"Loafer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sure I can tell the difference between a looker-on, a mere loafer, and a man who does," said ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... A larger allowance of grub We need than is due if we shirk Exertion, and lounge in a pub; For the loafer who rests in a chair Everlastingly puffing at "cigs" Can live pretty nearly on air, So I gather at least ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any one else who did. It was the rule that the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... greybeard. "Our limbs, our blood, our lives—what do they care so long as the Barbarians are held off, and they are left in peace to their feastings and their circus? Free bread, free wine, free games—everything for the loafer at Rome. For us the frontier guard ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... languid in the village, and if any occurred at all it would be on the loafer's bench at one or the other side of the bridge. When cooler weather came the group of local wits gathered in Riverboro, either at Uncle Bart's joiner's shop or at the brick store, according to fancy. The latter place was perhaps the favorite for Riverboro ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... returned Malcolm smiling. "Mr. Carlyon is certainly no loafer—he looks the incarnation ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... calculated the cost of production of a producer; and if a noble loafer costs far more to society than a worker, it remains to be seen whether a robust day-labourer does not cost more to society than a skilled artisan, when we have taken into account infant-mortality among the poor, the ravages of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Street." Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a point in the development of his character that he missed or failed to chuckle over. Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept nothing back. He now concluded it was a good time to find out about Cox. He ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... by some other day, preferably Saturday, there would be more happiness and virtue in the world. Mrs. Pepperall used to say that her boy was quite a ph'losopher in his way. Mr. Pepperall said he was a hopeless loafer and spent more time deciding whether he'd ought to do this or that than it would have taken to do 'em both twice. Whereupon Mrs. Pepperall, whose maiden name was Boody—daughter of Mrs. Ex-County-Clerk Boody—would remind her husband that he was only a Pepperall, after all, while ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... we met he ordered me from his office. I told you, Mr. Magee, that the Suburban Railway once promised to make use of my invention. Then Mr. Kendrick went away—and this man took charge. When I came around to the offices again—he laughed at me. When I came the second time, he called me a loafer ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... there's a great deal here that I've never read, and I add to it continually. The worst of it is," he said, laughing, "that we can't afford it. It's very hard on Mary and the wife, but I'm a rotten loafer, and that's the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... or low-bred vagrant, but beneath its hair and dirt showed as the mask of a man who might have fallen from high places. Even his curses went to prove it. They were not the dull profanities of the loafer, but were varied, colorful, imaginative, such curses as might come from one ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... wide rim of his hat, arranged his scarf, and tightened his belt. The horse's furnishings told him that the stranger was not a low-down prairie loafer. He strode to the veranda steps, and, crossing to the open door, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer" wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and worse. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... I used to run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of boots while ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not appear whence ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... poverty that is ugly and vile, and sometimes even vicious and criminal. How is it to be expected that the bad, rich man will take pity on the sorrows of the poor man, if this poor man is always presented to him as an escaped convict or a night loafer? It is very evident that the people, as presented to us in the Mysteres de Paris, are not particularly congenial to us, and we should have no wish to make the acquaintance of the "Chourineur." In order to bring about conversions, George Sand has more faith in gentle, agreeable ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Now what am I, Miss McQuinch? A worker. I belonged and belong to the class that keeps up the world by its millions of serviceable hands and serviceable brains. All the pride of caste in me settles on that point. I admit no loafer as my equal. The man who is working at the bench is my equal, whether he can do my day's work or not, provided he is doing the best he can. But the man who does not work anyhow, and the class that does not work, is a class below mine. When I annoyed Marian by refusing to wear ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... right John Convert may be earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, entirely ignorant of the fact that he is a millionaire by birth, for it was his father's intention never to disclose this secret to him, preferring that he should spend his time as a useful laborer, rather than a moneyed loafer, living without work. Whether he resembles me at this age or not, I cannot say. Perhaps not, for my hair has become prematurely white from sin and worry. Then again, he may wear a beard, while my ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... reach 10,000. Possibly the Viceroy sent the men because he did not feel strong enough to defy Peking altogether, because failure to help the court would [Page 240] have excited popular reprobation, and also in order to get rid of a considerable part of the dangerous 'loafer' class. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... brilliant of Socialist writers and most provoking of men; a man with a perfect genius for "aggravating" the enthusiastically earnest, and with a passion for representing himself as a scoundrel. On my first experience of him on the platform at South Place Institute he described himself as a "loafer," and I gave an angry snarl at him in the Reformer, for a loafer was my detestation, and behold! I found that he was very poor, because he was a writer with principles and preferred starving his body to ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... man of that fellow, if I had him in the business with me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer 'round—I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that city office, with an assistant, and that we only saw him for an instant in the lift. Well, that assistant was a very intelligent man of mine, named Corder—a fellow with a wonderful memory for a face. Now Corder is on another case just now, and we'd put him on, dressed like a loafer, to hang about Whitehall and the neighbourhood, watching for some one we want. Well, this morning there came an urgent message to the Yard from the Admiralty, to ask for a responsible official at once, and I was sent. As I came along I saw Corder lounging about, and of course I took no notice—it ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... match in which he had figured so ignominiously, Saurin had become a confirmed loafer, and frequented the old reprobate's yard almost daily. And, indeed, a new attraction had been added to the establishment. Wobbler, the pedestrian, a candidate for the ten-miles championship of Somersetshire, was residing there during his training for that world-renowned contest. It cannot ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... esteem of his men. The story had got noised about that while we lay in camp just before Fair Oaks, a loafer about his headquarters addressed insulting language to a woman who was employed in doing certain domestic work and who followed up the army. The general heard the vile talk of the fellow from his tent. He ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... retreat when I ran towards her, and to pursue when I fled. It was a very significant symbol. Stand a little apart, and things of their own accord will come more than half-way. Nobody ever goes to meet a loafer. Self-centred, domesticated persons attract. What would be the value of the heavens, if we could bring the stars into our lap? They cannot be approached or appropriated. Upon the highest mountain the horizon sinks you in a valley, and far ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... ordered me to move on, as if I were a common loafer," he said, with a soft chuckle. "I'm used to it, however. They ran me out of Meshed for taking snapshots; they banished me from Damascus, and they all but kicked me out of Jerusalem—I won't say why. But where have you kept yourself? Why have you avoided me? After ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to know the best things on earth, just to chuck it all and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, and my instincts tell me to stay ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the stories told of them in Cadiz. I gave my carpet-bag to a boy, who conducted me along the hot and dusty banks to the bridge over the Guadalquivir, where he turned into the city. On passing the gate, two loafer-like guards stopped my baggage, notwithstanding it had already been examined. "What!" said I, "do you examine twice on entering Seville?" "Yes," answered one; "twice, and even three times;" but added in a lower ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... matter of fact, I don't blame you for giving me a scare, my dear sister. I have been a shameless loafer. I'm going to reform and lift the burden of business off your shoulders—let you rest the remainder ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... see, that's the proper place for them. They belong to a Loafer class. They are no better mentally or morally than any of the other loafers in that division; neither are they of any more use. Of course, when we consider them in relation to the amount they consume of the things produced by others, they are not so harmful as the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... have the value of almost contemporaneous workmanship, and most probably the authority, either directly or indirectly, of an eye-witness. It may be as well to remember that to that gorgeous ceremony there was no possibility of any mere loafer, or any wandering unauthorised artist being admitted, because it is on record that everyone without a special permit was cleared out of the country in a circle of some four leagues; and it is not too much to imagine that even if one who had had a hand in ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... ever going to clear out of this, you loafer? We know all about factory hands of your sort. A big, strong, young chap! You aren't even drunk. What do you want here? You don't frighten us. Take yourself and your ugly ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... "A soldier ain't a loafer, and it takes nerve to be a soldier. It's a job for the bravest kind of a man," retorted Jud ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... most amazing cuckoo in many directions," said the Nilghai, still chuckling over the thought of the dinner. "Never mind. We had both been working very hard, and it was your unearned increment we spent, and as you're only a loafer it didn't matter." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... what impressed us most—we almost laughed to see her—was the lubber of the fleet. She was twice the tonnage of most of us, and early in the run across she had brought anguish to our souls by the way she lagged. "You bum, you loafer, you old cart-horse, why don't you move up?" our soldiers used to yell across at her. She had not then enough men in her steam department to keep her engines warm, so she reported. But now she had steam enough. She was wide and high, a huge hulk ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... silly!" he said. "I am delighted to be of use for a change. I don't do much worth the doing, being more or less of a loafer. It is good for me to exercise my ingenuity now and then. It ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Hegner turned a glance of contempt on Smith. "He's a bum an' a loafer, He won't learn an' he won't try to work. Why, Braun, who'd ought to be in bed instead of at a lathe, turns out half as much again as him. How can I jack the other men up if I let him lag behind? An' this morning I told him I'd had enough of his soldierin' an' what I thought he was good ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for I felt, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... lift to ascend he rushed to the staircase, and sweating with terror gained the street and bribed a loafer to ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... of steel, "when John Ward ties the can to a man, that man knows what 'tis for. When he give Jim Billings his time last week, he says to him, says he, 'Jim, I'm sorry for y'. Not because I'm fir'in' y',' says he, 'but because y're such a loafer that y're no good to yerself nor to anybody else—y're a disgrace to the Mill,' says he, 'and to every honest working man in it.' An' Jim, he never give a word back—just hung his head an' got out of sight like a dog with his tail between ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... not," agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. Best to keep ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... mould you could work out a philosophy from experience that would apply to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer; that's where fate flew up and struck at me—a deserved blow. But when I saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going clear downhill. Tom's probably forgotten me by this time; he never ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... in this town, mother," Fred replied with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "I should be worse than a loafer to remain idle while you were working, and by keeping my eyes open that crowd can't do very ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... said a clear, sarcastic voice near them; and a young man, bearing the unmistakable stamp of the genteel loafer about him, stretched out a small white hand, with a large diamond glittering on the little finger, and shook Charley's over the back of ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... respectably-dressed colored men and women for venturing no further even than into the cabins of ferry boats plying between opposite cities; of colored ladies made to get out of the cars in which they had found seats—in cars in which the vilest loafer, provided his skin be white might sit unmolested; of respectable clergymen having their clothes torn from their backs, because they presumed to ask in a quiet manner that they might have berths in the cabins of steamers on which they were ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... county family. Few would have recognized in the whiskered blear-eyed, stumbling creature an educated Englishman of more than middle-class extraction. In drink an extraordinary thing occurred. He then became sober, knew himself, and quoted from the classics; when sober, he was the sullen loafer, the unmannerly cad, and his service as guide alone redeemed him from starvation and neglect. Ringfield, who had seen him, as he supposed, drunk on the Saturday afternoon when Miss Clairville's departure had been made ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... of mercy can walk unattended and unharmed through our "Reservation" at midnight. She can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the White-chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is stilled and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen creatures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and men steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove their hats as a tribute to noble womanhood. The very atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming and the howl of hell's ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's been ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... singers, and appealing to the understandings of those who he well knew would effectively carry his message to the very hearths of the poorest labourers. Courtier and student, tradesman and freeman, thief and prostitute, beggar and loafer, all were alike carried by an indignation which launched them on a maelstrom of enthusiasm. So general became the outcry that, in Coxe's words, "the lords justices refused to issue the orders for the circulation of the coin.... People of all descriptions and parties flocked in crowds to the bankers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... the larger apes who come to view— The hoodlum with his horrible grimace, Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace, Significant reminders of the time When hunters, not policemen, made him climb; The lady loafer with her draggling "trail," That free translation of an ancient tail; The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit, Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot; The painted actress throwing down the gage To elder artists of the sylvan stage, Proving that in the time of Noah's flood Two ape-skins ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and never enter it again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford and her grandson for the insult offered them by your vile accusations. If it were not for soiling my hands, I would throw you down the steps,' he continued, as he stood holding the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... turned his face away, and then added dreamily, "a long time, a very long time ago, and met some fairly decent people. And I no more believe that Mr. de Vere comes from a good family than I do that Nathaniel Burrowes, a low, broken-down New Orleans wharf-loafer, comes from one of the 'first families in Virginia' that American newspapers are always blathering about" "What is wrong with him, Mr. Blount?" "Nothing from your point of view—everything from mine. And, so far as I am concerned, I don't mean to have anything to do with ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had so come to love. Look at it. Its trunk, naked as the supports of a scarecrow, suggesting mighty strength, indolence and poverty. There, above, its ragged garments—unwholesome, dirty, like the garments of some tramping, villainous, degraded loafer. And yet, with it all, the old tree looked so ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... much for him. He'll be lying on his back now by the river thinking poetry. This country's just thick with reposeful Britishers nobody at home has any use for, and their kind friends ship off onto us. In a way I'm sorry. He lit out hungry, and he didn't look like a loafer." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... have already dealt. The case is the same with your second favourite phrase; that the British army is mercenary. You learnt it in books and not in battlefields; and I should like to be present at a scene in which you tried to bribe the most miserable little loafer in Hammersmith as if he were a cynical condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city. It is not the fact, my dear sir. You have been misinformed. The British Army is not at this moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army. It is a volunteer army in the strict sense of ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... was a well-known character in Sulphide. Though a prospector all summer, he was a bar-room loafer all winter, spending his time hanging around the saloons, and doing only work enough in the way of odd jobs to keep himself from starving until spring came round again, when Yetmore would provide for ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... of you, cried the prefect of studies from the door. Father Dolan will be in every day to see if any boy, any lazy idle little loafer wants flogging. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the newcomer. "Wal, yes, that'll do. You might call him an accident, poor beggar, for he's about played down to the lowest level. Some'd call him a loafer, but we'll say accident—fatal accident, for I'm thinking he's too far gone for you, friend Lee, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... those whose tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of loafer. His cabin was recognized as a center of disorder and was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... my Saturday afternoon. Dont flatter yourself that I'm a loafer or a criminal. I'm a cashier; and I defy you to say that my cash has ever been a farthing wrong. Ive a right to call you to account because my hands ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... and remained upon him with steady insistence. "He's not going to turn into a fancy-dress loafer, my lord," he said at length in his soft, deliberate voice. "I'll ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... professors and to abjure German science. The doings of every scapegrace in an American university, of every silly woman in Chicago, of every blackguard in New York, of every snob at Newport, of every desperado in the Rocky Mountains, of every club loafer anywhere, were served up as typical examples of American life. The municipal governments of our country, and especially that of New York, were an exhaustless quarry from which specimens of every kind of scoundrelism ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... school, but I don't believe there's half-a-dozen kids on the diggin's. They'd be of no mortal use except to tumble down shafts. Fact is, if you are really hard up, you can be a peeler. Up at the camp they'll take on any useless loafer wot's able to carry a carbine, and they'll give you tucker, and you can keep your shirt clean. But, mind, if you do join the Joeys, I hope you'll be shot. I'd shoot the hull blessed lot of 'em if I had my way. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels that rub shoulders ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... want a young man who has got brains, but is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don't stop there. We're up against it here, Dalyrimple. We've got to get some young men into politics—you know the old blood that's been running on the party ticket year in and ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... machinery. Rosalie pushed open the door of one of the workshops and took Perrine into a long room. There was a deafening roar from the thousand tiny machines, yet above the noise they could hear a man calling out: "Ah, there you are, you loafer!" ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame waited on ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... a hundred or so on the side," says he, swellin' his chest out. "And, say, I guess I got it some on the rest of the family. You know how they used me,—like dirt, the old lady callin' me a loafer, and Annie so stuck up on livin' in an elevator apartment she wouldn't have me around. Maggie too! Didn't I hand it to her, though? Notice me frost her, eh? But I said I'd show 'em some day. Guess I've delivered ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... our cruise, when an old white man, locally known as "Bandy Tom," came up from the yard, and sat down on the verandah steps near us. Old Tom was a character, and well known all over Polynesia as an inveterate old loafer and beachcomber. He was a deserter from the navy, and for over forty years had wandered about the South Pacific, sometimes working honestly for a living, sometimes dishonestly, but usually loafing upon some native community, until they tired of him and made him seek ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... that cuts my eyeballs open, and work till the sweat freezes on my face, and then come home to find you loafing by the fire as if you were a house cat—purring and rubbing against my legs when I come in," he snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along with a stick. I used to get some work out of you then. But you think you're too big ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... dare to show his face among decent working people. Honor the uniform! Honor that which gives a free license to kill, if the victim happens to be a worker? Honor that which stands for oppression, for the loafer against the worker, for the master against the slave? Honor that which causes a worker to become a traitor to his class, to forget his ties of blood, and for pay to deliver himself over body and soul to his natural enemy, the capitalist class? Honor the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... called "Fatty" ran up and down the station platform. "Where is that bundle of Omaha papers, you Irish loafer?" he shouted, shaking his fist at Jerry Donlin who stood upon a truck at the front of the train, up- ending trunks into the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... in half a dozen villages, where he was the life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other ne'er-do-weels. You ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as if they would never break up, and though the persons in the piece mean no harm, they are nearly as noxious to sleep as the loud musical water-side rough or public-house loafer. Dogs, too, like men, seem to feel it incumbent on them to howl more than usual in hot weather, and to bay the moon with particular earnestness in July. No enemy of sleep is deadlier than a dear, good, affectionate dog, whose owners next door ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... bent his ear to listen. "Job, let's see it. Is it in there—'red like crimson, white as wool'? Oh, no, my sins are too red for that! Listen, Job, I want to tell you. I am dying a poor lost sinner, but I was not always a street loafer, kicked and cuffed by the world. Hear me, my boy! Would you believe that I was once a mother's blue-eyed boy in old New Hampshire? Oh, such a mother! She's up where the angels are now. I can feel the soft touch ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... necessary to let him live without working. I have him placed now. I know his type. I could show you a thousand men in this city in exactly the same position. They don't starve and they don't work. This young man of yours is a loafer." ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... letter is Loafer Redhorse, a son-in-law of the Titon Chief, Swift Bear, whose band have colonized as homesteaders along the Niobrara River near the mouth of Keya Paha River. Their colony is one hundred and thirty miles ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 2, February 1888 • Various
... work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making estimates of the price to be paid for ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... listens to the voices of the dead In the City as the sun sinks low; And his hand begins to tremble and his face to smoulder red As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled, For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led Through the land where ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... his desk, and in the daytime he displayed an aversion for the streets, which was more than his partner did, for the industrious Tom, undergoing quite as remarkable an alteration of habit, became, all at once, little better than a corner-loafer. His favorite lounging-place was a small drug-store where Carewe Street debouched upon Main; nevertheless, so adhesive is a reputation once fastened, his air of being there upon business deceived everyone ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and paid your wages there would be no hope. That forty pounds even, if they were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind words; and then when he had ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... loafer, as indeed he was. Yet love is blind, and as yet Jean would believe nothing to his discredit, crushing out any suspicion that had arisen ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... at will in S. Mark's as long as one wishes, free and unharassed; but a ticket is required for the galleries and a ticket for the choir and treasury; and the Baptistery and Zeno chapel can be entered only by grace of a loafer with a key who expects something in return for opening it. The history of this loafer's privilege I have not obtained, and it would be interesting to learn by what authority he is there, for he has no uniform and he accepts ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... him there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he makes up his mind that a well-lighted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... away from this house, you loafer or I'll call the police. No one by that name ain't here. Now, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Denboro, the six everlasting, idle, monotonous years, had had their effect. I had grown hardened and had come to accept my fate, at first rebelliously, then with more of Lute's peculiar kind of philosophy. Circumstances had doomed me to be a good-for-nothing, a gentleman loafer without the usual excuse—money—and, as it was my doom, I forced myself to accept it, if not with pleasure, at least with resignation. And I determined to get whatever pleasure there might be in it. So, when I saw the majority of the human race, each with ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sleighs got away at 3:00 p. m. Twenty-five more at 7:00 p. m. At 9:30 we got away with the remainder of company. Have a good sleigh and can sleep. Here is Yural and I must awake and telephone to Pinega to see how situation stands. Loafer in telegraph office informs us of the battle today resulting in defeat of White Guards, the volunteers of Pinega who were supporting the hundred Americans. Bad news. It is desperately cold. No more sleeping. The river road is ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... absolutely. It was true of him as with those devils that are called wicked, but in whom one discovers good qualities when one associates with them. And I am disposed to think that injustice has been done Putois. Madame Cornouiller, who, warned against him, had at once suspected him of being a loafer, a drunkard, and a robber, reflected that since my mother, who was not rich, employed him, it was because he was satisfied with little, and asked herself if she would not do well to have him work instead of her gardener, who had a better reputation, but expected more. The time had come for ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... and all sort of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... although by this means the armies might be kept full, the new men were very inferior to those who had responded voluntarily to the earlier calls. Every knave in the country adopted the lucrative and tolerably safe occupation of "bounty-jumping," and every worthless loafer was sent to the front, whence he escaped at the first opportunity to sell himself anew and to be counted again. The material of the army suffered great depreciation, which was only imperfectly offset by the improvement of the military machine, whereby a more effective ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... When a loafer of this sort finds that he can get nothing more out of you, he moves his family and goods to some other part of the country; he then begins the old game with somebody else, borrowing a sovereign off you for the expense of moving. As for ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of New York, while trying to induce a recalcitrant loafer to part with a dollar, he remembered that he had not met anyone so stubborn as Biddy. She had given very little, and yet she seemed to be curiously mixed up with the building of the church. She was the last person he saw on his ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... scallywag," Mr. Mason declared, "and if you call him names like loafer and scallywag ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... pronounced Christopher conclusively. "And the Millers are the best family hereabouts, leaving the kunnel's out. And Jeff's well off—nobody knows how well, I reckon, but I can guess, being his land neighbour. Jeff ain't no fool nor loafer, if ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... English by the Carl Rosa Opera Company, is redolent of Mascagni's influence, but the nauseating incidents of the plot make 'Cavalleria,' by comparison, seem chaste and classical. The libretto deals with the vengeance wreaked by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... ever hear a loafer on a corner using profane and obscene language? I'll warrant most of you have, and I'll warrant that you were thoroughly disgusted. You looked on the fellow as low, coarse, cheap, unfit to associate with respectable persons. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... money for them, for those loafers? He would have come once, twice, three times, four times, five times! That means two five-franc pieces, two five-franc pieces, for sure. And what would he have done, the loafer, tell me, what would he have ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... who are here,' she said, 'the great majority of men at all open-air meetings seem to be loafers. Woman—whatever else she may or may not be—isn't a loafer!' Through Borrodaile's laugh she persisted. 'A woman always seems to have something to do, even if it's of the silliest description. Yes, and if she's a decent person at all, she's not hanging about at street corners waiting ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... was opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... and slouched over to a chair. He was young Isaacstein, son of the Tarrong storekeeper, a would-be sportsman, would-be gambler, would-be lady-killer, would-be everything, who only succeeded in making himself a cheap bar-room loafer; but he was quite satisfied that he was ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... The waterman, a weedy loafer with a bottle nose and watery blue eyes, agreed to pull across for threepence; but no sooner were they embarked and on the tide-way, than he lay on his oars and jerked his thumb towards the moving ship. "Make it a crown, ma'am, and I'll overhaul ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... America all insects, especially Coleoptera. Bummer,(Amer.) - A fellow haunting low taverns; applied during the late civil war in the United States to hangers-on of the army. Probably a corruption of the German bummler(loafer). Bumming - From Bummer. Bushwhackers - Guerillas. Bust his shell - Broke his head. Butterbrod,(Ger.) - Buttered bread. By-Nearly; Beinahe ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... acknowledge. And, by the way, this reminds me that I wanted to call these "Charcoal Sketches,"—that title being mine long before the late Joseph C. Neal borrowed it of me without leave, and used it for his "Loafer" and a variety of capital sketches, which have been attributed to me, and still are, notwithstanding my denials. I wrote one number only,—the first. It was a Yankee sketch; while his were street sketches, and among the best in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... not going to tell my young readers now how Bobby came out in the end; but I can confidently say that, if he had waited for "something to turn up," he would have become a vagabond, a loafer, out of money, out at the elbows, and out of patience with ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... by my feeble little cracks was that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer with his ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various |
