"Comber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days together I could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even through Johnson's inarticulate speech, his "O yes, there ain't no harm in them Kanakas," or "O yes, that's a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right down; I didn't never ought to have left that island," there ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... those cursed tunes you can't forget," said the surgeon. "Heard a scoundrel of a beach-comber sing it years ago. Down in New Zealand, that was. When the fever rose on him he'd pipe up. Used to beat time with a steel hook he wore in place of a hand. The thing haunted me till I was sorry I hadn't let the rascal die. This creature might have learned it from him. Howls ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said the bow-plates, proudly. "Ready, behind there! Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!" A great sluicing comber thundered by, but through the scuffle and confusion the Steam could hear the low, quick cries of the ironwork as the various strains took them—cries like these: "Easy, now—easy! Now push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... truth is impossible, and therefore not justly supposable. We have also a late American grammarian who gives a similar interpretation: "'Though never so justly deserving of it.' Comber. Never is here an emphatic adverb; as if it were said, so justly as was never. Though well authorized, it is disapproved by most grammarians of the present day; and the word ever is used instead of never."—Felch's Comp. Gram., p. 107. The text here cited is not necessarily ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Beyond the comber's crashing thunder Strange beaches flash into my ken; On jetties heaped head-high with plunder I dance and dice with sailor-men. Strange stars swarm down to burn above me, Strange shadows haunt, strange voices greet; Strange ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... own experience, and I say, give a girl the choice, an' she'll make a good wife. That's my theory. So if my gal is set agin a man, I'm set agin him. If she likes a partic'lar man, I'll like him too. She won't cotton to any miserable, fish-backed beach-comber, I can promise you. So mushy, flabby talk don't count with Rose; you can make your mind clear on ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... ryches. He taketh this charge to lyue in welth and eas. Howe be it that sole that hath suche besynes And dyueres charges fyndeth great disseas Neyther shall he god, nor yet the worlde pleas And shall with his burthyns his mynde so vex and comber That halfe his cures, can he nat ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... your time like this—loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and—and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... scatterling[obs3], landloper[obs3], waifs and estrays[obs3], wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab[obs3], Wandering Jew, Hadji, pilgrim, palmer; peripatetic; somnambulist, emigrant, fugitive, refugee; beach comber, booly[obs3]; globegirdler[obs3], globetrotter; vagrant, hobo [U.S.], night walker, sleep walker; noctambulist, runabout, straphanger, swagman, swagsman [obs3][Aust.]; trecker[obs3], trekker, zingano[obs3], zingaro[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... She's gi'en him a shaver for his beard, A comber till his hair, Five hunder pound in his pocket, To spen', and ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... was a thundering crash on the deck above them, and a rush of water told that a big comber had come aboard, nearly burying the small craft in ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... After a varied career as seaman, whaleman, boarding-house keeper, gold seeker, gravedigger, and beach-comber, he had taken to decent ways and now acted as head-foreman to a firm of stevedores. He was an office-bearer of the local Scottish Society, talked braid Scots on occasions (though his command of Yankee slang when stimulating his men in the holds was finely complete), and wore a tartan neck-tie that ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... downwards, I approached the creek where my skiff had to be left; but before I reached it a "beach-comber," with a coil of cord over his shoulder, asked me if he should tow me "up to 'Ampton." I shook my head, whereupon he abused me in such choice terms that I listened abashed at my ignorance. It had never occurred ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... cart close to the edge of the dune, springing out of the way of the boiling surf or sinking up to their waists into crevices of sluiceways gullied out by the hungry sea. Once Archie lost his footing and would have been sucked under by a comber had not Captain Holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again. Now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... plates proudly. "Ready behind there! Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!" The great sluicing comber thundered by, but through all the scuffle and confusion the steam could hear the low, quick cries of the iron-work as the various strains took them—cries like these: "Easy now, easy! Now push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove crossways! ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various |
