylton, would you mind if ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... swore he'd die. I taught 'em both the motions; She never know'd no fear, And they've done the trapeze together For more'n a couple o' year. Last Summer we took on a Spaniard, A mis'rable kind of cuss, Spry feller—but awful tempered, Always a-makin' a fuss. He wanted to marry Ida— His chance was pretty slim, He did his best, but bless yer, She'd never go back on Jim. He acted up so foolish, That Jim, one day, got riled 'N' guv him ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... 'a' mellered his head proper if he'd 'a' been spryer on his pins. But Jack sprung up like he were made o' Injy rubber. The bulldog devil had drawed his long knife. Jack were smart. He hopped behind a tree. Buckeye, who hadn't no gun, was jumpin' fer cover. The peg-leg cuss swore a blue streak an' flung the knife at him. It went cl'ar through his body an' he fell on his face an' me standin' thar loadin' my gun. I didn't know but he'd lick us all. But Jack had jumped on him 'fore he got holt o' the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... charitable old cuss," was Mr. Berry's elegant answer. "His name leads all the subscription lists a-going; but I'll give you a tip on the side, if you're after him to get a bit of local color for any of your documents. Just make ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... so, Brummy," he said impressively, addressing the corpse. "I allers told yer as how it 'ud be—an' here y'are, you thundering jumpt-up cuss-o'-God fool. Yer cud earn more'n any man in the colony, but yer'd lush it all away. I allers sed as how it 'ud end, an' now yer ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... excl; shriek; . Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... "'Cuss him!' Dick said to me, and I could see his hold on his rifle tighten, 'what does he look at Queen May like that for? You mark my words, Abe, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... on 'em is a big, long, rangy cuss, like a yearlin' colt, by gosh, and ther other's the dead spit of the school teacher at ther Four Corners, back ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... man's mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clean through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, and snapped the blood off it, looked at him, and said: 'There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you have made me cut my finger.'" [Laughter.] "Now," said Lincoln, "England will find she has got the South into a pretty bad scrape from trying to administer to her. In the end she will find she has only cut her own ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... too much eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of his classes. "What's that cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so did ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... all credits and set-offs, and swore positively that it had not been paid. The attorney for the defendant simply produced a receipt in full, signed by Hoblit prior to the beginning of the case. Hoblit had to admit the signing of the receipt, but told Lincoln he "supposed the cuss had lost it." Lincoln at once arose and left the court-room. The Judge told the parties to proceed with the case; and Lincoln not appearing, Judge Treat directed a bailiff to go to the hotel and call him. The bailiff ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... give up 'n' own up beat. 'N' Goda'mi'ty! but didn't them two cheap imitation hunters tell us what they thought o' us pr'fessionals—said 'bout everything anybody could think of, 'cept cuss us. 'N' there was no doubt in our minds they wanted to do that. If they'd been plumb strangers, 'stead o' friends o' one o' our parties, it's more'n likely brother 'n' me'd wore out a pair o' saplings over their fool heads, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... all scared of me. He wouldn't get out of the way and let me go, but he put himself in my way, and then we had it. When we got through I found that I had it, and I had it bad. There ain't no need to tell just what happened. Take a look at my mug and you'll see for yourself. That young cuss ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... them and they will go for you; and, oh, won't we give 'em a lesson? You bet we will; we'll just clean them out and give the money to some needy person—that is, you can—and you'll meet many a poor cuss before you ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... Jerry; sure not—not that kind of a guy. Louie'd 'a' spotted him. Most observing cuss I ever seen." ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... a lean, lanky, long-armed, awkward, thin-nosed cuss that you'd think, to look at, didn't have an ounce of ambition or a pint of sense. The next minute you'd wake up to find the ounce a hundred pounds of condensed lightning and the pint a couple of ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... corresponds to Cousins or Cozens. In Neame we have a prosthetic n- due to the frequent occurrence of min eme (cf. the Shakespearean nuncle, Lear, i. 4). The names derived from cousin have been reinforced by those from Cuss, i.e. Constant or Constance (Chapter X). Thus Cussens is from the Mid. English dim. Cussin. Anglo-Sax. nefa, whence Mid. Eng. neve, neave, is cognate with, but not derived from, Lat. nepos. [Footnote: In all books on surnames that I have come across this is referred to Old Fr. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... declared, as he looked into the pock-marked face of the trembling man, whose terrified eyes were fixed on the huge fist that had so summarily dealt with his big partner. "Wal, you are a likely lookin' cuss tew be th' side partner of Greaser Smith. I reckon you tew pull tewgether like tew mules. I'll have sumthin' special tew say tew you 'bout this case, when I see who t'other witness is," and he turned to the man with the broken arm, who had been looking excitedly ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... ornery little cuss," said Falkner, pausing with a forkful of beans half way to his mouth. "Where in God A'mighty's ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... a vice, and he world her out of the room; then up he goes to Mrs. S. "Get up," says he, thundering loud, "you lazy, trolloping, mischsef-making, lying old fool! Get up, and get out of this house. You have been the cuss and bain of my happyniss since you entered it. With your d——d lies, and novvle rending, and histerrix, you have perwerted Mary, and made her ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... almighty good start, and I want to say here in the hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss I ever ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... he-female conventions, green cotton umbrellers, and pickled beats. Otheller is a good provider and thinks all the world of his wife. She has a lazy time of it, the hird girl doin all the cookin and washin. Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.) ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... they was enemies of yours, an' they wasn't in no good humor, so, when they axed me ef I knowed ye, I 'lowed I didn't know nothin' good about ye. I had ter cuss ye out, or git ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... last night myself," he continued. "One of my men has hit some good dirt, and we'll know what it means in a day or so. I'll gamble we're into the money big, though, for I always was a lucky cuss. Say, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... by-the-by; for, out of the talk there was among the gentlemen about that difficulty, the Squire laid a bet as he would drive stags; not as we do, mind you, but in harness, like carriage-horses; and, cuss me, if he hasn't had the break out half a dozen times with four red deer in it, and you may see him tearing through the park, with mounted grooms and keepers on the right and left of him, all galloping their hardest, and the Squire with the ribbons, a-holloaing like mad! For my part, I don't ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... years ago I started in to stick up a shack. That was before this one was built, and I put it in another place. I set Ah Wee and a little cuss named Gopher to cutting the timber. Of course I didn't expect Ah Wee to help much, for he had a face like a day in June and big black eyes—I guess maybe they were the damn'dest eyes in this ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... of the bird of Jove itself. Great was the excitement it produced among the warriors. A furious hubbub was heard to arise among them, followed by many wrathful voices exclaiming in broken English, with eager haste, "Know him dah! cuss' rascal! Cappin Stackpole!—steal Injun hoss!" And the' "steal Injun hoss!" iterated and reiterated by a dozen voices, and always with the most iracund emphasis, enabled Roland to form a proper conception of the sense in which his enemies held that offence, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... move, you damned spy," a voice said coldly. "Now, Mark, frisk the cuss, and be lively about it. Had a gun, hey; I thought so. Give it to me. Now get the cord over there and give him a turn or two. A very good job, old boy; the fellow is safe ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... trees Crushed upon the leaden forms; Muckintosh, the famous thinker, Muckintosh, the great and mighty, Felt a trembling, felt a quaking, Saw the earth about him open, Saw the flame and sulphur smoking, Came the printer's little devil, Far from distant lands the printer, Man of unions, man of cuss-words, From the depths of sooty blackness; Came the towel of the printer; Many things that Muckintosh saw,— Galleys, type, and leads and rules, Presses, press-men, quoins and spaces, Quads and caps ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Somebody said, "Cuss those niggers! why can't they let us have our tea in peace?"—it wasn't Stewart,—and there was a general scramble for swords and belts. A company of the Pioneers was soon doubling off, while the rest of us strolled up the road to see what the row was. We met the baggage coming in, ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... wife's relations t' come an' help 'em out. He's thinkin' the ole Diamon' Bar's goin' t' be one too many fer 'em. She shore looks fighty, with 'er head down an' 'er eyes rollin' all ways t' oncet, ready fer the first darn cuss that makes a crooked move! An' they know it, too, by golly, er they wouldn't hang back like they're a-doin'. I'd shore like t' be cached behind that ole pine stub with a thirty—thirty an' a fist full uh shells— I'd shore make a scatteration ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... hyar boy all he knows," another voice took up the testimony. "Ab 'lows ez his mother war quick at school, but his dad—law! I knowed Ebenezer Yerby! He war a frien'ly sorter cuss, good-nachured an' kind-spoken, but ye could put all the larnin' he hed in the corner o' ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... is? How Miss Sue gettin along over dere to Marion? I hope she satisfied, but dere ain' nowhe' can come up to restin in your own home, I say. No, Lord, people own home don' never stop to cuss dem no time. Dere Koota's mamma all de time does say, 'Ma, ain' no need in you en Booker stayin over dere by yourself. Come en live wid us.' I say, 'No, child. Father may have, sister may have, brother may have, en chillun may have, but blessed ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... high old times. Even if I went to board somers else I'd come here an' set of an evenin' to hear him talk. He drives off every spell of blues I have. He is the beatenest man to get off jokes I ever knowed, to be as old as he is. Just now he walked clean over to Pitman's to tell that crusty old cuss that thar was a cow inside his lot fence, an' when Pitman come down hoppin' mad with his shot-gun full o' pease yore father-in—(excuse me)—Mr. Wrinkle p'inted to Pitman's own cow an' said, 'I wasn't lyin' to you, Sam; thar she is.' He was laughin' just now an' said ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the One-Way Trail is just the trail of Life. It's chock full of pitfalls and stumbling blocks that make us cuss like mad. But it's good for us to walk over it. There are no turnings or bye-paths, and no turning back. And maybe when we get to the end something will have been achieved in His scheme of things that ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... a rap," the sailor answered. "I wouldn't give a cuss for any of the British settlements. Give me real niggers, chaps as knows nothing of law or civilizing, or any rot of the sort. I can pull along ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... desaved us intirely he has,—the black-hearted crather; an' may the cuss O' Crom'ell stick to him day an' night, an' turn his sleep to wakin', an' his mate to pizen, till all I wish him ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... had learned English and studied some law and been made a notary public, this very same captain walked into my office in St. Louis one day to have some documents sealed. As soon as he saw me he stopped short, as if he had seen a ghost, and said, "Say, ain't you the damned cuss that ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... stage is groanin' an' creakin' along on a up grade, thar's a trio of hold-ups shows on the trail, an' the procession comes to a halt. Old Monte sets the brake, wrops the reins about it, locks his hands over his head, an' turns in to cuss. The hold-ups takes no notice. They yanks down the Wells-Fargo chest, pulls off the letter bag, accepts a watch an' a pocket-book from the gent inside, who's scared an' shiverin' an' scroogin' back in the darkest corner, he's that terror-bit, an' then they applies a few epithets to Old Monte ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... put it, "a dangerous old cuss." O'Brien was even worse. He was a bull-necked, bullet-headed, pugnosed young ruffian with beery eyes, who had an insatiable ambition and a still greater conceit, but who had devised a blundering, innocent, helpless way of conducting ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... us, Hank, if we ain't back to camp to-morrow," remarked Bill presently, breaking the silence. "He can be sore though if he wants to. He can't fire us fellers for bein' away even if he does get sore and cuss us out. He needs us bad, and he can't get any more men now. I don't mind his cussin'. Cussin' don't hurt ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... foraging on the outskirts of the camp for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... now," he mused. "He sure is a rantankerous cuss when he's lickered up. He'd jest as soon ride his horse through that door as he would to walk through, an' he's always puttin' somethin' over on someone. But he's a man. He'd go through hell an' high water fer ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... and a bull's-eye lantern flashed upon my face. A group of foot-soldiery, with drawn pistols and sabres, gathered around me, and I heard the neigh of steeds from some imperceptible vicinity. "Who is it, Sergeant?" said one. "Is there but one of 'em?" said another. "Cuss him!" said a third; "I was takin' a bully snooze." "Who are yeou?" said the Sergeant, sternly; "what are yeou deouin' aout at this hour o' the night? Are ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... not me; then we worked me and some labourin' men he brought, till we was all of a sweat, and we got the dratted thing out, and off she went, whizzin' and buzzin' in a way I never did see. Come mornin' I took a look at things, and there was half my hay not worth a cuss for horse or ass, and thirty feet of fence fit for nowt but firewood. 'Send in your bill,' says he, and send it I did, and neither song nor sixpence have I got for it. Thinks I, I'll go and see if he give me a right name and address, and a mighty moil 'twas to find the place, and ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Howsum, it wus the cause o' the trouble as I wus gassin' 'bout. Y' see, Brown was one of them juicy fellers that chawed hunks o' plug till you could nose Virginny ev'ry time you got wi'in gunshot of him. He was a cantankerous cuss was Brown, an' a deal too free wi' his tongue. Y' see he'd a lady with him; leastways she wus the pot-wolloper from the saloon he favored, an' he guessed as she wus most as han'some as a Bible 'lustration. Wal, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... stickler to rules that don't mean a cuss. There isn't another train within a hundred miles or so, except west; there won't be one this ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... that his customary happy and seductive grin was slightly stiff about the corners as if his face needed oiling. "Hang it all! Nobody but an undertaker could look happy in this town," Jimmy thought after his final effort. "No wonder that old cuss is so solemn. I'd be too, if I ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... deadly strain of waiting Till your turn comes, and fortune smiles on you; If you can fight and lose and keep on fighting And to your early promises stay true; If you can go thru Hell to spend the summer And cuss, and freeze, and starve the winter thru And start in broke again another New Year You don't need this Land to make a ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... started for the boy, who was a running for the train as fast as his little legs could go. But we was nigh enough then; and just as the Ingin was reaching down from his pony for the kid, Al Thorpe—he was a powerful fine shot—draw'd up his gun and took the red cuss off his critter without the paint-bedaubed devil know'n' ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... that drove her nearly frantic, from the manifest kindliness of intent that made it impossible for her to resent it. "I felt that way myself at first. Things will look strange and unsociable for a while, until you get the hang of them. You'll naturally stamp round and cuss a little—" He stopped in ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... says to herself, "if he only would be cross! If he only would say something rough to us! If he only would cuss." ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... don't reckon there's a cuss on this gold, do you? Just see how many people it has killed. Dick Winters and Bill Frank and Jim and Haney, besides all the prospectors that have died huntin' for it. You-all don't reckon anything will happen to us, or to ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a wolf, I remember, darting about his cage, slinking, furtive, ever on a futile prowl. He especially engaged the interest of Tom McNeil, who said admiringly, as I, too, looked through the bars, "Ain't he a prompt little cuss?" I felt that with Tom it was the fascination of opposites; he ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... says, 'There was a arrow fastened in its mane when I see it this mornin', but his dad took no notice whatsoever av the boy's sayin'; just went on that it was the one Jean Pahusca had stole when he was drunk last. What does it mean, Phil? Is Jean hidin' out round here again? I wish the cuss would go to Santy Fee with the next train down the trail an' go to Spanish bull fightin'. He's just cut out for that, begorra; fur he rides like a Comanche. It ud be a sort av disgrace to the bull though. I've got nothin' ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... put it to your nose once, you can't smell it a second time. Oh what beautiful galls they be! What a shame it is to bar a feller out such a day as this. One on 'em blushes like a red cabbage, when she speaks to me, that's the one, I reckon, I disturbed this mornin'. Cuss the rooks! I'll pyson them, and that won't make ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Little Stevie cuss! Better get in on it. Some fight! Tennelly sent 'Whisk' for a whole basket of superannuated cackle-berries"—he motioned back to a freshman bearing a basket of ancient eggs—"we're going to blindfold Steve and put oysters down his back, and then finish ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the night air, Sol,'—meaning Mrs. Sol,—I acted ugly. No, sir, it's human nature; and it was quite natural that Mornie, when she caught sight o' Mrs. Sol's face last night, should rise up and cuss us both. Lord, if she'd only acted like that! But the old lady got her quiet at last; and, as I said before, it's all right, and we'll pull her through. But don't YOU thank us: it's a little matter betwixt us and Mornie. We've got everything fixed, so that Mrs. Sol can stay ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of his classes. "What's that cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so did others. Linski ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... you about, he turns out to be a true sport after all. Marches with the best of us, lives as dirty as we, enjoys it all. The young cuss, I've grown fond of him. What do you think his latest is? He's kept hammering at me till he's made me stop buying pies and things! Good for the pocket-book, but particularly good for my little insides. The last three days I haven't even had a hankering for something sweet. Tell Nelly she needn't ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... enjoyment, where no envious rule prevents; Sink the steamboats! cuss the railways! rot, O rot ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... there, so I had a chance to talk with him. He's been up to Boston and never got back till this afternoon, so I cal'lated maybe he hadn't heard about Cap'n Sam's app'intment. And I knew, too, how he does hate the Cap'n; ain't had nothin' but cuss words and such names for him ever since Sam done him out of gettin' the postmaster's job. Pretty mean trick, some folks call ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ab rupt' dis cuss' a cross' a gree' an nul' de duct' a dopt' a sleep' con struct' in duct' a loft' es teem' in struct' re but' a non' de cree' in trust' re sult' be long' de gree' at tire' in vite' com port' dis close' en tice' o blige' re port' dis pose' en tire' per ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... long afore the news had spread the country over, And miners come a-flockin' in like honey-bees to clover; It kind uv did 'em good, they said, to feast their hungry eyes on That picture uv Our Lady in the camp uv Blue Horizon. But one mean cuss from Nigger Crick passed criticisms on 'er,— Leastwise we overheerd him call her Pettibone's madonner, The which we did not take to be respectful to a lady, So we hung him in a quiet spot that wuz cool 'nd dry 'nd shady; Which same might not ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... undertake to fulfil my part of the contract. I'll leave you to yours. Money down on delivery is the only terms. I want to know the money's there, and you want to know the goods are there. The name of the Count Ro-Say-No would be a sufficient guarantee for anybody in the world but a cuss like me. I'm business. In matters of business, gentlemen, delicacy and consideration for high-flown feelings don't enter into my composition, not for a cent's worth. If I was trading with Queen Victoria I should want to ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... says I, 'I never heared such a woman. 'Clect, at Oxford, hearing of an old Roman Catholic lady they called the Civil, as spoke in that 'ere fashion, and was a dealer in books and stationery, but, cuss me, if you doesn't beat her hollow. Whose blood do ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... really aware of his reflection in a looking-glass for twenty-five years. He saw now a lean, lined, sad face, a morose droop of thin and bitter lips; he saw gray hair standing up stiffly above a careworn forehead; he saw kind, troubled eyes. And as he looked, he frowned. "I'm an ugly cuss," he said to himself, sighing; "and I look sixty." In point of fact, he was nearly fifty. "But so is she," he added, defiantly, and took down his hat. "Only, she looks forty." And then he thought of Mrs. Maitland's "fair ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... fellow, too— almost a kid. When I got up this morning—" Billy shrugged his shoulders again and pointed to his empty pistol holster. "Everything was gone— dogs, sledge, extra tent, even my rifle and automatic. He wasn't quite bad, though, for he left me my grub. He was a funny cuss, too. Look at that!" He pointed to the bakneesh wreath that still hung to the front of his tent. "'In honor of the living,' " he read, aloud, "Just a sort of reminder, you know, that he might have ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... both got our warning. I've had yours and you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's what ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... letter, dilated on state politics, set the Irish question on the right end, cleared Bacon[42] of all hostility to me, declined tea because he had insomnia and explained just how it works to keep you awake, danced more and declared himself happy and bowed himself out—well pleased. He's as funny a cuss as I've seen in many a day. Lord Cowdray, who was telling Mexican woes to Katharine in the corner, looked up and asked, "Who's the little dancing gentleman?" Suppose X had known he was dancing for—Lord Cowdray's amusement, what do y' suppose he'd've thought? There ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... save in Allauh, the Gloriose, the Great!" Now when she heard these words she shouted for joy, and fell to the ground fainting; and when her senses returned she asked, "O my lord, can it be true that thou hast power of speech?" and the King making his voice small and faint answered, "O my cuss! cost thou deserve that I talk to thee and speak with thee?" "Why and wherefore?" rejoined she; and he replied "The why is that all the livelong day thou tormentest thy hubby; and he keeps calling on 'eaven for aid until sleep is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to yuh a lot, then," he replied warmly. "Don't yuh never go near old Murton. In the first place, he ain't a cowman—he's a sheepman, on a small scale so far as sheep go but on a sure-enough big scale when yuh count his feelin's. He runs about twelve hundred woollies, and is about as unpolite a cuss as I ever met up with. He'd uh roasted yuh brown just for saying cattle at him—and if yuh let out inadvertant that yuh took him for a cowman, the chances is he'd a took a shot at yuh. If yuh ask me, you was playin' big luck when yuh ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... news last night myself," he continued. "One of my men has hit some good dirt, and we'll know what it means in a day or so. I'll gamble we're into the money big, though, for I always was a lucky cuss. Say, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... privilege. The true interpretation of the obligations upon which the United States entered in this treaty of 1846 has been given repeatedly in the utterances of Presidents and Secretaries of State. Secretary Cuss in 1858 officially stated the position of this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... swimmed over to our island, and tuck up his abode in a hole in a log. The cuss got kind of affectionate, and after a while crawled right into our hut to catch flies and other varmin. At last he got so tame he'd let me scratch his back. Then he tuck to our moss bed, and used up a considerable portion of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... "He's a lean, blighted cuss," Murphy had explained; "what God intended for an engineer, but Nature stepped in and flambasted his constitootion, and so he took to preaching—that not demanding ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... exclusively an inspiration from the intellect which animated his, Farmer's, proper clod; nor was he greatly exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a "mean cuss," destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... night! May life's patriotic cup for such Be filled with glory overmuch; And when their spirits go above in pride, Spirit of Patriotism, let these valiant abide Full in the sight of grand mass-meeting—I don't Want you to cuss them, But put them where they can hear politics, And ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... I suppose his real name is Thaddeus, or Tantalus, or something like it; I never knew, and I never liked him well enough to ask. Tank was a black-eyed little runt whom none of the boys liked, a grasping cuss, younger than Jim, and as selfish as ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... storekeeper growled. "You done first-rate, young man. You tole the ole cuss in plain words what we've bin a- thinkin' fer a coon's age. Help ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... that be meanness itself? Some time ago I had a ham that I couldn't and wouldn't eat, and they wouldn't take it back at the store, so I got some of the Lord's poor brethren to come to dinner, and I palmed it off on them. But I had to cuss myself the whole evenin' to pay up ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... them new apple-corers Than folks's oppersition views aginst the Ringtail Roarers; They'll take 'em out on him 'bout east,—one canter on a rail Makes a man feel unannermous ez Jonah in the whale; Or ef he's a slow-moulded cuss thet can't seem quite t' agree, He gits the noose by tellergraph upon the nighes' tree: Their mission-work with Afrikins hez put 'em up, thet's sartin, To all the mos' across-lot ways o' preachin' an' convartin'; I'll bet my hat th' ain't nary priest, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... a word which interested the policeman. When the ambulance clanged away, he turned to a fellow patrolman who had joined him. "Funny what he says to the little cuss that done the damage. That's all he did call him—'nothin' else at all—and the cuss had broke both his legs fer him ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... in this town stand on a street corner to-morrow, and utter an oath; she would shock every one within sound of her voice. A man can "cuss" to his satisfaction and, if not a church member, the community is not shocked. Let a young woman seeking a position in a public school in one of our cities, call a member of the school board into ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... a-come," whispered Sol; "but we decided that he was too tall an' somehow too strikin'-lookin' to come in here ez a common, everyday Injun, so it fell to me to loaf in, me bein' a tired-lookin' sort o' feller, anyway. But they're out thar in the woods a-waitin', Henry an' Tom Ross an' that ornery cuss, Jim Hart." ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rookies!" replied grandfather tartly. "You'll be all right once you get going. You'll settle down to be real soldiers yet. And I'd like to hear a little more cussing. How the Hussars used to cuss! Too much reading and writing nowadays. It makes ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... he stated. "Not one little wrangle, even. Of course I was expectin' it. I've watched 'em come around too many times not to know how they can cuss a man cold one minute, and then make him plumb ashamed of mankind in general, with beggin' and pleadin'. I just beat him to it the morning he woke up; I told him what he could have, and what he couldn't, and he took it calmly enough. He just set there, pretty blue and shaky, and not quite clear ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... "what you ask is fair enough, and for my own part I'd be willing enough to let you have all you want, but I vow I don't just see exactly how I'm to do it. The key of the arm-chest is in the armourer's pocket, and I can't issue anything out of that chest without his knowledge. Now, I know that cuss, he's no friend of mine, and he'd just go straight away and tell Ralli what I'd done, and that'd set the Greek dead agin you all for a certainty and make things just as uncomfortable for you as could be. Besides which, Ralli 'd just take 'em all away from you again as soon as my back ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... tearin dogs to peaces, and I allers sposed from his gineral conduck that he'd hav no hesitashun in servin human beins in the same way if he could get at them. Excuse me if I was crooil, but I larfed boysterrusly when I see that tiger spring in among the people. "Go it, my sweet cuss!" I inardly exclaimed. "I forgive you for bitin off my left thum with all my heart! Rip 'em up like a bully tiger whose Lare has bin inwaded ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... " He's a sly cuss, anyhow." The railway man grinned. After an elaborate silence the wine merchant asked: " Know Miss Black long, Rufus?" Coleman looked scornfully at his friends. " What's wrong with you there, fellows, anyhow?" The Chicago man answered airily. " Oh, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... nut, evidently!" murmured one of the young men contemptuously. "Come on, Stan. Don't let's miss that anthem, for this cuss." And off they ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... clear out of the State of California—show him up for what he is—a mean little cuss of a grafter; no friend of labor or anything else but his ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Fox get mighty mad. Der never wuz a madder beas' dan he wuz des den. He rip, en he r'ar, en he cuss, en he swar, he snort, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... Marster, was born clubfooted. His hands and foots was drawed up evvy which a way long as he lived. He was jus' lak a old tom cat, he was such a cusser. All he done was jus' set dar and cuss, and a heap of times you couldn't see nothin' for him to cuss 'bout. He tuk his crook-handled walkin' stick and cotch you and drug you up to him and den jus' helt you tight and cussed you to yo' face, but he didn't never whup nobody. Our Mist'ess, Miss ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... returned the nugget to his pocket. "I call you a dam' amusin' cuss, I do that. You're a goer. There ain't no keepin' up with the likes o' you. You shall make what you blame well please—we'll talk about it by-and-by. But for the present, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... ther damage, but his indifference about ther injury he done ter us riled us all up. Seein' as he didn't care a blame, our skipper sent ther friggte aflyin' arter him. Waal, sir, ther cuss cracked on sail an' fled. Arter him we tacked, detarmined ter punish ther swab fer his imperdence. It wuz a long stern chase wot lasted ten hours. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... getting to be a regular old granny. What Master Frank needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss has got me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I'm mum as a hooter on the nest," he admitted to himself ruefully. "Just when something comes up that needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school eye of his, and it's Bucky back to Webster's unabridged. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... git, an' de only time dat eber I cuss bad wuz when de Yankees come. Dey stold de meat an' things from de smoke house, an' eber thing else dat dey can git. Dey ain't done nothin' ter me, but de way dey done my white folkses made me mad, an' I jumps straight up an' down an' I yells, 'Damn dem Yankees ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... I reckon, when I knowed Nigh onto every dern galoot in town. That was as late as '50. Now she's growed Surprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown, Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cuss We didn't know, the cause ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... which we passed, carried our excitement, which had been cruelly growing for three weeks, well-nigh up to an exploding climax. I was told not to lose my ticket, or I could not get in; and when the ticket taker seized hold of it, I held on until he finally yelled angrily, "Let go, you little cuss!" whereupon my father came to his rescue. The show on the whole was very satisfactory, except for the color of Columbus, the fine old elephant, which for some reason, probably from the show bills on the barns, I had expected to be of a greenish tint. I also had supposed that the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to come down with a conveyance for the almshouse was in a suburb. In due time he appeared, and was briefly told Alida's story. He swore a little at the "mean cuss," the author of all the trouble, and then took the stricken woman to what all his acquaintances facetiously termed ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... contribution to the keep of the animal, he would inform against his son to the squatter on the Darnley Downs, and had shown him that he knew the very run from which the horse had been taken. Then the sons within had interfered from their beds, swearing that their father was the noisiest old "cuss" unhung, they having ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... when it positively is a crime not to swear," he hoarsely said. "It seems to me that this is one of the times. If you will cuss a little it will relieve my ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... your wrist. Two or three of us dey stood by me. Captain he vera angry, say we mutinous dogs. I say not mutinous, but wasn't going to see a boy who was only stunned thrown overboard. We say if he did dat we make complaint before consul when we get to port. De skipper he cuss and swear awful. Howebber we haf our way and carry you here. You haf fever and near die. Tree days after we bring you here de captain he swear you shamming and comed to look at you hisself, but he see that it true and tink you going to die. He go away wid smile on his face. Every ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... chauffeur, his knowledge of English appeared to be limited to an explosive sort of profanity. Lum Gillespie declared on the third day after Mrs. Smith's car first came to his garage for live storage, that "that feller Francose" knew more English cuss-words than all the Irishmen in ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... Why, Ah Sing, over at Albuquerque, gives them away every time yu gits yore shirt washed," gravely interposed Hopalong as he went out to cuss the cook. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... and finally decided that as Mausers were "shoot farther guns" he had better go to Vienna, I watched the twinkle in Dad's gray eyes and thought of the cool contempt in his friend's. And from being amused I became rather sore. For, after all, this little Russian cuss had risked his life for fifteen years and expected to lose it shortly. (As a matter of fact, he was stood up against a wall and shot the following April.) Why make him ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... body's scalped it's us! So we've a well-earned right to cuss, And you've no right to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... Louis. Here's my card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... pirits; de hotbed ob wickedness; de home ob de Moors an' Turks an' Cabyles, and de cuss ob de whole wurld." ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... her—maybe more, maybe less—along both banks; an' next it might annoy 'im a bit when these two waves fell together an' raised a weight o' water full on her bows, whereby she 'd travel like a slug, an' the 'arder he drove the more she wouldn' go; let be that she'd give 'im no time to cuss, even when I arsked 'im perlitely what it felt like to steer a monkey by the tail. Next an' last, if he should 'appen to find room for a look astern at the banks, it might vex 'im—bein' the best o' men as well as the cleverest—to notice that he 'adn't left no ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... what we'll do. Jess nothin'! Ain't Bull Corey the blowin'est and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods? And would n't it be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... a little old man from the corner. "Well, you are a low cuss," said he; and, taking up a basket beside him, hobbled out of the room. You maybe sure I said some pretty sharp things to him, for I was out of humor to begin with, and it is one thing to be insulted by a stout young man, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... cheerful companion," exclaimed Howland, laughing in spite of himself. "Do you know, Croisset, this whole situation has a good deal of humor as well as tragedy about it. I must be a most important cuss, whoever I am. Ask me ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... an enterprising cuss!" laughed the reporter. "Haven't you got enough on your hands, with all the men you're going to ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... elder brother, Khizr bin Makbl, about as ill-conditioned a "cuss" as himself. Very dark, with the left eye clean gone, this worthy appeared pretentiously dressed in the pink of Desert fashion—a scarlet cloak, sheepskin-lined, and bearing a huge patch of blue cloth between the shoulders; a crimson caftan, and red morocco boots with irons resembling ice-cramps ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... should have seen that Ophir—power plants, electric lights, and hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer—I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to cuss. But that Ophir!—I sure am proud of her now, just as the last time I laid eyes ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... were a pall to the burrying, Joe's finally out of the way, Nothing 'special ailing of him, Just old age and gen'ral decay. Hope to the Lord that I'll never be Old and decrepit and useless as he. Cuss to his family the last five year— Monstrous expensive with keep so dear— 'Sides all the fuss and worrying. Terrible trial to get so old; Cur'us a man will continue to hold So on to life, when it's easy to see His chances for living, tho' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... you is? How Miss Sue gettin along over dere to Marion? I hope she satisfied, but dere ain' nowhe' can come up to restin in your own home, I say. No, Lord, people own home don' never stop to cuss dem no time. Dere Koota's mamma all de time does say, 'Ma, ain' no need in you en Booker stayin over dere by yourself. Come en live wid us.' I say, 'No, child. Father may have, sister may have, brother may have, en chillun may have, but blessed be he dat have ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... his one eye. "I knows the feeling myself, cuss me, but I do! 'Thine for once and thine for never,' as the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Stop!" The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and summoned a look of stubborn resolve. "Mo' better you call me St. Pierre because I'm a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You dawn't want me git Claude back in Gran' Point'. You want me to give, give. Well, all right! I goin' quit Gran' Point' and give myself, me, to Claude. I kin read, I kin write, I t'ink kin do better 'long wid Claude dan livin' all 'lone wid snake' and alligator. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... mountaineer—that is a trapper a good many years ago I met with your father Horace Greely on the plains, and greatly admired the old gentleman. The way I came to make his acquaintance is this. A drunken, unruly Cuss seeing that your father appeared quiet and peaceable thought it safe to play the bully at his expence so he commenced to insult and threaten Mr. Greely in a pretty rough manner. Seeing that your father was quiet and peaceable and did not wish to quarrel with the Cuss I took the ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw—and the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or anything; and he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He was ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... reckon you an' me better try to live mo' righteously 'n what we've been doin', or he'll be took from us." An', sir, the very nex' communion we both up an' perfessed. An' I started sayin' grace at table, an' lef' off the on'y cuss-word I ever did use, which was "durn." An', maybe I oughtn't to say it, but I miss that word yet. I didn't often call on it, but I always knowed 't was there when needed, and it backed me up, somehow—thess the way knowin' I had a frock-coat in the press ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and departed, assuring Andy, by way of farewell, that he was an unappreciative cuss and didn't deserve any sympathy or sick-calls. They also condoled openly with Pink because he had been detailed as nurse, and advised him to sit right down on Andy if he got too sassy and haughty over being shot up by a real outlaw. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... though," the Major interrupted, "and that's where we're going to have a big fight on our hands when it comes to the rub. This Lewis Robards, her first husband, was a quarrelsome cuss. Every man that looked at his wife, he swore was after her, and if she lifted her eyes, he was sure she was guilty. There was no divorce law in Virginia and Robards petitioned the Legislature to pass ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Pepper, as they had grown to call him, "I heard that sung by a fellow up in Chartres Street two nights hand-running before this thing happened,—a merry cuss, too, with a rather loose hand on his shekels. Lots of people may know it, ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... just a jokin'. I meant it was such an honor for common folks like us to git inside of the palace of a high-toned cuss like Farnham; and the fact is, Sammy," he continued, more seriously, "I would like to see the inside of some of these swell places. I am a student of human nature, you know, in its various forms. I consider the lab'rin' man as the normal healthy human—that is, if he don't work ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... horse-keepers to "stand clear with their cloths, and take care no one pays them twice over," gives a whistling hiss to his leaders, the double thong to his wheelers, and starts off at a trot, muttering something about, "cuss'd pair-'oss coach,—convict-looking passengers," observing confidentially to Mr. Jorrocks, as he turned the angle of the street, "that he would rather be hung off a long stage, than die a natural death ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... at givin Blind-man concerts, appearin as the poor blind man myself. But the infamus cuss who I hired to lead me round towns in the day time to excite simpathy drank freely of spiritoous licker unbeknowns to me one day, & while under their inflooance he led me into the canal. I had to either tear the green bandige from my eyes or be drownded. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn't made for a white man to live in. You've got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It's nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... lead's for," a philosopher remarked, stirring the embers. "So it don't get under my skin, I don't care a cuss what they do ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... or hot, Differs nothing, matters not; For to quote that Roman cuss, Why dispute "de gustibus?" If to this or that one should Take a fancy, it is good. If these rhymes look good to me, What care ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... from fright, looking around for guns and so on. Don't you believe you'd keep an eye around the corners, kind of—eh? I'll bet a hat he was taking it all in, lying there in his bunk, 'turned the other way.' Eh? I pity the poor cuss—Well, there's only one more entry after that. He's good and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... was going to Chicago. I'd have asked him to look in on my girl," said Jimmy, folding up his letter. "I don't like the way she writes—all jazz and picture shows. Some cuss is trying to cut ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... went for us, And br'iled and blistered and burned! How the Rebel bullets whizzed round us When a cuss in his death-grip turned! Till along toward dusk I seen a thing I couldn't believe for a spell: That nigger—that Tim—was a crawlin' to me ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... too. But yo're a real smart cuss, now ain't you?" queried Hopalong, his eyes twinkling and his face wreathed with good humor. "An' how innocent you act, too. Thought you could scare me, didn't you? Thought I'd go tearing 'round this fool town like a house afire, hey? Well, I ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... means they try to hang up our drive. The average mossback's a hard customer. I'd rather try to drive nails in a snowbank than tackle driving logs through a farm country. They never realize that we haven't got time to talk it all out for a few weeks. There's one old cuss now that's making us trouble about the water. Don't want to open up to give us a fair run through the sluices of his dam. Don't seem to realize that when we start to go out, we've got to go out in a hurry, spite o' ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... red; but if black, no," was answered back, with an invitation to "show" myself. I led the pony across the narrow trench which ran around the stockade, and, mounting him, rode into the yard. As I approached the party I overheard remarks, such as, "An army cuss"; "One of those little stuck-up officers." But not appearing to have heard them, I got down, and asked what party they were. "Wood-haulers," they replied; "taking building logs down the road"; followed by "Who are you, and where are you going ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... "You young cuss," I addressed him savagely. "Do you mean to say you have gone and got shot in that very leg I fixed up ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... a wallop on the jaw and bang your head against the wall and dance on your ribs, and you'll cuss worse than ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... drive me wild!" says the pa'son. "Why the hell didn't I marry 'em, drunk or sober!" (Pa'sons used to cuss in them days like plain honest men.) "Have you been to the church to see what happened to them, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... him boisterously on the shoulder. "Oh, you solemn comic cuss!" He strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of his pipe into the water—Doggie trembled lest he might next squirt tobacco juice over the ivory curtains. "You don't give a fellow a chance. Look here, tell me, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... struck a town o' sand-rats. This niggur's har wur longer then than it ur now. I made snares o' it, an' trapped a lot o' the rats; but they grew shy too, cuss 'em! an' I had to quit that speck'lashun. This wur the third day from the time I'd been set down, an' I wur getting nasty weak on it. I 'gin to think that the time wur come for this ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... is any chance to take him alive, just send down to the Forks for us. If not, you had better shoot him. I wouldn't advise you to meddle with him much, however, for he's a dead shot, and fights like a cuss." ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... that, I'll bet? He's got shet of a foot, or he'd a cut like the rest of the lot. Don't you wash him, nor feed him, but jest let him holler till he's tired. It's a blasted shame to fetch them fellers in here, along side of us; and so I'll tell the chap that bosses this concern; cuss me ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... breathing deeply and indignantly, "I hope so; he's a mean cuss—what d'ye think? never give Locust's boy so much as a half-sovereign! Now don't such a feller deserve to lose? And do you think Locust's boy will ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... Here he straightened up, his eyes glistening. "I tell ye, once let 'im git after a house he thinks a feller air in an' he'd turn it topsy-turvy, tissel end up. Why, Burnett can smell a man from prison a mile. I know him, I do! Hain't I seen,—and you have too, Orn,—many a poor cuss get away just like I did, mebbe over the river, mebbe a hundred miles or two, or he might even git in another state, but Burnett'll haul him back by ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... doesn't," Bob replied. "Jane and I were speaking of it last night. If you'll notice, when he gets excited, or much interested, he's like a typical mountaineer. Only when careful is it otherwise. He's a funny cuss, but, gee, Colonel, look at that power! I'll bet he can run a hundred miles without ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to the Tennesseean confidentially, and his tones would have moved a heart of stone: 'Bill, you always was a friend of mine. I know'd you a long while ago, and honored you—cuss me, if I didn't. I said you was a man bound to rise. I told Jimmy Polk so—me and Jimmy was familiar friends. I intended to get up a biographical notice of you in the Democratic Review, but that —— Corby stopped it I'm glad to see ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Yes, that dog is a big-feelin' little cuss-tomer. And if I wuz a chipmunk he couldn't bark at me no ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... to swim the lake. There's a pretty mess come o' that, by-the-by; for, out of the talk there was among the gentlemen about that difficulty, the Squire laid a bet as he would drive stags; not as we do, mind you, but in harness, like carriage-horses; and, cuss me, if he hasn't had the break out half a dozen times with four red deer in it, and you may see him tearing through the park, with mounted grooms and keepers on the right and left of him, all galloping ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... yes, lots of them, but the old cuss never read them, though. He chucked them in the fire as soon as he made out who they ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... and stories, &c., and was so odd, original and humorous and witty, that all the people in town would gather around him. He would keep them there till midnight. I would get tired, want to go home, cuss Abe most heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and was a kind of newsboy." One or two articles written by Abe found their way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot was on the first round of the ladder. It is right ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... he knew the other. On the contrary, the man was both angry and rude. "What'd I tell you, Rhody?" he exclaimed, turning to his wife. "I know'd they'd crowd us out'n house an' home ef they got a chance; I could 'a' took oath to it! Cuss 'em, an' contrive 'em, both sides on 'em, all an' similar! They'd as lief make a hoss-stable out'n the house as not, an' I built it ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... Spider, and Pat, and Clam, and Johnny Heinhold, and others, came the tips that Old Scratch liked me and had nothing but good words for the fine lad I was. Which was the more remarkable, because he was known as a savage, cantankerous old cuss who never liked anybody. (His very nickname, "Scratch," arose from a Berserker trick of his, in fighting, of tearing off his opponent's face.) And that I had won his friendship, all thanks were due to John Barleycorn. I have given the incident merely as ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... there? No? Well, maybe Pollard is all right. He's sort of a newcomer around here. That big house of his ain't more'n four or five years old. But most usually a man buys land and cattle around here before he builds him a big house. Well—Pollard is an open-handed cuss, I'll say that for him, and maybe they ain't anything in the talk that ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... also was a Jew, Who drove a Putney bus— For flesh of swine however fine He did not care a cuss. ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even." He paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally taken to a 'Sylum ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... that way,' said I, 'I guess we can find a place that will be big enough and will answer just as well,' said I; and then I began to start up warmer and get bolder, when he shut me off with a string of cuss words that ran all over me. I didn't suppose he could talk that way, but no one in the office seemed to mind, although I'll bet you could have heard him a ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... not. I like dogs. I don't like babies—except Mrs. Rickett's and he's such a jolly little cuss." He smiled over the words, and again she felt a deep compassion. Somehow his face seemed almost sadder when ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... coughin? My narves is racked a listenin to her. I don't see what she wants to live for, and she most a hundred. I believe its purpose to bother me, Sabbath mornins. Here, Phillis, who's this bin here, diggin up my sweet-williams I planted?—cuss ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... days of the business the comedian was always distinguishable by his comedy clothes. One glance would tell you he was the comical cuss. The straight-man dressed like a "gent," dazzling the eyes of the ladies with his correct raiment. From this fact the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot. And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram". So I promised him, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... to gobble up what was left of the cornbeef and potatoes.... Nippers looked up at me, with a hunk of beef sticking from his mouth, which he poked in with the butt-end of his knife.... "Say, didn't the old man cuss wonderful, and him lookin' ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... "We don't allow no such cuss as you to make reflections on gentlemen. We've put up with your ugly mug altogether too long, and I for one ain't going to do it no longer. What do you say, gentlemen?" he continued, turning to his companions, "shall we trifle with our luck, and lower our self-respect ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... I don't say no cuss words, an' wash meself all over on Wednesdays and Sat'days, she's goin' to help me ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust. When you going to start the gang and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fell; and the furious fat man made a vicious prod with the fork. It might easily have proved fatal, but Jim was near enough to seize the man's arm and wrest the fork from him. The fat man was white with rage. He blustered a good deal and finally went off sputtering comically although he used no cuss-words. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ain't forgot—de time when Miss Lucy lay on her las' bed. She sent for Uncle Bushrod, and she say: 'Uncle Bushrod, when I die, I want you to take good care of Mr. Robert. Seem like'—so Miss Lucy say—'he listen to you mo' dan to anybody else. He apt to be mighty fractious sometimes, and maybe he cuss you when you try to 'suade him but he need somebody what understand him to be 'round wid him. He am like a little child sometimes'—so Miss Lucy say, wid her eyes shinin' in her po', thin face—'but he always been'—dem was her words—'my knight, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... don't say as how I don't hold with Gawd," he explained, with uplifted forefinger and cocked head; "but if ever I thinks of Him, I like to feel that He's in the wind or in the crickle-crackle of the earth, just near and friendly like, but not a-worrying of a chap, listening for every cuss-word as he uses to his old horse, and measuring every half-pint he pours down his dusty throat. No. That ain't my idea of Gawd. But ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... sock it to the cuss a little," remarked Mr. Robinson in recounting the conversation subsequently; and, in truth, it was not elevating to the spirits of our friend, who found himself speculating whether or no Timson ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... realising shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town—the Stars and Stripes flying over it—with a four-horse lecture to describe the barbarity of the ancient British Barons and the cuss ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... are making an almighty good start, and I want to say here in the hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss I ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
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