"Loafer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... straight along, from this time forth, I'll give you the thrashin' now. That ain't all, either, you've got to be man enough to stand by your dad an' say somethin to the fellers, an' explain that you're goin' to stop bein' a town loafer, an' ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... for instance. We've been living on an allowance from Grandfather Fuller in Chicago for forty years. None of us has ever done a stroke of work; we've simply been waiting for him to die and divide up his millions. Look at us! Bill and Tom drunkards, Dick a loafer without even the energy to be a drunkard; Ed dead because he was too lazy to keep alive. Alice and I married nice fellows; but as soon as they got into our family they began to loaf and wait. We've been waiting in decent, or I should say, indecent, poverty for forty ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of his hat, arranged his scarf, and tightened his belt. The horse's furnishings told him that the stranger was not a low-down prairie loafer. He strode to the veranda steps, and, crossing to the open door, looked furtively ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... keep his place in the power-house till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... provincial governor that, to his knowledge, at one time, there were 80 of this class in his province. [243] The number of undesirables was so great that it became necessary for the Insular Government to pass a Vagrant Act, under which the loafer could be arrested and disposed of. The Act declares vagrancy to be a misdemeanour, and provides penalties therefor; but it has always been interpreted in a generous spirit of pity for the delinquent, to whom the option of a free passage home or imprisonment was given, generally resulting in his ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... quivering notes set in a minor key; The endless round of sunny days, of starry nights, The desert's blank immutability. The coyote's howl is heard at dark from some Low-lying hill; companioned by the loafer wolf They yelp in concert to the far off stars, Or gnaw the bleached bones in savage rage That lie unburied by the grass-grown paths. The prairie dogs play sentinel by day And backward slips the badger to ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... you're a grouch; if you spend it, you're a loafer; if you get it, you're a grafter, and if you don't ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... walking for mere walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and surprises: "The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my head off? This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is anybody waiting round there to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared, she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection, with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, and greenish-black ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... leading the blind, generally fall into the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept nothing back. He now concluded it was a good time ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... chuck it all and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, and my instincts tell me ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... man bent his ear to listen. "Job, let's see it. Is it in there—'red like crimson, white as wool'? Oh, no, my sins are too red for that! Listen, Job, I want to tell you. I am dying a poor lost sinner, but I was not always a street loafer, kicked and cuffed by the world. Hear me, my boy! Would you believe that I was once a mother's blue-eyed boy in old New Hampshire? Oh, such a mother! She's up where the angels are now. I can feel the soft ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... person who had a friendly heart to go with him there and then to drink the Queen's health. On seeing his brother returning, the figure concluded his address—which had been mightily enjoyed by three porters, a couple of Highland drovers, a Perth loafer, who had once passed through the police-court when the Bailie was on the Bench, and an elderly lady, who was anxious that a doctor should be sent for—by explaining once more that his brother was a gentleman beside whom the Pharisees were straightforward ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... in which he had figured so ignominiously, Saurin had become a confirmed loafer, and frequented the old reprobate's yard almost daily. And, indeed, a new attraction had been added to the establishment. Wobbler, the pedestrian, a candidate for the ten-miles championship of Somersetshire, was residing there during his training ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... nation, kindred, and degree. Hens and chickens were also abundant, and seemed to be taken good care of by the women. The men appeared to be the laziest of mortals; and indeed, as far as my observation goes, there are no people to whom the newly invented Yankee word of "loafer'' is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans. These men stood about doing nothing, with their cloaks, little better in texture than an Indian's blanket, but of rich colors, thrown over their shoulders with an air which it is said that a Spanish beggar can always give to his ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... an assistant, and that we only saw him for an instant in the lift. Well, that assistant was a very intelligent man of mine, named Corder—a fellow with a wonderful memory for a face. Now Corder is on another case just now, and we'd put him on, dressed like a loafer, to hang about Whitehall and the neighbourhood, watching for some one we want. Well, this morning there came an urgent message to the Yard from the Admiralty, to ask for a responsible official at once, and I was sent. As I came along I saw Corder lounging about, and ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... get some men out of town to work with me on it. But they get lonely. Don't like working on a ranch. Besides, they had a scrap with me. I wouldn't have 'em loafing around the job. Rather have no help at all than have a loafer helping me. So they quit. Then I tried to get my cowhands to give me a lift, but they wouldn't touch a hammer. Specialists in cows is what they say they are, ding bust 'em! So here I am trying to do something and doing nothing. How can I handle a beam that it takes ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... tramped the Sydney pavements till you've counted all the flags, And your flapping boot-soles trip you, and your clothes are mostly rags, When you're called a city loafer, shunned, abused, moved on, despised — Fifty hungry beggars after every job that's advertised — Don't be beaten! Hold your head up! To your wretched self be true; Set your pride to fight your hunger! Be a MAN in all you do! For it cannot last for ever — 'I will ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... experience that would apply to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer; that's where fate flew up and struck at me—a deserved blow. But when I saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going clear downhill. Tom's probably forgotten me by this time; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of him with a round, appetizing face and all sort of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have idled, I ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... therefore I shall outline its history, beginning at a period in its being when stupidity predominates over its evil-that is, when it is the May beetle or June bug, that blunders and bumps around in utter disregard of itself and every one else. In this stage it is like the awkward village loafer, quiet by day, but active and obtrusive in the early evening. It dislikes honest sunshine, but is attracted by artificial light, at which it precipitates itself with the same lack of sense and reason ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Pringle, Insurance Agent; Mister Peter Snagget, Grocer; Mister Alphonso Pumper, Rate Collector; Mister Bill 'Iggins, Publican; Mister Walter Weed, Clerk; Mister Jeremiah Ramsmouth, Local Preacher; Mr. 'Ookey Snagg, Loafer; Mister William Guppy, Potman—place them beside Hybrias, Goat-herd; Damon, Shepherd; Phydias, Writer; Nicarchus, Ploughman; Balbus, Bricklayer; Glaucus, Potter; Caius, Carter; Marcus, Weaver; Aeneas, Bronze-worker; Antonius, Corn-seller; Canidius, Charioteer—and then talk of the glorious ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... was standing looking round me, the chief mate approached in a great hurry about something, and seeing me in his way, cried out, "Ashore with you, you young loafer! There's no stealings here; sail away, I tell you, with ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and went his way. It was intensely quiet and still now; the weary loafer at the outside hospital seat had disappeared. There was nobody to be seen anywhere as David placed his key in the latch and opened the door. Inside the hall-light was burning, and so was the shaded electric lamp in the conservatory. The study leading to the conservatory was in darkness. The effect ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... widened, so far as Miss Impett and Miss Potter were concerned, to whom Mavis rarely spoke. Miss Allen, who, in all other respects, toadied to and imitated Miss Potter, was disposed to be friendly to Mavis. Miss Impett, who on occasion swore like any street loafer, Mavis despised as a common, ignorant girl. Miss Potter she knew to be fast; but Miss Allen, when alone with Mavis, went out of her way to be civil to her; the fact of the matter being that she was a weak, easily led girl, whose character ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Fenelby returned with leisurely slowness of pace, the station loafer and man-of-little-work slouching along at a respectful distance behind them. Kitty greeted them with a cheerful frankness of face. The man-of-little-work looked at the three big trunks as if their size ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... you for showing us?" Jack asked, with an air of business that no doubt impressed the loafer. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... to keep all this together, for loafers are rife in these parts. He had gathered a very choice collection of coins, which was placed in a glass case in the Museum. A loafer cast his eye upon them, visited the Museum frequently, until he fully comprehended the whereabouts, and then, by the help of a comrade or two, broke a window-pane, passed through a glazed division of stuffed snakes, &c., and bore off his prize in the dead of the ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... caused a vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to him. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers. We're free men. We run our own government, and we run ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... you happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not appear whence or whither, and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... The pirates are thick above Ichang. We'll both have our bloody necks slit a dozen times before we make Ching-Fu." Bobbie turned from the miniature mirror. His sea-blue eyes glared through a white lake of lather. "Hurry up and shave, you loafer! We'll ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Both parents were living. The father was a loafer. Nine brothers and sisters were said to be well, with the exceptions of one brother who had an irritable temper, and of a markedly ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... might unnerve him. He wiped his forehead with a jerk of his handkerchief. "We never doubted you, Alexandra. We never questioned anything you did. You've always had your own way. But you can't expect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property by any loafer who happens along, and making yourself ridiculous ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... told. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirk honest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as you recognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, I am a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything but loaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The only difference between me and my rivals past and present is that I have the decency to be ashamed of myself. So ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... went a begging; nobody wanted them. Fine clothes were at a discount. He was looked upon as a tender-foot who knew nothing about the gold regions. But a flannel-shirted, roughly-dressed miner was the lion. He could tell something about the gold regions. The governor appointed a loafer fellow, in the early days, Port Warden. Nobody wanted it, and he was indorsed by one firm. As the city grew very rapidly the office soon became valuable. Somebody told the governor what kind of a man he had appointed Port Warden, and the governor wrote him a letter requesting ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... o'er us? Mint juleps from City Hotel! A loafer is smoking before us— (A nasty cigar, by the smell!)O Woman! thou secret past knowing! Like lilacs that grow by the wall, You breathe every air that is going, Yet gather ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... see this city, with its swarming population of young men, all in uniform, erect, eager, well-set-up and vivid with health, every man of them busy, and every man seemingly absorbed in his job—that alone was a worth-while experience. It was a new kind of city—a city without a loafer, without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their ill-fitting civilian clothes and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... together on the same piece of work, and when their temporary chum-ship ends the one cannot entirely cut the other, such being a course quite inadmissible with colonial views of life. Only one man may be scouted by any one, and that is the loafer. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... VIII and Bluebeard. But making all due allowance for his arithmetic, he must have run these worthies a close second. He had not been a specially good "hand" before the war, and was generally on unfriendly terms with the overseers. They used to say that he was a "slick-tongued loafer," and "the laziest nigger on the place." But Jabe declared, in defiance, that he had been on the plantation before any overseer ever put his foot there, and he would outstay the last one of them all, which, indeed, proved to be true. The overseers disappeared with ...
— Old Jabe's Marital Experiments - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... lack of human understanding, the negro loafer to be found around some of our Southern towns and depots may be quoted as a signal and quite amusing example. The hat, as Mr. Sala humorously puts it, resembles an inverted coal scuttle or bucket without handles, and pierced ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Iakiminskaia, for instance, saw him oftenest as a petty merchant; the Piatnitskaia as a Jewish or Tatar trader; the Basmanaia as a soldier, or petty officer off duty; other quarters as a member of a workingman's artel, a university hanger-on, or a loafer, as the neighborhood demanded. To-day, however, being himself, he directed his steps towards the fashionable part of the town, passing from the shopping district into the old Equerries' quarter lying behind, and west ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the mind.* It does this not only by wasting the body, the physical basis of the mind, but it does it through habits of intellectual idleness, which the user of tobacco naturally forms. Whoever heard of a first-class loafer who did not e-a-t the weed or burn it, or both? On the rail train recently we were compelled to ride for an hour in the smoking-car, which Dr. Talmage has called "the nastiest place in Christendom." In front of me sat a young man, drawing and puffing away ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the lady, who ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a rye loafer, indignantly, "why the horrid beast has eaten three of our dear Crumpets, and is ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... meant nothing," returned Malcolm smiling. "Mr. Carlyon is certainly no loafer—he looks the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer" wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... loafer with a bottle nose and watery blue eyes, agreed to pull across for threepence; but no sooner were they embarked and on the tide-way, than he lay on his oars and jerked his thumb towards the moving ship. "Make it a crown, ma'am, and I'll ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a diagnosis, and asked one student after another what kind of an operation he would perform. The peasant misunderstood it altogether, and as he was half stupefied he cried out involuntarily: "The old donkey is asking one loafer after another what to do. Nobody knows anything, and yet they are ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... vos noddings put a poy, hey!" he snorted. "I show you, ain't it! You pig loafer!" And he ran Pold up against a partition and got the iron bar directly under the rascal's throat so that the fellow was in danger ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... of that fellow, if I had him in the business with me. There's stuff in him. But I spoke up the way I did because I didn't choose Irene should think I would stand any kind of a loafer 'round—I don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. And I guess, from the way Pen spoke up, that 'Rene saw what I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have money for them, for those loafers? He would have come once, twice, three times, four times, five times! That means two five-franc pieces, two five-franc pieces, for sure. And what would he have done, the loafer, tell me, what would he have done? Can ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Moe Klein, of Klinger & Klein," he went on. "Moe says he seen Mendel Immerglick, in the back of Wasserbauer's Cafe, playing auction pinochle with a couple of loafer salesmen at three o'clock in the afternoon, and while Moe was standing there already them two low-lives set Immerglick back three times on four hundred hands at a dollar a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... attacked by Indians; suppose they never got across all that great stretch of country; suppose Esau and I were lost in the woods, to starve to death, or drowned in the river, and so on, and so on; till toward morning sleep would come, and I began dreaming about that long-haired dark Yankee loafer, who had got hold of me, and was banging my head against the ground, and trying to kill me, till I opened my eyes the next morning and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... he'p you do your dooty regardin' them pa'tridges," said Byram, quickly. "Dan McCloud's a loafer an' no good. When he's drunk he raises hell down to the store. Foxville is jest ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... I used to run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of boots while I ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... Mr. Cullen when he first accosted me in the courtyard of the Milan. At no time of distinguished appearance, a certain carelessness of dress and gait had brought him now almost on a level with the loafer in the street. His clothes needed brushing, he was unshaved, and he looked altogether very much in need of a ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the mere accident of birth for their claims to distinction, without energy and industry to maintain their position in society, are sadly at discount in a country which amply rewards the worker, but leaves the indolent loafer to die ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... hard-working citizen keep his earnings, but steals upon him in the night and robs him into poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before him, that he may be worthy of the company of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... other. Then royalty and its guards withdrew, and Queen Victoria's son and daughter-in- law were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. Our pride was perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our high places by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet I was glad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give me some idea of the subject of the songs. One was patriotic, and dared Tembinok' of Apemama, the terror of the group, to an invasion. One mixed the planting ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began accordingly to saunter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... intemperance and an increasing desire in herself for ease and good living; but deterioration had begun, and with the reappearance of Lantier, her old lover, it became rapid. Coupeau was by this time a confirmed loafer and drunkard, while Gervaise was growing careless and ease-loving. Lantier, having become a lodger with the Coupeaus, ceased doing any work, and as he never paid anything for his board, his presence not unnaturally hastened the downfall of his hosts. Circumstances conspired ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... dealt. The case is the same with your second favourite phrase; that the British army is mercenary. You learnt it in books and not in battlefields; and I should like to be present at a scene in which you tried to bribe the most miserable little loafer in Hammersmith as if he were a cynical condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city. It is not the fact, my dear sir. You have been misinformed. The British Army is not at this moment a hireling ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... silly!" he said. "I am delighted to be of use for a change. I don't do much worth the doing, being more or less of a loafer. It is good for me to exercise my ingenuity now and then. It only ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... listens to the voices of the dead In the City as the sun sinks low; And his hand begins to tremble and his face is rather red As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled, For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led Through the land where the dead ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any one else who did. It was the rule that the man who was the readiest in the use of fist ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Northerner," pressed the incorrigible loafer again; "it don't become a Right Honorable to be so mean ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... considered the large head, wedged between the shoulders as if a giant's hand had pressed it down, the masterful nose, the keen grey eyes, and the cynical lips; and in that moment determined to make him Ada's husband. Yet he was the last man she would have chosen for a son-in-law. A loafer and a vagabond, he spoke of marriage with a grin. Half his time was spent under the veranda at the corner with the Push. He worked at his trade by fits and starts, earning enough to keep ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... artisan, artificer, craftsman, handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, loafer, shirker. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... on the ocean Own no dear domestic cave, Yet he slumbers without motion On the still and halcyon wave; If on rainy days the loafer Gamble when he cannot roam, The police will help him so far As to ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... this trip. If you watch my interests while I'm away, your mother may have a home for life with me, in charge of my home; and you, you young rascal, I'll push your fortune. So, a shut mouth; look out and don't babble to Lilienthal. He is a chatterer. Timmins, here, is a drunken loafer, and will burn the block up some night, but I need him a ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... know me well enuff to know that I didn't come here to disturb this meetin. Nobody but a loafer will disturb any kind of a meetin. And if you'll notice it, them as are up to this sort of thing, allers come to a bad end. There was a young man—I will not mention his name—who disturb'd my show in a certain town, two years ago, by makin remarks disrespectful of my animals, accompanied ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment- rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. This is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken out ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... dirty pride about Jeff," pronounced Christopher conclusively. "And the Millers are the best family hereabouts, leaving the kunnel's out. And Jeff's well off—nobody knows how well, I reckon, but I can guess, being his land neighbour. Jeff ain't no fool nor loafer, if he is ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said a clear, sarcastic voice near them; and a young man, bearing the unmistakable stamp of the genteel loafer about him, stretched out a small white hand, with a large diamond glittering on the little finger, and shook Charley's over the ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... and come back with an excuse that sounded genuine from its very simplicity. Another sister of hers lay ill in an isolated hut, alone and uncared for, except by the teacher's wife, and occasionally by a poor pa outcast who had negro blood in her veins, and a love for a white loafer. God help her! All of which sounds strange, considering that Maoris are very kind to each other. The schoolmistress sent August one night to stay with the sick Maori woman and help her as she could, and gave her strict instructions ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... hope for you; even if you were treated better and paid your wages there would be no hope. That forty pounds even, if they were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in despair, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... hid out in here one night looked like a lotta plumbers to me!" she says. "Any man who sits up half the night playin' cards is a loafer!" ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... want you to take me on as a loafer. I'll do my share at the graft and bring in my share of the tucker and ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Vincent. "It's a bargain, then! Will you be ready to go the day after to-morrow? There are some things I want to buy, now that I'm going to school again. But I'm awfully relieved—it's just what I want. I was getting into a mess with all my work, and becoming a muddled loafer." ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bread by the sweat of his brow, entirely ignorant of the fact that he is a millionaire by birth, for it was his father's intention never to disclose this secret to him, preferring that he should spend his time as a useful laborer, rather than a moneyed loafer, living without work. Whether he resembles me at this age or not, I cannot say. Perhaps not, for my hair has become prematurely white from sin and worry. Then again, he may wear a beard, while my face is clean shaven. But no matter ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... ain't a loafer, and it takes nerve to be a soldier. It's a job for the bravest kind of a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... cursed coach will reach the town And they'll all come out, every loafer grown A lion to handcuff a man that's down. What's that? Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat! I'll give it a head to fit it ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my gun and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Pete Lathers! If there's anythin' in this world I hate, it's a liar. Ye said it, and ye know ye said it. Ye want that drunken loafer Dan McGaw to get me work. Ye've been at it all summer, an' ye think I haven't watched ye; but I have. And ye say I don't pay full wages, and have got a lot of boys to do men's work, an' oughter be over me tubs. Now let me tell ye"—Lathers ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favorable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me; neither did she decide in my favor, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime, I saw her admitting other students, and that ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... boy is a loafer!" answered Tad bravely, taking a couple of paces forward and facing the crowd. "You wouldn't dare do that to a man, especially if he had a gun as you have. Why didn't you try it on Luke Lame when ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... of the "picked up" variety; that to the end of his life, though ignorant of what literary men regard as the a-b-c of knowledge, he was supremely well satisfied with himself; that till he was past forty he worked irregularly at odd jobs, but was by choice a loafer; that he was a man of superb physical health and gloried in his body, without much regard for moral standards; that his strength was broken by nursing wounded soldiers during the war, a beautiful and unselfish service; that he was then a government clerk in Washington until partly disabled ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... had dallied through breakfast that particular morning he sat about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all about ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... put a new heater in, there was nothing more to be done to her, except to wash her down, a thing no self-respecting mechanic will ever do if he can get another to take the job on for him. So I hired a loafer who was hanging about the mews, and set him to the work while I read the papers and ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... of course not," agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... not the tone of a common loafer, hanging about the station for any chance job, and Felix turned to look at him in the light of the street-lamp. It was the old story, he thought to himself, a decent mechanic from the country, out of work, and lost in this ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... this misinterpretation of his motives. One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary. The loafer nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... paused to look about me. I had my reasons for so doing, for ever since I had left the river-side, I had entertained the notion that I was being followed. When I had crossed the road at the Houses of Parliament, two men, apparently of the loafer class, had crossed too. They had followed me up Victoria Street, and now, as I stood outside the Duke of Wellington's residence, I could see them moving about on the other side of the way. What their intentions were ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... th' border riffraff idears 'bout takin' over. But mosta us now ain't wavin' no flag. Iffen Kitchell has got him some diehards backin' him—" Nye shrugged again. "Git 'long there, you knock-kneed, goat-headed wagon-loafer!" He pushed ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... face of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel? Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... necklace. It's about us—us—you and Esther and Choate and Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn't been for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, I might have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer half labourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve, Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't have been doing divine childish things to bail ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... while that of reminiscence has begun, realise too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasures than the other — that action, indeed, is only the means to an end of reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart supreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goes straight to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly been spent in those subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and peeled faces, are only just beginning ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the esteem of his men. The story had got noised about that while we lay in camp just before Fair Oaks, a loafer about his headquarters addressed insulting language to a woman who was employed in doing certain domestic work and who followed up the army. The general heard the vile talk of the fellow from his tent. He hastily ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... in me the makings of a very fine loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "He's a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah interceded. "Doesn't he work hard enough as it is? He hardly ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... you dessay! I know. Every loafer that can't do nothink calls isself a painter. Well, I'm a real painter: grainer, finisher, thirty-eight bob a week ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... sometime after he had been ruined at a gambling hell, went there, but having no money, was not cared for by the gambler. He laid down on the floor in a corner of the room, night after night. One day, in particular, it was asked who he was. "Only a loafer," replied the gambler. The young man was aroused from his stupor by the one with whom he had gambled and lost, and was told to go about his business. The young man replied, "Sir, you should be the last man to treat me so; it was with ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... sense—namely of thinking or supposing. In the New England States, "ugly" is employed for "ill-natured," and "friends" for "relations." Some of the words in vogue in the Middle States are survivals of the original Dutch colonists—as "boss," an employer or manager, and "loafer," a vagabond. As to the Western States, it has been amusingly observed that "every prominent person has his own private vocabulary." Like the Emperor Sigismund the Great, who was "above grammar," the Western States ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... I, Miss McQuinch? A worker. I belonged and belong to the class that keeps up the world by its millions of serviceable hands and serviceable brains. All the pride of caste in me settles on that point. I admit no loafer as my equal. The man who is working at the bench is my equal, whether he can do my day's work or not, provided he is doing the best he can. But the man who does not work anyhow, and the class that does not work, is a class below mine. When I annoyed Marian by refusing to wear a tall ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future—and with Vision!—that we want here. How about it? What's your Ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you want to be a loafer, with ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... David learned, forsook the show soon after his wife's disappearance, and went to the Middle West. From time to time news of him reached David in roundabout ways. He had developed quite naturally into a common street loafer in Chicago, preying on the generosity of his old acquaintance and living the besotted life of a degenerate. Of certain cheerful wights who made up David's secret circle of intimates we may expect to hear more as we go along. Suffice it to say, he kept in close ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... right for you to be ambitious, my son. I would not have you otherwise. Without a strong desire to reach some height that in the distance lifts above the level of the present, a man becomes a laggard on the highway of life—a mere loafer by the wayside—slothful, indolent—slipping easily, as the years go, into the most despicable of places—the place of a human parasite that, contributing nothing to the wealth of the race, feeds upon the strength of the multitude of toilers who pass him by. But ambition, my boy, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... walk or sit at will in S. Mark's as long as one wishes, free and unharassed; but a ticket is required for the galleries and a ticket for the choir and treasury; and the Baptistery and Zeno chapel can be entered only by grace of a loafer with a key who expects something in return for opening it. The history of this loafer's privilege I have not obtained, and it would be interesting to learn by what authority he is there, for he has no uniform and he accepts any sum you give him. If all the hangers-on ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... ringing in my head to this day, whenever I think of him; and I can repeat them every one. It was some few years after our intimacy had ceased, and when I only knew that he had degenerated into a Fleet Street loafer of the most dilapidated type, that I caught sight of him one day outside a theatre. It was the theatre which was for some years a gold-mine to one Morton Morrison, of whom you may never have heard; but he was a public pet in his day, I can tell you, and his day was just then at its ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... It may be in a dark alley at midnight, in an opium den, at the entrance to a theater, or in the victim's bed. If the assassin is arrested the society furnishes witness to prove an alibi and money to retain a lawyer. Another favorite pastime of the Highbinder who is usually a loafer, is to levy blackmail on a wealthy Chinaman. If the sum demanded is not paid the victim's life is not worth 30 cents. One of the famous victims of the Highbinders in recent years in San Francisco was "Little Pete," a Chinaman who was worth $150,000 and owned a gambling ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the dhoby to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-mates should look ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of peace," as Dickens says. Just as justice requires to be tempered by mercy, so energy requires to be tempered by inaction. But the difficulty is for the indolent, the dreamy, the fastidious, the loafer, the vagabond. Energy is to a large extent a question of climate and temperament. What of the dwellers in a rich and fertile country, where a very little work will produce the means of livelihood, and where the temperature does not require elaborate houses, carefully warmed, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... given beans. And as the Chief, and Saxham with him, dropped on Brooker in the act of smuggling lush into the trenches the other day, I fancy Brooker's teeth are fairly drawn. Though he swore to me that there isn't a saloon-keeper or a saloon-loafer in the town that doesn't know Saxham by the nickname ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... like Tomlinson, let's hang on to him. We can easily wait ten days, and the cost of the journey is nothing to the bank as compared with getting a man of Tomlinson's stamp. And, by the way, you might telephone to the Chief of Police and get him to see to it that this loafer gets out of ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... loafer, who lived by taking clams, oysters, fish, and the other treasures of the surrounding bays. He was by no means as bigh authority as Baiting Joe; still he was ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that you could use me." He still spoke lightly, hiding the things which he was feeling, his recurrent self-contempt. "I don't suppose, that I know enough to run a ditch straight. I've been rather a rum loafer." ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... over fallers. He ant have to vork, yu see; But, yu bet, he ant no loafer, And he yust digs in, by yee! "Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me, "Making living ant no trick. And the hardest yob ban easy Ef yu only ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk
... hundred or so on the side," says he, swellin' his chest out. "And, say, I guess I got it some on the rest of the family. You know how they used me,—like dirt, the old lady callin' me a loafer, and Annie so stuck up on livin' in an elevator apartment she wouldn't have me around. Maggie too! Didn't I hand it to her, though? Notice me frost her, eh? But I said I'd show 'em some day. Guess I've delivered ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht's name: the Hermana. I didn't make it out myself, she lay a trifle too far from shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that her owner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned I learned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here to meet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was still indefinite. This was not very much to find out; but it was ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... absolutely mad," declared the Captain. "I can't understand it. I'm still in my bed when I'm aroused by an insolent loafer who calls himself a walking delegate and tells me his union won't load me until I ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... his hand up checking the traffic. His glance fell on Jane—the effect was electrical. His eyes bulged, his cheeks whitened, his chest heaved, his hand dropped, and he would undoubtedly have fallen had not a good Samaritan, in the guise of a non-psychical public-house loafer, held him up. Jane was now close to the chemist's, and it was with a sigh of relief that I saw her glide in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and steady loafer in the selectman's office, rolled his long cigar across his lips and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... a general favorite in half a dozen villages, where he was the life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other ne'er-do-weels. You may be sure he was no favorite of Mrs. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the understandings of those who he well knew would effectively carry his message to the very hearths of the poorest labourers. Courtier and student, tradesman and freeman, thief and prostitute, beggar and loafer, all were alike carried by an indignation which launched them on a maelstrom of enthusiasm. So general became the outcry that, in Coxe's words, "the lords justices refused to issue the orders for the circulation of the coin.... People of all descriptions and parties flocked in crowds to the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man of him and he's gone out ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... cost of production of a producer; and if a noble loafer costs far more to society than a worker, it remains to be seen whether a robust day-labourer does not cost more to society than a skilled artisan, when we have taken into account infant-mortality among the poor, the ravages ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... have a sum of cash ready for him there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he makes up his mind that a well-lighted city is the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the habitues of the "Myrtle Grove Tavern," had assembled outside to witness our departure, and, as I never missed an opportunity to spread the light, I distributed among them some hand-bills entitled "What is Anarchy?" regardless of their decidedly hostile attitude. The London loafer has little wit or imagination, and their comments did not rise above the stale inquiry as to where we kept our bombs, and the equally original advice bestowed upon Kosinksi to get 'is 'air cut. A half-hour's walk brought us to our destination, but ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... coming, Hugh," he hastened to say. "What you saw gave you a sort of idea, didn't it? You reckon right now that there may be a way to frighten this lazy loafer, so that of his own free will he'll cut stick and clear out. Well, perhaps after all something like that would be the best way to get rid of him. I don't believe the people in this civilized section of country would stand for any night-riding business ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... When a loafer of this sort finds that he can get nothing more out of you, he moves his family and goods to some other part of the country; he then begins the old game with somebody else, borrowing a sovereign off you for the expense of moving. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... you finish in the mix-up or the row, There are those among the rabble who will pan you anyhow; But the entry who is sticking and delivering the stuff Can listen to the yapping as he giggles up his cuff; The loafer has no come-back and the quitter no reply When the Anvil Chorus echoes, as it will, against the sky; But there's one quick answer ready that will wrap them in a ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Parisian loafer, as indeed he was. Yet love is blind, and as yet Jean would believe nothing to his discredit, crushing out any suspicion ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... thought of making such an offer to an English loafer, and no English loafer would have had the wit to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... exists among a great horde of cads. But in no country is the minority nobler, but smaller also, and the horde more caddish than in Holland - and in imagination I often see the Neapolitan tramp and loafer stand out as a prince or nobleman among the inmates of a Dutch village inn, or hall for more respectable entertainment. But your purse and your life are safer and the average standard of middle-class respectability higher here below the sea ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... says Brooks. "It's true enough that you're not quite an agreeable person to live with. Still, I hardly feel that I have treated you just right in this matter. I shouldn't have deceived you about the studio. When I found that I couldn't bear to give up my work and live like a loafer on your money, I should have told you so outright. I haven't liked it, Sir, all this dodging and twisting of the truth. I'm glad it's over. Would you prefer to have us go tonight ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the typical East End loafer,—a bullet head, closely cropped; dull round eyes, and fat nose, also rounded; a thick neck, and fat cheeks, in which were plainly to be seen the overdoses of beer and spirits he had drunk since he was ten or twelve ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... conviction the moment they begin life's business. Many a young man has sacrificed his individuality on the altar that a profligate companion has built for him. Many a young man who knew right, has allowed some empty-headed street-corner loafer to lower his own high moral tone lest he should seem singular in the little world of society surrounding him. And many a lad whose life promised well at the beginning, has gone to the bad, or lost his chance in life, because he never learned ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in grey. He was in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of the death of his father. This was an important day of mourning, because on this day, the forty-second after his death, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... whose name is associated with Blois is Francois Villon. A loafer and a vagabond he was, and a thief he may have been, yet by reason of his genius and for the beauty of his song this troubadour was welcomed to the literary court of Charles d'Orleans. That Villon received substantial assistance and protection from his royal ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... a man that labors, whether he labors for two dollars a day or a thousand; and a loafer is a loafer, whether he has millions or dimes. Well, I've talked longer than I ever did before or ever will again. Do you believe anything ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the emigrant wagon, reins in hand and pipe in mouth, or with shouldered rifle on the track of a deer, you would say that such a life was eminently agreeable to him. Every man is made for something; and you would say that he was cut out for a wandering frontier loafer, who gets his subsistence by doing the least possible work in the easiest possible manner, and hunting and fishing. A horse and wagon, or extemporized log cabin, for a shelter; tools enough for the simplest tilling ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched the cortege go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as to make the corpse sit up in bed ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... youngster who stood erect in the boat, doubtless looking pleasedly conscious of his new uniform and importance, became the object of audible comment upon his personal appearance. The boat's crew sat silent but chafing, the bowman holding on with his boat-hook, until one loafer proceeded from witticism to practical joking by sprinkling the midshipman with an old water-pot. Quick as look the bowman caught his boot-hook in the culprit's pocket and dragged him into the boat, while the rest of the crew, by this time spoiling for a fight, seized ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... I was to learn to be very clever about mill machinery. Perhaps you remember my father—a sweet-natured, wiry, active man, incapable of conceiving an interest in life that was divorced from respectability. I think he had some imagination, for now and then he was troubled about my becoming a loafer. However, he certainly kept it in control: I was to become a ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... been discovered some years before, but about a month previous to the arrival of the Galatea in Sydney, news had come down the country of the discovery of a new auriferous region, the richness and extent of which was said to be something past belief. The result of this rumour was that every idle loafer who arrived in an Australian port made it his first business to desert from his ship and start hot-foot for the gold-fields. If the matter had ended here the shipmasters would have had cause to congratulate themselves ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... per cent. Of the young men of this land do not darken the church door. They are not interested in moral improvement or moral education. Eighty-five per cent. Leave school under 15 years of age; prefer the loafer's honors to the benefit ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... easy to see how the worthless element from our villages, the loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities. But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a comparatively small ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... sufficiently familiar with Lynde to criticize him in her own mind, and even outwardly by innuendo, for being a loafer and idler who had never created in any way the money he was so freely spending. She had little power to psychologize concerning social conditions, but the stalwart constructive persistence of Cowperwood along commercial lines coupled with the current ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the rail; lashed chests went sliding down the gangway—mighty few of both at that. "The rest is having a cruise off the Cape," explained Knowles enigmatically to a dock-loafer with whom he had struck a sudden friendship. Men ran, calling to one another, hailing utter strangers to "lend a hand with the dunnage," then with sudden decorum approached the mate to shake hands before going ashore.—"Good-bye, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... she said, 'the great majority of men at all open-air meetings seem to be loafers. Woman—whatever else she may or may not be—isn't a loafer!' Through Borrodaile's laugh she persisted. 'A woman always seems to have something to do, even if it's of the silliest description. Yes, and if she's a decent person at all, she's not hanging about at street corners ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... caught me at the upper one. I made this one to keep him busy on his way up, so's the upper one could get a good start. The upper one wouldn't 'a' hurt us. It's jest like my cussed luck! I knew it was a-comin', but I didn't think I'd get it like this. It's all his fault, the great lazy loafer, sleepin' at the bottom of his beat, 'stead o' comin' up as he'd ought to have done last evening. He wasted the whole ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... people agree that some qualification should be exacted from all voters. The absurdity of the intelligent, tax paying but disfranchised woman being governed by the vote of the illiterate, shiftless loafer or pauper would be laughable were it not so serious. An educational qualification should ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... understand," cried the guest eagerly. "I was one great big loafer," and he laid outstretched hands upon the blue bosom of his gala shirt; ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... you mean by the term? A loafer?—a lounger in the streets?—a leerer at women? Or a man who works for daily food from sunrise to sunset, and controls his lower passions by hard and honest labour! Gentleman! What is that? Is it to live lazily ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... unusually fortunate this evening. She has only had to sit out thirteen dances, and has already been given half a polka by Mr. LAYSIBOHNS, who, however, seemed too tired to finish it. Her view is, that "half a loafer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... shirt on every day. A Whig, Sir,' says he, 'is a gentleman every other inch of him, and he puts an onfrilled one on every other day. A Radical, Sir, ain't no gentleman at all, and he only puts one on of a Sunday. But a Chartist, Sir, is a loafer; he never puts one on till the old one won't hold together no longer, and drops off ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton |
