"Bum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is," I said. "Charlie says it's a good Monday night town because two through freights lay over there till daylight. Tuesday night we have to double back to Greenwich, and that's where Charlie gave us the bum deal. This gag of chasing us back over the same route is rotten, because somebody may be sitting up for us with a rock. But Charlie says Greenwich has developed into a great show town since five new families' moved there last summer. Wednesday we get into Stamford for a run—two performances. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... some yearlings in there that belong in the 'bum bunch,' and six or eight with wrong earmarks. We'll have to catch them." Kate set the example by walking in among them, and immediately a cloud of dust arose as the frightened sheep ran bleating in a circle. Above the din Kate's voice rose sharp and imperative as her ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... gate, an' most likely fine it locked when we git there. Hold on till I git my internal machine to work on the fence. Dad! Where's that ole morepoke? O, you're there, are you? Fetch the jack off o' your wagon—come! fly roun'! you're (very) slow for a young fellow. Bum," (abbreviation of "bummer," and applied to the red-headed fellow) "you surround them carrion, or we'll be losin' the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... always it was good advice she was giving to my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck. There was none of the other children of us ever seen her unless me; but I used to be glad when I seen her coming up the bum, and would run out and catch her by the hand and the cloak, and call to my mother, 'Here's the Wee Woman!' No man body ever seen her. My father used to be wanting to, and was angry with my mother and me, thinking we were telling lies and talking foolish ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... occurred to him that it was not necessary to go into so much detail in breaking in a political recruit. When he resumed, it was in a good-natured tone of dismissal. "That's what you do, kid. To-morrow you get a sprained wrist, so you can't work for a few days, and that'll give you a chance to bum round and hear what the men are saying. Meantime, I'll see ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... thy tender leg shall rake: (I spare the thistles for Sir Arthur's[2] sake) Sharp are the stones; take thou this rushy mat; The hardest bum will bruise ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... brief adventure there ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... no use, Senor," he said to Frank, who had jumped from the running board and stood beside him. "She is finish. The spark plug, she is on the—what you call it?—the bum." And with an air of finality, he closed the cover. At the same moment he turned to peer anxiously down the road ahead, whence came now on the still twilight the thudding hoofbeats of a galloping horse, ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... The rule for elevator boys is still somewhat in the air, because so few of these bum hotels over here have elevators, but you can sort of reason the thing out if you put your mind on it. When you get on a street car in Germany, what tip do you ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... handkerchief. The heat in the dining-room was oppressive. "I've never see 'em before, an' they didn't seem like talkin' a heap. They were all three hard-lookin' citizens, an'—might ha' been anything from bum cowpunchers to—" ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... that. I cain't water 'em. I ain't got rights to even lay my hands on 'em! O-h-h!" he shuddered, and agonizedly pulled taut on every tired, aching muscle. "Yuh oughter be beat up with a club. Yuh oughter get pounded with a rawk. You're a rotten, whisky-soaked bum, that's all yuh are now, and yuh oughter be killed and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... They were up so high that they could look down and see everything, you know. They could see the big ponds up in the sky where the rain is made, and the awful big windmills up there where the wind blows from, and the cannons that bum the thunder down." ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... She isn't the kind that needs six butlers to live—she doesn't live that way now. That's just pride, Ted, thinking that—and a rather bum variety of pride when you come down to it. I hate these people who moan around and won't be happy unless they can do everything themselves—they're generally the kind that give their wives a charge account at Lucile's and ten ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... sits a Knight, And here a grave old man ore right Against his worship, then perhaps That by and by a Drawer claps His bum close by them, there down squats A dealer in old shoes and hats; And here withouten any panick Fear, dread or care ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... know that his name is Jack Hoag; he's a little bit of a trapper and a big bit of a bum; stuck me last year. He doesn't come out this way; they say he goes out by the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in to Beaver Dam. Yer knows them two fellers, an' so do I. One of 'em is the feller what whacked me, an' the t'other is that bum Hildey. If they gits here afore I come back, you an' Dink'll ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... whose lives seem sweet and decorous when compared with those of a Sandwich or a Dashwood or a Duke of Grafton. Yet these men, whose companionship might be rejected by Jack Sheppard, and whose example might be avoided by Pompey Bum, are the men whose names are ceaselessly prominent in the early story of the reign, and to whose power and influence much of its calamities are ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 12.30 A.M. still coaling up. Every thing working smooth and nothing to stop, it is a beautyfull night and the Southern Cross looms up with more beauty than I ever seen befor. But the ships bum Boat is all right too, she loomed up with a big ketle of hot Steaming cocoa, Just the thing a man wants when he has the mid watch. the wether is very cold down hear. a few of the men is going ashore to morrow. ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... death, and peace, untroubled by a single sigh; methinks I see the blessed soul of her who appeared to me in this spot rise, dazzling and immortal, from every point of the horizon, fill of herself alone the sky and waters, shine in that splendor, float in that ether, bum in all those flames. I see it penetrate those waves, breathe in their murmurs; pray, and laud, and sing in that one hymn of life that streams with these cascades from glacier unto lake, and shed upon the valley and on those who keep her memory a blessing that the eye seems to ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... just after Number Seventeen had pulled out, westbound, about one-forty in the morning. There wasn't anything else till six-one. Them are always the hardest hours. A fellow's got to stay awake, see, and nothin' to keep him—unless maybe a coyote howlin' a mile off, or maybe a bum knockin' around among the box cars on the sidin', or, if it's cold, the stove to tend. That's all. Unless you put a record on the old phonograph and hit 'er up a few minutes now ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... admire the busy thoroughfare seated on the backs of these animals. The native camel-drivers in their national costumes moved around and mingled with the strangers—which gave the populated street a peculiar charm to the eye, whereas the "Bum-Bum Candy" sold by Egyptian confectioners, afforded a strange sensation to the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... armed with jezails, umbrellas, brooms, catapults, pikes, brickbats, kukeries,[52] pokers, clubs, axes, horse-pistols, bottles, dead fowls, polo-sticks, assegais and bombs. They were commanded by a Highlander in a bum-bee tartan kilt, top-hat and one sock, with a red nose a foot long, riding on a rocking horse and brandishing a dem great cucumber and a tea-tray made into a shield. There was a thundering great drain-pipe mounted ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the well. I saw her give him one of the apples; and hearing him say, with a loud gaffaw, "Where is the tailor?" I took to my heels, and never stopped till I found myself on the little stool by the fireside, and the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... "Dose bum an' saloon feller got all de bes' claims at Klondike," said Poleon. "I guess it's goin' be de ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the sun was out o' sight, And darker gloamin' brought the night; [twilight] The bum-clock humm'd wi' lazy drone, [cockchafer] The kye stood rowtin' i' the loan; [cattle, lowing, lane] When up they gat and shook their lugs, [ears] Rejoiced they werena men but dogs; And each took aff his several way, Resolved to meet ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... me gude faller, Ay s'pose she tenk dat vill help some; And all of dem call me gude faller, And helping to put me on bum. Val, back to the pines, Maester Olaf, And driving yure old team of mules. Put dis in yure pipe, tu, and smoke it: Gude fallers ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... bad dreams, that's all," said Overland, grinning. "Fifteen a month and found ain't bad for a bum, is it?" ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... hire all the bullies, blackguards, bankrupts, blacklegs, bum-bailiffs, and even the gipsies in the neighbourhood," &c. {157} This and much more of a scurrilous character appeared in large type with the printer's ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... a hobo is a different breed of cat than you think. Oh, people are getting educated to the idea that a hobo will work and move on, whereas a tramp will mooch and move on, and a bum will mooch and hang around, but you still find folks who are ignorant enough ...
— See? • Edward G. Robles
... not to come, with a hey, with a hey, Now safe is David's bum, with a ho; Then hey for Oxford ho, Strong government, raree ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... finished shaving, had donned his clean white soft shirt. His soft collar fitted to a miracle about his strong throat. Nick's sartorial effects were a triumph—on forty a week. "Say, can't you talk about nothing but that kid of yours? I bet he's a bum specimen at that. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... BUM'KINET, a shepherd. He proposes to Grub'binol that they should repair to a certain hut and sing "Gillian of Croydon," "Patient Grissel," "Cast away Care," "Over the Hills," and so on; but being told that Blouzelinda was dead, he sings a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... think they'll try to put the place on the bum, sir?" cried Pete, the irrepressible, his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... It does not increase his respect for Christians to find them easily deceived, and it outrages his sense of justice to see that laziness, drunkenness, and vice are rewarded by church workers. Even among tramps, the variety known as the "mission bum" is looked down upon by his fellows, and there is a lesson for the mission worker in this ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... satisfied the witnesses of the defendants' guilt, and they now state the circumstances as being indubitable proof. This argument manifests, in those who use it, an equal want of sense and sensibility. It is precisely fitted to the feeling and the intellect of a bum-bailiff. In a court of justice it deserves nothing but contempt. Is there nothing that can agitate the frame or excite the blood but the consciousness of guilt? If the defendants were innocent, would they not feel indignation at this unjust accusation? ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... they lived. I'm afraid I wasn't interested. Aren't you glad the fire didn't bum the cupola? I almost wish they could leave the house that lovely weathered brown tone, instead of painting it white with green blinds again. Dad would like it that way, too. I suppose everybody would say it was flying in the face of tradition, after the Trowbridge ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... clitoris in my mouth, I sucked it up to its greatest stiffness. I had thrust three fingers into her cunt, and when I found she had thrust hers into my bottom, I transferred them all into her beautiful pink bum-hole. They were very greasy from my sperm coming down upon them when in her cunt, and as she favoured their entrance by pushing out her bottom, all three slipped in, without, apparently, her thinking ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there (God! but I'm weak—since the bitter dawn, and never a bite of food); I'll just go over and slip inside—I mustn't give way to despair— Perhaps I can bum a little booze if ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... I climbed one of those bum mounds they call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink, preferably drink. The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system. I figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 'pie' for the 'Greys' or 'Maroons.' I can excuse Caldwell for not playing his best, since he broke his finger in the beginning of the game and nobody knew it until twenty minutes later. Plucky of the youngster, but he ought to have told us. Ellis is all right, but that's the second time his bum ankle has given way, and I don't know whether he can stand the strain of a big game. Hodge has got the weight and the strength, but he leaves too much of the work to Trent. As for Boyd, I'm afraid ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... I'll keep watching. Since Farquaharson got this bug about writing stories he's taken to rambling around town at night. I said he didn't seem to want companions, but when he goes out on these prowls he'll talk for hours with any dirty old bum that stops him and he always falls for pan-handling. Beggars, street-walkers, any sort of old down-and-outer interests him, if it's hard ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says Morgan. "The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called 'Love's Idle Hour.' It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a purple river. The cablegram said it might ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... with you using mine?" demanded the other. "That plug you put in holds dandy, and there's nothing the matter with it right now. Same old place, under the side porch here. Guess the lamp is on the bum, but you hardly need that. If a cop holds you up, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... ten a twain, Who care not a rush for hail nor rain, Messages swiftly to go or to come, Or duck a taxman or harry a bum,[7] Or "clip a server,"[8] did blithely lie In the stable parlour next to the sky[9] Dinners, save chance ones, seldom had they, Unless they could nibble their beds of hay; But the less they got, they were hardier all— 'T was the custom of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... what a guy your big brother looked on Lexington street, where all the ladies here go shopping! I should have died if I had seen anybody from home. There wasn't any breaking away, because they were too many for us. One "freshy" tried it, and he's going around with a bum eye and his hand in ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... either—Judas, immaculately attired in a white coat, arrived from downstairs with a step ladder and proceeded with everyone's assistance to reconstruct the original pipe. And a pretty picture Judas made. And a pretty bum job he made. But anyway the stove-pipe drew; and everyone thanked God and fought for places about le poele. And Monsieur Pet-airs hoped there would be no more ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... he began apologetically. "I haf for Mis' Slawson a liddle bresent here. I tink she like it. She look so goot-netchered, und I know she iss kind to bum animals. My vife, her Maltee cat vas having some liddle kittens already, a mont' ago. I tink Mis' Slawson, she lige to hef von off dem pussies, ja? Annyhow, I bring her von here, und I esk you vill gif it to her mit my tanks, ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... book here that the city 's the natural place to live—aboriginal tribes prove man 's naturally gregarious. What d'you think about it, heh, Bob?... Bum country, this is. No thinking. What in the name of the seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... off a cannon, bum! bum! Outside her window, and she wouldn't wake up," she said. Then holding out a newspaper, she asked whether the gentlemen had heard of the sinking of the Roland and the few survivors. When Willy, with his dilating nostrils and his ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of his feat, and when he caught his breath enough to speak, explained, "Yepp,—it's the only place in this bum town where you can get Alligretti's, and they're the only kind that're fit to eat" He tore open the box as he spoke, demolishing with ruthless and practised hands the various layers of fine paper and gold cord which wrapped ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... four shaku (feet) in depth. The Osho[u] began the recitation of the sutra. The priests stood by in vigilant attention. As the last word reverberated on the bishop's lips they seized the sutra wrapped bamboo, slipped it in the long box—bum! the lock snapped. The congregation was tremendously impressed. For a decent time Shu[u]den remained in prayer and meditation. "The charm is complete. O'Iwa no longer wanders, to her own penance and the disaster of men. Henceforth he who says she does so lies. Hearken to the words of Shu[u]den. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and moreover, very hungry. The first lieutenant did not forget his promise: he sent us a good dinner, and a glass of grog each, which we discussed under the half-deck, between two of the guns. We had some money in our pockets, and we purchased some sheets of paper from the bum-boat people, who were on the main-deck supplying the seamen, and I wrote to Mr Drummond and Mr Turnbull, as well as to Mary and old Tom, requesting the two latter to forward our clothes to Deal, in case of our being detained. Tom ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... up at last and hands me a species of coma and leaves me with twenty-five dollars! That's what I get. What I've been doing is a longer story. I apologize for not having seen your friend who brought the letter, but it's up to you to apologize for a bum epistle to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... light on the lives of the younger boarding-school boys and girls of the nineteenth century, particularly eight to thirteen year-old boys. I can tell you that not a lot had changed by the time I was at such a school, less than fifty years later. Even the Eton collar and the bum-freezer jacket was familiar to me! ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... we shall refer no farther,' pulling down his neckcloth with a smile. 'That man exists no more: by an exercise of will I have destroyed him. There is something like it in the poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career - the observed, I may say, of all observers, including the bum-bailie: and then, presto! a quiet, sly, old, rustic BONHOMME, cultivating roses. In ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bum!" cried the blacksmith angrily, "but I mean to save my bones"—with which he ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... speed, he loosened the drag and threw it under the hind wheel, and at this abrupt braking the wagon leaped mightily into the air, like a startled rhinoceros. One of the poles on the side cracked, and the smaller cask toppled over and fell from the cart with a heavy bum-bum-bum-bum. Florie had tried to throw his weight against it, but the cask gave his head a severe slanting blow before dropping full weight into ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... STEVENSON: If you know when you are well off you won't have much to do with Jack Rover or his cousins. They are a bum lot and some day you will be ashamed of every one of them. Jack Rover never treated anybody square, and some day you can take it from me that I intend to pound his handsome face into a jelly. Better listen to my warning, or you will be very sorry you ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bum for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the lawyer. "I've a little personal business you might attend to," he said. Wilding set himself to listen, resignedly, imagining that this bum would ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the money and let me go now, and I won't ever come back!" cried Montgomery eagerly. "I been lookin' for the chance to get clear of this bum town! I'll stay away, don't you lose no sleep about that; I ain't got nothin' ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... unanimous. I think it's a rotten shame for America to go into this war. And some of us Americans are sayin' we won't stand for it. We don't own no Congersmen; we're only the protelarriat, as the feller says; but we're goin' to put this country on the bum, and that's what old Kaiser Bill wants we should do, or I ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Chip's manner and tone when crossed. "I've been trying out all the darned benchest you've got—and there ain't a one I'd give a punched nickel for but Silver. I'd a rode Shootin' Star, only he wouldn't stand still so I could get onto him. Whoever broke him did a bum job. The horse I break will stand, or I'll know the reason why. Silver'll stand, all right. And I can guide him pretty well by slapping his neck. You did a pretty fair job when you broke Silver," the Kid informed his ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... one desperate young fellow took the lead, and the rest marched after. He moved off down the street, shouting through his closed lips "Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum!" The rest took up the drum-like cry, and marched after him two and two. They made straight toward Judge Brown's office, where they knew Bradley was. They halted ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... forward with his hand clutchin' at his side, an' his pink checks gray an' twisted. He coughed a dry, short cough, an' groans out between his set teeth. "It 's my heart; I got a bum pump. You tell George Jordan that I never breathed a word of it, but that Jack Whitman—Oh, my God! Get me a drink of whiskey! Get me a drink ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... dust-covered crown and torn rim. He was going forth to eat as the wanderer may eat, and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had reached City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with yells of "bum" and "hobo," and with various unholy epithets that small boys had applied to him at intervals, that he was in a state of the most profound dejection. The sifting rain saturated the old velvet collar of his overcoat, and as the wet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt that there ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... down South, clean off the track of ever'thing. I puts my foot in my hand and went out and seen the world. I tramps up to New York, works my way over to England, tramps and peddles, and gits enough dough to pay my way back. Say, it's bum slow over there. Why, they ain't even on to street-cars in London! I makes more in a week at home than I do in a month in England. Say, where you goin' ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... voided. I was struck with its extraordinary thickness. I made no observation at the time, but it raised an idea that preoccupied me much. I had often thought over the pleasure that fucking Mrs. Benson's bum-hole had given me, hence I had tried to initiate both Miss Evelyn and Mary in that delightful route of pleasure, but, as before stated, had been unable to succeed with them from the great developement of my weapon. Thinking ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Umpth' was changed over into the Steenhundred and Umpty-umpth, wasn't it? The last that was heard from them they were at Blankville-sur-Bum. Now they've moved to Bingville-le-somethingorother. Clerk! Shove ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... lost by stocks,[2] His wings are clipp'd: he tries no more in vain With bands of fiddlers to extend his train. Since he no more can build, and plant, and revel, The duke and dean seem near upon a level. O! wert thou not a duke, my good Duke Humphry, From bailiffs claws thou scarce couldst keep thy bum free. A duke to know a dean! go, smooth thy crown: Thy brother[3](far thy better) wore a gown. Well, but a duke thou art; so please the king: O! would his majesty but ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... his attitude toward his own work and that of his master, and I attempted to draw him out with a crass compliment. He denied me gently. 'The best things I do, or rather did, young feller, are jest a little poorer than his worst. Between ourselves, he painted some pretty bum things. Some I suppose he did, like me, by lamplight. Some he sketched with one hand while he was lighting that there long pipe with the other. Sometimes, I guess, he was in a hurry for the money. Now, when I'm painting my level best, like I used to could, mine are about like ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... he said, "what I'm a-tellin' yer. I wanter be a good boy. My pa, he drinks. He drinks like—" The word he used, in description, was not the sort of a word that should have issued from childish lips. "An' my big brother—he ain't like Pa, but he's a bum, too! I don't wanter be like they are—not if I kin help it! I wanter be th' sort of a guy King Arthur was, an' them knights of his'n. I wanter be like that there St. George feller, as killed dragons. I wanter do real things," unconsciously he ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... years of age, having passed through every phase of probationary shrewdness, he is qualified to act as a full-blown bus conductor. In the purlieus of the theatres are supper-rooms (lavish of gas and free-mannered waitresses), and bum-boat shops where they sell play-bills, whelks, oranges, cheroots, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... bunch like that," Dickie commented. "A man that can't get a job to-day is a bum. And the fellow doesn't live that ever gets through knocking around. That is if he's ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... jealous—the cats! Anyhow, she had quit the scene of her early triumphs, lured by the attractive offer of a vaudeville manager. In this new field she appeared for a short time; but when on the roof they put her on the programme sandwiched between a troup of performing dogs and a bunch of bum acrobats—she kicked! Any self-respecting artiste would have done the same! I agreed with her. She, too, like the Montgomerys, and other noble families, had been caught in the Knicknack disaster, and her savings swept away; and rather ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... It's the woman's suit-case, and if we can't find out who she is from that, we're pretty bum, eh?" ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... had been out on some business, was refreshing himself before going to the field too. The officers entering declared him their prisoner. "Well," said Johnny, "I know that very well. Don't I know a bum-baily when I see him? But sit down and take something; I'm hungry if ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Ide, "if you've told it to me straight. I should think a man put on the bum from a good job just in one day ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... wailed the invalid. He wheeled his chair toward his nephew. "You wouldn't do that if my friend Lopez was here, you big bum!" he ended, as peevish as ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... man who could play any juvenile Shakespearian role without a rehearsal, a member of The Lambs and The Players Clubs. And here I was sitting out on the end of a wharf because I didn't have money enough to hire even a bum rowboat. And the three first launches that had passed by were all owned by Vaudeville players—whom my legitimate friend 'did not know at all.' I thought it all out and then I turned to my ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... understand something important to everybody. You come in here and claim by the right of personal interest that we should be most willing to tell you our business. Then in the next breath you defend the installation over on the other side of town for their attitude in giving the bum's rush to people who try to ask questions about their business. Go read your Constitution, Mr. Fisher. It says there that I have as much right to defend my home against intruders as the A.E.C. has to defend their home ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... day before I ran away with the circus," he soliloquized in the midst of the throng milling up the Elevated station stairs. "And later, when I had come back from the circus, I took that long bum on brake-beams. And when I had come back from that, a little later I went off in the forecastle of the 'Tropic Bird' to Tahiti. And each time that flapping business came first. Every time I've done something wild and foolish, I've flapped first ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... some bum from that squatters' camp over on the East Side who claims the Fuzzies beat up his ten-year-old daughter," Fane was saying. "They have both of them at police headquarters, and they've handed the story out to Zarathustra News, and Planetwide ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... one. She was expelled from school; put in a reformatory; ran away; stole to keep herself alive. Then they all took a hand at her—ministers, society girls, charitable associations; they gave her a bum steer and made her feel she was a hopeless outcast, so she felt more at home with the vagrant class. The only person who had ever made her feel she wanted to be straight was a Salvation Army woman, but she had gone away and no one ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "I'm through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... uncertainly across the floor, and took courage from its splinters. "Well, there's one thing sure. When Prince Ludwig and his train-load of big guns show up at four o'clock this afternoon they'll find bare floors, and pretty bum bare floors, on ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... it. Slovaks and bum farms are played out. There's no money in Shadow Hill—or if there is, it's locked up—or the income tax has paralysed it. No, I'm through. There's nothing doing in land; no commissions. And I'm considering a ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... into the fair, he saw a great crowd gathered in a ring in the street. He went into the crowd to see what they were looking at, and there in the middle of them he saw a man with a wee, wee Harp, a Mouse, and a Bum-clock (Cockroach), and a Bee to play the harp. And when the man put them down on the ground and whistled, the Bee began to play the Harp, and the Mouse and the Bum-clock stood up on their hind legs and got hold ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... bum excuse," continued the unaffected youth, "but you bet your life you'll never beat our Cora-lee when there's a person in pants on the premises! It's sickening." He rose, and performed something like a toe-dance, a supposed imitation of his sister's mincing ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Luck, I'll take that there camery and bust it over your danged head!" he spluttered. "I'll show ye! Call me a bum that's wearin' a shurf's star fer the first time in his life, will ye! Why, I'll jest ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... d'you make out? Aren't they darn suckers? Look at that job line in bum ink. Could you get that face from a Limburger cheese? And the dope? After handing you a valentine that 'ud scare a blind Choyeuse, and you couldn't rec'nize for a man without a spy glass, they set right in to tell you he's ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... replied her new acquaintance. "You don't suppose a New York conductor'd miss a chance to put his passengers more on the bum than ever?" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips |
