"Canny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Liberal. He's going baldheaded for some temperance fad and is backed by a score or so of Presbyterian ministers. We'll have to call canny ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... its long white plume of steam. "Now, Buckland," said Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you tell me what is the power that is driving that train?" "Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines." "But what drives the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver." "What do you say to the light of the sun?" "How can that be?" asked the doctor. "It is nothing else," said the engineer, "it is light bottled up in the earth for tens of thousands of years,—light, absorbed by plants and vegetables, being necessary for the condensation ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... among most of our public institutions, asylums, water-cures, and the like, of procuring the very cheapest servants we can get, and thinking it an economical triumph to chuckle over if [Footnote: This is all that the "canny" business men who compose the managing boards of some of the first asylums in this country permit the heads of the institutions to offer those who must for twenty-three hours of the twenty-four be responsible for the moral, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... off for a burglar they could not have looked worse over it, for in those days among the decent canny country folks it was mostly the black sheep that were herded by the sergeant. But, my word, those same black sheep did their country some rare service too. My mother put up her mittens to her eyes, and my father looked as ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time lying around on those trips, and they took it. On the advent of the new era they complained that "King George men" took all the time and gave them none, so they frequently quit to go in quest. The nativity of my skilled labor was a piece of national patchwork—a composite of the canny Scotch, the persistent and witty Irish, the conservative but indomitable English, the effervescent French, the phlegmatic German, and the irascible Italian. I found this variety beneficial, for the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them."[189] Upon duels and resentment of injury in strange lands he throws cold common sense. "I advise young men to moderate their aptnesse ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... Lieutenant-Colonel Hobson that he knew whether women were witches or no by their looks. On a good-looking woman being brought to the finder, the gallant colonel thought it was unnecessary to try her, but the canny Scotchman knew better, and therefore submitted her to his infallible test. Having put a pin into her side, he marked her down a witch of the devil. The colonel, not satisfied that the woman was guilty, remonstrated, and then the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... what is good In olden times and distant lands, Is that do-nothing neighborhood Where the old cider-hogshead stands To welcome with its brimming gourd The canny crowd of kin and kith Who meet about the bibulous board ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... running loose on the range. No one cared to interfere with these early activities in collecting unclaimed cattle. Many a foundation for a great fortune was laid in precisely that way. It was not until the more canny days in the North that Mavericks were regarded with ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... Cathedral having been robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak out of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... manage these things, if she's any gumption, without letting the young people suspect that there is any interference. They like their own way, young people do, and Isabel is obstinate, like her father. Mr Macalister can be led, but he'll never be driven. Ye have to ca' canny to ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... wise scepticism which should be the handmaid of common-sense; and if such a person in telling a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take everybody at their highest note, is she any the less canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there are always two sides to a shield, why not look ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... directing the Hand-outs, she very often slips some Squarehead the canny Gift of corraling the Cush, but holds out all of the desirable Attributes supposed to distinguish Man from what you see in the Cages at ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... to this—the money, more money than was good for that antiquated "Noah's Ark" at the bank—and whose contemplated sojourn there overnight was public to too many minds—in short, Wood was not only incorruptible, he was canny. To what one of those minds, now, would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro? For this one, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... came to naught, for Madelon, like some fleeing fox, took a sudden turn which no canny hunter could have anticipated. She sat somewhat away from the hearth and well at Eugene's back. He would have asked her why she did not draw nearer the fire and if she were not cold had he not feared to encounter a sulky humor. He could not see the lengths of linen cloth, which she herself had ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... canny to deny the obvious. "But what has that to do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken it. But at my age a man doesn't dare take certain kinds of places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm playing for a really big stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you, we'll make as much money ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... chemicals, artificial colouring matter, mineral salt, &c. The variety of biscuits and cakes ranges from the plainest sorts, to suit the dyspeptic or ascetic, to the most delectable dainties for afternoon tea, not forgetting Oaten Shortcakes to specially delight the "Canny Scot." Nor need any one be at a loss to obtain supplies, for, besides the various Health Food Depots mentioned (see inside front cover), customers can obtain 5s. worth of cakes and biscuits carriage paid to any part of the United Kingdom, ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... "but it made us afeard, for we expect it that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose. An' a' the time we could no speer a thing. Gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell on us and travelled wi' us, till when after it had lifted and ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... to whom we were at once introduced; amongst others a canny Scotchman, the only Britisher living permanently in the country. We were a cosmopolitan gathering. There was Dr. S., a Roumanian, an Austrian ornithologist, a Scotchman, our innkeeper was a Macedonian, and two or three Montenegrins. From that evening date ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... gracious tree From latest twig to parent root, For when all others leafless stand It gayly blossoms and bears fruit. On certain days a friendly wind Wafts from its spreading boughs a store Of canny gifts that flutter in Like ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the frailty of human nature will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the rate of fifteen thousand a year should be able to swallow most things and stick at very little. And there can be no doubt that the canny Scotchman who has climbed or wriggled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared to go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he regards the doctrines of the Church very much as did that irreverent youth mentioned ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... among our elect set yclept Lemonade, partly owing to her habit of fizzing over, and partly to a certain acid quality in her temper, otherwise hard to define. Miss Douglas, our honoured Form mistress, being a canny Scot, goes by the familiar appellation of Thistles, intended also to subtly convey our appreciation—or shall I ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... clear of any entanglement which could hamper his life, probably by virtue of that hardness which he had shown to poor Lady Fan, and which had so strongly prejudiced Clare Bowring against him. His father said cynically that the lad was canny. Hitherto he had certainly shown that he could be selfish; and perhaps there is less difference between the meanings of the Scotch and English words ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... follow the professional eccentrics; even the emotional philanthropists took that direction; Lord Shaftesbury and Carlyle, Fowell Buxton, and Gladstone, threw their sympathies on the side which they should naturally have opposed, and did so for no reason except their eccentricity; but the "canny" Scots and Yorkshiremen ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... (my master's reverence always excepted,) who can be fair and false, and wait their time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves, and touch pot and flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and, after all, when time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of the dagger. Canny Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why, man, an you had hit me a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken it from you, than a rough word from another; for you have a good notion of falconry, though you stand up for washing the meat for the eyases. So give us your hand, man, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... a good gas-burner with pipes and a meter that a honest man can understand! Now this 'ere elective light I say it's not canny; I've no belief in things o' that kind, it ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of achievement to make much of her, and the late spring saw the successful launching ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... capital, but still more to carry out an artful scheme of his own. Descoings had no children. Madame Descoings, twelve years older than her husband, was in good health, but as fat as a thrush after harvest; and the canny Rouget knew enough professionally to be certain that Monsieur and Madame Descoings, contrary to the moral of fairy tales, would live happy ever after without having any children. The pair might therefore become ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... shine benignantly. Popery is at present, as you say, suing for grace in these regions in forma pauperis; but let royalty once take it up, let old gouty George once patronise it, and I would consent to drink puddle-water, if the very next time the canny Scot was admitted to the royal symposium he did not say: 'By my faith, yere Majesty, I have always thought, at the bottom of my heart, that popery, as ill-scrapit tongues ca' it, was a very grand religion; I shall be proud to follow ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... you fellows!" returned Dick, in a disgusted voice. "What is the good of your pretending to be Irish, Hamilton, when you are a canny Scotchman?" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... sooty's a thinking. He's a young canny ball, and he believes we're going to make a fire and roast ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... a canny Scot, a Royal Engineer, and weighs fully three hundred pounds; but with this avoirdupois he is far from being inactive, and together we ramble up the Asterabad Pass to take a look at the Bostam Valley on the other side. The valley isn't much to look at; no verdure, only ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... seasoned drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semi-intoxication. And he does it by the twelve-month around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort in the United States to-day, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homes—men who are never drunk, and who, though most of them will indignantly ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... han' 'at s' lay finger upo' the bairn but mine ain," said Miss Horn. "I had it a' ower, my lee lane, afore the skreigh o' day. She's lyin' quaiet noo—verra quaiet—waitin' upo' Watty Witherspail. Whan he fesses hame her bit boxie, we s' hae her laid canny intill 't, an' hae ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and canny builder is Madam Mag, for though her home must be large to accommodate her size, and conspicuous because of the shallowness of the foliage above her, it is, in a way, a fortress, to despoil which the marauder must encounter a weapon not ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... up," urged Shako's host, "whilst I pay the taxi—you can settle with me later." Here spoke the canny Yorkshire tyke. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... great nation. Such assimilated Americans had to face not only the usual conditions confronting a stranger in a strange land, but had to develop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that was later to become for them a flaming gospel. Andrew Carnegie, the canny Scotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steel magnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist. Jacob Riis, the ambitious Dane, told in The Making of an American the story of his rise to prominence as a social and civic worker in New York. Mary Antin, who was brought ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... himself had recently diverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the Norembega Theological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the fact conveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer, his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerry who are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... quarter of a century, and a sweet pretty wine it'll be. I only hope I may be here to drink it. Ah! [He shakes his head]—but look at claret! Times are hard on claret. We're givin' it an awful doin'. Now, there's a Ponty Canny [He points to a bin]- if we weren't so 'opelessly allied with France, that wine would have a reasonable future. As it is—none! We drink it up and up; not more than sixty dozen left. And where's its equal to come from for a dinner wine—ah! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... French medios, or quarter francs; they will be very useful every where on the route, especially on the Upper Amazon, where change is scarce. Fifty dollars' worth will not be too many; for, as the Scotchman said of sixpences, "they are canny little dogs, and often do the work of shillings." Take a passport for Brazil. Leave behind your delicacies and superfluities of clothing; woolen clothes will be serviceable throughout. A trunk for mountain travel should not exceed 24 by 15 by 15 inches—smaller the better. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... but Alexander Leslie was different from his son Robert. He was a canny, cautious man, who could ding for his ain side, and who always stood by the kirk. Robert left Dr. Morrison's soon after his father died. The doctor was too narrow for Robert Leslie. Robert Leslie has wonderfu' broad ideas about religion now. Jenny, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... life caused by this war; but of these women sitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's central establishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyond cavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen or superintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, and I should not have ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... liberally used for other purposes than that of drinking. From Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, where I found a very stern and critical audience. Not a sound broke the stillness as I walked up the hall; not a sound as I ascended the platform and faced the people; the canny Scot was not going to applaud a stranger at sight; he was going to see what she was like first. In grim silence they listened; I could not move them; they were granite like their own granite city, and I felt I would like to take off ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... a dining-room and bedroom, which the king occupied, and in the afternoon, after dining with the Scotch commissioners, he placed himself in their hands, and was sent a prisoner to their head-quarters. The canny Scots before leaving stripped the lead from the roof of the palace, and it afterwards fell into ruin, so that Cromwell, who arrived subsequently, found it uninhabitable, and then occupied the king's room at the Saracen's Head, his horses being stabled in Southwell ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and then a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... single bond. In literature this tendency is reflected in a wider liking for local color and in an intenser relish for the flavor of the soil. We find Verga painting the violent passions of the Sicilians, and Reuter depicting the calmer joys of the Platt-Deutsch. We see Maupassant etching the canny and cautious Normans, while Daudet brushed in broadly the expansive exuberance of the Provencals. We delight alike in the Wessex-folk of Mr. Hardy and in the humorous Scots of Mr. Barrie. We extend an equal welcome to the patient figures of New England spinsterhood as drawn by Miss Jewett and Miss ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... been out, going down to the Grant Avenue corner for an assortment of Bay cities papers not to be had at the hotel news-stands, so that he could see whether our canny announcement of Clayte's fifteen thousand dollar defalcation had received discreet ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... (as they call them, though two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me those novels have so much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... excommunicate." This time the fomenter of discord was a busy Scotchman. Muggleton calls him Walter Bohenan, which appears to be only a bhonetic representation of Walter Buchanan. That so sagacious a seer as Muggleton should have been betrayed into associating himself intimately with a canny Scot is truly wonderful, and illustrates the eternal verity that "we are all of us weak at times," even the prophets. Bohenan's self- assertion led him on to dizzy heights of towering presumption, until at last "he acted ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color and texture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathers had been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful on this summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settled his white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road, he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the closer criticism. "Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth, but 'takes care,' with the least trouble to himself and the finest short cut—does it, if you'll let me say so, rather on the cheap—by finding 'the likes' of me, as his daughter's trusted ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... Maule as she had promised. She had no communication with him from the time he left the station until they met on the E. and A. boat. He joined her, as you know, at the next port above Leuraville. It was rather canny of him to go there—yet I don't see how, in the circumstances, he could have loafed round Leuraville without making talk—though I think it was a great pity he didn't. Of course he had his own means of communication with the township, and knew she was on board. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... ready to believe once more that there was something "no canny" about the affair, but he shook off the feeling, and began searching about once more for some sign or other of his enemies; but he sought in vain, and at last he turned to his companions to ask them ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... partly on account of his kind-heartedness, partly since he could never resist a bargain and he got her for almost nothing, partly, perhaps because of his canny foresight, bought a wretched, puny, sickly, little runt of a four-year-old slave-girl, a mere rack of bones covered with yellow skin. She continued sickly for some years, then, when she was more than half grown, the fresh air of Trebula, its good ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Vincent Innis is still richer, so the pencil obliterates both names. Now we arrive at Angus McKeller, an author of some note, as you are well aware, deriving a good income from his books and a better one from his plays; a canny Scot, so we may rub his name from our paper and our memory. How do my erasures correspond with yours, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... William Coward, Esq., with cramps in his legs, and crotchets in his head—the rich London merchant who was constantly changing his will, but who at last, by what Robert Baillie would have termed the "canny conveyance" of Watts and Doddridge, did bequeath twenty thousand pounds towards founding a dissenting college. At each of these and several others we would have wished to glance; for we hold that biography is only like a cabinet specimen when it merely presents the man himself, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... words, if ye lay a hand on that monkey ye'll regret it as long as ye live!' This made the men a little frightened, for although they did not like to confess it to one another, there was something about Gum that was 'not canny.' Anyhow, whether it was fear of the monkey, or of their own consciences, instead of killing Gum as soon as they left the house they carried it all the way home with them, discussing which of them was to kill it, and how ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... John, When Nature first began To try her canny hand, John, Her masterpiece was man; And you amang them a', John, Sae trig frae tap to toe— She proved to be nae ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... waters of the swollen river in an attempt to follow them; they themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds, arm in arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they left the poor paramours to shift for themselves, nor did any of these canny people after passing the stream dash back to rescue a single female life,—no, they were too well employed upon the bank in dancing strathspeys to the tune of "Charlie o'er the water." It was, indeed, Charlie o'er the water, and canny Highlanders o'er the water, but where ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... say, "Lor, miss, it's a fine thing to hev' a dumb brute fond o' yer! it sticks to yer and makes no jaw." This question of making no "jaw" is rather a vexed one. Most people's experience would lead them to attend to a canny Dutch proverb, which observes that a "friend's" faults may be noticed but not blamed: since the consequences of blaming them are mostly unpleasant; but a braver proverb says, "A true friend dares sometimes venture to be offensive;" and we read that it is our duty to "admonish a ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... follows: Of his own volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes a stolid dependable unit of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... "Now, why are we going there? Manifestly to assist in the betrayal of one Giuseppe something—I don't happen to know his other name. From a hint dropped by Carera I have formed the opinion that this Giuseppe must be an industrious, hard- working, and, withal, somewhat canny gentleman of the piratical profession; a man who seems to have made the business pay pretty well, too, for does not our friend on deck estimate that he has accumulated the tidy little sum of close upon twenty-five thousand doubloons? Now, however, that fickle ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... pealed their mellow, alto horns from the calm bosom of the lake; the partridges that "drummed" in the outlying copses and patches of second growth, in April, and led forth their broods in June, subject every autumn to our first excited, early efforts at gunning; and last of all, the flapping, canny, thievish, black crows that like the foxes were always about, and always at ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... dropped behind the hill, leaving the West one haze of gold: but southward and seaward this gold grew fainter and fainter, paling into an afterglow of the most delicate blue-amber. In the scarce-canny light, as he rounded the corner of the cliff, he perceived two small figures standing above the hollow which ran down funnel-wise containing ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... asked Quentin something about me; to which that affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know nothing of ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... which he considered to be the most important factor in industry—labor, capital, or brains? The canny Scot replied with a merry twinkle in his eye, "Which is the most important ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... her all the good in the world," he answered cheerfully. "The old master, who is a canny man, went down into the cabin and began to talk of the wonderful things which had occurred to his knowledge at sea—how people had been kept alive floating on a spar for a couple of days, and how others had swam a dozen miles or more, or been washed from the deck of one vessel ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the Red Cross and buying Liberty Bonds, and that was brave of Bronson. For Bronson was close, and the hardest thing that he had to do was to part with his money, or to take less interest than his rather canny investments had made possible. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... of a sledge, and no ski should be used. The start was high up the hillside, and as the time for it approached the [Page 138] queerest lot of toboggans gradually collected. The greater number were roughly made from old boxes and cask staves, but something of a sensation was caused when the canny Scottish carpenter's mate arrived with a far more pretentious article, though built from the same material. In secret he had devoted himself to making what was really a very passable sledge, and when he and ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... noted—and these are modified by the genial humanity they embody—he is one of the great masters. His use of the Scotch dialect adds indefinitely to his attraction and native smack: racy humor, sly wit, canny logic, heartful sympathy—all are conveyed by the folk medium. All subsequent users of the people-speech pay toll to Walter Scott. Small courtesy should be extended to those who complain that these idioms make hard reading. Never does Scott give us dialect for its own sake, but always ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Edgar the Dreamer, she would have been puzzled and alarmed. If Mr. Allan had known him he would have been angry. A man of action was John Allan. A canny Scotchman he, who owed his success as a tobacco merchant to energy and strict attention to business. If there were dreams in the bowl of the pipe, there was no room for them in the counting-house of a thrifty dealer in the weed. Meditation ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... could be more positive than that if Morty's father had made a fortune in his own day, and the son inherited and administered it with the canny vigilance which distinguished the sons of rich men to-day from the mad spendthrifts of a former generation, he would be as logically intimate with those young capitalists who were the renewed pillars of San Francisco society, as she was ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... way, he proceeded with his client down the High Street, where, along under the glimmering lamps, were the usual crowds of loungers, composed of canny Saxon and fiery Celt, which have always made this picturesque thoroughfare so remarkable. Not one of all these had any interest for our two searchers; but it was otherwise when they came toward the Canongate Tolbooth, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... were Jarvis, the spectacle man, and that canny Scotchman Sanderson, the florist, who knew the difference between roses a week old and roses a day old, and who had the rare gift of so mixing the two vintages that hardly enough dead stock was left over for funerals ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Some canny lassies have been known to get the ring into one of their very first spoonfuls, and have kept it for fun in their mouths, tucked snugly beneath the tongue, until the dish was emptied. Such a lass was believed ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... God did not forget me—if he did, O what would become of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me—I must go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin—how could I resist it O no I will never do it again—no no—if I can help it." (Canny wee wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again—but as for regaining ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... twirling his thumbs on his stomach and looking askance, allows this political adviser to urge upon him in a whisper that there is not a minute to lose—to lose for action, of course—if he wishes to keep his wife, his house, his field, his heifer and his calf. The canny scepticism in the ugly, half-averted face of the typical rustic who considerably suspects his counsellor is indicated by ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... "but, in the meanwhile, can you expound to Mistress Alice Lee two lines of Horace, which I have carried in my thick head several years, till now they have come pat to my purpose. As my canny subjects of Scotland say, If you keep a thing seven years you are sure to find a use for it at last—Telephus—ay, so ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... instant the clever, witty, canny woman in Madame Le Mois looked upon her son's renouncing the world of Paris, and holding to the glories of Dives and their famous inn in the light of a sacrifice? "Parbleu!" she would explode, when ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... as Mordaunt approached. He also wagged his tail, though without effusion. The visitor was welcome so far as he was concerned, but he must make no disturbance. A canny little beast was Cinders. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of the merchants told that she was sixty years of age and others laughed and said she was but forty; but they spoke of her in whispers, for they seemed to think that she was ill to deal with and not more than ordinary canny. ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... winter. Now and again it was Nice or Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the maker young of men as good as dead, the talk ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to plan, Blundering like an Irishman, But with canny shrewdness lent By his far-off Scotch descent, Such was ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... friends. This latter place, into which he conducts the nervous man, is lumbered with boxes, chests, charts, camp-seats, log lines, and rusty quadrants, and sundry marine relics which only the inveterate coaster could conceive a use for. But the good wife Molly, whose canny face bears the wrinkles of some forty summers, and whose round, short figure is so simply set off with bright plaid frock and apron of gingham check, in taste well adapted to her humble position, is as clean and tidy as ever was picture ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... here are letters—one for Mr. Julian and one for you," Jean gasped, the sea-fog in her throat, "thankful I am to see you! I thought you would never come. Here, too, are the provisions—be canny with the eggs. They are on the top in a box by themselves, packed in sawdust, but do not be throwing them down wi' a brainge to get at your letters. And there in a big bag are the linen and clothes—cleaner ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... "Weel, noo, ye're a canny lass to coom and filch all old Malcom's secrets to set oop opposition to him. But then sin' ye do it sae openly I'll tell ye all I know. The big wourld ought to be wide enough for a bonnie lassie like yoursel to ha' a chance in it, and though I'm a little mon, I would ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... told me by a gentleman who does not wish his name to appear in print, as it would lead to the identification of the parties mentioned, and the descendants of the supposed witch, being respectable farmers, would rather that the tale of their canny grandmother were forgotten, but my informant vouches for the truth of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... standing collar, which yawned at the throat, and a narrow, black tie. His general effect was that of a cross between a parson and a shrewd Yankee—a happy suggestion of righteous, plain, serious-mindedness, protected against the wiles of human society—and able to protect others—by a canny intelligence. For a young man he had already a considerable clientage. A certain class of people, notably the hard-headed, God-fearing, felt themselves safe in his hands. His magnetic yet grave manner of conducting business pleased Benham, attracting also both the distressed ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, [*Young fellow] and show him the way down the muckle loaning. —He'll show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the Laird's servant— that's no to say his body-servant, but the helper like—rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie, [*Midwife] and he just staid the drinking ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... contempt, they would feel some condescension in dealing and mixing with us; but I was personally of the opinion that it was easier for us to walk through China than it would be for two Chinese, dressed as Chinese, to walk through Great Britain or America. What would the canny Highlander or the rural English rustic think of two pig-tailed men tramping ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... PLANTS. A couple of cases are reported of worms boring into the stalks of Asters, Dianthus and Carnations. Of course the tops die, and the damage is great. There is no insecticide that can be used against these canny worms which snugly hide themselves in the plant stalks where not a drop of liquor can reach them. The only remedy is to keep a sharp outlook for affected plants, cutting away each worm-infested top and burning it. This kills ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... weirdly distorted space of ultralight velocities requires more than machines and more than merely ordinary human abilities. No computer, however built, can possibly estimate the flight of a dodging spaceship with a canny human being at the controls. Even the superfast beams from a megadyne force gun require a finite time to reach their target, and it is necessary to fire at the place where the attacking ship will be, not at the position it is occupying at the ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... It was not like her father to thus boast. On the contrary he was usually what the Scotch call a "canny" player. He never predicted that he was going to win, except, perhaps, to his close friends. But he was now boasting like the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... The canny Scot with his beautiful "nearness" lives in legend and story in a thousand forms. The pain a Scotsman suffers on having to part with a shilling is pictured by Ian MacLaren and Sir Walter. Then came Christopher North ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... justifies violence in the overthrow of the modern system and the creation of a nobler ethic than that on which the modern State is based. For this reason, he disagrees with most of his Syndicalist colleagues, and condemns sabotage and also the ca canny policy, both of which are a kind of revenge upon the employer, based on the principle of "bad work for bad pay." He would have the workers produce well now, and urges that moral progress is to be aimed at no less than ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... we passed the light of an occasional inn, while cottage lights made a scattered sprinkling among the dim masses of the hills. A man might have been puzzled as to where all the kilted Highland soldiers whom he had seen at the front came from, if he had not known that the canny Highlanders enlist Lowlanders in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Troll began. But when Christianity came in, and heathendom fell; when the godlike race of the Aesir became evil demons instead of good genial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief, whether Aesir, Giants, or Trolls, were mingled together in one superstition, as 'no canny'. They were all Trolls, all malignant; and thus it is that, in these tales, the traditions about Odin and his underlings, about the Frost Giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are confused and garbled; and all supernatural agency that plots man's ill is the work of Trolls, whether ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... flown; they must have been hurried out of the nest as soon as they could stand. Could it be because I knew their secret? I felt myself a monster, and I tried to make amends by hunting them up and replacing them. But the canny parents, as usual, outwitted me. Not only had they removed their infants, but they had hidden them so securely that I could not find them, and I was sure, from their movements, that they were ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... was, that Clover, who was a canny little mortal, had slipped across the room and opened the door just before putting her wishes in. This, of course, made a draft, and sent ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... too canny to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings and spars, Lithe gymnasts who live on trapezes ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... Smith, founder of the Hundred Year Club, suggests that there is an opening in intensive farming for the benevolent but canny wealthy who are interested in the soil and want to combine philanthropy ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... James Six of Scotland, miscalled a 'fule' 1603-1625 As James One of England comes to rule. Gramercy! 'tis a canny thing To be a 'double-barrelled' King. The son of Mary Queen of Scots Of learning he had lots and lots, Writing sundry ponderous books 'Gainst 'bacca, witches and their spooks. James thought his kingly power divine And, loathing Puritanic 'whine,' He vowed to make them all comply ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... "She aye thought Halbert was ower gleg at his weapon to be killed sae easily by ony Sir Piercie of them a'. They might say of these Southrons as they liked; but they had not the pith and wind of a canny Scot, when it ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... good luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to be let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... Bad Man of this tale, being withal of a shrewd and canny Nature, stood often on a street corner, and engaged in grave conversation with the Magnates of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... you to say that, Andy McGuffey. Why, you're a regular old pessimist, like all your canny Scotch ancestors were. You love to look at the world through smoked glasses. On my part, I prefer to use rose-colored ones, and expect the best sort of things to happen, even if I do get fooled lots ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... city of flats its people are resourceful and energetic. Keen and canny, they drive a close bargain but, scrupulous and conscientious, fulfil it faithfully. Proud of their city and its progress, its industries and manufactures, its civic importance, they are a little disdainful perhaps, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... leonine eyes looking into hers gleamed the light of admiration and approval. The canny Scotsman admired this girl for her beauty, as a matter of course, for her courage, because courage was a quality standing high in his estimation, but, above all, for her ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... She is still the same efficient and self-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen that she ever was, but she grows more "sot" in her ways, more averse to any change in her daily routine, and more despairing of ever finally and completely capturing that canny old Scotsman whom we still so affectionately designate as Whinnie, in short for Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I'm afraid, still nurses the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yet unwedded is after ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... doubt of that. It was being hastened by the lessened output of the workers. The ca-canny system ruled everywhere. With good pay for little work there was no incentive to excel, and from "little work" to "no work" was an easy step for many, as under the Humanist rule the unemployed were ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... to be all coppers, unrelieved by a single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a mean over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, and as the hired waiters from the Falcon brought out the viands (all was a delusive ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to engage his attention than aught else. But he had some notion of drawing, and when the teacher came round she was astonished to find he had set down a fair picture of a bird on a bough. "Ha! who drew this?" she asked. "Mysel'," was the canny Scotch reply. "And who's mysel'?" she queried. "Oh, I'm fine," was the second response, not less Scotch than the first. The English reader, of course, won't fairly understand the word "fine" as spoken there; but every Scotsman will, as also how "who's" may ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... finally persuaded to take the job of mate when his canny New England mind grasped the fact that the mate's share of the profits is much bigger than a foremast hand's. He was as good as his word, however, and, when the Janet Barry, with her flag at half mast but her hold full of fine skins, docked ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... half-dollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... are, sir, over anything they can see; but when it's anything they can't, then they are like so many children as are afraid to go in the dark. I believe he's got an idea in his head that there's a something no canny, as the Scotch people call it, as lives in that there hole in the rocks, and nothing will make him go in for fear he should be cursed, or something ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... her mother blithely. "It is real. Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, must have been very old; and he was probably as saving and canny as any Scotchman who ever wore kilts. It is not surprising that he should have left ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... my hand. He said to himself, 'Aye, aye, here are fingers that have seen canny service.' Then running his hand over my hair, my face, and my dress, he went on with his soliloquy; 'Aye, aye, muisted hair, braidclaith o' the best, and seenteen hundred linen on his back, at the least o' it. And how ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... represented the ultimate ambition of the aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made the Forum one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the Forum let him slip ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... it do ye, my bonny man. I trow ye dinna get sic a skirl-in-the-pan as that at Niel Blane's. His wife was a canny body, and could dress things very weel for ane in her line o' business, but no like a gentleman's housekeeper, to be sure. But I doubt the daughter's a silly thing—an unco cockernony she had busked on her head at the kirk last Sunday. I am doubting that there ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... from a foreign land had not been able to bring in their pockets certificates of orthodoxy, and might, after all, be dangerous heretics, it occurred to Zinzendorf's canny steward, Heitz, that on the whole it would be more fitting if they settled, not in the village itself, but at a safe and convenient distance. The Count was away; the steward was in charge; and the orthodox parish must not be exposed to infection. As the Neissers, further, were cutlers ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... his writings Anecdotes of 'School for Scandal' School of Homer, Lord Byron's visit to Scotland, the impressions on Lord Byron's mind by the mountain scenery of Lord Byron 'Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one' 'A canny Scot till ten years' old' Scott, Sir Walter, his dog 'Maida' His 'Rokeby' The 'monarch of Parnassus' His 'Lives of the Novelists' His 'Waverley' His first acquaintance with Byron His 'Antiquary' His review of 'Childe Harold' in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Halbert, laying his finger on his nose, with a knowing expression, 'my young lady is safe from harm so long as you are out of the Master of Albany's reach. Had you come by a canny thrust in the fray, as no doubt was his purpose, or were you in his hands to be mewed in a convent, then were your sister worth the wedding; but the Master will never wed her while you live and have friends to back you, and his father, the Regent, will see she has no ill-usage. You'll do best ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my mannie, bark! Then I'll recognize your voice, ye ken. It's no canny to hear ye speak like a Christian, ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... If Jess, calm, canny, and reliable, stood for the spirit of the North, attractive, persuasive, fascinating little Delia Watts represented the South. She came from California, and was as quick and bright as a humming-bird, constantly in harmless mischief, but seldom getting into any serious ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... largest British-owned ranches of North America. His book is the best of all sources on British-owned ranches. It is just as good on cowboys and sheepherders. Clay was a fine gentleman in addition to being a canny businessman in the realm of cattle and land. He appreciated the beautiful and had ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... these matters is, I venture to say, almost identical with that of Sir Walter Scott. A Scot himself, by descent, Kant may have heard tales of second-sight and bogles. Like Scott, he dearly loved a ghost-story; like Scott he was canny enough to laugh, publicly, at them and at himself for his interest in them. Yet both would take trouble to inquire. As Kant vainly wrote to Swedenborg and others—as he vainly spent 7L. on 'Arcana Coelestia,' so Sir Walter was anxious to go to Egypt to examine ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... flower patterns strewn over them. They made her hair look blacker and her skin whiter by contrast. Sometimes Eugene or Adele or both would drop in and the four would play bridge. Aunt Sophy played a shrewd and canny game, Adele a rather brilliant one, Julia a wild and disastrous hand, always, and Eugene so badly that only Julia would take him on as a partner. Mrs. Baldwin never knew about ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for you to dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse, warning whisper of impatience—loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear of being heard. "Hurry up, man—hurry up, or he'll be down on us like ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... if anything, a trifle more cautious than canny when he came to his "in conclusion," and his zeal touched ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... then touched his greasy cap to us, and in the broadest possible Scotch dialect bade us welcome. There is a saying that one has only to knock on the companion ladder of any engine room in any port the world over, and call out "Sandy" to bring up in response one or two canny Scots from the engine room below. This little steamer evidently took the place of the carrier's cart used elsewhere; for passengers and parcels, as well as crates of vegetables were her cargo. At length we started puffing along the river, and stopping from time ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... of it, and quite by chance—and this, to his mind, ennobled the Claptonites; there was the place in which to start the revolutionising of the musical world. Besides—and here he thought himself very canny, by no means a Jew for nothing—there were fine old houses at Clapton, and where there were such houses there must ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the herrin', maybe, laddie. See how they come up and turn over, and dive doon again. Canny kind o' fesh a porpoise, but they're much finer than these in the Clyde. I'm thenking, though, that we'll ha'e to shorten sail ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... said to have been bought off by a friend. His crime had been stolen entrance into a house in Thrums by the chimney, with intent to rob; and though this old-fashioned family did not see it, not the least noticeable incident in the scrimmage that followed was the prudence of the canny housewife. When she saw the legs coming down the lum, she rushed to the kail-pot which was on the fire and put on the lid. She confessed that this was not done to prevent the visitor's scalding himself, but to ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... affected by Extravagant Demands on Employers.—Unduly high wages mean, of course, unduly high prices. Without here taking account of the "ca'-canny" policy, which aims to make labor inefficient, extravagant wages for efficient labor increase the cost of goods. This opens the way, as we have seen, for the free shop and the labor which is willing to sell its product at a cheaper ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... shot can cleave your delicate gold. The quail is such a canny bird, that he lies low lest he make his last appearance on toast. And so, in lack ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... a misfortune to the atmosphere is widely supposed. In Scotland it is an agricultural maxim among the canny farmers that— ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... when the Association broke up. I never saw such a change. It seemed as though regretful remembrances of former times clung to him. There was no more the music of "the sounding horn" to awaken him from his drowse, and he passed much of his time under the woodshed. But he was not the sleek and canny dog of yore. He grew thin and weak. Long locks of indifferent colored brown hair grew out of his sides, and hung loosely down. His gait was slow and feeble, and it was not pleasant to look at him. Finally, one cold day, at least a year after the general departure, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Terry to sink too low in these possible clients' estimation, for my canny Scotch mind was working round the fact that they were probably American heiresses, and an heiress of some sort was a necessity for the younger brother of that meanest of bachelor peers, the Marquis of Innisfallen. "He's an amateur chauffeur," I hastened to explain. "He only does it ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this may not be 100 per cent. accurate, but after putting things together this is how it dopes out. Weintraub, who was as canny as they make them, saw he'd have to get into direct touch with Metzger. He sent him word, on the Friday, to come over to see him and bring the book. Metzger, meanwhile, had had a bad fright when I spoke to him in the hotel elevator. He returned ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... expensive woods, and the thousand other ways of panning inferior goods upon an inexpert public for high-grade articles. At present there is little recourse but to carry distrust into all purchasing, learn to be canny, and to recognize differences in quality in all articles needed. But the average man cannot become an expert purchaser; he buys furniture which breaks down prematurely; he pays a high price for clothing which proves to have ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... right, Morrison. You're canny! You're for yourself and the main chance. Now let me tell you! You caught us foul two years ago because you jumped the newspapers into coming out with broadsides about a thing they didn't understand. Their half-baked scare stuff made the state ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... he sold it, its fixtures, contents and goodwill, for what the property would fetch at quick sale, and he gave up business. He had sufficient to stay him in his needs. The Stackpoles had the name of being a canny and a provident family, living quietly and saving of their substance. The homestead where he lived, which his father before him had built, was free of debt. He had funds in the bank and money out at interest. He had not been ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... circle of friends from whose combined brains was soon to start the Edinburgh Review. He fell in love, and married his second cousin, Catherine Wilson, on 1st November 1801—a bold and by no means canny step, for his father was ill-off, the bride was tocherless, and he says that he had never earned a hundred pounds a year in fees. They did not, however, launch out greatly, and their house in Buccleuch Place (not the least ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... except in the kirk, where he sits glowerin' straecht afore him, as gin there was naebody worthy o' a glance within the four walls, I havena set my een upon him. It's inborn pride that ails him, or else he has gotten something no' canny ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the "detestable lay figure" of John Bull. In like manner, the obtrusive type of the "canny Scot" is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose. Of late ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... "'A canny young canner of Cannee, One morning observed to his Granny, "A canner can can A lot of things, Gran, But a canner can't ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... As there are well over two million Englishmen in France, a very small percentage of whom have any knowledge of French, the liaison enjoys no sinecure. To assist in the billeting of British battalions in French villages, to conduct negotiations with the canny countryfolk for food and fodder, to mollify angry housewives whose menages have been upset by boisterous Tommies billeted upon them, to translate messages of every description, to interrogate peasants suspected of espionage—these are only a few of the duties which the liaison officers ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... drive into the lot at night. I had but to go down where he was feeding and soon as he heard me comin' he made for the lot—he knew quite as well as I did what was wanted of him. He's a canny old boy." ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland |
