"Loiterer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better class, was made of glass instead of oiled paper, which supplied its place in the humbler tenements, till they were out of sight. The drum had some time before ceased its sonorous rattle, indicating thereby that the services had commenced, and the streets were bare of the last loiterer. Spikeman then resumed his seat, listening and glancing occasionally at the door, as if he was expecting some one to enter. At last, as if tired of waiting, he rose, and going to the door, called softly, "Prudence." No answer was returned, and in ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he replied to a question by a chance loiterer into the Court seemed to imply the contrary. The question was, what the Devil he was doing that for?—and referred to the fact that he was walking on his hands. His answer was, that it was because he wasn't at Church. Not that all absentees from religious ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... then of yesterday, Who bore me gifts of attar and of myrrh, And leaves of roses delicate that were Sprung from a garden-close in far Cathay; While I, unheeding, let them pass their way Nor cared for all the gifts they might confer, Watching in vain for one dear loiterer, Who never dreamed adown ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... The poor loiterer, whose shop had confined him, or whose wife had locked him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and, at last, inquires what was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the narrator, but that it spoke ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... know not love who sip it at the spring. Youth is a fragile child that plays at love, Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail, Mimics the passion of the gathered years, And is a loiterer on the shallow bank Of the great flood that we have ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... out i' the midst o' my clanin'? What came I out for to see? Was it to pass the time o' day wi' an aged shaken-by-the-wind kind o' loiterer they ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great forests of France except that of Fontainebleau, where nature is sometimes seen in her most picturesque form. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of Saint Germain, the wild boar still makes his savage lair; and still the loiterer, in these lengthened alleys, is startled by a roebuck or a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "Loiterer or not, he is the first to return from this long and weary chase," said Ruth, breathing heavily, like one who regretted that the truth were so. "Go thou to the postern, and admit him, girl. I ordered bolts to be drawn, for I like ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. The shouts of revelry had died away; the roar of the lion had ceased; the last loiterer had retired from the banquet, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, silvered the dew-drop on the corselet of the Roman sentinel, and tipped the dark waters of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... To the great Strife that, like a sea, O'erswept His soul tumultuously, Whose face gleams on me like a star— A star that gleams through murky clouds— As here begirt by struggling crowds A spell-bound Loiterer I stand, Before a print-shop in the Strand? What are your eager hopes and fears Whose minutes wither men like years— Your schemes defeated or fulfill'd, To the emotions dread that thrill'd His frame on that October night, When, watching by the lonely mast, He saw on shore ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Stall-keepers whose occupation was partly gone, were healed, and where gloom was spreading, wreathed smiles once more prevailed. Even now these Opera-glasses are rather too powerful. Still, "let us see ourselves as others see us," is a good practical motto for the loiterer in the lobby, as he catches sight of himself, en passant, and wonders who that chap is, whose face he has seen somewhere before, but whose name he can't for the life of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... uplifting of the heart. The others tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog; while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap. A loiterer you had need to be, did you choose one of them,—so many were the tiny hands thrust out to detain you, from this side and that. But this other was of a sterner sort, and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... drumming the people poured out from every gate of the garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed the portals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue de Rivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left to the silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used to wonder, as I looked through ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... closed hand; still lays down the pallet and, lighting a cigar, throws himself into the huge easy-chair, hanging one leg over the chair-arm and gazing, as he swings his foot, at something which does not seem to be in the room. Cheerful and gay, he has always a word of welcome for the loiterer who returns to Italy by visiting the painters; even if the loiterer find him with the foot idly swinging and the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... To the Loiterer, the Tourist, or the Antiquary: the ivy-covered ruins of Restormel Castle will amply repay a visit, inasmuch as the remains of its former grandeur must, by the very nature of things, induce feelings of the highest and most dignified kind; they ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Almost as great, if of different kind, was the woman's curiosity at sight of the caged beauties, waiting the summons of those far better supplied with cash than her own spouse. Finally in indignation she dragged away the loiterer; and muttering rebuke followed after the jingle of the rings on his pilgrim's staff. They were passing through the Go Bancho[u], along the long stretch of yashiki wall. From a postern gate came forth a woman. The light of her lantern fell on the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... leaving such instructions with the Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing, Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the bell holds its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies away. The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me, and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh, I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising congregation reaches my ears. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it gates at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty; for the time Of blossoms and green leaves ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... wall she brought up, with a sudden bump, at the back of the stairway. Then she deliberated. If she went around to the front so as to get access to the steps, she might pass in range of the loiterer whom she mistrusted. That risk she would not incur. Examining the wall that enclosed the box-like stairway as best she could in the dark, she found it rickety, full of holes and cracks, and she decided she would climb it. A sheer perpendicular board wall, some twelve or fifteen feet high, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... was the pattern of a loiterer. I saw him stop on the knoll and look widely about him. Then he stooped down as though searching for something, then moved slowly forward for a few steps. Just at that point in the road lies a great smooth boulder which road-makers long since dead had rolled ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... were air and water," how crass and dull in comparison with other more subtle fluids; he added that speech had no less deceived him, seeming, as it did, to be such a perfect messenger of thought, and being after all nothing but a shuffler and a loiterer. ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... even around country churches you will find a wonderful exhibition of skulls, and crossbones, and noseless angels, and trumpets pealing for the Judgment Day. Every mason was a pedestrian Holbein: he had a deep consciousness of death, and loved to put its terrors pithily before the churchyard loiterer; he was brimful of rough hints upon mortality, and any dead farmer was seized upon to be a text. The classical examples of this art are in Greyfriars. In their time, these were doubtless costly monuments, and reckoned of a very elegant proportion by contemporaries; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me whether he is generally a loiterer on duty. I do not inquire whether he is a laggard in his duty to you, but whether, mounted on a good hunter, he could get over twenty miles, in eight or ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time the Syndic watched the loiterer without seeing him. What did it matter to a dying man—a man whom heaven, impassive, abandoned to the evil powers—who came or who went? But by-and-by his eyes conveyed the identity of the man to his brain; ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... will not wait the loiterer's time Who keeps so long away; So others wear the broom and climb The hedgerows ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... rich the wave, in front, imprest With evening twilights summer hues, While, facing thus the crimson west, The boat her silent path pursues! And see how dark the backward stream! A little moment past, so smiling! And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam, Some other loiterer beguiling. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... adventures of Eastern wanderings, and full of golden dreams of poetry before it settles into authorship or action! She missed the brilliant errors, the daring aspirations,—even the animated gestures and eager eloquence,—that had interested and enamoured her in the loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the tomb-like chambers of Pompeii. For the Maltravers now before her—wiser, better, nobler, even handsomer than of yore (for he was one whom manhood became better than youth)—the Frenchwoman could at any period have felt friendship ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw in an instant that the order was meant for him and for no one else—he being the only outsider likely to come under the head of "loiterer." A sharp glance revealed the fact that not only were the officers watching the little scene, but others in the balcony were ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... wheelwright's, where the linen hung on poles between the elms, and once Frank saw the provoking boy hide behind the cricketers' tent and remain watching the match. For half an hour the question—letters or no letters—hung in suspense, and when the loiterer came, stopping every minute to see where the ball was hit to, the joy, heightened by anticipation, was great in receiving a packet of newspapers and various correspondence. Frank often went to meet him. True, he might have ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... had stopped, and the last loiterer had taken his place on the oak bench, when as usual two strangers took their places in a seat that was usually occupied by any ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young. But they double the point at last, and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides by and makes no effort to find them. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... wizard who inhabited or haunted the place, his fantastic treasures, his immense age. His windows might be seen glittering afar on stormy nights, with a blaze of golden ornaments, said the more adventurous loiterer. It was not because he was suspicious still, but in a kind of wantonness of affection, and as if by way of giving yet greater zest to the luxury of their mutual trust that Duke Carl added to his announcement of the purposed place and time of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... among our ordinary birds that is most regularly seized with the fit of ecstasy that results in this lyric burst in the air, as I described in my first book, "Wake Robin," over thirty years ago, is the oven-bird, or wood-accentor—the golden-crowned thrush of the old ornithologists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this pretty, speckled-breasted, olive-backed little bird, which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards from him, moving its head as it walks, like a miniature domestic fowl. Most birds ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... shopper is a vagabond at heart—a loiterer by nature. Here is one gazing in a photographer's window to discover someone he knows. These two are not professionals though but a spring couple looking in furniture windows for nest material. And sailors wandering about, nothing but kiddies, lonesome looking and no doubt wishing ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... what tha'rt about!" responded a stout loiterer in our path. "Or I'll take thy ears home ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... face to face with Armand, and gave a sudden little gasp of terror. It was not good these days to come on any loiterer unawares. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the loiterer! He walks as composedly as if nothing weighed upon his conscience! He cares not for the preservation of my honor and my life; since the death of Geronimo he hates and despises me. I must appear angry ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Indiman appeared. He, too, had been unsuccessful; I could see it in his face before he spoke. I told him of the suspicious loiterer across the street. Together we kept close watch on the areaway, and after a while the fellow came out and strolled off with what was intended to pass as jaunty indifference. But ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... exclaimed Harry, as they came up! 'As for you,' said he, turning to Ned, 'such a loiterer should be trusted to escort no one unless it were his grandmother or a rheumatic old lady ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... have thee barter fates with me,— Lone loiterer where the shells like jewels be, Hung on the fringe and frayed hem of the sea. But no,—'twere cruel, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... theatrical loiterer may call to mind many pleasing reminiscences, although mingled with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... with thy foot, or toss with thy finger, shall throw him from thy sight into the foldings of the cloud, and he shall be no more seen till found at the bottom of the cliff dashed to pieces. Make haste, therefore, thou loiterer, if thou wouldst ever prosper and rise to eminence in the work ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... near its townward end, a shelled walk lured on into a musky air of verdurous alleys that led and misled, crossed, doubled, and mazed among flowering shrubs from bower to bower. Out of sight in there the loiterer came at startling moments face to face with banks of splendid bloom in ravishing negligee—Diana disrobed, as it were, while that untiring sensation-hunter, the mocking-bird, leaped and sang and clapped his wings in a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the meantime the prelates take their pleasures. They are lords, and no labourers: but the devil is diligent at his plough. He is no unpreaching prelate: he is no lordly loiterer from his cure, but a busy ploughman; so that among all the prelates, and among all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for my money, for he still applieth his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil: to be diligent in doing of your office, learn of the ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... Slidder was no loiterer on his errands, nevertheless he did not deem it a breach of fidelity to cast an occasional glance into a picture-shop window, or to pause a few seconds now and then to chaff a facetious cabby, or make ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... precipice;—it wears the shape Of a vast building made of many crags; [46] And in the midst is one particular rock 385 That rises like a column from the vale, Whence by our shepherds it is called, THE PILLAR. Upon its aery summit crowned with heath, The loiterer, not unnoticed by his comrades, Lay stretched at ease; but, passing by the place 390 On their return, they found that he was gone. No ill was feared; till one of them by chance Entering, when evening was far spent, the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... so easy hung by the heels," that aged loiterer affirmed, "shipping as he did along with the lady herself, as ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... need care for. Still, it may be better to bring him along. No doubt he slipped off to settle some affair of his own— some pilferings, I presume; and will be found at the ranche. Cabo! take a file of men, go back to the valley, and bring the loiterer along with you. As I intend marching slowly, you'll easily overtake us at ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... those dilatory souls whose tardy repentance involved their sojourn in the Ante-purgatory. To a mind preoccupied, like Browning's, with the failures of aspiring souls, this hint naturally appealed. He imagined his Sordello, too, as a moral loiterer, who, with extraordinary gifts, failed by some inner enervating paralysis[11] to make his spiritual quality explicit; and who impressed contemporaries sufficiently to start a brilliant myth of what he did not do, but had to wait for recognition until he met the eye ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... most terrible imaginations, he watched beside the fatal boxful of dead flesh. The suggestion of the boots that his trunk was full of gold inspired him with all manner of new terrors, if he so much as dared to close an eye; and the presence in the smoking-room, and under an obvious disguise, of the loiterer from Box Court convinced him that he was once more the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for. This is, of course, a survival of the old notion that style is a sort of achievement in decorative art; that fine feathers may do much for the literary bird, at least. The style of a writer like Irving—a mere loiterer in the field of letters—is at best a creditable product of artifice. To him even so much credit has not been always allowed; the clever imitator of Addison—or, as some sager say, of Goldsmith—has not even invented a manner; he ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... back to the yellow school. There was no sentry, and a queer air of forlornness seemed to pervade. We asked a loiterer for the colonel's office. He pointed. We climbed yet another stair and found a pair of large rooms; they were empty. Town papers were scattered on the floor, one table ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Fain would he trifle time with idle talk, And parley with his fate. But 'tis in vain; Not all the lavish odours of the place, Offer'd in incense, can procure his pardon, Or mitigate his doom. A mighty angel, With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay, And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take One last and farewell round. At once he lost His glory and his God. If mortal now, 580 And sorely maim'd, no wonder!—Man has sinn'd. Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures, Evil he needs would try: nor tried in vain. (Dreadful ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the temper of the Timanyoni miners. To be seen crouching on the boss's doorstep would be to take the chance of making a target of himself for the first loiterer of the day shift who happened to look his way. Dismissing the risky expedient, he made a third circuit from moon-glare to shadow, this time upon hands and knees. To the lowly come the rewards of humility. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... brief oblivion to forego Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, And be awhile with me content To stay, a kindly loiterer, here: ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... garb engendered in my mind. Do your work manfully, and flatter not yourself that your most strenuous efforts are able to cross the design of the Almighty. My own poor belief is that He has patience with any but a coward and a loiterer." ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... languor &c. (inactivity) 683; drawl; creeping &c. v., lentor[obs3]. retardation; slackening &c. v.; delay &c. (lateness) 133; claudication|. jog trot, dog trot; mincing steps; slow march, slow time. slow goer[obs3], slow coach, slow back; lingerer, loiterer, sluggard, tortoise, snail; poke* [U.S.]; dawdle &c. (inactive) 683. V. move slowly &c. adv.; creep, crawl, lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... play the loiterer: 'tis enough to note That here in dwarf proportions were expressed The limbs of the great world; its eager strifes Collaterally pourtrayed, as in mock fight, 585 A tournament of blows, some hardly dealt Though short of mortal combat; and whate'er Might in this pageant ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... "There, loiterer! Go call a carriage. The Prince is sleepy—dear sheep!" This last was a tender apostrophe to her snoring friend. Ambroise helped them into a fiacre. When it drove away it was past two o'clock; the house had to be closed. He walked slowly home to his little ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... that famous artificial tree which has so often been described. It is so constructed with root, trunk and branch, leaf and bud as to deceive the most practiced eye. Its shade, with an inviting seat placed beneath it, lures the loiterer, through these Eden groves, to approach and rest. The moment he takes his seat he presses a spring which converts the tree into a shower bath, and from every twig jets of water in a cloud of spray, envelops ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... splash and clink. There was a pleasant murmur of talk in which an Eastern listener would have heard the "r" sound well-defined. There were many couples seated about the pavilion on the benches and railings. It was all busy yet tranquil. Each loiterer had fed, had taken his draught of healing water—and this was the hour of pleasant gossip and repose. Clement fell at last to analyzing the action of the boy who supplied the water at the pool. He slammed the glasses into the pool, and set them on the bench with a click as regular as a pump. Occasionally, ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... put out from the vessel's side, and the two men, keeping her head well to the wind, pulled lustily for shore. Lawless turned to a loiterer. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expedition. It was perhaps the last as it was certainly one of the most extreme examples of that divinity which once hedged the white in Samoa. The feeling was already different in the camp of Mataafa, where the safety of a German loiterer had been a matter of extreme concern. Ten days later, three commissioners, an Englishman, an American, and a German, approached a post of Mataafas, were challenged by an old man with a gun, and mentioned in answer what they were. "Ifea Siamani? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Carlton House Terrace. In a few minutes he was moving through the streets, still familiar yet already curiously changed. Men and women were going about their business as usual, but an air of stupefaction was everywhere apparent. Practically every loiterer was studying a newspaper, every chance acquaintance had stopped to confer with his fellows. War, alternately the joke and bogey of the conversationalist, stretched her grey hands over the sunlit city. Even the lightest-hearted felt a thrill of apprehension at the thought of the horrors ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up knowledge not to be had in any other ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... invariably selected by the great mass of the populace as a peerless place to go home by at midnight; and the two intellectual explorers find no sentimental young couples rambling arm in arm among the ghastly head-boards, nor so much as one loiterer smoking his segar ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices retired and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe is now superseded by a leather tube; and they all grinned with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, and sprinkled him with a fine white shower of which the scent proved that three chins had just been shaved. Standing on tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy their victim's rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... his service and counter wiping. But late that night, when the bar was closed and the last loiterer was summarily ejected, Mr. Roscommon, in the conjugal privacy of his chamber, produced a legal-looking paper. "Read it, Maggie, darlint, for it's meself never had the larning nor ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... that continually wait upon the librarian, that he should be possessed both of energy and untiring industry? By the very nature of the calling to which he is dedicated, he is pledged to earnest and thorough work in it. He cannot afford to be a trifler or a loiterer on the way, but must push on continually. He should find time for play, it is true, and for reading for his own recreation and instruction, but that time should be out of library hours. And a vigilant and determined economy of time in library hours will be found a prime necessity. I have dwelt elsewhere ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of its standing there. It waited for the slowest foot and the weariest laggard. God makes His 'very present help' of the same length as our necessities, and lets us beat the time to which He conforms. Not till the last loiterer has struggled to the farther shore does He cease by His presence to keep His people safe on the strange road which by His presence He has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the breeze their tresses flew, And high their snowy arms they threw, As echoing back with shrill acclaim, And chorus wild, the Chieftain's name; While, prompt to please, with mother's art The darling passion of his heart, The Dame called Ellen to the strand, To greet her kinsman ere he land: 'Come, loiterer, come! a Douglas thou, And shun to wreathe a victor's brow?' Reluctantly and slow, the maid The unwelcome summoning obeyed, And when a distant bugle rung, In the mid-path aside she sprung:— 'List, Allan-bane! From mainland cast I hear my father's signal blast. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... faces grew around the old chief. Every loiterer was there, and others came back. Not one spoke. All were fascinated by the singular and weird scene. The moon, low down on the mountain's crest, still shed a pallid, grayish light that mingled with ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... name or by sight knew every resident of the town, made up his mind that the loiterer was a stranger. Now a stranger abroad at such an hour and apparently with no business to mind would at once be mentally catalogued by the vigilant night marshal as a suspicious person. So when he had come close up to the other, padding noiselessly in his heavy rubber boots, the officer ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... been so small a thing as the fact and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... disappointed in Venice, but you will be hard to please if you are not caught by the spell of an English lane. Of course, you must not expect to feel that spell if you tear through it in a motor-car. It was made for the loiterer, as its whimsical twists and turns plainly show. If you are in a hurry, you had better keep to the king's highway, stretching swift and white on the king's business. The English lane was made for the leisurely meandering of cows ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... mounting to cheer him; The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain, And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him. The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid, While gazing intent, as he warbles before them, In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red, That each little loiterer seems ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... a man named Thord, who lived at Hoefdi on Hoefdi-strands. He married Fridgerd, daughter of Thori the Loiterer and Fridgerd, daughter of Kiarval the King of the Irish. Thord was a son of Biorn Chestbutter, son of Thorvald Spine, Asleik's son, the son of Biorn Iron-side, the son of Ragnar Shaggy-breeks. They had a son named Snorri. He married Thorhild ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... light clouds, Such as you see in summer, and the winds Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny cleft, Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at— Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall oft Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... seen in the afternoon had given me no idea of the man's appearance. Now the eyes were closed and the features composed and peaceful, but even death failed to give them any dignity. It was a weak and dissipated face, the face of a hanger-on of cafes, as Parks had said—of a loiterer along the boulevards, of a man without ambition, and capable of any depth of meanness and deceit. At least, that ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... thought that. At Ujvidek, when Renwick, bag in hand, got down upon the station platform, the stranger stood beside him, fingering his cotton umbrella foolishly and looking this way and that. But when the Englishman after an inquiry of a loiterer, started in search of a garage, he found his fellow traveler at his heels, and the frown which Renwick threw over his shoulder failed utterly to deter him from his purpose—which clearly seemed to be that of continuing his journey in the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... heroes of Hambledon played for money and renown only, while David was champion of a lady. A lady! May we not prettily say of two ladies? There were no spectators of our contest except now and again some loiterer in the Gardens who little thought what was the stake for which we played, but cannot we conceive Barbara standing at the ropes and agitatedly cutting down the daisies every time David missed the ball? I tell you, this was the historic match ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... followed screaming, and his little brother and sister staring open-mouthed. It was some relief to the doctor's feelings, in the excitement of the moment, to rush to the window and throw it open, admitting a gust of chill December air, penetrating enough to search to the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... her, but hours. And for her and thee—O poor, but mighty one!—will there be even a joint hereafter! Through what grades and heavens of spiritualised being will her soul have passed when thou, the solitary loiterer, comest from the vapours of the earth to the gates ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed to intensify the heat, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... that my companion's tone was changed, that his whole appearance was different. I was suddenly conscious of an irresistible conviction. I did not believe any longer that he was, like me, an idle loiterer here. I felt that his presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... once fully awakened, remained awake, and my opportunities of gratifying it have been tolerably ample. I have been an explorer of caves and ravines, a loiterer along sea-shores, a climber among rocks, a labourer in quarries. My profession was a wandering one. I remember passing direct, on one occasion, from the wild western coast of Ross-shire, where the Old Red Sandstone leans at a high angle against the prevailing ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Anthologies. Urbanities Specially Selected The Open Road The Phantom Journal The Friendly Town A Boswell of Baghdad Her Infinite Variety Cloud and Silver Good Company Loiterer's Harvest The Gentlest Art One Day and Another The Second Post Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive starved dogs, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... commodities and nationalities by the way. The scene is an epitome of the world. Here crouches a Chinese mendicant, there glides an Italian image-vender; a Swedish sailor is hard pressed by a smoking Cuban, and a Hungarian officer is flanked by a French loiterer; here leers a wanton, there moans a waif; now passes an Irish funeral procession, and again long files of Teutonic "Turners"; the wistful eyes of a beggar stare at the piles of gold in the money-changer's show-window; a sister of charity walks beside a Jewish Rabbi; then comes a brawny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... purchased any thing for his lord. Never, perhaps, all along the way, did he so bitterly regret his early sloth as now, for he wrung his hands together, and said in great bitterness, "What shall I do?" and, "How shall I, a loiterer, traffic ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... Endymion's was a mellow voice, of rich compass, and he had a knack of compelling the attention of all persons within range. He preferred this to addressing anyone in particular, and his eye sought and found, and gathered by instinct, the last loiterer without ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... WAKE, Loiterer! for already Dawn is seen With her red marker on the eastern Green, And summons all her Little Ones to change A joyous Three for every ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... was poor. He had only his salary, and that was but scanty. Energetic and enthusiastic, he loved his work, and his whole soul was in it. He was no plodding laborer, who had taken the field because it happened to be nearest to him; he was no loiterer, who had entered the field because he thought it would give him a larger chance for idleness than the close-drawn ranks of business life. He had felt the inward call which is given to but few, and he obeyed it instantly. To him the world was literally a harvest field, and ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... masterworks you pore, As you were crazy: what does Davus more, Standing agape and straining knees and eyes At some rude sketch of fencers for a prize, Where, drawn in charcoal or red ochre, just As if alive, they parry and they thrust? Davus gets called a loiterer and a scamp, You (save the mark!) a critic of high stamp. If hot sweet-cakes should tempt me, I am naught: Do you say no to dainties as you ought? Am I worse trounced than you when I obey My stomach? true, my back is made ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Kitty, hurrying back, began to taste lees. They began to see things, too—menace in every loiterer, threat in every alley. They had had a glorious lark; somewhere beyond would be the piper with an appalling bill. They exaggerated the dangers, multiplied them; perhaps wisely. There would be no let-down ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath |
