"Tommy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... politics. He got a peerage and he left a fortune. My father, for all he was a soldier, had a mild voice and a soft heart. He gave a certain military distinction to the peerage, but he played hell-and-tommy with the fortune. And then I come: I can't be either a Chancellor or a General, and I haven't a penny to bless myself with. You can't think of a more idiotic box for a man to be in. But now—thanks to you—there comes this prospect of an immense change. If I ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "Tommy Potts has gone to town To join the deputation; He is a man of great renown, And fit to save the nation. Yankee doodle do, Yankee ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... "It's all tommy-rot, Baron," said Truxton. "We've got a dozen stage wizards in New York who can do all she did and then some. That smoke from the kettle is a corking good trick—but that's all it is, take my word for it. The storm? Why, you know as well as I do, Baron, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... ribs with his stick, an implement which he had grasped a moment before as though he meditated putting it to a less pacific use, "you young divils of business-men are too much for poor old Tobias. Ged, sir, to think of being stuck in the mud for the want of a paltry tenner! Tommy Heathcote will laugh when he hears of it. You know Tommy of the 81st? He gave me good advice: 'Always sew a fifty-pound note into the lining of each waistcoat you've got. Then you can't go short.' ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with knowledge of the subject.] I was told Mallaby insisted on their showing they meant business. I thought he was being too clever ... and it turns out he was. Tommy Luxmore told me there was a fearful row in the Cabinet about it. But on their last legs, you know, it didn't seem to matter, I suppose. Even then, if Prothero had mustered up an ounce of tact ... I believe they could have pulled ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... party to this," said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're expecting too much of us. The whole thing is put on us to do, and it takes ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... equal frankness he replied: "No. I think he'd like you, but this town and the people up here would gall him. Order is a religion with him. Then he's got a vicious slant against all this conservation business—calls it tommy-rot. He and your father might lock horns first crack out of the box. But I'll risk it. I'll ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... aside her shawl with a triumphant smile, "you overlooked her, the crowd's so great, but little Sarah's here. I put the others to bed, and neighbor Bryce will feed Tommy if he cries; but I brought little Sal along o' me. My! ain't she peart with delight? We're both that starved to see a bit of real gentry life, and to hear a ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... "Tommy," said the cook, mildly, yet firmly, "you know I've told you that it was wrong to touch the coffee-mill. See here, on the floor, where you have scattered the coffee about, and now I must get a broom and sweep it up. If you do so, I can't let you ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... Thompson's gazelle by its big black stripe on its white sides and by its frisky tail that is always flirting back and forth. The Grant's gazelle is a little harder to pick out at first, and one is likely to get the Grant's and Tommy's confused. But after a short time the difference is apparent, the Grant's being much larger in stature and has much larger horns and is minus the Thompsonian perpetual motion tail. It certainly is a stirring tail! The impalla is about the same size as the Grant's gazelle, but has ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... mouthful, Looey. But say, Tommy's shovin' some grub on the table. Mebbe we better hop to it before the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... getting far richer than he had been, and so able to enlarge his mode of life. He had begun, modestly enough, by taking his wife to live with him in his bachelor's quarters in Furnival's Inn,—much as Tommy Traddles, in "David Copperfield," took his wife to live in chambers at Gray's Inn; and there, in Furnival's Inn, his first child, a boy, was born on the 6th of January, 1837. But in the March of that ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Milly, love," Costigan said, winking to his child—and that lady, turning to her father a glance of intelligence, went out of the room, and down the stair, where she softly summoned her little emissary Master Tommy Creed: and giving him a piece of money, ordered him to go buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and sixpennyworth of sorted biscuits at the baker's, and to return in a hurry, when he might ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... till three or four o'clock in the morning, and they say it was very amusing to see the Duke doing the honours to him. The Tories have had a great disappointment in the Finsbury election, which they fancied Pownall was sure of carrying the first day, but Tommy Duncombe beat him hollow the second. It is certainly a great exhibition of Radical strength in that metropolitan district, and may serve to sober the Tories a little, and bring some of them down from ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... The most familiar instance in English is crayfish from the French ecrevisse, though it is well known that a crayfish is not a fish at all. Amongst the Mohammedans in India there is a festival at which the names of "Hassan" and "Hosein" are frequently called out by devotees. Tommy Atkins, to whom the names were naught, converted them into "Hobson, Jobson." That the practice of so altering words is not limited to the English is shown by two perhaps not very familiar instances in French, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in the deuce of a mess, Mr—by-the-by, you haven't told me your name. Twisdon? Any relation of old Tommy Twisdon of the Sixtieth? No? Well, you see I'm Liberal Candidate for this part of the world, and I had a meeting on tonight at Brattleburn—that's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold. I ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... to paint stripes on a cow you would make a speech about it & say that you had discovered that it wasnt no tiger & I wish I had been 1 of them indyans tonight because I would of loved to of beened you with a Tommy Hawk & I says o you would would you & she seen it wasnt no use to argue with me & anyway Ethen nobody would be fool enough to paint stripes on a cow unless maybe they was born in Boston. Well Ethen thats the way it goes & when you do put one over on the ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... his report of the picnic; hard and self-consciously. Tommy Burt would, he knew, have made a "scream" of it, for tired business men to chuckle over on their way downtown. Pursuant to what he believed Mr. Gordon wanted, Banneker strove conscientiously to be funny with these human moles, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... into the trap. "Dear me! I'm sorry I didn't know that. You might have had 'Nicholas Nickleby.' I'll send it to school with Tommy to-morrow, if you promise you won't read any of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... which shows with such cruel distinctness a podgy, pot-bellied (excuse the vulgarism) boy, who couldn't run a mile to save his life. I want Bruno to be strong, but at the same time light and active—with the figure of one of the little acrobats one sees at the circus—not "Master Tommy," who habitually gorges himself with pudding. Also that dress I dislike very much. Please give him a short tunic, and real knickerbockers—not the tight knee-breeches ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... why some days I'd so much rather use the axe on the kitchen stove than in the wood-house, or why the sight of a dish-pan makes me sick in my stomach. As for my chickens—calling hens and roosters by names of big people is tommy-rot to him, and he don't any more know my longin's for a look at high life and for people who use elegant language and paint pictures and play the pianer than I understand how he can live in a teacup and not smash it. He's one of the kind what ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... the Enchanted Street? It happened that there was a parade, "an endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the right leg in the air at the same time, then the left leg. Seeing at once that they were after him, Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner he found himself wedged between two legs. He was of just sufficient size to fill the aperture, but after a momentary lock he squeezed through, and they proved to ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... 'Sammies' now, and the name probably will stick along with 'Tommy,' 'poilu' and 'Fritz.' ... The christening was one of those spontaneous affairs, coming nobody knows ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... company, and after they had been playing around the orchard for an hour or two, and had slid down the straw-stacks to their heart's content, the children all went to the well to get a drink. A bucket of water was soon hauled up, and Tommy Barrett with a tin-cup ladled out the refreshment to the company. When they had all drank enough they began to play with the well-pole. Boys and girls will play, you know, with things that no grown person would imagine ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... all this?' said the minister. 'Why, what have you been about, Tommy,' lifting the little petticoated lad, who was lying sobbing, with one vigorous arm. Tommy looked at him with surprise in his round eyes, but no ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... each item of his load as soon as it was put on, especially to the guns; but F—— was very patient, and took good care to tie and otherwise fasten everything so that it was impossible for "Master Tucker" (called, I suppose, after the immortal Tommy) to get rid of his load by either kicking or plunging. At last we mounted and rode by a bridle-path among the hills for some twelve miles or so, then across half-a-dozen miles of plain, and finally we forded a river. The hill-track ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... who would willingly give a year's pay to shepherd a personally conducted Cook's party to France of the British working man. They get their legs pulled right and left by everybody out there; and do you wonder?" He laughed shortly. "Tommy's no fool: six pounds a week instead of a shilling a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... first morning I entered my school-room South, such a mass of little dark faces as greeted me! At first it seemed so strange to me, they all looked alike, but in a short time I was able to pick out Simon, and Tommy, and Mollie, and Janie. Most of them want to learn, and are quite tidy in their appearance. One of the exercises they enjoy most is the singing. It would be hard to find a colored boy or girl who does not sing, and many of them have ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... straight mile, and there is no better galloping ground. Southerly Buster cantered down with Bradley in the saddle; the Baron's jockey fancied his mount, he had ridden him in several gallops. Tommy Colley was, as usual, on Alan's horse. It seemed an equal match both as regards the riders and horses. Naturally there was prejudice in favor of The Duke, odds of five to four being laid on him, then six ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Tom bent his back, [7] As if to place a heavy thwack; Vile Jem, with neat left handed stopper, Straight threatened Tommy with a topper; 'Tis all my eye! no claret flows, [8] No facers sound—no smashing blows, Five minutes pass, yet not a hit, How can it end, pals ?—vait a bit. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Hospital to see a number of wax figures in uniform, cheerfully arranged as wounded men in all the stages of pain and misery. How encouraging for TOMMY ATKINS, I thought to myself; but at this moment my supporter informed me that he had remembered where to find the battle-pictures, and thither therefore we proceeded, thankful in the knowledge that if either ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... connections with life. Fifteen-year-old Tommy Jonkers, shipping as O.S. (ordinary seaman) on the S.S. Fernfield in Glasgow in 1911, could hardly have suspected that the second engineer would write a novel and put him in it; or that that same novel ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... thought of Robert Emmet, and that last speech of his before Lord Norbury; I thought of Tommy Moore, and his amatory verses: I thought of Curran, Grattan, Plunket, and O'Connell; I thought of my uncle's ostler, Patrick Flinnigan; and I thought of the shipwreck of the gallant Albion, tost to pieces on the very shore now in sight; and I thought ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... over well-educated, I admit; but you needn't try him by an impossible standard. I dare say you are thinking of ancient days when a Roman general could address his troops in Latin and make quite sure of being understood; but you can't expect Tommy Atkins to be so learned. And our generals, as you say, may chiefly distinguish themselves at reviews; but the reviews they seem to me to be too fond of are those published monthly. As for ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... "Tommy sent me here," said the newcomer, sinking wearily into a chair. "I'm hired for a month, on good behavior, with a chance to stay on if I conduct myself in a ladylike manner. I've been working on the Herald, you know; but there was no end ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... am, Tommy," said Mrs. Hill, climbing up into the control deck. "I have some bandages and ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... looks and nods. Hugh Morgan had apparently always been more or less of an enigma to them. They knew he was no coward, for only the last winter he had leaped boldly into the river at the risk of his own life, and saved little Tommy Crabbe just when the unfortunate child was about to be drawn by the fierce current under the ice. Still, no one had even known Hugh to be engaged in a fight. There was some deep object back of his reluctance so to demean himself, most of the fellows ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... including the son who later became learned. He, when he had left his village for Glasgow, reasoned himself out of the opinion that the grocer's knock did herald and precede the grocer. But when he went home for a visit he found that he heard it just as of old. Possibly some local Sentimental Tommy watched for the grocer, played the trick and ran away. This explanation presents no difficulty, but the boy ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... if he is at the dressing station." I went back to the station. For nearly a mile the wounded and gassed men were lying on each side of the road waiting for conveyances to remove them. I spoke to a Tommy who had met with a peculiar accident; he had two plates in his mouth and the concussion of a shell explosion in his immediate vicinity had broken the plates into four pieces, leaving ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... expression. It is very difficult to reduce a speech to the accuracy of a written composition. In doing so, the merit of the speech is lost, and the 'redacted' elements form a very bad paper. Old Tommy Townshend, when he heard of a good speech being printed, used to ask 'How does it read?—for if it reads well, it was not a good speech.' A judgement orally delivered extempore may be satisfactory to the ear, but when reduced to ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Belgium need some explaining for those who have not had the opportunity to see them. Firstly there is the pave, and a very popular picture with us after that day was one which came out in the Sketch of a Tommy in a lorry asking a haughty French dragoon to "Alley off the bloomin' pavee—vite." Well, this famous pave consists of cobbles about six inches square, and these extend across the road to about the width of a large cart—On either ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... the long-continued struggle between Mr. GIBSON BOWLES and a colleague who was always endeavouring to insert "the thick end of the GEDGE" into "Tommy's" favourite seat. Mr. HOPKINS is the Member who has jumped Mr. BOTTOMLEY'S claim on the present occasion—a fact which will recall THEODORE HOOK'S remark that the game of leap-frog always reminded him of those famous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... "Tommy Ruggles, a smart-looking knight of the currycomb, whose first name was a kitchen word in Pointview, sprang to my assistance. He had curly hair, and a good deal of natural cuteness, and was, moreover, 'a ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... are saying now is, "We must have a definite plan of strong action. We are not going to fight any longer with speeches and despatches." That's the way, Athenians! Good luck to you! Zeus bless you. And the same to you, Tommy Hoplites and Jack Nautes, and many of them! You don't mean PHILIP to be Tyrant of Athens, do you? You're not going to have him turning our beautiful Parthenon into a cavalry stable? You're not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... hair, Jimmy Jones!" she cried, without turning around. Jimmy Jones and Tommy Green were in the habit of pulling her hair or giving it a twitch whenever they passed her. So now she took it for granted it was one of them when Billy pulled it while chewing ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... closer. There is such a thing as law for brute animals. I'll ask Mr. Jenkins, but I don't think them Radicals has done away with that law yet, for all their Reform Bill, ma'am. My poor precious love of a Tommy, is he hurt? and is his leg broke for taking a mouthful of scraps, as most people would give away to a beggar,—if he'd take 'em?" wound up Mrs. Jenkins, casting a contemptuous look on the remnant of a scrag end ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love, sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... goods from the Indian packers. This latter had necessitated the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration in force—Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a Winchester while Tommy apportioned their wages among them at his own appraisement. It had been a little thing in itself, but it meant much to a woman playing a desperate single-hand in the equally desperate Klondike rush of '97. Men were occupied with their ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... quite true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was just going into the Cri—let me see, on Tuesday night it was—when whom should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... may bring Tommy? I don't like to part from him. I am an old-fashioned mother, and quite ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... gravely. "He is a dear good old rough bear when you don't know him, but he likes me. If you put your ear close against him," she confided, suiting the action to the word, "you can hear him talking to himself. This little fellow is Tommy. I don't care so much for Tommy because he's sticky. Still, I like him pretty well, and here's Dick, and that's Bob, and the one just ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you, Tommy-boy. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... from my brother Colin, who is farming in Australia. He was a good many years my senior—and I've always understood that he was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in his younger days. Ultimately, he enlisted in the Army as a Tommy, and in that scrap on the Indian Frontier he was close behind Maurice and saw the whole thing. He got badly wounded then, and was dangerously ill for some time afterwards, so it happened that he knew nothing about the court-martial till it was all over. When he recovered, he ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... replied Mrs. Perkins. "I'd kept him in a chair for an hour because he would tease Tommy, and when finally I let him go I told him that he was wearing me out with his naughtiness. About an hour later he came back and said, 'You have an awful hard time bringin' me up, don't you?' I said yes, and added that he might spare ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... what a Hircus Oepagrus is, Tommy? Well, it is a big name for him, isn't it? And if you should ask that somewhat slatternly female, who appears to employ tubs for the advantage of others rather than herself, what the animal is, she would tell you it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... out in hundreds to look at us. I do not know how many men I saw, but certainly during this one march not less than 5,000. Of this great number two only offered insults to the gang of prisoners. One was a dirty, mean-looking little Hollander. He said, 'Well, Tommy, you've got your franchise, anyhow.' The other was an Irishman. He addressed himself to Frankland, whose badges proclaimed his regiment. What he said when disentangled from obscenity amounted to this: 'I am glad to see you Dublin fellows in trouble.' The Boers silenced ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... country that Master Tommy Courtly and his sister, who went over with their papa, learnt all that good manners and genteel behaviour, which made every body love and admire them so much at their return home; which had such an effect on their brother Jack, (who ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... must confess that the attitude of French and English to one another today is almost thrilling. The English Tommy Atkins and the French poilu are delightful together. For that matter, the French peasants love the English. They never saw any before, and their admiration and devotion to "Tommee," as they call him, is unbounded. They think him ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... came to cease the retreat and to turn upon a foe, which flushed with unprecedented victory still greatly outnumbered the retreating armies, the British soldier struck back with almost undiminished power. The "miracle of the Marne" is due to Tommy Atkins as well as to the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... young officer found himself—or at least considered himself—quite a gentleman at large. In his own opinion he had become a person of very considerable importance, and the orders he gave had to be implicitly obeyed. His uniform was a source of extreme pleasure to him. He was allotted a whole "Tommy" to himself as a soldier servant. He rejoiced in the possession of quite a big room for his quarters. And ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... primitive ideas, understand the Harvard ideal? So subtle and evanescent, so much a matter of the most delicate shadings was this ideal that he himself often found the distinction quite hazy between it and that which looked disquietingly like "tommy rot." ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... scene changes to France and Belgium. Tommy Atkins is on his way to the Front. He has already begun to send home some of those gallant letters that throb throughout the pages of this book. If he felt the absence of the stimulating send-off, necessitated by official caution ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" might be called Tommy. But there were no "little radiant girls." Now and then an "Education of the Virgin" is the exception, and then it is always a matter of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when they were so young that their hands, like ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... further investigation, that the club had been badly sold. In the resulting confusion Baxter escaped, but later was waited upon by a committee, to whom he made the rather lame excuse that he had always regarded uncut and sealed books as tommy-rot, and that he had merely been curious to see how far the thing could go; and that the result had justified his belief that a book with nothing in it was just as useful to a book-collector as one embodying a work of genius. He offered to pay all the bills ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... made me one of her pages of honour. This post I held until I grew out of it, when I withdrew from town, but egad! I found I must get back to it again, for Beacham Ford Park was as dull as a monastery after the life which I had been living. In town I stayed then with such boon companions as Tommy Lawson, my Lord Halifax, Sir Jasper Lemarck, little Geordie Chichester, aye, and old Sidney Godolphin of the Treasury; for with all his staid ways and long-winded budgets he could drain a cup with the best of us, and was as keen on a main of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... things, but they may help to give colour to your impressions. Heaven forbid that, by telling the horrors of war, the writers of books should make pessimists of those at home! Heaven forbid that they should belittle the dangers and hardships, and so take away some of the glory due to "Tommy" for all he has suffered for the Motherland! There is a happy mean—the men at the front have found it; they know that death is near, but they can still laugh ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... Sylvia remembered her faithful Reggie, who corresponded vigorously every day, and refused to be put off with worthless imitations. The lovesick swains, however, could not be expected to know of this, and the rescuing of Tommy proceeded briskly, now one, now another, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... so badly treated as he, should become the head of the Red Hand. Yet, as the possible development of the movement occurred to Abel, the child began to share the uneasiness of all conspiracy and feel a weakness inherent in the Band. Seen from that modest standard of evil-doing which belonged to Tommy and Billy Keep, Amos Whittle and Jacky Gale, the Red Handers appeared a futile organisation even in Abel's eyes. He felt, as greater than he have felt, that an ideal society should embrace one member only: himself. There were far too many brothers of the Red Hand, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... as Master Budd entered; "come along, Tommy Budd, you can play too. Now Charity Cora, look out for Is'bella! We're going to have my ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Poor fools and blind! let us cease, I say—' But he had no one to say it to, for the whole audience had gone off in different directions, and the preacher had only his little brother of five left to listen to his wise words. 'Come along, Tommy,' said he, 'I will try and find some one for you ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... us out, there's a stone on Tommy,'—at least so the poor woman understood the lispings, almost stifled; and she ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tommy was the most juvenile of all the bell-boys, a lad of not more than ten, who tried to appear quite as old as these others and who ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... Mason, Tommy Shipwright and Bill Adams, Joe Basalt and old Higgy—only that lot among the common folk," added he, ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... "I've got one with me. I'll give it to you now. But for Heaven's sake don't look at it here! I should see by your face what you thought of it, and you're likely to think precious little of it; you'll think it tommy-rot; though, of course, you won't say so. Look here!" he went on, as he drew out the precious manuscript slowly, "don't tell me that it 'shows promise'; I can bear anything but that. That's fatal; it's what all the beastly editors ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... basket Tommy stow'd The piscatory spoil; Says Nobbs, "We've netted two at least, Albeit ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... tommy rot!" ejaculated Mr. Prim; "but I'll call the police, because I got to report the theft. It's some slick outsider, that's who it is," and he started down stairs toward the telephone. Before he reached ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65,000, gold coin, and gone to the States for his family. The widow Brewster had "struck it rich" in the "Golden Fleece" and sold ten feet for $18,000—hadn't money enough to buy a crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's wake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew they were "right on the ledge"—consequence, "feet" that went begging yesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and seedy owners ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... village I'm thinking of it is a sight on no account to be missed to see the same old British Tommy shopping by telepathy. He doesn't speak their language and they don't speak his, and when the article required is not in the window or on the counter to be indicated by the thumb, a deadlock would appear to be inevitable. Our Master Thomas, however, never did realise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... used it, and more rarely still had it used for them. For the ancient fashion still held ground of attaching the idea of a man to that of things more extensive and substantial. So the head of the house was "Will o' the Wallhead;" his son was "Tommy o' Will o' the Wallhead;" and his grandson, "Willy o' Tommy o' Will o' the Wallhead." But the one their great lady desired to see was the unmarried daughter of the house, "Sally o' Will o' ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... The good Tommy Moore did not know this, but, letting his warm Irish imagination run riot through a mixed bag of Eastern romancists and their works, he evolved, amid a pot pourri of impossibilities, an impossible damsel as unlike anything to be found in these ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Tommy: "And supposing I was born before you, papa; and supposing mamma had forgot all about it, and hadn't been at home when ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... if hell-fire can't stir sinners, a slow call to duty ain't going to get a hustle on them. I swear if it wasn't so late, I'd get Gaston over here to listen to your views. Gaston is open to all kinds of tommy-rot that has a new mark on it. I'll be jiggered if I don't believe Gaston will want to pay you a salary to keep you here just for a diversion. But take my advice, and keep to old-fashioned lines, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... mentioned ——. I said that his elaborate manners and bridegroom dress marked him out as natus convivio feminali, meant by nature to be a guest at ladies' tea-tables. Dilke assented, adding that he was less bland to men than to women. "Tommy" Bowles said of him in the House: "The right honourable gentleman answers, or, rather, does not answer, my questions with the pomposity of a Belgravian butler refusing ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... cried the third. "I likes London. I can stand on my head twice as long as Tommy Blake, an he's a year ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... fit-out for hunters; and with the jolly basket of lunch Mrs. Mullin gave us, we can get on tip-top for two or three days," said Tommy, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... soft tommy, soldiers, pipes, and backey, rotten apples, stale pies, needles and threads, and a hundred other things; besides a fat old woman sitting ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... arranged some little treat, and went in for enjoying ourselves. On this occasion we were starting off from Hammersmith to the Alexandra Palace in all the dignity of a four-wheeler. What with the wife and her sister, and Tommy and Fanny and Jack, the inside was pretty well filled up, so I had to look out for myself. I didn't adopt the plan of John Gilpin under similar circumstances, but I took my waterproof and climbed up beside ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... theatre; and he bombarded the newspapers with stories of Mr. Mansfield's method of making the quick change from one character to the other in the dual role of the Stevenson play, and with anecdotes about the boy Tommy Russell in Mrs. Burnett's play. The sale of the books went merrily on, and kept pace with the success of the plays. And it all sharpened the initiative of the young advertiser and developed ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... spring, which Forrest characterised as the best he had ever seen, the grass and herbage around being of an equally satisfactory description. The springs were named the Windich Springs after the black boy, Tommy Windich, who had been with Forrest on three expeditions. To the northwest there was a fine range of hills, which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... on the ground, s'h'lp me if they wasn't. Grannie Staples was took to the Union last Wednesday fortnight, and anyone's got the run of her garden since. Don't you let the new parson get us put away, Cap'en. We belongs to the Island—I'm William Jennifer's Tommy, please Cap'en, and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... inhabitants, and they acknowledged his endeavor. But the officers, less experienced than he and with fewer responsibilities, and also less acquainted with the spirit of the colonists, were angry with him for what they called his subservience. They dubbed him Tommy, and confided their indignation to their diaries. "Yesterday," wrote Lieutenant Barker of the King's Own,[50] "in compliance with the request of the Select Men, Genl Gage order'd that no Soldier in future ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... fight, hey? How many times have I got to tell ye how disgraceful and wicked it is for boys to fight? It was only yesterday that I talked to you an hour about the sin of fighting, and here you've been at it again. Who was it with this time? With Tommy Kelly, hey? Don't you know any better than to fight a boy that weighs twenty pounds more than you do, besides being two years older? Ain't you got a spark of sense about ye? I can see plainly that you are determined to break your ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... assistant, was at work in the grounds when Eudora entered. He touched his cap. He was an old man who had lived with the Lancasters ever since Eudora could remember. He advanced toward her now. "Sha'n't Tommy push—the baby-carriage up to the house for you, Miss Eudora?" he said, in his ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... too glad about what you've got, either, because you're going to find out that furnishing a house with wedding presents is equivalent to furnishing it on the installment plan. Along about the time you want to buy a go-cart for the twins, you'll discover that you'll have to make Tommy's busted old baby-carriage do, because you've got to use the money to buy a tutti-frutti ice-cream spoon for the young widow who sent you a doormat with "Welcome" on it. And when she gets it, the young widow will call you that idiotic Mr. Graham, because she's going ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... could work in peace, and he was right. The noise from our batteries immediately gave me a bad headache, but apparently the Boche did not respond at all till the afternoon. Then they started, and the noise was HELL. Whenever there was a big bang I couldn't help giving (p. 026) a jump. The old Tommy I was drawing said, "It's all right, Guv'ner, you'll get used to it very soon." I didn't think so, but to make conversation I said: "How long is it since ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... perceived a small, yet neat cottage, so different in general appearance from those around it, that I turned my way thither, in hopes of resting in quiet, and, if possible, of learning something relative to the town. I alighted, knocked, and soon an old lady requested me to enter, saying that Tommy would see that my horse was cared for. It was a small room that I entered; everything was as neat and clean as a New Year's gift, and there was so much of New England about it, that I felt at home. Near ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... as "Tommy's." But Tommy himself was only half an Indian, and swore such bad swears in excellent English, that I was forced to leave ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... them I no go drinkee. They aska me "why not?" I say them Japanee man no want go talkee to lamp-post, shakee hands with pump, and try for makee light him cigar with door-key. So it make American man do. Drinkee no good for Japanee mans. Japanee TOMMY too much fond—what you call—cobblers. TOMMY bad boy. Got ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... "No, Tommy. You are wrong, my dear boy. Go to the foot of your class. With the naked eye we can only distinguish three or four thousand, but with the telescope we are able to count at least fifty millions. They are thickest in the Milky Way, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... finished"; whereupon the fellow laughed impertinently in my face, repeating my words, "All will be finished!" under his breath, adding, "before to-morrow!" This was the first insult offered by the "Bloodthirsty Tommy," who had committed murder only a short time before; but I had been watched by the fellow, with a cat-like eye at ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... was at Mr. V—-'s. He was a widower, and, finding his home lonely, had sought at Marchmont for a little one to love and cheer him. He had taken the twin-like brothers, Freddy and Tommy, whose sweet little faces bore some resemblance to his own. We found the children at school, looking hearty and happy in the playground as we passed the schoolhouse. Mr. V—- was from home, but his mother, a pious woman, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... way to visit Little Red Riding Hood the Flyaways fell in with Tommy Tucker and The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. They told Tommy about the Magic Button on Red Riding Hood's cloak. How the wicked Wolf stole the Magic Button and how the wolves plotted to eat up Little Red Riding Hood and all her family, and how the Flyaways and King ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... Tommy Duncombe was not only indefatigable at Crockford's, but at every other rendezvous of the votaries of fortune; a skilful player withal, and not unfrequently a winner beyond expectation. One night at Crockford's he astonished the house by carrying off sixteen hundred pounds. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... "Tommy rot! Imagination's a splendid thing for a detective to possess, Dollops, but don't let yours run away with you in this fashion, my lad, or you'll never rise above what you are. Toddle along now, and look out for Mr. Narkom's arrival. It's after nine already, so ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... singing lyrics even farther than the banjo penetrates, of which latter democratic instrument his wonderful poem is the apotheosis. And we have the word of a distinguished British major-general to prove that Mr. Kipling has wrought a miracle of transformation with Tommy Atkins. General Sir George Younghusband, in a recent book, A Soldier's Memories, says, "I had never heard the words or expressions that Rudyard Kipling's soldiers used. Many a time did I ask my brother officers whether they had ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... a bloomin' volley, An' we made the beggars cut, An' when our pouch was emptied out, We used the bloomin' butt, Ho! My! Don't yer come anigh, When Tommy is a playin' with ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... lettuce and toasted crackers-and-cheese, with a most remarkable combination of fruits and ices; and Van Bibber could eat nothing, and sat unhappily looking at his plate and shaking his head when the waiter urged him gently. "Economy!" he said, with disgusted solemnity. "It's all tommy rot. It wouldn't have cost me a cent to have eaten this dinner, and yet I've paid half a dollar to make myself ill so that I can't. If you know how to economize, it may be all right; but if you don't understand it, you must ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... this unhappy couple know what further griefs awaited them! The smallpox broke out in the prison, and poor Tommy Clewline was infected. As the eruption appeared unfavourable, you may conceive the consternation with which they were overwhelmed. Their distress was rendered inconceivable by indigence; for by this time they ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... scream of delight, for just then, out came Ucatella, with little Tommy on her shoulder, and danced along to meet her. As she came close, she raised the chubby child high in the air, and he crowed; and then she lowered him to his mother, who rushed at him, seized, and devoured him with a hundred inarticulate cries of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... case that got me. I knew Tommy Mantell. very well—also Colonel Hix, the C.O. at Godman. I knew they were both intelligent men—not the kind to be ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... had been carried even into Pembroke; and while she was living her solitary and inoffensive life in Paris, Mrs. Bishop was writing to Everina: "The conversation [at Upton Castle] turns on Murphy, on Irish potatoes, or Tommy Paine, whose effigy they burnt at Pembroke the other day. Nay, they talk of immortalizing Miss Wollstonecraft in like manner, but all end in damning all politics: What good will they do men? and what rights ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with not a drop of plebeian blood in his noble body, will fulfill all the expectations of his friends, and we shall hear of many a brave and gallant deed of his performing; but when you have heard what Tommy Tompkins has to tell, I think you will say that not even Don Quixote could have done himself more credit under ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... second trader you've lost there in a year," Young concurred. "To make it safe there ought to be two white men at least. Those Malaita canoes are always raiding down that way, and you know what that Port Adams lot is. I've got a dog for you. Tommy Jones sent it up from Neal Island. He said he'd promised it to you. It's a first-class nigger-chaser. Hadn't been on board two minutes when he had my whole boat's-crew in the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... warms up in one a great love for one's kind—a comrade feeling, like that which comes from being tent-mates in a long campaign. Two o'clock in the morning wake to the tramp, tramp of men marching in the dark—marching out to fight—and the unknown Tommy you march beside and talk to in low voice, as men talk at that hour, is your comrade unto the day's end of fighting; when returning, to the sentries' challenge you answer "A friend," and, dog-tired, you re-enter the lines, welcomed by his ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... 'Mammy.' This was about eleven, mark you. People stopped and spoke to him, and then went on, leaving him more frightened than before. But I and a good-humoured mechanic came up together; and I instantly developed a latent faculty for setting the hearts of children at rest. Master Tommy Murphy (such was his name) soon stopped crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry him; and the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to find his parents. I was soon so tired that I had to ask ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more consequence, a good man might command his patience, might indulge in a reasonable caution, might hesitate on the brink of Black Cliff with the sanction of his self-respect. But if Elizabeth Luke lay ill and in need, a passage of Scalawag Run might be challenged, whatever came of it. And both Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Tommy's brother-officers on the following day that it was he rather than the bride who displayed all the shyness that ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... feet square, constructed of good heavy timber solidly covered with deal boarding, and conveying indubitable evidence, to my thinking, of the remains of one of the cabanes or shanties commonly erected on the ice by those engaged in the "tommy-cod" fishery,—portable structures, so fitted together as to admit of being put up and removed piecemeal, to suit the convenience of their proprietors. I blessed mentally the careless individual who had thus unconsciously provided for our especial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... son. All are alleged to have been charmed with him. Mr. and Mrs. Garrick passing through the town, would retire to a summer-house in the garden of the Black Bear, and amuse themselves for some time with the recitations of the little fellow. 'Tommy has learned one or two new speeches since you were here, Mr. Garrick,' the father would exclaim, bringing forward his precocious boy. 'There was something about him,' says an authority, 'which excited the surprise of the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... find he's a half better. Clear es a bottle o' gin, an' flawless es the pope! Tommy Dartmoor, ye're in luck, s' welp me never ef ye ain't, an' that's a brilliant yer can show the polis an' not ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... priests of rival creeds from murdering one another. The sun shone and so did the stars. General Bols reopened Pontius Pilate's water-works. The learned monks in convents argued about facts and theories denied by archaeologists. Old-fashioned Jews wailed at the Wailing Wall. Tommy Atkins blasphemously dug corpses of donkeys and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... not a silly fad, but a symbol of ancestral self-respect; that when giving treats to friends or children, one should give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them; that there is nothing illogical in being furious because Tommy has been coldly caned by a schoolmistress and then throwing saucepans at him yourself. All these things they believe; they are the only people who do believe them; and they are absolutely and eternally right. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... you like to have a probe rammed through your hand twice a day?" demanded James with a smile. "But it's all part of the game. Comforts for Tommy. Everyone has their own way of making us happy, not forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred little lavender bags, with pretty little bows on them, all sewn by herself, to keep our linen sweetly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... tommy-rot," observed Handsome Tim, in a sulky tone. "We're not spoiling for a row; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Tender Counsels, its examples of Mercy and Love to all Mankind. But if I had a child five or six years old, would I let him fill himself with the horrible chronicles of Lust, and Spoliation, and Hatred, and Murder, and Revenge? "Why shouldn't I torture the cat?" asks little Tommy. "Didn't the man in the Good Book tie blazing Torches to the foxes' tails?" And little Tommy has some show of reason on his side. Let the children grow up; wait till their stomachs are strong enough to digest this potent victual. It is hard indeed for one who has been a Protestant ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... was Tommy Stubbins, son of Jacob Stubbins, the cobbler of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh; and I was nine and a half years old. At that time Puddleby was only quite a small town. A river ran through the middle of it; and over this river there was a very old stone bridge, called Kingsbridge, which led you from ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... is wanting for those who would argue that the story of Red Riding Hood is only another dawn-myth. Mr. Hussin holds this view, but is not the story of the Cat and the Well capable of the same kind of reading? Pussy is the earth; Tommy, who shoves her into the well, is the evening or twilight; the well is Night; Johnny Stout is the Dawn who pulls the earth out of darkness again. There is no limit to this kind of application of so elastic a theory. But the very ease with which such explanations can ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor |
