"Cannei" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of each other—and quarreled continually. Colina, by virtue of her reckless honesty, frequently got the better of her canny father. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... months hence, when the returned lists of the stoppages in the East and West Indies, consequent upon the late failures here, come home. The Western Bank of Scotland is whispered about. If that were to fail, it might bring the canny Scots to their senses; but they ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... But the canny young French girl had no notion of letting her charges be imposed upon, and she glared haughtily at the shopkeeper ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... his country in order to render Prussia feared and respected abroad. He felt that absolutism was the only kind of government consonant with the character of his varied and scattered dominions, and he understood in a canny way the need of an effective army and of the closest economy which would permit a relatively small kingdom to support a relatively large army. Under Frederick William I, money, military might, and divine-right ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit. This unity of purpose, backed by the spirit of enterprise, and joined with an acuteness and total absence of probity, where interest is concerned, which might set canny Yorkshire at defiance, may well go far ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... pleasant to deal with. But as his love-affair had shown his mother how little he had taken to heart her chiefest care for him, so this first business transaction was a painful awakening to his father, the canny Scotch merchant, who had heaped up riches hoping that ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... dree our weird. You are a canny Scotch-woman, and know what that means. Come, you must cheer up, for I have brought a young lady with me who is going to put your daughter-in-law a little more comfortable and see after her from ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... then with all possible dispatch 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 one to make close friends. Now those ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... other day, that Hadria's dancing of the reel was no 'right canny,'" Algitha observed, in the same low tone that all the occupants of the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... well on the whole. I sometimes get mad and swear, but then I am strictly honest. I work on Sabbath when I am particularly busy, but I give a good deal to the poor, and I never was drunk in my life." This man hired a canny Scotchman to build a fence around his lot. He gave him very particular directions. In the evening, when the Scotchman came in from his work, the man said, "Well, Jock, is the fence built, and is it tight and strong?" "I canna say that it ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... faster." We see James Gordon Bennett, the jibe of all the printers because of his crooked eyes. Yet he dies the owner of the greatest money-making newspaper of all newspaper history, a journal which sends expeditions to Africa and squadrons to the north pole. We see a "canny" Scotch boy at study. He "takes wonderfully to German," and soon the English world is hailing him as the "literary Columbus." He has shown them the greatness of Frederick, of Schiller, and Goethe. He writes a history of the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of Christendom; but the Prussian policy, too, has been diligently covered with the same decorous plea of needful provision for the common defense and an unremitting solicitude for international peace,—to which has been added the canny ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... bit of an aesthete but canny at affairs; good-looking, and temperate, and less hipped on the matter of sex than feminist gentlemen are wont to be. That is to say, while he vaguely wanted l'homme moyen sensuel to mend his ways, he did not expect him to change fundamentally. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... 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 do you think, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... losses by such cessations from labour are little as compared with those due to the spirit which in England is called "ca'-canny" or the shirking of performance of work, and of sabotage, which means the deliberate destruction of machinery in operation. Everywhere the phenomenon has been observed that, with the highest wages known in the history ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... 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 a brown, barren ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 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 trouble. Her highly strung ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... but not to be idle. In a week or two he was taking some of the reins into his own hands as a valuable assistant to the Major. He knew a good horse, could guess the weight of a steer with surprising accuracy, and was a past master in knowledge of sheep. By instinct he was canny at a trade—what mountaineer is not?—and he astonished the Major with the shrewd deals he made. Authority seemed to come naturally to him, and the Major swore that he could get more work out of the "hands" than the overseer himself, who ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... 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 including those presided over by his fellow conspirator Digwell, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Queensberry to win votes for the Union. Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals. Hamilton brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal which England would never have dreamed of accepting. Canny Jacobites, however, abstained from voting, and thence Lockhart dates the ruin of his country. Supply, at all events, was granted, and on that Argyll adjourned. The queen was to select Commissioners of both countries to ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... it to me. I had seen other timberlines in my rambles, but none so impressive as this. Here was the forest frontier. How dauntless, how gallant, these pioneers were! How they strove to hold the advantage gained during the brief summer respite! Here a canny stripling grew behind a sheltering bowlder, but whenever it tried to peep above its breastworks, the wind, with its shell-shot of sand and gravel and ice bullets, cut off its protruding limbs as neatly as a gardner might have done. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... I walked up alone for a casual look at our new possession. It was still and deserted up there, and as the light faded into dusk, the ancient overgrown place certainly had an air about it that was not quite canny. I decided that I would not remain any longer, and was about to go when I noticed an old, white-haired man standing a few feet away. I had heard no step, and his pale, grave face was not especially reassuring. I began ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... instructions to the two women travellers, the earnestness of his attempts to inspire them with courage for their enterprise, and the sincere fervour of his many commendations of them to the Divine keeping. The mixture of "canny" counsel and pious invocation has frequently a droll effect: as when the advice to "give the custom-house officers what I told you, and at Calais more, if you have much Scotch snuff;" and "to drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, that is, if you like it," ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... rent," laughed Peter. "You're as canny and careful as a Scotch professor. I think it's simply grand the way you've beaten out those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts. I should have melted them years ago. I believe you have got some ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... were standing on the step of the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny morning to you, Master Paul'—ey, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... advise me, inasmuch as I was about to go amongst the savage hill tribes of canny Scotians, to previously make myself acquainted with their idioms, &c., for which purpose she lent me some romances written entirely in Caledonian dialects, also the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash—brave fellows that they are, these "true British sailors." I waited the result, knowing ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Freeman Cottage, dressed as roosters, very scarlet as to topknot and wattles, very feather dustery as to tail, waylaid the unwary on campus paths and lured them to buy these tickets and to hunt for the hundreds of brightly colored eggs which these commercially canny fowls had hidden on the Art Building Hill. After the hunt was successfully over, the hunters came down to the front of the new, very new, administration building, already called the Wellesley Hencoop, where they were greeted by the ghosts and wraiths ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... said Dr. May, smiling. "The boy has missed it marvellously; but, you see, he has everything that subtle imp would wish to feed upon, and it is no harm to give him a lick with the rough side of the tongue, as your canny Scots ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... heavy 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 out of the darkness, fixed on her. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... in 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 of cabinets ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 and ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... a genius, quick 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
... creature taken herself off to? She has not eloped with one of our canny Scots, has she?" inquired the viscount, coolly lighting another cigar ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... under any conditions of life, school themselves much more than they are schooled. Active, inquisitive, resolute, and possessing a fair share of the national perfervidum ingenium, not without some tincture of those elements of the Scottish character known as the "canny" and the "dour," our worker early developed that robust vigour of mind and body which has so long stood the wear and tear of ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... 've mony bonnie lassies seen, Baith blithesome, kind, an' canny; But oh! the day has never been I 've seen another Nanny! She 's like the mavis in her sang, Amang the brakens bloomin', Her lips ope to an angel's tongue, But kiss ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... 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 goddess, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... of Baltistan, on the opposite (or northern) side of Kashmir, again surprise us by speaking a Tartar tongue. We are not told that they are Scotch, endowed though they undoubtedly are with some of the canny and thrifty characteristics of the dwellers ayont the Tweed. They are inveterate tradesmen, and carry their small wares, including hill-ponies, all through the mountains. Let us drop in upon them, if such an expression be applicable to a climb of the most tremendous description. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... a canny fisher that," shaking his head. "The fish you'd find in its nest come from the deep waters, where heron never flew. Well, they do say," in answer to her look of inquiry, "that on stormy nights it sits on the beach with a phosphoric ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the canny beasts, Brother Coon is the wisest, and were it not for his imprudence and self-assurance, he would be less frequently captured than the coyote, who is also a very clever gentleman. As it is, a raccoon hunt is a nocturnal escapade that may be enjoyed by any lively ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... he would the grass—and I had to turn the grindstone to sharpen his scythe. Uncle Edmund was a farmer and a pettifogger. Uncle William died comparatively young; he had nurseries near Rochester. Uncle Thomas was a farmer, slow and canny, with a quiet, dry humor. Aunt Hannah married Robert Avery, who drank a good deal; I can't remember anything about her. Aunt Abby was large and thrifty; she married John Jenkins, and had a large family.... Amy, my mother, was her mother's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... 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
... pondered. He had no wish to run ashore. In the skiff were upwards of a hundred of the dodgers hastily struck off at the Timber City printing office, which proclaimed the reward for the Texan and the thousand-dollar reward for information concerning the whereabouts of Alice Endicott. Long Bill was canny. He knew the river and he had figured pretty accurately the probable drift of the ferry boat. He expected to come upon it any time. And he wanted that reward for himself. The hundred dollars offered for ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the tradition of Trollope that rules to-day—Trollope, that canny craftsman who wrote every day for a stated number of hours, and who, if he finished a novel twenty minutes before the end of his term, would take up a clean sheet of paper and commence another. Did I say the canny Trollope? Nay, this is rather ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... no 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 ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... said Tam, jerking his thumb at the eastern sky. "He's a verra likeable feller—but a wee bit too canny an' a big bit too fast. Captain Blackie, sir-r, can ye no get me a machine that can flee? Ma wee machine is no' unlike a hairse, but A'm wishfu' o' providin' ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... are 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. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... "Sure," replied he, too 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 ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Margaret's, and society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the braw canny Scot"—as the House Surgeon always termed him—and he objected to kisses. So the good-morning greeting was a hearty hand-shake between ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... over to the banker, and he will give you ten pounds, which you will administer to the poor, by putting a twenty-shilling note in the plate on Sunday, as a public testimony from me of thankfulness for the hope that is before us; the other nine pounds you will quietly, and in your own canny way, divide after the following manner, letting none of the partakers thereof know from what other hand than the Lord's the help comes, for, indeed, from whom but HIS does ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... 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 highest act of rebellion ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... 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' ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... that protected forest, knowing perfectly well that once within its bounds they will not be disturbed. The same may be observed in the vicinity of the Yellowstone National Park; the bears, for instance, a canny folk, and shrewd to read the signs of the times, seem to be well aware that they are not to be disturbed near the hotels, and they show themselves at such places without fear; at the same time that outside ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... he tried to silence the qualms. Tried to reassure himself with Cliff's very evident sincerity, his easy assurance that all would be well. Johnny had been canny enough to make the agreement by the week—surely nothing much could go wrong in that little while, and if he didn't like the look of things after a week's try-out, he could quit, and that would be all there would be of it. It was too good a chance to let slip by without a trial, ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... their flesh, and most of them were found guilty. The witch-finder informed 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 witch-finder confessed he was in error. The highly-favoured ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... malice distorting her handsome face. "There he sits noo! he wha marrit me and afterwards marrit the heiress o' Lone! he wha betrayed me intil a prison, and wad hae betrayed me to the gallows, gin I had na been to canny for him! There he is noo, and he can na ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of matter, no people on earth are as canny, save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit—a very present help in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of these words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... mouldings by hand. That was long before the days of cement, so the fantastic shapes had to be fastened to each other and the ceiling with copper wire. When the skilled workmen had finished their fruits and flowers and leaves, and all the weird fancies which signified the evolution of Man, the canny merchant prince promptly packed the Italians back again to their native land, lest other merchant princes should employ them to repeat the marvellous ceiling for their houses! By this thoughtful act, he secured for himself the one and only specimen ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... PRINCE, who plays slashing reckless game, takes honour at first hole (Liege to Loos), hooks at right angles, dents two spectators, and ends up in Aisne Bunker. FERDINAND (canny, cautious type of player) hits a wind-cheating screamer which finished fully forty yards from the tee. Critics differ as to FRANCIS-JOSEPH's shot, and it is still a moot point whether he had a species of fit or was simply trying to follow through. When restored to perpendicular was found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... 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 ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... that, Andra," she pleaded. "It's no' canny, an' forby, the Lord disna like ye to ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... their country well with that strength and courage which brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the Royal Navy. So was the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and shoulders, whose springing hits for many a year carried all before them until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack Randall. Shaw, who stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. The brutal Berks died greatly in the breach ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who is to lecture at the Chautauqua here, has many strange stories and quaint yarns that he picked up while travelling around the globe. While in the highlands of Scotland he met a canny old "Scot" who asked him, "Have you ever heard of Andrew Carnegie in America?" "Yes, indeed," replied the traveller. "Weel," said the Scot, pointing to a little stream near-by, "in that wee burn Andrew and I caught our first trout together. Andrew was a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... men would if they were in Mike's shoes. Why, they say Mr. Carlisle was worth six or seven thousand a year—most of it solid capital, and locked up in safe securities and investments. He was always a canny Scotsman, and liked to take care of his money. And here is Mike pretending not to care a jot about it, and looking as though he had the cares of all the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to him as he stood at the door, and went in with him to see the sport. Robin, for some reason, could not bid him go away, and both Betty and Janet were sure he was in the plot against them; indeed, it was always thought he was an informer, and no doubt he was something not canny, for he had ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... elephant!" I was so eager to get rid of it that I would have wired at once, naming a figure proportionately low had it not been for the united protests of my four friends and the canny advice ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... future as a rule in the scale of wages. Therefore in all such factories they prefer never to produce as much as they can. In certain industries production is limited so as to keep up high prices, and sometimes the pass-word, "Go-canny," is given, which signifies, "Bad work ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Driffield as well as the small limestone and grit fish of Craven; if so, the gentlemen of the Driffield Club, who are said to think nothing of killing three-pound fish on midge flies and cobweb tackle, must be (as canny Yorkshiremen are likely enough to be) the best ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... next great war. With luck that 'ock may lie there another 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... formidable claws, and became the lion playing with the lamb; and 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 International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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 of another gay little play, and early fall found her deep—head, hands, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... anecdote we should expect an archbishop to be as orthodox as 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 by Sidney Smith, who, on being asked to ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... Oberland forming part of the Canton of Berne: "Where do you take your cattle and your cheese?"—"To Berne."—"Whence do you get your grain, cloth, and iron?"—"From Berne."—"Very well: 'To Berne, from Berne'—you consequently belong to Berne." The reply is a good instance of that canny materialism which he so victoriously opposed to feudal ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... demands of these unskilled workers. The men were quite at the end of their resources, when finally they hit upon the plan of "lying down on the job" or "soldiering." As a catchword they adopted the Scotch phrase ca'canny, to go slow or be careful not to do too much. As an example they pointed to the Chinese coolies who met a refusal of increased wages by cutting off a few inches from their shovels on the principle of "small pay, small ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... tossing behind 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, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... 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" ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 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, this ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 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
... I should hurt the woman by any kind of meane, I should be throwne to the wild Beasts: But in the meane season she kissed me, and looked in my mouth with burning eyes, saying: I hold thee my canny, I hold thee my noose, my sparrow, and therewithall she eftsoones imbraced my body round about, and had her pleasure with me, whereby I thought the mother of Miniatures did not ceaseless quench her inordinate desire with a Bull. When night ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... in Perthshire, who had been rather severely cross-examined by the opposing counsel, had his sweet revenge when the sheriff, commenting on the case, inquired: "There seems to be a great deal of dram-dramming at C—— on Tuesdays, I imagine?"—"Aye, whiles," was the canny reply—and immediately following it up, as he pointed across at the rival lawyer, he continued—"an' that nicker ower there can tak' a bit dram wi' ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... to the camp, and there the Little Woman met them, and by some canny intuition knew who they were and what they wanted,—thanks to Casey's garrulous mood when he told her of Lucy Lily. They said that they were hunting horses, and presently went on over the ridge; not following Casey's plain trail to the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... has been left largely to local enterprise. An observant person can tell, by a study of the numerous name-boards, which of his countrymen have been occupying the line during the past six months. "Grainger Street" and "Jesmond Dene" give direct evidence of "Canny N'castle." "Sherwood Avenue" and "Notts Forest" have a Midland flavour. Lastly, no great mental effort is required to decide who labelled two communication trenches "The ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... 