"Cropper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glance at her. "Because, my dear, unless El Hassan is able to retake Tamanrasset, his movement has come a cropper." He turned his eyes back to Crawford, who was nervously running his hand through his hair. "I knew you had done considerable work in this area, so your whereabouts became obvious seeing that Tamanrasset is in Tuareg country. It was simply ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... in truth, an anxious week. Two things he set about instanter; he wrote a manly letter of apology to Ruth, and he returned Mrs. Hilliard's money. All day long he parried and laughed down fatuous comment on his supposed cropper into the canal, for the cob had returned to his manger and founded a theory that his master let gossip accept as true. He dissembled with greater ease as the hours lapsed, finding reasons why the inner history of the incident would remain secret; neither Ruth nor Bernard Graves was likely to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... half an hour afterwards, "Royce Pederstone is going to come a terrible cropper over this business. He is mortgaged up to the neck and, singly or with some of the political gang, he is in almost every realty proposition ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... pursued, "it happened a good while ago, that business, and it's just as likely as not that it was Adam whom the devil first put up to a thing or two, and Eve got it out of him—for I grant you that women are curious—and then they both came a cropper together, and it was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. It mostly is, I should think, in a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... literary gentlemen with that decoration. The Jew with the beard, as you call him, is Herr von Lungen, the eminent hautboy-player. The three next gentlemen are Mr. Smee, of the Royal Academy (who is shaved as you perceive), and Mr. Moyes and Mr. Cropper, who are both very hairy about the chin. At the piano, singing, accompanied by Mademoiselle Lebrun, is Signor Mezzocaldo, the great barytone from Rome. Professor Quartz and Baron Hammerstein, celebrated geologists from Germany, are talking with their illustrious ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brick cottages scattered all round, each with its large neat garden, and beehives, and pigs and geese, and turf-stack, and clipt yews and hollies before the door, and rosy dark-eyed children, and all the simple healthy comforts of a wild 'heth-cropper's' home. When he can, the good man of the house works at farm labour, or cuts his own turf; and when work is scarce, he cuts copses and makes heath-brooms, and does a little poaching. True, he seldom goes to church, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... us, my dear chap. But it's up to you to make yourself some other way, if you don't want to come a cropper and leave the Service. I hope I am no Pharisee, but I've been reared to believe that living in debt is an aristocratic, and rather mean form of theft. My notion of you doesn't square with that; and I know ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Clupp, go scour the pikes. Tom Cropper, find something to keep you out of mischief. As for you, Gaffer Shard, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of country they know, Across it for years they've been rangers, All right, when the going is slow, When 'tis fast, are they fly to its dangers? For Hares to raise scares 'midst the Hounds were improper, But how if the pack come a general cropper? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... blue eyes opposite were still twinkling. "In the first place, you're my good friend—my best friend. You wouldn't be seen letting me start off on a wild-goose chase like this without your guiding hand at the helm to see that I didn't come a cropper." ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... you're doing—it's great," Graham said with sparkling eyes. "I've fooled some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in the Argentine. If I'd had beef-blood like that to build on, I mightn't have taken the cropper I did." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... has missed the ugly foundations of his fancy, as it were, by jumping over the soup and fish, the joint, the entree, and the sweet, and has got his lovers to the coffee, the cigar-and-liqueur stage, when, if the truth be known, all the hurdles over which the "horse of disillusion" may come a nasty cropper have been passed. So, if you be wise, sit on the side of your best-beloved until the nourishing part of your gastronomic "enfin seul" is over; and then, if you must gaze into his eyes and he into yours, move your seat round—and your evening will ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... memorable, but I think I have a right to congratulate myself upon the fact that I was able at that age to manage the triple rhymes and the twelve-syllable line at the end of each stanza without coming a complete cropper. I could not do it now, even if my ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... angle formed by the cloth in contact with them. This is, of course, at the feed side; the cloth is pulled through the machine by three rollers shown distinctly on the right in Fig. 42. This view illustrates a double cropper in which both the spirals are controlled by one belt. As the cloth is pulled through, both sides of it are cropped by the two spirals.[3] When four spirals are required, the frame is much wider, and the second set of spirals is identical with ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I wish some New York millionairess would work herself ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... listened. His original idea that they were young men of wealth (because of the Bass) was soon dispersed by the trend of their conversation. They had gone out from England to make their fortunes on the fields, but had come a cropper like himself, and were discussing what they'd do next. The fair-haired one, Remington, was all for getting back to England while they had any money left, but Turold was dead against it. There were plenty of diamonds to be found, and he was going to have some of them. He'd been talking to ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Hughie!" cried Davie to him. "Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop. It was not a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady nerve. A moment too soon or a moment too late in letting ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper. All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. But two things remain the same: The look in the face of the hunter as he closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the coveted contract lying ready for ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... Sir—keep those 'eels down! Lost your stirrup, Mr. JELLY? Never mind that—feel for it, Sir. I want you to be independent of the irons. I'm going to make you ride without 'em presently. (Mr. JELLY shivers in his saddle.) Captin' CROPPER, Sir; if that Volunteer ridgment as you're goin' to be the Major of sees you like you are now, on a field-day—they'll 'ave to fall out to larf, Sir! (Mr. CROPPER devoutly wishes he had been less ingenuous as to his motive ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... and you'll come an awful cropper," I went on. "Not that it matters so much for you, but you've got a father and a mother ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... experience at the time, and, in several instances, helped forward good marriages later on. Pauline Lister was apportioned to me for two whole seasons, but she eventually married the man on whose jolly old staircase I painted her. Why didn't I come a cropper over any of them? Because there were too many, I suppose. Also, the attraction was skin-deep. I don't mind telling you quite frankly: the only one whose beauty used to cause me a real pang was Lady Brand. But when I had painted it and shown it to the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... It was plain enough. You had come a bad cropper. Some girl, I gathered. You had lost her, you blamed yourself. You talked a great deal of nonsense. I ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... you do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man; you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... anything—when I have to. You do not seem to understand. You have come a cropper—a bad one. Left to yourselves you are all going to die here. If I am to help you to your feet, I must do it without interference. I think we shall get through: but I am not at all certain. Go and sit down ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... the tall girl was already drawling with consummate impudence, "that the record of past performances are all against your finishing the distance without coming a cropper in these international matrimonial hurdles. Just what is ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... The idea was novel to them. 'Trust to Parliament,' said they; the outsiders replied, 'Trust to the people.' This scheme of agitation, however, was rejected, and would have fallen to the ground had not a benevolent Quaker of the name of Cropper come forward. 'Friend S., what money dost thou want?' 'I want 20,000 pounds, but I will begin if I can get one.' 'Then, I will give thee 500 pounds.' Joseph Sturge immediately followed with a promise of 250 pounds, and Mr. Wilberforce ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... fiddlestick, sir!" quoth my father. "The man is talking largely on matters of which he can know nothing; and in five minutes (I bet you) he will come a cropper." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of fools there is literally no end, but for the king of fool who is predestined to come a cropper in the field of life, and to spill other people in his own downfall, there is no rival for the Quixote. The man who is over-anxious to pay in the market of morals is the man who goes bankrupt You may be a good deal of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... lot of men, in my line and in others, have come a cropper in their careers, because of some woman. But I'm the first to come such a cropper on account of a woman with a white soul and the eyes of a child,—a woman I scarcely know, and who has no interest ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... simple, Colonel. My horse was hit in the head with a round shot. I went a frightful cropper on some stones in the middle of a clump of bushes. I lay there insensible all night, and coming-to in the morning, saw that the French had advanced, and the firing on the hill over the town told me that the troops had ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... stages of consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even less life. And these were bosuns!—bosuns of the fine American sailing-ship Elsinore! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more distressing cropper. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... much what was the matter with Rupert, and guessed that he had "come an awful cropper" of some kind. It must certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he—The thought of a woman came suddenly to her, she did not know why. Suspicion, jealousy woke in her. She glanced sideways ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... often noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper in the ditch." ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... sharp eyes of the French custom-house officials on the Belgian frontier. Others of the band were also under lock and key again: it really seemed as if Mother Toulouche and her circle were being strictly watched by the police ... and now here was Emilet who had come a regular cropper in ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... origin. M'Intosh describes it as being "decidedly the best kidney potato grown, and an excellent cropper. Tubers sometimes seven inches in length, and three inches in breadth. It is longer in coming through the ground in spring than most other varieties, and the stems at first appear weakly; but they soon lose this appearance, and grow most vigorously. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... you to sit, it's my chance! You've got it all there in you—the immense manner. You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley Court, and paddle round the Row? Not you! You're clever, and you're crafty, and you've a way with you. But you'll come a cropper at this as sure as I shall paint two big pictures—if you'll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
