"Lout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Idle lout," she cried, "thou couldst not keep an eye to the bread although thou wouldst be glad to fill thy belly with it. Play another trick of the kind and I will thwack thee on ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... said the manager with a disgusted accent. "He always was an awkward lout. Of course there's a doctor—why didn't he send ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... he had a liking for my gift of ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a shy young lout. "You ought to write it out for the newspapers," he used to say. "That's what you ought to do. I ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... to have you out there in that store for these folks to look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides, there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... chance of a ransom. Why, look you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "but not to-day. We will wait until everybody has had time to get completely sober again. I do not choose that the lady should be subjected to the annoyance of encountering, and perhaps being insulted by, some half-drunken lout. But you will not require all the boats, I suppose, so you had better send off the smallest one, with a pair of oars, that we may have the means of going to and from the ship and the shore at our own pleasure, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... exertion. He was big-boned and deep-chested, and had nervous as well as muscular strength. The timidity in him was strange in such a man. What could it spring from? It was not like ordinary shyness, the gaucherie of a big, awkward lout unaccustomed to woman's society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a crowd of men. Domini thought that he would be timid even of men. Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward, unmanly. Such a quality would ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... created. "Who is it? What's that?" Then my footman walks in [draws himself up and imitates] and an-nounces: "Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov of St. Petersburg. Will you receive him?" Those country lubbers don't even know what it means to "receive." If any lout of a country squire pays them a visit, he stalks straight into the drawing-room like a bear. Then you step up to one of their pretty girls and say: "Dee-lighted, madam." [Rubs his hands and bows.] Phew! [Spits.] I feel ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... thou wilt take up thy hand {p.263} and bless thee, and marvel that such young heads could ever bring such a matter as this to pass. I tell thee, the matter hath been a-brewing this quarter of a year at least, when thou wast in the country like a lout. Well, well, man, we shall either be men shortly, or no men; yea, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat at ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... let me try.' Many the things we poets feign. I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain. I tost and turn'd from side to side, With open mouth and nostrils wide. At last there came a pretty maid, And gazed; then to myself I said, 'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss, Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!' ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... himself, as he watched John Dormay ride slowly away through the park, "and, if it were not that he is husband to my cousin Celia, I would have nought to do with him. She is my only kinswoman, and, were aught to happen to Charlie, that lout, her son, would be the heir of Lynnwood. I should never rest quiet in my grave, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... interest to them, but when near us and in the presence of a white Rebel, this interest took the shape of stupid, open-eyed, open-mouthed wonder, something akin to the look on the face of the rustic lout, gazing for the first time upon a locomotive or a steam threshing machine. But if chance threw one of them near us when he thought himself unobserved by the Rebels, the blank, vacant face lighted up with an entirely ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... while; and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... began to doubt. Once let loose on that field, imagination soon saw shapes enough to confirm any doubt. Ottilie's manner certainly had seemed less tender—nay, somewhat indifferent—during the last few days. Had the arrival of that heavy lout, her cousin, anything ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... eyes; he'd hew a pathway to his throne—and he forgot the matron's pies. And then the cowherd's wife came in; she smelled the smoke, she gave a shout; she biffed him with the rolling pin, and cried: "Ods fish, you useless lout! You are not worth the dynamite 'twould take to blow you off the map! Your head is not upholstered right—you are a worthless ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... do with the quarrel; but if I were walking along the streets and saw a big lout pick a quarrel with a weaker one and then proceed to smash him up altogether, I fancy I should take a hand in the business. The Germans deliberately forced on the war. They knew perfectly well that when they put up a German Prince as candidate for the throne of Spain it ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... gave me over in the plain field, protesting he would not hold out with me; for, indeed, my pace in dauncing is not ordinary. As he and I were parting, a lusty country lasse being among the people, cal'd him faint-hearted lout, saying, "If I had begun to daunce, I would have held out one myle, though it had cost my life." At which words many laughed. "Nay," saith she, "if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, I'le venter to treade one myle with him myself." I lookt upon ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... that the young lady must have gone away with the idea that I was a combination of longshore lout and effeminate dilettante, with the financial resources of the former. She might as well have that idea as any other, I supposed, but, in her eyes, I must be more of a freak than ever. I should take care ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... blank, and seemed so unable to return Oonah's fond greeting, that she felt the pique which every pretty woman experiences who fancies her favours disregarded, and thought Andy the stupidest lout she ever came across. Turning up her hair, which had fallen down in the excess of her friendship, she walked out of the cottage, and, biting her disdainful lip, fairly ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... peculiarities. But to the remaining portions of the village, their arrival proved full of interest The landlady took them to her heart at once. They were gentlemen, she said, and that was enough for her. Her son, a heavy lout, unlike his mother, accepted them as he did everything and everybody by remaining outwardly profoundly unconscious of their existence; the hostler adored them, especially Mr. Joseph; when the latter ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... become a tolerably expert physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only necessary to add that his owners "had stuck a musket in his hand, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... have. Haena, have not. "Hae 't," have it. Haill, whole. Hantle, a great deal. Harry, to rob, to break in upon. Hash, a clumsy lout. Hand, to hold, to have. Hauld, a habitation. Hempie, giddy. Heugh, a dell; also, a crag. Hinny, a term of endearmenthoney. Holme, a hollow, level low ground. "Horse of wood, foaled of an acorn," a form of punishment. Howf, a retreat. Hunder, a hundred. Hup! used to a horse in order to make him ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... shepherd's lass Which piped there unto that merry rout; That jolly shepherd that there piped was Poor Colin Clout; (who knows not Colin Clout?) He piped apace while they him danced about; Pipe, jolly shepherd, pipe thou now apace, Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advanced to be ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... save his own vile trade. He is a lout—no more. He is as grim as a goose, always. And you have a town air about you," he went on, running his eyes critically over the young man's dress. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... marlinspike was sent down with the thread as a line. An inquisitive lout of a seal did all it could to bite through the thread, but whether this was too strong or its teeth too poor, we managed after a lot of trouble to coax the marlinspike up again, and the interfering rascal, who had to come up to the surface now and then to take breath, got the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the farm, and I met them face to face. I thought they would have recognized me, for amongst them was one whom I remember to have seen doing sentry duty; but I'm such a scarecrow in these clothes, and so dishevelled, that they took me for some farm hand or village lout, and let me pass. But in a little while they will be asking questions of the farmer, there'll be a hue and cry, and they'll know that one of the prisoners who escaped has been close to them. We must move. That comfortable ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently 'flyting' the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to 'draw a stick across his back' if he did not ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the big duck gun was like thunder, and roused the marshes. In a fury the hunter sprang from his ambush across the mere, and ran down to the water's edge, threatening vengeance on the lout who would fire on a decoy. The brown retriever, wild with excitement, dashed barking up and down the shore, not knowing just what he ought to do. Sandpipers went whistling in every direction. And the foraging flock, startled from their security, screamed wildly and flapped ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... behind. The prince happened to have a basket of freshly-plucked strawberries in his hand, which attracted the notice of the proud Saxon lady.[151] She ordered the coachman to stop, and called out from the coach-window, "Come here, you lout, and bring me the strawberries. I will give you a few copecks for them, to buy wheaten bread." The royal herd-boy did as if he had heard nothing, and did not imagine that the order was addressed to him, while the lady called out a second and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... with rage): Hear his arrogance! A country lout who. . .who. . .has got no gloves! Who goes ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... abject respect. When one of the boyards complained that "The grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high noble with, "Be silent, lout!" His court displayed great splendor, but it was semi-Asiatic. The throne was guarded by young nobles called ryndis, dressed in long caftans of white satin, high caps of white fur, and carrying ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... you envy those who dare!—how you envy the spruce apprentice, and the lout in the smock who cracks his whip, and whistles with as much nonchalance as if he was between the handles of his plough! as though the awe of that fair presence should not freeze his lips to stone! Gauche that he is, how you envy him his opportunities! ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... The thing was manifestly absurd—the Hebrew fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the lad questioningly. He was a loose-lipped, awkward lout, trembling still from a fright he could ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior of Spain! As if a little thing ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... march recline Dead gods devoid of feeling; And thick about each sun-cracked lout Dried Howisons ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... whistle. "Kick him out!" She yelled; and the knights, laughing, took the lout, And thrust him from the gate. A week from this, Looking without, she saw his simple phiz; And cried "Go kill him! Stick him like a pig! You three can do it, if he is so big!" Unwilling, yet the knights went out to try, And light-of-love GAWAIN came riding ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... brutal hurried negative in their faces. In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it. Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion overtook him. He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once or twice, and even heard the epithet "drunken lout" from one ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... interfering with me, and that you are to be always offending and I always pardoning? Don't fancy it, impious scoundrel, for that beyond a doubt thou art, since thou hast set thy tongue going against the peerless Dulcinea. Know you not, lout, vagabond, beggar, that were it not for the might that she infuses into my arm I should not have strength enough to kill a flea? Say, scoffer with a viper's tongue, what think you has won this kingdom and cut off this giant's head and made you ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I think she loves me, she's so sweet and so tender. At such times I'm a god. But I know it can't be; that it is only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play a part—the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... pretence, And the want of common sense, And arrogance, and fawning, and deceit, John Brown; I love the meadow flowers, And the brier in the bowers, And I love an open face without guile, John Brown; And I hate a selfish knave, And a proud, contented slave, And a lout who 'd rather borrow than ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... meminisse juvabit. Look at Clive, I was saying; a lout, a bear, a booby—as a boy, mark you; yet now! Is there a man whose name rings more loudly in the world's ear? And what Robert Clive is, that Desmond Burke might be if he had the mind and the will. You are ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... magnificent furniture in the rooms, and that there were numbers of people, both lackeys and officers, of various descriptions, who were awaiting the commands of the fool. The fool, seeing that all these people had a decent and honourable appearance, and that he alone was a lout, wished to be made better, ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... engaged in petty finance, some quite mites, to make up the accounts for Tripoli. Whilst seated near his Excellency, a big lout of a fellow was brought up, charged with beating a little urchin, who was present to substantiate the charge. The Rais, after gravely hearing the case, had the big clown turned round with his hands tied behind him, and then told the little rogue aggrieved ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... stepped promptly forward at the announcement of the overgrown lout, who had signified his intention of whipping the young engineer of No. 999. Clark had told Ralph that athletics was his strong forte. He looked it as he ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... seem as if I'd just come," said Sam. Her shy innocence was contagious. He felt an awkward country lout. "Well, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 'Too jolly comfortable perhaps—or perhaps the right man hasn't turned up. Florrie Hensor is several cuts above a malingering lout like Steadbolt. Well there, poor devil! Maybe, it's not unnatural that I should feel a sneaking sympathy for an unsuccessful lover. That abominable lie was a bit too strong though—and before you! The man must have been downright mad from ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... I say, doctor!" he said pathetically. "I'm quite upset enough as it is. That lazy lout, Soames, won't stir a finger. The other chaps are on duty. And Miss Eversley has proved faithless. Why can't ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... "that my heart bodes ill of this match? Eric is a mighty man, and, great though thou art, I think that thou shalt lout ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... here, beneath the bridge Sleep in a row the outcasts, Packed in a line with their heads against the wall. Their feet, in a broken ridge Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts A look as he stands on the ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... against the lout who had spoken that the fire of his rage was principally directed, and the fellow realised at once that all that had gone before, on the part of the stranger from the Den, was mere sparring and self-defence. Aleck meant fighting now, and he ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... was "rudeness": he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong. All his life he had ordered little human beings about, and now he was equally magisterial to big ones: Stephen was a fifth-form lout whom, owing to some flaw in the regulations, he could not send up to the headmaster ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... officers are in their uniforms—a costume for equestrian exercise not quite shipshape as they would phrase it. On horseback in a naval uniform! It would not do riding thus on an English road; there the veriest country lout would criticise it. But different in California, where all ride, gentle or simple, in dresses of every conceivable cut and fashion, with no fear of being ridiculed therefor. None need attach to the dress worn by Edward Crozier. His rank has ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... yesterday on the Golden Horn?" she demanded with no preface and of a sudden; her voice rang sharp as I remembered it when she first spoke to me by that white hedge of England, and I could have sworn that the tide had verily borne us thither, and she was again that sallow girl and I the blundering lout of ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... the arts of reading and writing, and would not be able to send word how matters went on after their departure. In this emergency, while Isoult and John were talking over the subject, Barbara presented herself with a deprecatory courtesy, or rather lout. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool's hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool's-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly qualified ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 'you said that possibility was not to make any difference to us. Wouldn't it be making the wrong sort of difference to let it keep a great lout like me in idleness while Bernard ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant notes of Roland's Horn had only filled ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... made for this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Chanrellon, who spoke his thoughts as hastily as a hand-grenade scatters its powder. "The Black Hawk hates him—God knows why—and he is kept down in consequence, as if he were the idlest lout or the most incorrigible rebel in the service. Look at what he has done. All the Bureaux will tell you there is not a finer Roumi in Africa—not even among our Schaouacks! Since he joined, there has not been a hot and heavy thing with the Arabs that ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... all felt very blue; because he had been the joy of our lives. He left the command to Kleber—a great lout of a fellow who soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet; that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so much that one ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... The Lout, at length, having bethought him, Heave'd up the Friar on his back once more; And (Castles having armories of yore) Into the Knight's old Armory he ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... mollified. "Old Lakatos Pal has hankered after him so, though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his hoardings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... memories to strangers? That is a task I would leave to my enemies. Besides, whenever I have come to grief, some other fellow has been to blame. When I fell into Hampton Lock, before the eyes of a multitude, it was because that ungainly lout Jones let the boat swing. Jones laughed then, and many times after when he told the story; but why should I help him to spread it? But that is neither here nor there. If I had been always as lucky as the other members of this club, who seem to have remained dignified in their misfortunes, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... "That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all"; and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... an ugly face, a broad back, long heels. Toddle-shankie also came sunburnt, having scarred feet, a broken nose, called Theow. Their children were named: the boys,—Sooty, Cowherd, Clumsy, Clod, Bastard, Mud, Log, Thickard, Laggard, Grey Coat, Lout, and Stumpy; the girls,—Loggie, Cloggie, Lumpy [ Leggie], Snub-nosie, Cinders, Bond-maid, Woody [ Peggy], Tatter-coatie, Crane-shankie. The story seems to present the three classes or ranks as founded in natural facts. Slaves ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect, mounted, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her feel ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... I've told ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me back to school ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... The lout never said a word in reply, but his horse carried him swiftly out of sight in the wake of the runaway. Then the girl turned again to Hiram and the young farmer knew that he was being keenly examined by ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... find it so hard to do!" confessed young Nisbet. "I'm a stupid sort of lout, you know, Miss Rathbawne. I've never had half a chance to practice talking to dames, and where other lads fuss like experts, I just can't make good. I foozle every ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... new lease of life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this sullen bill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore, hindered the lawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so much dignity and resolve that even the lout himself was impressed and dropped ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... yet. There's the Governor with an attack of gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be off, man—away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited, I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be all night ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... returned Matcham. "Y' are but a lout and bully, Master Dick; ye but abuse advantages; let there come a stronger, we will see you truckle at his boot! Ye care not for vengeance, neither—for your father's death that goes unpaid, and his poor ghost that clamoureth for justice. But if there come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... am I saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About her neck ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... get out of prison. At last, however, we managed to get free and stand outside the walls of the town. He could talk French like a Frenchman, but I could not say a word. We were both dressed as countrymen—he of the better sort, and I, as a lout, born deaf and dumb. This did very well for some time, and whether or no the country people suspected us I cannot say, but I rather think they did, though many of them were very kind to Englishmen, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... children, and the freemasonry requisite to bring him acquainted with them; and it lighted up his face with a pleasant surprise to see two such beautiful specimens of boyhood and girlhood in this dismal, spider-haunted house, and under the guardianship of such a savage lout as the grim Doctor. He seemed particularly struck by the intelligence and sensibility of Ned's face, and met his eyes with a glance that Ned long afterwards remembered; but yet he seemed quite as much interested ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of them, "I thrashed him in the Grande Place, right before the hotel there—what's its name?—the first hotel in Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he did it again I would punish him; that is, I did not exactly tell him—for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I could not speak a word—but I held out my fist in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... place of venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve." Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days: when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called "roasting" him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the Almanach des Gourmands says, On ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... retorted the captor, who had now released both young men. "Besides being a mean, detestable trick, it's as old as the world. That red-pepper trick was invented by some stupid lout who lived thousands of years ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... appeared to our group of anxious watchers. This time he had more friends. They swarmed respectfully but enthusiastically after him out of Hoffmuller's place, a dozen at least of our ne'er-do-wells. One of these, "Big Joe" Kestril, a genial lout of a section-hand, ostentatiously carried the bag and had an arm locked tenderly through one of the Colonel's. These two led the procession. It halted at the corner, where the Colonel began to read his Argus notice ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Eustace's studs were in his shirt, and the unnatural shine on his tawny hair too plainly revealed the perfumeries that crowded the young squire's dressing-table. With the purest intentions of kindness Eustace had done his best to disguise a demigod as a lout. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little band of Free State Boers and their leader, loyal to a lost cause? No, England, no! It is not you that shriek anathemas to the weeping skies because the foe dies hard. The gutter gamin and the brutal lout who never owned a soul fit to rise above the level of the kettle singing on the hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from whose ranks ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... however, get so far as the Consul, but one of the clerks, a stupid lout with an eyeglass, had come out and told him that he would get no employment on a ship belonging to the firm, until he had been to the Seamen's school, and gave up drinking. As he told his story there was an evil glare in his eyes, which were large and bright ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... berquinade—indeed, except for the absence of riotous fun, one of the best of all Paul de Kock's books—is Jean, also an example of his middle and ripest period. If translated into English it might have for second title "or, The History of a Good Lout." The career of Jean Durand (one of the French equivalents for John Brown or Jones or Robinson) we have from the moment of, and indeed a little before, his birth to that crowning of a virtuous young Frenchman's hopes, which consists in his marrying a pretty, amiable, sensible, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... repeated Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words. Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests. Here is my lout of a boy—" ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh and Stormont leaped for it. Then the lout detonation of Quintana's rifle was echoed by the splintered rip of bullets tearing through the closed door; and both men halted in the face of the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and spat, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hanged, and will be; but, curse him, I wish he could have lasted out my time. He knew all my ways, and, dammy, when I rang the bell, the confounded thief brought the thing I wanted—not like that stupid German lout. And what sort of time have you had in the country? Been a good deal with Lady Rockminster? You can't do better. She is one of the old school—vieille ecole, bonne ecole, hey? Dammy, they don't make gentlemen ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... No, by my head, it is that notable mark of his master's holiness, that same lantern-jawed lout of a servant. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... wall; it was the schoolmaster, Aalbom. He recognized Gabriel, and stopped. "Isn't it what I always said?" cried he, triumphantly. "You are a regular Laban, standing here blubbering. You might at any rate manage to lend a hand with the water, you lout!" ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... cleaving firewood in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant. When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house, they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his back" if he did not work ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a good-looking fellow, Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... continued; "my uncle would have given you a hearty welcome, and made our peace with my father, or if not, he would have left us all his goods, and secured my career. What call had that great lout, with a wife of his own too, to come thrusting between us? I thought I should make short work of him, and give him a lesson against meddling—great unlicked cub as he was, while I had had the best training at Berlin and Paris in fencing; ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in prison, and repeated Tom's volunteer statement. The picture, though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard, whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear, unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a bacon-munching, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scored no end in the next few rounds by following Acton's advice, his good efforts seemed wasted. The lout's face was as hard as a butcher's block. Acton saw that Bourne was visibly tiring, and that it was an almost foregone conclusion that in the end he would be beaten. He could hardly stall off the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... a certain wintry day and was within a page or two of the conclusion of the story when I was called to luncheon. In the ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in my bedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs a certain lout, whose name was Victor, who did duty about the stables of the hotel, I gave him instructions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful inspiration occurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. The man was kneeling before the stove and was ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... eggs, cream, sausages, and cakes. Lastly, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food they have collected. In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is called the Whitsuntide-lout, and being mounted on horseback with a green branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough. Thereby he acquires the right of sprinkling water on everybody, and he exercises the right ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Rainey," he said easily. "My intent was, that Sandy could never stay on top in those seas, and that it was idle to send a valuable man after a lout who was as good as dead. If it hadn't been for the whale you'd never have landed him. And the killers got the whale," he added, ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... sonny, and don't waste valuable time in stopping to ask silly questions," was the ungracious reply I received; and I suppose it was the reflection that it served me right for persisting in my attempts to be civil to the lout that drove out of my head the thought which had flashed into it for an instant, that it was rather queer that the skipper should have sent for me at a moment when Bainbridge was actually on the spot and would serve his purpose quite as well. So, all unsuspectingly, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... her; she is expecting you this evening. That great lout of an Alsatian is going to have supper with his opera-dancer. Aha! he looked very foolish when my attorney let him know where he was. He says he idolizes my daughter, does he? He had better let her ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... dear," she said. "Don't worry; it was only some foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... miss him when he was gone. And it seemed as if Marie grew more stupid and cared less for her. And that lout of a Jules Personeau would sit by her on the grass, or help her pick berries or grapes and open them skilfully, take out the seeds or the pits of plums, and place them on the flat rocks to dry. He never seemed to talk. And Rose knew that M. Destournier ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... passed the same sentry, had told her that he was the lover of Johanna Elizabetha's waiting-maid, the woman who had always been so insolent to Wilhelmine at the castle. 'He would do me harm, that lout, if he could,' Wilhelmine reflected as she walked on, and the man's frowning face haunted her for a time, but soon the freshness of the evening breeze and the garden's beauty drove all ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... attacked or sneered at in print, without one thought of asking what Herald this unknown represents, without remembering that Miller's Pond or Somebody-else's Corners may have a Herald she hastens to grant to this probably ignorant young lout the unchaperoned interview she would instantly refuse to a gentleman whose name was even well known to her; and trembling with fear and hope she will listen to his boastings "of the awful roasting he gave Billy This or Dick That," ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... you lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!" came rebukes from all sides addressed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... very late, that the beaten eggs which she has just eaten were not sufficiently sweetened, that she owes more than five hundred francs to her dressmaker; in fine, thinking about everything which you may suppose would occupy the mind of a tired woman. In the meanwhile arrives her great lout of a husband, who, after some business meeting, has drunk punch, with a consequent elation. He takes off his boots, leaves his stockings on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the fireplace; and wrapping ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... time, this friendly advice pulled Dick up in his profitless career. The dread of being considered a "lout" by your senior is a motive which appeals forcibly to most boys; and for a week or so Dick made a feverish show of returning to his outdoor sports, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Shouldest thou a courtier marry What amusement unto me And consolation that would carry! For if as a country-lout he harry 435 Thee all day and for evermore, Would I, what though my heart should grieve, Rejoice, since, though I thee adore, Me thus contemptuously dost thou leave, And if he bid thee keep thy place 440 As being but of low degree: Since thou ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... because of Absalom Puntz's unfailing appearance at the hotel, he began to think, in his chagrin, that he must have exaggerated the girl's superiority, since week after week she could endure the attentions of "that lout." ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one's quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham's brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white: Or, as a line doth guide, So thou doest leuell slide, And throw'st into the sea thy mite? Is't, that with twisted line, The Angler doth vntwine The fishes life, by giuing breath. Or, as the threshing lout, Rusheth his Lyners out, So Lyner on his course rusheth: Or, as some puppy seat, Lineth a mastiue great, And getteth whelps of mongrell kinde: Lyner, the sea so lines, And streame with waue combines, Begetting waters ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Helen, ask yourself this question: what choice is left to a man in such a case? You are generally known as the most beautiful woman in this city. Now shall I, an artist, allow myself to acquire the reputation of an unsociable lout who shuts himself up in his four walls and denies himself to all visitors? The second possibility would be to receive you while at the same time pretending not to understand you. That would give me the wholly undeserved ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... insolence of a wretch like this only shews itself in the guise of jesting. I answered that I should like some rice soup, a piece of boiled beef, a roast, bread, wine, and water. I saw that the lout was astonished not to hear the lamentations he expected. He went away and came back again in a quarter of an hour to say that he was astonished I did not require a bed and the necessary pieces of furniture, "for" said he, "if you flatter yourself that you are only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... as he grew toward manhood, he became, as the old man called it, "trifling"; a word which bore with it in the local dialect no suggestion of levity or vivacity, for Luke Matchin was as dark and lowering a lout as you would readily find. But it meant that he became more and more unpunctual, did his work worse month by month, came home later at night, and was continually seen, when not in the shop, with a gang of low ruffians, whose head-quarters were in a den called the "Bird of Paradise," on ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay |
