"Cockney" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked pleasantly conscious and flattered as we walked to the dining-room, and I felt as if I was being led to the altar to be sacrificed like poor little Isaac. His English is very cockney, and he got so mixed up with "heart" and "art" that I did not know half the time whether he was talking of the collection of the Louvre Gallery or of his lady victims. He did not hesitate to call my attention to the presence of some of them at the table, which ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... with certain events which might seriously have affected the history of England. It is, however, an interesting enough place to-day, if one cares for the bustle and rush of a seaport and fishing town,—not very cleanly, and overrun with tea-shops and various establishments which cater only to the cockney abroad, who gathers here in shoals during the summer months. There is, too, a large colony of resident English, probably attracted by its nearness to London, and possibly for purposes of retrenchment, for there is no question but that the franc, of twenty per cent. less value than the shilling, accomplishes ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... o' Bass, gov'nor," responded Millwaters promptly, dropping into colloquial Cockney speech. He turned to Perkwite and winked. "Well, an' wot abaht this 'ere bit o' business as I've come rahnd abaht, Mister?" he went on, nudging his ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... my folly! he has heard that word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a cockney.—I pr'ythee now, ungird thy strangeness, and tell me what I shall vent to my lady. Shall I vent to her that thou ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... mental gipsy, to whom books were roads open to adventures; he saw skies in books, and books in skies, and in every orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses something ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward, they bled in their struggles, the red flesh was torn away from the white bones. "Awake!" cried a voice; but I determined I would not rise to such horrors. "Awake!" They would not let me alone. "Wake up!" said an angry voice. A cockney angel! The man who sells the tickets was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... distant view or a glimpse of the sea; they will not leave one another, and they indulge their pet dislikes: this shies at a camel, that kicks at a dog. Presently Tamaddun, as the Arabs say, "urbanity," or, more literally, being "citified," asserts itself, as in the human cockney; and at last they become cleverer and more knowing than any country-bred. They climb up the ladders of stone with marvellous caution, and slip down the slopes of sand on their haunches; they round every rat-hole which would admit a hoof; and they know better than ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... this chastened English prose, we have men of genius who have fallen into evil habits. Bulwer, who knew better, would quite revel in a stagey bombast; Dickens, with his pathos and his humour, was capable of sinking into a theatrical mannerism and cockney vulgarities of wretched taste; Disraeli, with all his wit and savoir faire, has printed some rank fustian, and much slip-slop gossip; and George Meredith at times can be as jerky and mysterious as a prose Browning. Charlotte Bronte and Kingsley could both descend to blue ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... distance, to describe to the best of his ability the things that he had seen. Dr. Johnson, familiar with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could read the description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit. To a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the Hog's Back in Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting. But we, or rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that. The man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and billiards on the summit of the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... walked abroad with Jane, who, having lengthened her skirts and put up her hair, was now a young woman looking older than her years. She too had developed. Her lank figure had rounded into pretty curves. Her sharp little Cockney face had filled out. She had a pleasant smile and a capable brow, and, correcting a tendency to fluffiness of hair of which she disapproved, and dressing herself neatly, made herself by no means unattractive. Constant association with Paul had fired her ambitions. Like him, she might have ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... year 1854—or it may have been a few months later—Mr. W. Beatty Kingston made an early appearance with a cockney ballad on the subject of the admission of female searchers to the penetralia of H.M. Record Office, of which at that time he was a "flickering light" at L100 a year. Soon he took service under the Hapsburgs, and left England afterwards ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Sybil's entreaties the cab-driver hurried on. With all the skilled experience of a thorough cockney charioteer he tried to conquer time and space by his rare knowledge of short cuts and fine acquaintance with unknown thoroughfares. He seemed to avoid every street which was the customary passage of mankind. The houses, the population, the costume, the manners, the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Frank, that is"—expostulated Harry—"that is just the most snobbish thing I ever saw you do; aint you ashamed of yourself now, you genuine cockney!" ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... a cockney drawl, and a rude look coming into his eyes which he'd kept out while there was hope that the dusty, blown-about little thing might turn into a customer. "Well! Let's see! But I've got more old lace on hand now than I know what ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dirty, evil-faced little cockney named Jessop, whom Oliver and his fellow officers particularly abhorred—at once followed the supercargo in to his cabin, which was immediately closed. In less than five minutes it opened again, and Jessop came out and returned to ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... for Kamrangh Bay. This knowledge enabled Togo to destroy the Baltic fleet in the Tushima Straits. And a stevedore made something like a million dollars out of a cargo of canned salmon by hearing some cockney give his theory about how the blockade could ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... ventilation. I find the theatres much more amusing, not from the excellence of the dramatic performances, but from their sheer and gross absurdity, which, without actual experience, is almost too monstrous for belief. The fact is, that a new Cockney school has arisen, ten times more twaddling and impotent than the ancient academy of that name. The old professors, for whom I always had a sneaking kindness, affected a sort of solitary grandeur, deported themselves with the conscious swagger of genius, read Tooke's Pantheon, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Tam's genius for description to the pencil of a stenographer, and thereafter, when a long report was needed by Headquarters, there would appear at Tam's quarters one Corporal Alexander Brown, Blackie's secretary, and an amiable cockney who wrote mystic characters in ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... These cockney birds sure chirp some language. Believe you me, a guy had orto carry an interpreter around with him. Me and Skinny went out to a swell English camp today to take a peep at English trainin methods; outside we sees a tipical Tommy Atkins settin down fixin sumpin wrong with his kicks; ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... bronzed and moustached, with a deep bass voice and an almost guttural speech, and the other, Raff, was slight and effeminate, with nervous hands and watery, washed-out gray eyes, who spoke with a faint indefinable accent that was hauntingly reminiscent of the Cockney, and that was yet not Cockney of any brand she had ever encountered. Whatever they were, they were self-made men, she concluded; and she felt the impulse to shudder at thought of falling into their hands in a business way. ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. He was a pious little man, bent and thin, with a marked Cockney accent. He had mild pale blue eyes and a simple, almost seraphic smile which scarcely ever left his countenance and which was the index to his character. His wife was small and pious like himself, and had the same accent and the same benevolent expression. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... am extremely sorry to be obliged to decline the article proposed, as I should have been flattered with a Plate accompanying it. In the first place, Midsummer day is not a topic I could make anything of—I am so pure a Cockney, and little read, besides, in May games and antiquities; and, in the second, I am here at Margate, spoiling my holydays with a Review I have undertaken for a friend, which I shall barely get through before my return; for that sort of work is a hard task to me. If you will excuse the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had been shut up in Bungey castle. Rumours there are of great bickerings and uneasiness; but I don't believe there will be any bloodshed of places, except Legge's, which nobody seems willing to take-I mean as a sinecure. His Majesty of Cockney is returned exceedingly well, but grown a little out of humour at finding that we are not so much pleased with all the Russians and Hessians that he has hired to recover the Ohio. We are an ungrateful people! Make a great many compliments for me to my ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... any one enjoy anything as you enjoy this music," she said to me. She spoke well, perhaps rather too carefully, and with a hint of the cockney accent. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... creep, And human footsteps never tread, There is a store of treasure hid. If it be so, I have no doubt, Some lucky wight will find it out. Yet so or not is nought to me, For I shall ne'er go there to see." The man did slyly twice or thrice The Cockney thenk for his advice; Then heame agean withoot delay He cherfully did tak his way. An' set aboot the wark, an' sped, Fun' ivvery thing as t' man had said; Were iver efter seen to flourish T' fanest gentleman iv all t' parish. Folks wonder'd sair, an' ,weel they might, Whoor he gat ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... no respecters of spirit. Jimmy had successfully fought poverty and ill-health; he had risen from a newspaper-boy's existence to the dizzy heights of a milkman's cart. His pale face with its prominent eyes and rich, chestnut forelock bore an expression of indomitable Cockney confidence in the ultimate decency of things. He had always been kind to his mother. "More like a girl than a boy," she said, "in the way he cared for his home and looked after me." And now Jimmy was dead: the message had come that he would ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... clad in tweeds of a piebald check, with a pink tie, a sharp collar and protuberant yellow boots. He contrived, in the true tradition of 'Arry at Margate, to look at once startling and commonplace. But as the Cockney apparition drew nearer, Muscari was astounded to observe that the head was distinctly different from the body. It was an Italian head: fuzzy, swarthy and very vivacious, that rose abruptly out of the standing collar like ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... his society? The matter was simply this: His Serene Highness was venturing a small fish to catch a large one. As a good and provident ruler, anxious for the prosperity and well-being of his subjects, he was making a bid for the valuable patronage of the British Cockney. He was acting the part of land-lord of a gratuitous "free-and-easy," in the hope of making Florence an attractive place of residence to that large class of nomad English to whom gratuitous court-balls once a week appeared to be a near approach to those "Saturnia regna" when the rivers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... than they are at a political "At Home," or even an artistic soiree; and if the female trippers are overdressed, at least they are not overdressed and underdressed at the same time. It is better to ride a donkey than to be a donkey. It is better to deal with the Cockney festival which asks men and women to change hats, rather than with the modern Utopia that wants them ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening midsummer sun, he gives his colours to ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... are certainly some people who have more of the wine of life than others, and who are a wonderful refreshment to their friends. It was during this year, 1858, that we built our seaside cottage at Santubong—Sandrock Cottage, as we called it, which sounds rather cockney; but as it stood on the sand, with great boulders of granite rock scattered about, it seemed the most appropriate name. Santubong is the most beautiful of the two mouths of the Sarawak River, but not as safe as the Morotabas for ships to enter. The ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... So our Cockney Jefferies proceeds, presently coming upon a cinder path. They use cinders a lot about Sutton, to make country paths with; it gives you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You drop suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the Black Country, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... landing above I encountered my tutor, half-dressed, a candle in hand. 'Twas a queer figure he cut, thinks I—an odd, inconsequent figure in a mysterious broil of the men of our kind. What was this cockney—this wretched alien—when the passions of our coast were stirring? He would be better in bed. An eye he had—age-wise ways and a glance to overawe my youth—but what was he, after all, in such a case as this? I was his master, however unlearned I might be; his elder and master, to be ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... sister, Your face is writhed with jeers; How awful is the angle Of those protuberant ears! Those red, protuberant ears! And your splay feet—O lor!!! My loud, my Cockney sister, Where ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... Somebody's Memories of Everybody Else or Somebody's Experiences in an Enemy Country. Well, and so Stella Clackmannan and I, in the hostel we run for poor dears who've lost their situations abroad and have no friends to go to on coming back here, found among our guests a bright little Cockney who's been what she calls an up-and-down girl in the Royal Palace at Bashbang, the capital of Rowdydaria. My dearest, the things that girl has climbed over and crawled under, and the weather she's come through, in escaping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... while the child wailed his way through a song of some eight eight-line verses in the usual whine of a young Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign telegrams. Ten minutes later Alf returned to his parents rather ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... among servants,' writes that good-natured theatrical wag, Tate Wilkinson, 'was, "I wish you were at York!" which the wronged cook has now changed for, "I wish you were at Jamaica." Scotland was then imagined by the cockney as a dreary place, distant almost as the West Indies; now'(reader, pray note the marvel) 'an agreeable party may, with the utmost ease, dine early in the week in Grosvenor Square, and without discomposure set down at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... native heath and the City clerk on the loose, however, were not prone to such vestments as young Mr. Karslake affected. It wasn't that he overdressed; even the ribald would have hesitated to libel him with the name of a "nut"—which is Cockney for what the United States knows as a "fancy (or swell) dresser"; it was simply that he was always irreproachably turned out, whatever the form of dress he thought appropriate to the time of day; and that his wardrobe was so ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... arrived I went about in search of a type of the Australian girl for my pictures, and was sketching one from my hotel window as typical of a real Australian, when the Captain of our ship came in and said, "Oh, there's that Cockney, Miss So-and-so!" ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... for more than a year had been known to be occupied only by one Captain Burbage, a retired seaman of advanced years, his elderly housekeeper, a deaf and dumb maid-of-all-work, and a snub-nosed, ginger-haired young chap of about nineteen—as pure a specimen of the genus Cockney as you could pick up anywhere from Bow Church to the Guildhall—who acted as a sort of body servant to the aged captain, and was known by ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and minister to their convenience, an army of servants, of one description or other, was kept; waiters, chambermaids, grooms, postillions, shoe-blacks, cooks, scullions, and what not, for there was a barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a cockney accent; the French sounding all the better, as no accent is so melodious as the cockney. Jacks creaked in the kitchens turning round spits, on which large joints of meat piped and smoked before great big fires. There was running up ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... responded Charles, but no one save the traveller at the small table caught the play on words, the Cockney cant term for money being unfamiliar to American ears. He smiled, and then studied the bond-servant with more interest than he had ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... sunless Decadence has spread widely, by virtue of its own uncleanness, and its leading characteristics are gloom, ugliness, prurience, preachiness, and weedy flabbiness of style. That it has not flourished in Great Britain, save among a small and discredited Cockney minority, is due to the inherent manliness and vigour of the national character. The land of Shakespere, Scott, Burns, Fielding, Dickens, and Charles Reade is protected against literary miasmas by the strength of its humour and the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on mythic lore, But Science and the modern Fact, Teach me Electric Fires to store, The difference 'twixt "Bill" and "Act." Why should a Cockney care a "cuss" For HOMER ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... possibility of keeping sea-animals inland without changing the water. A few simple directions, therefore, will not come amiss here. They shall be such as anyone can put into practice, who goes down to stay in a lodging-house at the most cockney ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... shewn in 'Cocoa Paste,' 'Rock Cocoa,' 'Eating Vanilla Chocolate,' 'Penny Chocolate,' 'French Bonbons,' 'Flaked Cocoa,' 'Homoeopathic,' &c. So numerous are the sorts, that a purchaser is as much puzzled in his choice as an untravelled Cockney with a Parisian bill of fare. The making of the flaked cocoa is peculiarly interesting, and is, we were informed, peculiar to this establishment. To see how the amorphous mass comes from the mill in long curling ribbons, uniform in thickness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... It may have been on this day that Lord Albemarle got off his famous pun. On the Queen saying to him, "I wonder if my good people of London are as glad to see me as I am to see them?" he replied by pointing to the letters "V. R." "Your Majesty can see their loyal cockney answer-'Ve are.'" ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... the warm evenings your dinner didn't much matter as you sat letting it cool on the wooden terrace that stretched out into the sea. To-day the Lido is a part of united Italy and has been made the victim of villainous improvements. A little cockney village has sprung up on its rural bosom and a third-rate boulevard leads from Santa Elisabetta to the Adriatic. There are bitumen walks and gas-lamps, lodging-houses, shops and a teatro diurno. The bathing-establishment is bigger than before, and the restaurant as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... quiet elegance of a great hotel. The men in evening dress, the gorgeously attired ladies passing to elevator or drawing-room, seemed to be listening to her. Why did the bureau keeper speak so loudly? Then the assurance of the Cockney ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... all about I cannot imagine; all I know is that that evening, in the meadows near C—, a wretched Cockney, in a battered chimney-pot hat, and carrying an umbrella, was wantonly run to earth by a handful of natives, and that an hour later the same unhappy person was clapped in the village lock-up for the night as a suspicious character! It ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My instinct was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out something nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... as yet expensive, but Mr. Boyd thinks that railroads will have a cheapening influence. He quotes some present prices, which would make the hair of a Londoner stand on end! Imagine the feelings of the comfortable cockney who found himself face to face with a breakfast bill for nine shillings! For this modest sum Mr. Boyd was supplied with tea, ham, eggs, marmalade, and toast, in fact, the little commonplace things ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... so hard on us, Honor? Why are you so hard on me? I should say. For you are sweetness itself to that little curate of Drum, and he's about the poorest specimen of the Cockney ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... the girls who were my friends. They thought it a terrible idea that I should go among drunkards, but I told them I had brought a book with me which they could look at and read out loud to each other while I was away—at which they nodded gravely —and I went off with my beautiful cockney. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... "Filth of the world!" And mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge until the dawn came to drive the hyaena scum home. And after a time they vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney beanfeasters, away in the beechwoods. Then they came slinking near again. Andoo yawned and went on along the cliff, and they followed. Then he ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... said it was no matter,—"only we would have called him Marquis," said he, "if his name was not provided for him. We must not leave him here," he said; "he shall grow up a farmer's lad, and not a little cockney." And so, instead of going the grand round of infirmaries, kitchens, bakeries, and dormitories with the rest, the good old soul went back into the managers' room, and wrote at the moment a letter to John Myers, who took care ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Mary-le-Bow, the sound of whose mellow bells is supposed to be so dear to cockney ears, is the glory and crown of modern Cheapside. The music it casts forth into the troubled London air has a special magic of its own, and has a power to waken memories of the past. This chef-d'oeuvre of Sir Christopher ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Virtue," is one of Mrs. Eloise N. Griffith's thoughtful moral essays, and is as commendable for its precepts as for its pure style. "His Flapper," by Edna von der Heide, is a clever piece of trochaic verse in Cockney dialect, which seems, so far as an American critic can judge, to possess a very vivid touch of local colour. "An Eye for an Eye," by the same authoress, seems vaguely familiar, having possibly been published in the amateur press before. If so, it is well worthy of republication. "Women and Snakes," ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... fling oaths at one, And worse than oaths at Trumpington, And Ditton girls are mean and dirty, And there's none in Harston under thirty, And folks in Shelford and those parts, Have twisted lips and twisted hearts, And Barton men make cockney rhymes, And Coton's full of nameless crimes, And things are done you'd not believe At Madingley on Christmas Eve. Strong men have run for ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other—perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly wrong suggestion of the Hebraic—he was ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... became clumsy and common at once beside Michael and Nicholas and John. George was also in white flannels; he played furiously and well; he played too furiously and too consciously well; he was too damp and too excited; his hair became damp and excited as he played; his cries had a Cockney tang. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... with a touch even of the taste of nuts in it, and profess with contrition that properly we have never tasted Indian Corn before. Millers of due faculty (with millstones of iron) being scarce in the Cockney region, and even cooks liable to err, the Ashburtons have on their resources undertaken the brunt of the problem one of their own Surrey or Hampshire millers is to grind the stuff, and their own cook, a Frenchman commander of a whole squadron, is to undertake the dressing ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... first dismal warning. For some reason or other I had to go down into the basement of the school. The janitor, a highly efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied with all things Canadian because "in the old country we do things differently"—whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, "If you was a lidy, I'd wipe my ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and manners of these primitive countries; if not strictly virtuous, they are, at all events, terribly attractive. Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be, and commanded imperatively ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... in its way, as prolific of contrasts as any part of the United States. There is certainly no more cultivated centre in the country, and yet the letter r is as badly maltreated by the Boston scholar as by the veriest cockney. To the ear of Boston centre has precisely the same sound as the name of the heroine of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman," and its most cultivated graduates speak of Herbert Spencah's Datar of Ethics. The critical programmes of the Symphony Concerts are prepared by one ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar, and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... "You drop that Cockney accent and learn Berkshire, and I'll give you half a sovereign when you can talk it," I promised him. "Don't, for instance, say 'ain't,'" I explained to him. "Say 'bain't.' Don't say 'The young lydy, she came rahnd to our plice;' say 'The missy, 'er coomed down; 'er coomed, and 'er ses to the maister, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... to come, then," she said, shortly. "You don't look like a Cockney. I guess you're a gentleman, aren't you—run away ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... was introduced to some of the speakers. They were a scratch lot as seen in that dingy place. The chairman was a shop-steward in one of the Societies, a fierce little rat of a man, who spoke with a cockney accent and addressed me as 'Comrade'. But one of them roused my liveliest interest. I heard the name of Gresson, and turned to find a fellow of about thirty-five, rather sprucely dressed, with a flower in his buttonhole. 'Mr Brand,' he said, in a rich American voice ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Mr. Croker resigned Munster House as a residence, after having externally decorated it with various Cockney embattlements of brick, and collected there many curious works of art, possibly with a view of reconstruction. In the garden were two marble busts, one of which is figured on previous page. The other a female head, not unlike that of ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... cockney, that had he been born Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is worn, He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't, As tender as Fletcher, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not such a cockney place as the majority of men who have not visited it imagine. It really is larger than the Welsh Harp at Hendon, and the scenery, though not like that of Ben Cruachan or Ben Mohr, excels the landscape of Middlesex. At the northern end ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the two captains of the foretop were both prime young men, active as monkeys, and bold as lions. One was named Tom Herbert, from North Shields, a dark, good-looking chap, with teeth as white as a nigger's, and a merry chap he was, always a-showing them. The other was a cockney chap. Your Lunnuners arn't often good seamen; but when they are seamen, there's no better; they never allow any one to show them the way, that's for sartin, being naturally spunky sort of chaps, and full of tricks ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... certainly a patriot," said Lady Mabel, "if any amount of national prejudice can make patriotism. But yours is very like the cockney's, who despised all the world, beyond the sound of Bow bells. As to the fortress isle. (Let me warn you to keep it well garrisoned against surprise.) I believe there is an obscure little corner of it called Scotland, which both you and the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... those who had the wish or the means to buy themselves out of the adventure, were allowed to do so: for the Earl was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops. Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London, cockney apprentices, brokendown tapsters, discarded serving men; the Bardolphs and Pistols, Mouldys, Warts, and the like—more at home in tavern-brawls or in dark lanes than on the battle-field—were not the men to be entrusted with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... life was spent on the restless ocean. Two months at sea and eight days ashore was the unvarying routine of Jim's life, summer and winter, all the year round. That is to say, about fifty days on shore out of the year, and three hundred and fifteen days on what the cockney greengrocer living next door to Jim ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr Halsham in his bitterness cries out that "the town has overflowed the country," meaning the whole country, and that "we are cockney from sea to sea," he is being tragic at the cost of truth. Would he drag Wiltshire and all the pastoral West into his turmoil? You may go about any of the villages here, watch the daily doings of the inhabitants, and feel confident that, practically, there ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... come from the children themselves. For them freedom will not mean the expensive kind of savagery now called "the simple life." Their natural disgust with the visions of cockney book fanciers blowing themselves out with "the wind on the heath, brother," and of anarchists who are either too weak to understand that men are strong and free in proportion to the social pressure they can stand and the complexity ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... judgment of the cockney who buttered his horse's hay, the ragged boy skinned her mice and plucked her sparrows in my absence. The consequence was her untimely end. I was met by my landlady with many a melancholy "Ah, sir!" and actually the good creature ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... pugilist, though his chance looks poor, Will come up smiling soon, surviving failure; And an admiring ring will shout once more, (Pardon the Cockney rhyme!) "Advance, Australia!!!" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... the British possessions, first around the mountain, which is quite a mountain for a villa, though nothing to speak of as a mountain, with several handsome residences on its sides, and a good many not so handsome; but the mountain is a pet of Montreal, and, as I said, quite the thing for a cockney mountain. Then we went to the French Cathedral, which is, I believe, the great gun of ecclesiastical North America, but it hung fire with me. It was large, but not great. There was no unity. It was not impressive. It was running over with frippery,—olla podrida cropping ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... light at the foot of the ladder, which slid upon the deck to the heave and fall of the old barque's blunt bows, and left in shadow the double row of bunks and the chests on which the men sat. From his seat nearest the ladder, Bill, the ship's inevitable Cockney, raised his ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... father to the man. One of his first exploits was fishing with a bent pin. Another was to preach a little sermon on a naughty fish. The "application," though brief, was earnest. To the infant expounder, the subject of his discourse doubtless appeared in the guise of a piscatorial Cockney. After many other the like foreshadowings, and after draining dry his native village, he went, when twelve years of age, to Glasgow University. Professor Jardine, who then held the chair of Logic, was fully alive to the rare promise of his pupil, and said of him subsequently,—"He lived in my family ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... his hands up to his head and walked about the yard for a few moments. Then he turned abruptly and stood toweringly over the scared survivor—a tough, wizened little Cockney of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes of a mortal's life. The Cockney poet sings— ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... than even Mrs. Fox-Moore knew, her sister, instead of being in the houses where she was supposed to be, and doing the things she was expected to be doing, might have been seen in highly unexpected haunts prosecuting her acquaintance with cockney crowds, never learning Ernestine's fearlessness of them, and yet in some way fascinated almost as much as she was repelled. At first she would sit in a hansom at safe distance from the turmoil that was usually created by the expounders of what to the populace was a 'rum new doctrine' invented by ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... ramrod stiffness which some of the Irregular Cavalry cultivate with such painful assiduity; he sits easily and gracefully, so easily that you might fancy a rough horse would set him bobbing and slipping like a cockney astride a donkey on the sands. But with all the ease and grace, there is strength there, such as would wear down the nastiest of bad brutes. The leg that looks so lightly and gracefully posed grips like steel, and the pressure increases relentlessly the more the horse quarrels with his rider. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... the police station, where he heard a little of the matter in hand from a constable and then asked for permission to use the telephone. In five minutes he was speaking to his own chief at Scotland Yard, and the familiar cockney voice of Inspector Harrison came over the two hundred odd miles that separated the metropolis of convicts from the metropolis of ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... "Point Judith" mentioned by the New-Yorkers, as the Cockney voyager talks of Sea-reach, or the buoy at the Nore; and here it was close under our lee,—a long, low point of land, with ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... ever gazed upon the legendary Adler, but Timmins the cockney, and Braunschweiger the ex-Prussian grenadier, gaily dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally enforced thirst and ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... peaceful, smiling cultivation. The fields by the roadside are enclosed by hedges as in England, the harvest was in part down, and an English country gentleman who was of our party pronounced the crops to be as fine as any he had ever seen. Of this matter a Cockney cannot judge accurately, but any man can see with what extraordinary neatness and care all these little plots of ground are tilled, and admire the richness and brilliancy of the vegetation. Outside of the moat of Antwerp, and at every village by which we ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scanning the windows of the cars. Drawn up at the curb behind them was a smart two-seated phaeton, with a pair of clean-limbed bays. The driver was not a negro, as is usually the case in the South, but a tight-faced little man, who looked the typical London cockney that he was. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... Roger Doolan were of the party, I need not say that the English traveller was not left to his own unassisted imagination for his facts. Such anecdotes of our habits and customs as they crammed him with, it would appear, never were heard before; nothing was too hot or too heavy for the luckless cockney, who, when not sipping his claret, was faithfully recording in his tablet the mems. for a very brilliant and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... [Who speaks Cockney English with a slight foreign ascent— cutting the wire of a champagne bottle.] Why, you used to be a regular slap-up dancing man ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Thompsons were as alike as two peas, as two drops of water, as two Emperor-of-Morocco butterflies, as two death's-head moths. Could they have been twin brothers, like the Dromios of the old drama? or was the vicinity of the Regent's Park peopled with Cockney anglers—Thompsons whose daughters had ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... with this genuine specimen of Cockney philosophy, is vowing that if she once gets safe on shore, she will never again set foot in a half-penny boat, we are already at Waterloo Bridge. Duck goes the funnel, and we dart under the noble arch, and catch a passing view of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. From Euston Square he walked ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... including the great nation they fought with. It was their political independence only. It secured nothing beyond that. Morally we were not independent. Socially, we were not independent. There was a time, we can all remember it, when we literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... obsolete as is commonly supposed, and is intelligible after some practice; but the choice of stanza is unfortunate, though in spite of it, Spenser's verse is more melodious than any other English poet's except Mr. Waller's.[19] Ambrose Philips—Namby Pamby Philips—whom Thackeray calls "a dreary idyllic cockney," appealed to "The Shepherd's Calendar" as his model, in the introduction to his insipid "Pastorals," 1709. Steele, in No. 540 of the Spectator (November 19, 1712), printed some mildly commendatory remarks about Spenser. Altogether it is clear that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... surrounding small townships, and villages on the coast. Others again, take the train for a day's outing and play quoits, rounders, lawn tennis, and the like; the sportsman, perhaps, preferring his gun and his dog; families, again, are picnic-mad, for your colonist can rival the Cockney any day for making his holiday in the country. It may be to 'the rocks' he goes to watch his youngsters paddling in the rolling tide, or to the toil of clambering up the 'dim mountain,' which seems to suit their hardy lungs better than the shade of the 'fern glen,' and a journey ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... owner of the Cockney voice, rising to his feet and revealing himself a small man with large head and thin wizened features, "Mr. Chairman, I rise to protest right 'ere an' naow against the presence of (h)any representative of the ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... 'arshish, sir," said the cockney. "It's the Injin 'emp 'e needs. But 'e ain't smelt beer since we left Millsborough. Somethin's just appeared to 'im, and ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the Tevas of Tahiti. The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship grew warmer, and his lips were opened. It is this sense of kinship that the traveller must rouse and share; or he had better content himself with travels from the blue bed to the brown. And the presence of one Cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walk in clouds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the swarming buttons on jackets and trousers which used to distinguish the coster. But among the customers, whose number all but forbade our passage through the street, with the noise of their feet and voices, there were, far beyond counting, those short, stubbed girls and women as typically cockney still as the costers ever were. They were of a plinth-like bigness up and down, and their kind, plain, common faces were all topped with narrow-brimmed sailor-hats, mostly black. In their jargoning hardly an aspirate was in its right place, but they looked as if ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... species of the simia genus. In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely superior to the orang outang; so much so, that, but for their long wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old Cockney militia.... These creatures were evidently engaged in conversation; their gesticulation, more particularly the varied action of their hands and arms, appeared impassioned and emphatic. We hence inferred that they were rational ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who, after the fashion of "The North American Review," should be upon all occasions merely "quiet," must necessarily upon many occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be considered "easy" or "natural" than a Cockney exquisite, or than the sleeping Beauty in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... she reached home just before midnight, her mind was made up. Her husband had always insisted that the children should be well fed and healthy. He had spoken with a countryman's contempt of the meagre Cockney bodies around them. One at least should go. She lit the candle, and stood listening to their sleep. Suddenly the further question came—which of the four? Should it be Alfred, the child of her girlhood, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a stranger history than The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence. Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is beloved by the Turk's daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by her released. The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local bride, but "orders another ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... said Wright, "but originally he was a Cockney, from the London slums. And I believe I am the only person ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... born one of us, but she is like us all the same, and I'll be sorely grieved if she'll give up her light-heartedness and her pleasantry to win that Cockney.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... children," writes Mr. Maurice Kingsley, "Uncle Henry's settling in Eversley was a great event.... At times he fairly bubbled over with humour; while his knowledge of slang—Burschen, Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms—was awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the world, the Cockney has the queerest notions about vegetable nature. Show him the first letter of the alphabet, for instance, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... the platform-gate as herself a very tall, slim, dandy of an officer was bending over a smartly-dressed girl, smiling at her and whispering. Suddenly the girl turned from him with a disdainful toss of the head and said in a loud, clear Cockney voice: ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... perfect life you seem to live here! I have always felt rather contemptuously towards the poets before, with their wishes, "Mine be a cot beside a hill," and that sort of thing: but now I am afraid that the truth is, I have been nothing better than a cockney. Just now I feel as if twenty years' hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year of such an exquisite serene life as this—such skies!' looking up—'such crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!' pointing ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on the log, laughs heartily. He produces another cigarette, and tries in vain to light it. Then, as an atrocious little cockney enters whistling gaily, he addresses him ...
— The Noble Lord - A Comedy in One Act • Percival Wilde
... from the resident of any other urban community throughout the world. Since the spell which is recorded as first having fallen upon the ear of Whittington, the sound of Bow Bells is the only true and harmonious ring which, to the ears of the real cockney, recalls all that is most loved in the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... made next morning, the cockney as usual, taking the lead. One man followed him, but kept losing ground purposely, merely keeping the leader in sight; the others did the same. Before the last man had lost sight of the camp, he could ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... his measure in the House of Commons. This person was a member who was not connected with the government, and who neither had, nor deserved to have, the ear of the House, a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be supposed that these strange proceedings produced a ferment through the whole political world. The city was in commotion. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rivers. Owing to the difficulty of procuring summer carriages, and in some decree to the rudeness of the soil, in the Upper Province especially, boats are in much more general use; and excursions on the water, are as common to that class "whose only toil is pleasure." as cockney trips to Richmond, or to any other of the thousand and one places of resort, which have sprung into existence, within twenty miles of the Metropolis of England. Not confined, however, to picking daisies for their doxies, as these said cockneys do, or carving their vulgar names on ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... by the natives, "Fleen" by etymologists, and "Flegney" by the rare intrusive Cockney—had doubtless been a prosperous little port, but the encroaching sea had long since killed its trade, scattered its inhabitants, and reduced it to a spectre of human habitation compelled to keep the scene of its former activities after life had departed. Half the stone ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... London. Swaddled in money by his successful wife, he considered her a goddess. She poured the thousands into Coutts' Bank, and with the arrival of each fresh thousand he was more firmly convinced that she was a goddess. To say he looked up to her would be too mild. As the Cockney tourist in Chamounix peers at the summit of Mont Blanc, he peered at Mrs. Greyne. And when, finally, she bought the lease of the mansion in Belgrave Square, he knew ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... interlarded, as it was, with scraps of Greek and Hebrew, which no one understood, but every one expected as their right (for a preacher was nothing then who could not prove himself "a good Latiner"); and graced, moreover, by a somewhat pedantic and lengthy refutation from Scripture of Dan Horace's cockney horror of the sea— ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... for fear he should see his own reflection. He made his way unfalteringly to an outfitter's shop, and from there, with a bundle under his arm, to the baths. It was a very different Alfred Burton indeed who, an hour or two later, issued forth into the streets. Gone was the Cockney young man with the sandy moustache, the cheap silk hat worn at various angles to give himself a rakish air, the flashy clothes, cheap and pretentious, the assured, not to say bumptious air so sedulously ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... overbearing bully—Yah! Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!—it put me out dreadfully, and I am speaking in haste, for Ripsy is a fine, trustworthy man—my best non-com—to complain to me about you making a chum, a regular companion, of that confounded, low-bred cockney rascal, Pegg. Hang him! I'll have his peg sharpened and make him spin in a more upright manner before I have done with him! Ripsy told me that the fellow was on fatigue-work—takes advantage of the freedom of his ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... didn't want to know it; another wasn't certain whether he was a tallow-chandler or a button-maker; a third, who had met with him somewhere, described him as a damned ass; a fourth said, 'Oh, don't be hard on him; he's only a vulgar old Cockney, without an h in his whole composition.' A chorus of general agreement followed, as the dinner-hour approached: 'What a bore!' I whispered to my friend, 'Why do they go?' He answered, 'You see, one must do this sort of thing.' And when we got ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... they had gained below. Let them remember that the great Sutherlandshire sportsman and sporting writer, the late Mr. St. John, was once a fine gentleman about town; that Christopher North was an Edinburgh Professor, a man of city learning and city cultivation; and, as one more plea for our cockney chalk-streams of the south, that Mr. Scrope (who passed many pleasant years respected and beloved by Kennet side, with Purdy at his heels) enjoyed, they say, the killing of a Littlecote trout as heartily as he did ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... splendour, and horses that actually curveted, as they swirled maddeningly round to the strains of 'The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.' How I longed to join the wild riders! But though I am a brave man, I confess that to ride a merry-go-round in front of a laughter-loving Cockney public is more than I can dare. I had to content myself with watching the faces of the riders. I noticed particularly one bright-eyed little girl, whose whole passionate young soul seemed to be on fire with ecstasy, and for whom it was not difficult to prophesy trouble ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Coldstream Guards as he watched a dense mass of Germans emerging to the attack from a wood, and prepared to meet them with the bayonet. When first the fierce German searchlights were turned on the British lines a little cockney in the Middlesex Regiment exclaimed to his comrade: "Lord, Bill, it's just like a play, an' us in the limelight"; and as the artillery fusillade passed over their heads, and a great ironical cheer rose from the British trenches, he added: "But it's the Kaiser ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... from Lufa, concerning a point in rhythm which perplexed her. She had a good ear, and was conscientious in her mechanics. There was not a cockney-rhyme from beginning to end of her poem, which is more than the uninitiated will give its weight to. But she understood nothing of the broken music which a master of verse will turn to such high service. There are lines in Milton which Walter, who knew far more than ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... ply up and down the river during Henley week discovered the "Ammurikins," as they called us, and we had our first encounter that night with the Thames nigger, a creature painfully unlike that delightful commodity at home. The Thames nigger is generally a cockney covered with blackening, which only alters his skin and does not change his accent. To us it sounded deliciously funny to hear this self-styled African call us "Leddies," and say "Halways" and say "'Aven't yer, now?" They sang in a very indifferent manner, but were rather quick ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell |