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 ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... wrote to Mr 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 ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... been dead only a year when Aunt Matilda, who had adopted me several years earlier on the death of my parents, married her father. I was twelve and Kitty eight when the marriage took place, and with canny care I tried to shield her from the severity of Aunt Matilda's system in rearing a child. I had been ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... "that the house of this Master Caxton as you call him seems to me no canny haunt. Tell me what you will of making manifold good books or bad, I'll never believe but that Dr. Faustus and the Devil hatched the notion between them for the bewilderment of men's brains and the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and many-sided of American ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... what to say in answer to the creature's strange request. It was an unheard-of thing for anyone to come and offer their services for nothing, and the men began to whisper among themselves, and to say that it was not canny, and 'twere better to have nothing to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... wrought injury amongst cattle. Every animal that died suddenly was killed by the dart of the fairies, or, in the language of the people, was 'shot-a-dead.' Flint arrows and spear-heads went by the name of 'faery dairts....' When an animal died suddenly the canny woman of the district was sent for to search for the 'faery dairt,' and in due course she found one, to the great satisfaction of the owner ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... 'tention to me. He was sitting all alone in the moonlight out there at the end of the platform, and every few minutes the poor lonely little beggar'd lift his nose and howl as if his heart was breaking. He never did it afore—always slept in his kennel real quiet and canny from train to train. But he sure had something on his ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 Of old Bluebritches ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... did even more than this. Posters round the ground advertised the fact that, on receipt of five pounds, he would take up a passenger with him. To date, however, there appeared to have been no rush on the part of the canny inhabitants of Lexingham to avail themselves of this chance of a breath of fresh air. M. Feriaud, a small man with a chubby and amiable face, wandered about signing picture cards and smoking a lighted cigaret, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... 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 ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... himself dragged through room after room of the great building, and standing by while Elizabeth, guided by an official who seemed to hide a more than Franciscan brotherliness under the aspects of a canny Scot, and helped by an interpreter, made her way into the groups of home-seekers crowding round the clerks and counters of the lower room—English, Americans, Swedes, Dutchmen, Galicians, French Canadians. Some men, indeed, who were actually hanging ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stood ruminating for a moment. "The deil's in him," she said, "for he winna bide being thrawn. And I think the deil's in me too for thrawing him, sic a canny lad, and sae gude a customer;—and I am judging he has something on his mind—want of siller it canna be—I am sure if I thought that, I wadna care about my small thing.—But want o' siller it canna be—he pays ower the shillings as if they were sclate stanes, and that's no the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... inn was an apartment divided into 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 Minster. Southwell since ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... was forty yards from him; and it was a cold night for wading. It might be a hassock of rushes; a tuft of the great water-dock; a dead dog; one of the "hangs" with which the club-water was studded, torn up and stranded: but yet, to Tom, it had not a canny look. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... succeeded in getting a cancellation of the lease. On first securing the lease the season was well advanced and it became an anxiety to me as to where I should get cattle to put in the pasture, if only enough to pay the year's rent—some 7000 dollars. One man, a canny Scotsman, had been holding and grazing a large herd of 4000 two-year-old steers, all in one straight brand, on the free range just outside. He knew I wanted cattle and I knew he wanted grass, as he could not ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Irish hound named Murphy," McBride replied promptly, for he had heard rumors of war aboard the Retriever and something told him Kendall had come to borrow his second mate, in order that the Retriever might tow out immediately. A canny, cunning lad was McBride, but for all his Scotch blood he was no match for ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... without the canny Mr. Hildreth, when she reached the tool house. It was securely locked and no amount of tampering could make any impression on ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... But Shad Wells was "canny" and Peter had never succeeded in tracing any of the accidents or any of the dissensions directly to his door. Without evidence against him Peter did not think it wise to send him out of camp, for many of the men were friendly to Shad and his dismissal was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... 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 my head and throw it at them, if only to break ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... observe, was, in effect, a sweeping recantation of every ideal Margaret had ever boasted. But Love is a canny pedagogue, and of late he had instructed Miss Hugonin in a variety ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... now, to be explicit, upon two factors. The first and most immediate of these is a certain canny captain of many wars whose regiment is still at the disposal of either army—for a price, a regiment which has hitherto remained strictly neutral. And what a regiment it is! A block of river towns and a senator, and not a casualty since they marched ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the bins and the mow, Matthew the vintner and Mark the librarian, Clement the joiner and John apiarian, Each wise in his calling as craftsmen are made,— And each deep in love with his own special trade. But the Abbot was canny, and never would raise One above other by blame or ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... folk about here believe in her as something no canny, as the Scotch call it. So you think it was ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... 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 friend, out of ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... that sophism, Gerald; the fox is canny because he has been terrified so often,' said Helen. 'Let us own that it is barbarous, but such glorious sport that one ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
