"Yankee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of your head, the soul out of your body, the gould out of your pocket, and give you nothing but brass, and tin, and copper, in the place of 'em. Well, all the hubbub you hear is jest now about one of these same Yankee pedlers. The regilators have caught the varmint—one Jared Bunce, as he calls himself—and a more cunning, rascally, presumptious critter don't come out of all Connecticut. He's been a cheating and swindling all the old women ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... what a good boy you had been, brave an' game but revengeful when aroused. I'd tell 'em how you dared the bullets of our own men, after the battle of Shiloh, to cut down an' carry off a measley little Yankee they'd hung up as a spy 'cause he had onct saved yo' father's life. You shot two of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... women, and children, are fighting for their national existence, and their individual home and life, to have such evidences of Yankee smartness foisted upon them does not make for friendship. It inspired contempt. This unpleasant sentiment was strengthened by our failure to demand satisfaction for the lives lost on the Lusitania, while at the same time our losses in dollars seemed to distress us so deeply. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... the Yankee dialect of these verses. Some think Lowell struck too hard; but they forget Grant's characterization of the Mexican War as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." There are critics who think the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... threw it over to me. It was from Parker, who informed Mr. Morgeson that he was going by the morning's train to Boston, thinking it was time for him to leave his employ; that, though the fault was his own in the difficulty of the day before, a Yankee could not stand a knock-down. It was too damned aristocratic for an employer to have that privilege; our institutions did not permit it. He thanked Mr. Morgeson for his liberality; he couldn't thank him for being a good fellow. "And would he oblige him by sending per ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the horses sent back. Bring 'em round just as it begins to get dark an' whistle a bar of 'Yankee Doodle' when you get here. Now cut your stick, Bud. Don't be seen near ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... any thing to fire the ship," said Hunston, to himself; "fire it and watch it close by, chuckling at them while they roasted. What a glorious return it would be for them. By the powers, it is about the only thing I could do to wipe them all off at once, all, all! Jack, Harvey, Emily, that Yankee braggart—curse him!" ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... "Yankee," as one writing me in Paris characterized the men of that valley. This awkward landsman on water was born in a cabin in the Kentucky wilderness, a house replaced by one of unhewn timber, without door ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... were great rejoicings on board. The sky was brilliant with the rockets that were shot off from the decks, and the air resounded with the music of the bands. It was noticed that the favorite piece seemed to be "the Yankee tune": it was played by the regimental bands when Earl Percy led a British force out of Boston on Lexington morning, but no mention is made of its being performed when this force returned in the evening of that famous day, or when the Sam Adams ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Sulpician Fathers. After his ordination he exercised the ministry in several places till sent by the Bishop of Boston to Manchester. Here he found his co-religionists and countrymen regarded as Helots, and far more despised by Yankee and Puritan than the slaves in the South by their rulers. The Irish were denied the privilege of sidewalks, and obliged, in order to avoid perpetual quarrels, to walk in the middle of the streets. Wherever they appeared, they were hissed and hooted, and "blood-hounds of hell" was ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... hem'—" said the colonel aloud. "Oh, that infernal Yankee understood, even though he was born in Boston!" And this as coming from a Musgrave of Matocton, may fairly be considered as a sweeping tribute to the author of Give ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the lady sat alone: In her ears were rings of dead men's bone; The brooch on her breast shone white and fine, 'Twas the polished joint of a Yankee's spine; And the well-carved handle of her fan, Was the finger-bone of a Lincoln man. She turned aside a flower to cull, From a vase which was made of a human skull; For to make her forget the loss of her slaves, Her lovers had rifled dead men's graves. Do you think I'm describing a witch ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... be weary, and then, like a prudent man, resting for hours. By progressing slowly and carefully, he became, at last, able to do wonders in the way of fine writing, and also became able to read the newspapers without glasses. (Here's a hint for some clever Yankee—as good as a fortune.) Now, reader, prepare for a large story; but be assured that it is true, and that my hands have handled and my eyes seen the things of which I tell you. At the age of seventy-one, Dr. Scott wrote upon an enamelled ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... "savagerous" is not of "Yankee" but of "Western origin."—Its use in this place is best explained by the following extract from the Third Series of the Clockmaker. "In order that the sketch which I am now about to give may be fully understood, it may be necessary to request ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his contractor's fist down thuddingly upon the long table. "Such noo-fangled ideas are against the traditions of old Blaines College, I say! Old Blaines College is not asking for alms. Old Blaines College is not a whining beggar, whatever those Yankee colleges may be. I say, gentlemen, it's beneath the dignity of old Blaines College for its president to go about Noo York bowing and scraping and passing the hat to Rockyfeller, and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the other said simply, "born and raised in Ohio. Not a Yankee, not a Westerner, not a Southerner,—nothin', ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... him from this retreat. A British war vessel, in Narragansett Bay, in pursuit of a packet which had left Newport for Providence without permission, ran aground about seventeen miles from the latter town, and was burned by disguised Yankee citizens, indignant at the outrages which had been perpetrated by this armed schooner on American commerce. A reward of L500 was offered for the discovery of the perpetrators; and the English government, pronouncing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... essentially a New-Englander. His background was that of Boston and its remote suburbs. And when he preaches the necessity of the cooperative commonwealth, he does it with a Yankee twang. In fact, he is as essentially native American as Norman Thomas, the present leader of the Socialist Party ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... quarter of an hour elapsed before anything of note occurred. Then, an elderly man whom I did not know, a farmer, by his dress, drew a copy of the "Kiota Tribune" from his pocket, and, stretching it towards Johnson, asked with a very marked Yankee twang: ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the sympathy. "I presume," she went on, and I noted how often she used the quaint old-fashioned Yankee word, "that you feel as if you had almost as much right to hate him as I had, and that if you could overlook what he tried to do to you, I might overlook what he did do to his own family. But as I see it, the case is different. He failed when he tried ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... and Marjorie had never seen such gay and unwearied dancing. She was tossed and caught from one big backwoodsman to another, the dances being "cut-in" shamelessly, because the women were fewer than the men. They nearly all danced well, French or Yankee or Englishmen. There were a couple of young Englishmen whom she particularly liked, who had ridden twenty miles, she heard, to come and dance. And finally she found herself touched on the shoulder by her own husband, and dancing smoothly away ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... its American Vice-Consul, Julius Van Hee, a hair-trigger politician and a live wire if there ever was one. Van Hee, with his intimate knowledge of four languages and the Yankee knack of being on the right spot at the right time, twice saved blood-shed in the streets of Ghent and in one instance probably prevented a repetition of the ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... good to hear ye talk good Yankee talk, Phoebe," she said. "Ye hevn't dropped yer play-actin' lingo ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... moving crowd at the bar. At the head of the table sat the ex-cowboy and ex-pugilist, Stormy German, his face usually, and now, reddened with liquor—square-shouldered, square-faced and squat; a man harsh-voiced and terse, of iron endurance and with the stubbornness of a mule; next him sat Yankee Robinson, thin-faced and wearing a weatherbeaten yellow beard. And Dutch Henry was there—bony, nervous, eager-eyed, with broken English stories of drought and hardship on the upper Turkey. These three men—brains and resource of several less ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... year 1831, William Thomas Catto, mentioned in another place, commenced an improvement on a Thrashing Machine, when on taking sick, Mr. Weston improved on it, to the extent of thrashing a thousand bushels a day. This Thrashing Mill, was commenced by a Yankee, by the name of Emmons, who failing to succeed, Mr. Catto, then a Millwright—since a Minister—improved it to the extent of thrashing five hundred bushels a day; when Mr. Weston, took it in hand, and brought ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... however, meant to punish us for the capture of this position. He thoroughly and savagely shelled the position repeatedly and the British artillery moved up as the Yankee engineers restored the destroyed railroad track and duelled daily with the very efficient Red artillery. We have to admit that with his knowledge of the area the Red artillery officer had the best of the strategy and the shooting. He had ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... view. Comfortable carriages. Hullo! what's this? Find myself suddenly shot into a mountain tarn. A Yankee would call it "tarnation cold." Get out dripping. Guard of train explains that "battery must be rather too strong this morning." Train put on line again. Up we go! Shivery. If I'd known this sort of thing went on, I'd ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... that he decided to risk the early hour, and proceeded toward the town. Upon the outskirts he met a farmer boy, who, in reply to a question, said that the town was Connell. Kurt found another early riser in the person of a blacksmith who evidently was a Yankee and proud of it. He owned a car that he was willing to hire out on good security. Kurt satisfied him on that score, and then proceeded to ask how to get across the Copper River and into Golden Valley. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... and nurserymen over the whole country. Only a tiny twig, three inches long, is requisite for a scion for grafting into other trees. The Wild Rose Sweeting tree would produce thousands of such scions. Willis, who was a Yankee lad by ancestry, resolved to preserve the secret of the tree at all hazards. He appears to have had dreams of making ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... "Your uncle is a Yankee, and is doing all he can to subjugate the free South. He has no rights which we are bound to respect," ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... corruption of the old Indian name O-sin-sing. Some have rendered it O-sin-sing, or O-sing-song, in token of its being a great market town, where anything may be had for a mere song. Its present melodious alteration to Sing Sing is said to have been made in compliment to a Yankee singing master who taught the inhabitants the art of singing through the nose." The Indian village here bore the same name before the Dutch ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... go where he would, behave as he might, the moment his name appeared in the papers, anonymous letters and paragraphs followed, denouncing him as a "pedler," as a "native Yankee," as a thief who had robbed a fellow-boarder at Bedford Springs and then run away, taking one of the most unfrequented roads "across the country to Cumberland, upon which no public conveyance runs"; and yet I found, upon further inquiry, that he went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... understand. Perhaps it was against the regulations for a colonel, in full caparison of sword and shoulder straps, to laugh at a joke from a dusty, wayworn, shabby stranger in a dented straw hat and a wrinkled Yankee-made coat. At any rate this colonel did ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... cabin for himself and his men. He had taken the place over from a New Englander, who had made his pile by running the lumbering business up here and a saw-mill down in the valley at the same time. The place seemed dog-cheap at the time; but after a while it began to dawn upon Hewson that the Yankee had the better of the deal. Eucalyptus had not come up to early promise. In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill with a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-mills were idle and rotting. Its original architect had sunk to a blue-faced and lachrymose bar-loafer, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... country, a trifle to keep him from foundering. Look, your honour, how I lost my precious limb in the sarvice. You see we was in the little Tollymakus frigate, cruising off the banks o' Newf'land, when we fell in with a saucy Yankee, twice the size of our craft; but, bless your honour, that never makes no odds to British sailors, and so we sarved her out with hot dumpling till she got enough, and forced her to haul down her stripes to the flag of Old England. But somehow, your honour, I caught a chance ball that threw me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the retrospect of my memory as Number 3 was as unlike the Kentuckian, as the latter was to Thompson. He was a disciple of Esculapius—not thin and pale, as these usually are, but fat, red, and jolly. I think he was originally a "Yankee," though his long residence in the Western States had rubbed the Yankee out of him to a great extent. At all events he had few of their characteristics about him. He was neither staid, sober, nor, what is usually alleged as a trait of the true bred Yankee, "stingy." ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Man is born with an innate knowledge of the strain of "Yankee Doodle." No one can remember when he first learned it. The reason is because he never learned it at all. It ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... to several factories," she gleefully explained, "here and abroad. A Yankee firm built it. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... fence, Snorting, ramping, snapping, sniffing, With gastronomic calculations, Crossed the Appalachians, The east walls of our citadel, And turned to gold-horned unicorns, Feasting in the dim, volunteer farms of the forest. Stripedest, kickingest kittens escaped, Caterwauling "Yankee Doodle Dandy," Renounced their poor relations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to tiny tigers In the humorous forest. Chickens escaped From farmyard congregations, Crossed the Appalachians, And turned to amber ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... character was born of cattle. The cattle were worked in huge herds and, like the buffalo supplanted by them, roamed in unnumbered thousands. In a pre-railroad period, cattle were killed for their hides and tallow, and smart Yankee coasters went constantly to such ports as Galveston for these cargoes. The beef was left ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... severity which sat upon it, and a deep scar which traversed his brow from the right temple to the top of his nose. It was difficult to tell to what country he belonged. His father was a Canadian, his mother a Scotchwoman. He was born in Canada, brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... gentleman is now in the country. We trust he will not fail to visit the Connecticut State Prison. There he would unquestionably obtain numerous hints for improving the Spanish system of prison torture, or even that in vogue in his native land, for political prisoners. There he might learn how Yankee thrift, applied in this direction, makes the starving of convicts even a more profitable business than manufacturing wooden nutmegs. Perhaps not the least valuable information he would gain, would be the best method of goading obnoxious prisoners into revolt, and thus obtaining a chance for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient sepulchres of the Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and inventions help us to see and so to understand better the works of ancient Egypt. But it is perhaps a little too much like the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. The interiors of the later tombs are often decorated with reliefs which imitate those of the early period, but with a kind of delicate grace which at once marks them for what they ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... regarding this life as a stern warfare, but the possible pathway to an infinite happiness beyond; fierce to beat down the emissaries of evil,—heretic, witch, or devil; yet tender at inmost heart, and valiant for the truth as he sees it. After a century, behold the Yankee,—the shrewd, toilful, thrifty occupant of the homely earth; one side of his brain speculating on the eternities, and the other side devising wealth, comfort, personal and social good. And to-day, successor of Puritan ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... oppression. He had been told that the Canadians were serfs, fighting for liberty. Fired with zeal for such a cause, he crossed the frontier with a company and was captured. He was only second in command, the nominal chief being a Yankee named Abbey, who tried to run away, and who, Von Shoultz declared ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... of only one other party of whites. They had journeyed up on the train with us, getting in at North Bay, and hailing from Boston way. A common goal and object had served by way of introduction. But the acquaintance had made little progress. This noisy, aggressive Yankee did not suit our fancy much as a possible neighbour, and it was only a slight intimacy between his chief guide, Jake the Swede, and one of our men that kept the thing going at all. They went into camp on Beaver Creek, fifty miles and more to ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... headquarters of the 60th Rifles on board, and thence to the Gulf of Peche-li, which I should say submitted one of the finest spectacles in the world, with its congregations of transports and English and French and Yankee ships of war. It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time has obliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noble frigates, the Imperieuse and the Chesapeake, straining tightly ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... my entreaties for leave-taking in the carriage, he insisted upon getting out on the sidewalk and escorting me up to my door, saying, with a mock heroic protest to the heavens above us, "That it would be shameful for a full-blooded Britisher to leave an unprotected Yankee friend exposed to ruffians, who prowl about the streets with an eye to plunder." Then giving me a gigantic embrace, he sang a verse of which he knew me to be very fond; and so vanished out of my sight the great-hearted author of "Pendennis" and "Vanity Fair." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... habits of some little German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark about the English in France—"They take their pleasure sadly, after their fashion"—may apply to the population of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... one has to get up in the morning to beat a Yankee or a Scotchman at a bargain," was McPhearson's quiet observation. "I could add to this tale many another one of the early clockmakers. They were ingenious old fellows. Indeed, they had to be. Some of them, to be sure, brought tools with them from England; but at best there were only ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Yankee; and though a cultivated one, he had not parted with an innate inquisitiveness, and had an off-hand way of asking such questions as first presented. He catechised these three missionaries as faithfully, even in presence ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of a previous state of things, are some very modern forms of life, looking like Yankee pedlars among a tribe of Red Indians. Crocodiles of modern type appear; bony fishes, many of them very similar to existing species, almost supplant the forms of fish which predominate in more ancient seas; and many kinds of living shell-fish first become known to us in the chalk. The vegetation ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... from a huge bludgeon which he carried in his hand, and (probably disordered by his troubles) could hardly be persuaded from attacking the mummy which is in one of the halls; how a sharp, bustling, go-ahead Yankee rushed in one morning, rubbing his hands, and demanding, "Show me all ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... The women are just as bad as the men. But Demming is not only a cracker; he is a cracker spoiled by the tourists. We have despoiled him of his simplicity. He hasn't learned any good of us,—that goes without saying,—but he has learned no end of Yankee tricks. Do you suppose that if left to himself he would ever have been up to this morning's performance? Oh, we've polished his wicked wits for him! Even his dialect is no longer pure South Carolinian; it ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Fer-de-lance looks an hideous fiend, the Ocelot a beautiful fiend, merely because the outlines of the Ocelot approach more nearly to those which we consider beautiful in a human being: but I confess myself not yet convinced. 'There is a great deal of human nature in man,' said the wise Yankee; and one's human nature, perhaps one's common-sense also, will persist in considering beauty and ugliness as absolute realities, in spite of one's efforts to be fair to the weighty arguments on the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... after the funeral to see the Professor. The skipper was a tall, slim man, lean as a fasting friar, and hard as nails, with closely clipped red hair, mustache of the same aggressive hue, and an American goatee. He spoke with a Yankee accent, and in a truculent manner, sufficiently annoying to the fiery Professor. When he met Braddock in the museum, the two became enemies at the first glance, and because both were bad-tempered and obstinate, took an instant dislike to one ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Yankee blood in him somewhere, for now he was chewing tobacco industriously, and staining the snow in front of the barricade, where a loophole between the logs offered him opportunity for marksmanship ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... shoutin' an' singin' goin' on all about—he begun by goin' over his own family trouble, an' I wanted to laugh out, fer the Lord knows, while Brother Tim's folks has had some few ordinary reverses, an' did lose a few head o' stock in the war, an' one o' the gals married a no-'count Yankee carpenter an' never would write back home, an' Brother Mitchell's ma an' pa died uv ripe old age—but, as I say, nobody ever thought they wus particular unfortunate. Howsomever, she thought they wus from his tale an' his sad, mournful way o' talkin'. Job an' all ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... fingers on the arm of his chair. Eventually this assumed the time and accent of some air. Then he began to whistle softly and hesitatingly, as if trying to recall a forgotten tune. Finally this took shape in a rude resemblance, not unlike that which his flag bore to the national standard, to Yankee Doodle. Suddenly ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his job at the end of two months, leaving the launch moored at the pontoon in Horta. Got a better screw at a sawmill up the river—blast him! And ever since it has been the same thing. Any Scotch or Yankee vagabond that likes to call himself a mechanic out here gets eighteen pounds a month, and the next you know he's cleared out, after smashing something as likely as not. I give you my word that some of the objects I've had for engine-drivers couldn't tell the boiler from the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... were heavier and better constructed, and their missiles of unusual shape and improper use. The Americans resorted to expedients that had not been tried before, and excited a mixture of irritation and respect in the English service, until "Yankee smartness" became a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... turned to stone by his magic, lies asleep at his feet. The island called by the Ojibways the Mak-i-nak (the turtle) from its tortoise-like shape, lifts its huge form in the distance. Some "down-east" Yankee, called it "Pie-Island," from its (to his hungry imagination) fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. McKay's Mountain on the main-land, a perpendicular rock more ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... until my stock purchase, had been the chattel and creature of one Button Gwynnet Fles. In appearance he was such a genuine Yankee, lean and sharp, with a slight stoop and prying eyes, that one quite expected a straw to protrude from between his thin lips or have him draw from his pocket a wooden nutmeg and offer it for sale. After getting to know him I learned this apparent shrewdness was a pure defense mechanism, that he ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with Rogers was, indeed, like living in the past: and one may imagine how weird it seemed to a raw Yankee youth, thus facing the man who might have shaken hands with Dr. Johnson. I ventured to ask him one day if he had ever seen the doctor. "No," said he; "but I went down to Bolt Court in 1782 with the intention of making Dr. Johnson's ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... now. Not go da school any more. Boss, he giva da cut. I bringa da Tony, getta da job as tool boy. Boss, he fire da Yankee boy. Tony, he ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... successful in adapting the Yankee dialect to the purposes of humorous writing in his "Jack Downing's Letters" and other productions. The writings of Henry D. Thoreau, combining essay and description, are quaint and humorous, while those of "Timothy Titcomb" (J.G. Holland) are addressed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... it. If he deplores the evils of war, why does he not end it at once, and order his hordes of Yankee invaders to throw down ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... that blackguard Feeny's different, I tell you. He'd hear the gurgle of the spigot if he were ten miles across the Gila, and be here to bust things before you could serve out a gill,—damn him! He's been keen enough to put that psalm-singing Yankee on guard over your liquor. How're you going to get at ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... one ear, and remained a fixed fact; for long experience had induced the philosophic beast to take for his motto the Yankee maxim, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead!" He knew things were not right; therefore he did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... woman to a well-known restaurant. He led her to a table in a remote corner, and the moment they were seated she removed her veil and disclosed a very beautiful face. She was evidently an American woman, and our hero had detected a Yankee pronunciation, but he was thoughtful enough to know that the down east idiom might be assumed. We will here say that his suspicions of the woman had not relaxed, but when he beheld her fair, beautiful face his suspicion was just a ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... curled his mustache in astonishment and indignation; he hinted something about beating to quarters, and chastising this piece of Yankee insolence. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers. These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid. The very special attitude of Wilmington, however—a Yankee town in perpetual protest with a Bourbon State—has inspired its press with peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... have you lived?" snapped out the tailor with a sneer. "You must be a Yankee—they have only what we leave over down there!" —he jerked his head southward. "We don't stop to look at weather here. I suppose you did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the American Missionary Association has ever been better than this last one. Dr. William M. Taylor, who with such consummate felicity combines so many of the best characteristics of the Scotch, the English and the Yankee, presided. The topics of the several papers and addresses, though covering a large range of thought all converged to the same main point, and were especially pertinent to the hour. Those who had ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... WOULD-BE "ENGLISH WIVES"—It is reported that "Yankee Girls and American Belles were the feature of the Miscellaneous Market." This should put our young men on their mettle—tin, of course, for choice. No reasonable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... Ursula's church in Cologne, where the old sexton narrating the story of the ashes and bones to the eleven thousand innocent virgins, who, according to tradition, were sacrificed on a certain occasion. One of the characters whom he pretended to have met several times on his trip to Mont Blanc, was a Yankee, whom he named "Phineas Cutecraft." The wink came at the time he introduced Phineas in the Cologne church, and made him say at the end of the sexton's story about ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... I have left my Diary for some weeks, I cannot tell why. We have had the usual number of travelling Counts and Countesses, Yankees male and female, and a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy into the bargain, a smart young Virginia man. We have had friends of our own also, the Miss Ardens, young Mrs. Morritt and Anne Morritt, most agreeable visitors.[404] Cadell came out here yesterday with his horn filled with good news. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... shall be greater, We will sail pathless and wild seas, We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... which yearly visits the Moravian stations on this coast anchored in the harbor of Hopedale ten minutes before us: we had been rapidly gaining upon her in our Flying Yankee for the last twenty miles. Signal-guns had answered each other from ship and shore; the missionaries were soon on board, and men and women were falling into each other's arms with joyful, mournful kisses and tears. The ship returned some missionaries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... old notion that the negro is, by constitution, a lazy creature, who will do no work at all except by compulsion, is now forever exploded."[187] He even declared, that the free negro "understands his interest as well as a Yankee."[188] These confident statements, made by an eye-witness, were hailed by the abolitionists as conclusive proof that the experiment was working admirably. "The great truth has come out," says Dr. Channing, "that the hopes ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... says: "I could not help wondering if old mother Scotland had put into 'the father of all the tea-kettles' two thousand teaspoonfuls of tea for the company and one for the teapot, as is our good Yankee custom." ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots, blouses, and the scarlet of the British lines-man,— all these are seen in narrow streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east, Yankee state of Maine. It is not far from New England to Old France.... There has been no dying out of the race among the French Canadians. They number twenty times the thousand that they did 100 years ago. The American soil has left physical ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... troops were received with every mark of hatred and disgust, and for three years were subjected to every sort of insult and indignity, which they repaid in kind. The troops led riotous lives, raced horses on Sunday on the Common, played "Yankee Doodle" before the church doors, and more than once exchanged blows with the citizens. In one encounter the troops fired on the crowd, killing five and wounding six. This was the famous "Boston Massacre," and produced over all the land a ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... into a single line. Some were armed with rifles, some with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle. Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company, raised his arms in prayer, invoking the "God of Armies" as though he addressed his supplication before a vast ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... awkward pupil, and certainly worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I can see his rooms now, with colored pictures of the fights between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan and Sayers, and other great events in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to excite interest among his patrons, he held a series of "championship" matches for the different weights, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... oil wells, and was very much interested in contrasting the Austrian ozokerite and petroleum industry with the American. It is a good illustration of the difference between the lower class of Poles and Jews and the Yankee. Borislau, after twenty years' work, was unimproved, dirty, squalid, and brutal. It contained one school house, but no church nor printing office. None of its streets were paved, and, in the main ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... as she handed me a boiled potato one day, I fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes on her blue-Presbyterian, non-committal ones, and asked, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Only a Yankee, son," I replied, satisfied I held the upper hand, and clambering in over the back of the seat. He shrank back from contact with me farther into the corner, but there was nothing in the slight movement to cause alarm. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... shrewdness which would have done credit To even a Yankee boy, he Sought the lamp where the wizard had hid it, And, turning a mystical key, Brought it forth, and then, rubbing ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... time there was, when no one thought It sin, to hold a slave he'd bought, And of his strength have the command, As much as of his house and land. A Yankee Lawyer long had kept A ...
— Amusing Trial in which a Yankee Lawyer Renders a Just Verdict • Anonymous
... from the American to the midshipman and back again, with his doubts here and there, veering like a weather vane, for the thought would keep attacking him—suppose all this about the slave schooner was Yankee bunkum, and as soon as he had got rid of them, the lugger would sail away and ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... no less! But it aint our lifeboat sarvice: it's the American one, cause it's to be given by that fine young fellow, Dr Hayward, who looks as if suthin' had damaged his constitootion somehow. I'm told he's a Yankee, though he looks uncommon ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... think your steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have you?—tumbled upon every platform?—and you've found all your cleverness no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?—that would be better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... thrifty streak, and I hated to see a property like Ridge House lie fallow. It's great. The buying of Blowing Rock was pure Yankee sense of a bargain. But you see how it all works out. You'll have the time of your life developing your holdings and, at odd moments, I can start my shack. Look upon the change as an adventure—nothing permanent. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... beating time to his jerky syllables. He had twinkling blue eyes, which were half hid under heavy, projecting eyebrows, and shut up tight whenever he laughed. His hair was long and thin, and white as spun glass. Altogether, except that he spoke with an unmistakable Yankee twang, and wore unmistakable Yankee clothes, you might have fancied that he was an ancient elf ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a lively scene all the year round; the rest of the city appears deserted in comparison. The British steamers from Panama and Payta arrive weekly; Yankee steam-boats make regular trips up and down the Guayas and its tributaries; half a dozen sailing vessels, principally French, are usually lying in the stream, which is here six fathoms deep; and hundreds of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... brightened them up he might have passed them for $3.89. But Jenkins puts a thief within his stomach that steals away his business ability, so that when I asked for them nickels he merely replied: 'Take the damned Yankee ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... a fair sample of the men who made the Yukon country. A Yankee, born, in Auburn, Maine, the Wanderlust early laid him by the heels, and at sixteen he was heading west on the trail that led "farther north." He prospected in the Black Hills, Montana, and in the Coeur d'Alene, then heard ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... thence to Canon de Oro. As we now approached Tucson, everything was in fighting trim. A short halt was made near the town, and the cavalry company, in two divisions, approached the place from the north and west. The infantry marched in by the main street from the west, with the field music playing "Yankee Doodle," and instead of being received by shot and shell, we found neither friend nor enemy, only a village without population, if we except some ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... of the last Cuban cable isolated the island. Thereafter the invasion was vigorously prosecuted. On June 10, under a heavy protecting fire, a landing of 600 marines from the Oregon, Marblehead, and Yankee was effected in Guantanamo Bay, where it had been determined to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... him that Edestone as an American had a sense of duty to the nations of Europe was something quite different. This man of steel had no imagination, he was convinced, and to ask him to follow him in his flights would be as useless as to request him to whistle Yankee Doodle. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... myself had been making our usual Christmas visit to Aunt Charity, or Aunt "Charty," as we used to call her, in good old Yankee language. Aunt Charity dwelt in Boston; and was the wife of a very excellent man, in very excellent circumstances; and the mother of seven dear, excellent boys, of whom Cousin Jehoiakim Johnson ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... snow melted, the wild geese flew northward, and the wilderness trail was open again, he had no difficulty in finding an emigrant party to which to attach himself. Abner Blythe was a lean, hard Yankee, but he had lived for years in the Middle West and had made journeys out into the prairie, although he had never gone the whole of the way to the mountains and the coast. He knew how to drive cattle with the long black-snake whip, whose snapping lash alone can voice ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... in men and in materiel, yet the infantry, the main strength of the defence, was still intact.* (* "Our artillery," says General D.H. Hill, "could not cope with the superior weight, calibre, range, and number of the Yankee guns; hence it ought only to have been used against masses of infantry. On the contrary, our guns were made to reply to the Yankee guns, and were smashed up or withdrawn before they could be effectually turned against massive columns of attack." After ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... The detachment of Royal Artillery, whose quarters my road leads directly past, is composed largely of the gallant sons of Erin, and as I wheel into the cantonment, an artilleryman seated on a eharpoy beneath a spreading neem-tree, sings out to his comrades, "Be jabbers, bhoys; here's the Yankee phat's travellin' around the worruld wid ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... halt without any command, and directly beside the young man, who was working diligently over the overturned motorcycle. His repair kit was spread out at the roadside, and the cause of the trouble was self-evident, it would seem. But Walky was a true Yankee ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... could tell him anywhere, and we have a first-rate fellow in command of the cavalry—Colonel Stuart—a splendid, dashing fellow, full of life and go. His fellows swear by him. I quite envy you, for I expect you will astonish the Yankee horsemen. They are no great riders up there, you know, and I reckon the first time you meet them ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... opened up a new world for clipper ships and Yankee traders, space holds enormous potential for commerce today. The market for space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it. Companies interested in putting payloads into space must have ready access to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... because the English and Canadian public are prejudiced against 'Yankee propositions.' You yourself couldn't float it in England. On the other hand, I'm Canadian-born, and my name carries weight both in England and ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... a certain vigor of epithet, picked up in the familiarity of the camp during the days when she was known as "Old Ma'am Atherly" or "Aunt Sally," declared that they were "no corn-cracking Hoosiers," "hayseed pikes," nor "northern Yankee scum," and that she should yet live to see them "holding their own lands again and the lands of their forefathers." Quieted at last by opiates, she fell into a more lucid but scarcely less distressing attitude. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... terrestrials, led to the introduction of some interpolations as to the Washington Treaty, which, when interpreted by the production of the American flag and English Union Jack, brought down thunders of applause. The final chorus was sung to "Yankee Doodle," and accompanied by a fiddle. The acting and accessories were perfect; and what poor Robson used to term the "horgan" of Triballos, was wonderful. That youth would be a nice young man for a small tea party. It is to be hoped ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies |
