"Duffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wild Hunter, the spooky old critter, has been seen agin. i wuz on the top of the painted Butte yesterday squinten one i in the valley look'n for elk and look'n up with tother i for Big horn on the mountain, when i staged the old duffer snoop'en along in one of the parks an' he had the same long hair and long rifle he uster have. He sure is a ghost or else he's a nut or an old timer gone locoed. He sends the chills down my backbone every time i sots my eyes ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... a duffer in your district Whose sheer cussedness is such He has neither pride nor manners— No, nor gumption, overmuch. 'Twould be great to up and tell him Where to go. But be resolved— He's no foeman to be fought with, Just a problem ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... eyes were bright with excitement. "It was the loveliest thing you ever saw, Anna. The princess was a beauty, and no mistake; even Charles thought so, and he has seen princesses by the score. I am glad I went; the boys won't think me such a duffer when I tell them. Don't shake your head, Anna; you are a girl, and you don't understand how much one has to put up with from the fellows. They call me the Puritan, and ask if I wear pinafores at home. But I stopped that," and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were about as successful as such domestic offices ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... paced he, followed stealthily By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step: "Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward! Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak! Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can! Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason To draw and kill you. Take your billy out. I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!" But never a word the hog-eyed one returned But trod about the court-house, followed both By troops of boys and watched by all the men. All day, they walked the square. ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... he said ecstatically, "and real food the other two meals! Gee, but it's fine to eat something some other poor duffer has cooked! Say, Joe, what is it that pigs have that kills them off in bunches: ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... makes me feel sort of glad, Miss Helen. You see, I'm not such a duffer really. I think an awful lot, and it don't come hard either. But folks have always told me I'm such a fool, that I've kind of got into the way of believing it. Now, when I saw that pine and the valley I felt sort of queer. It struck me then it was sort ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... should have known more what the world was like, I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends. As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest, thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two—but I never dreamed of telling anyone what I was ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quite see Davy as strong," said Jim, "though he is paying his debts. But Dick certainly is getting to be a conceited duffer. The ayes," he sighed, "seem to have it. The next question is ways and means. Old Bixby's method in St. X looks good to me. A conditional contribution—what do ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... mother. If I get into a chest, you may depend I shall know how to get out of it. That girl in the poem was a duffer for not having made more row; and her lover was a beastly sneak for not ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of my hostesses come to round me up to do my duty," he confessed. "I'm a duffer at dancing, so I've taken cover in here. I see you don't remember me, but we've met before—at Red Ridge Barrow. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... in a sharp, clipping voice; and the next minute Bessie heard her call one of her sisters a duffer for missing the ball. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that's the very thing we mustn't do. Don't you see, you old duffer you, that if we shut up shop and retire into private life, everybody will be thinking we daren't hold up our heads? I mean to hold up my head, for one," added Tony, proudly, "if there were a thousand Greenfields in the class; and I mean to make you hold up ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... I said, assuming an enthusiasm I did not feel. Put on the gloves with this strapping, skillful boxer? Not I! I was firmly resolved to stop while my record was good. In a scientific clash with the gloves he would soon find out what a miserable duffer ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... of matters that most apprentices ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and 'ice to the south'ard of the Horn,' and subjects like that, when, properly, they ought to be criticising their Old Man, and saying what an utter duffer of a Second Mate they had. Jones was wonderfully indignant at such talk, and couldn't sleep at night for thinking of all the fine sarcastic remarks he might have made, if he had thought of them ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... to have anything to do with that feller, 'cause he's a reg'lar duffer. He's too lazy to work, an' he hangs 'round the city like a loafer. That boat hain't his at all. I know who owns her. Bart West hain't got money enough to buy one end of a punt. He was goin'. to steal the yacht, that's what he was goin' ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... your nose out of this business, an' don't speak to me again till after I'm dead. Do ye mind that, ye big duffer?" ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... of asking me when you measured it yourself, you duffer? Didn't you tell me yourself it was seven feet two to the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... game of Football has, of course, no charm. There is too much hard work for him, and the training required to put one in condition, fraught with all that is called self-denial, he could never endure. The musty old duffer, too, looks upon the game in the light of a deadly sin, which can never be associated in his mind with anything short of idiocy and the most virulent fanaticism. To some of his young men he remarks—"And you call that a grand game, running about a field trying to put a ball near a pair of upright ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... his paces. Ask him what he knows. Process (I fear) incidentally reveals to him what I know. Hear him at lunch explaining to HERBIE (with whom he has made friends again) that I am "not bad at sums, but a shocking duffer at Latin." Pretend not to hear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... little Duffer, I know! We've seen him before! Wouldn't mind giving him a chase to-day, just for exercise, ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... advanced than she is if the passionate desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept out of the game. See for example the sagacity which Spencer and Weismann now display. On the other hand, if you want an absolute duffer in an investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no interest whatever in its results: he is the warranted incapable, the positive fool. The most useful investigator, because the most sensitive observer, is always he ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... a shop all right, or if it isn't exactly a shop that old duffer will be glad to get a little good money for one ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... intoxicated by all his mooning anecdotes about the past glories of Venice in general, and of his illustrious family in particular. Why, in Heaven's name, must he pitch upon Zaffirino for his mooning, this old duffer of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... out in farewell. The growing light of early morning transfigured his face, and to Philip it suddenly seemed to be most remarkably like the face of That Man, Mr. Peter Graham, whom Helen had married. He was just telling himself not to be a duffer when Lucy cried out in a loud cracked-sounding voice, 'Daddy, oh, Daddy!' ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... so sound. I thought to myself—well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him there apparently so much at ease—is he silly? is he callous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... and IX. of Meredith's story are very good, I think. But who wrote the review of my book? Whoever he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep when I think of him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot. I should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of immorality, and a publisher at once. My mind is extinct; my appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether into a hollow-eyed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... play golf himself, but he consented to walk over the course and watch the representative's strokes. The representative was rather a duffer. Teeing off, he sent clouds of earth flying in all directions. Then, to hide his confusion he said to his guest: "What do you think of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and mincing gait! It was as though as much as possible of his body were seeking to escape that all-devouring tension in relapse. How familiar it all was! Even during those months at camp the picture would recur and Joe would laugh softly to himself. Poor old duffer! He was a product of the plant just as much as ploughs and tillage implements were. How soon would he begin to show ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... make a golfer—it only helps. You may chip, you may wallop the ball if you will, But the slash of the duffer will cling round it still. Look before you cheat. Every water hole has a silver lining—ask the boat boy. To stymie is human; to lift up divine. Half a stroke is better than none. He laughs last who putts best. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... eating him, the old duffer, I wonder?" growled Holmes. "Is he falling in love, at ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... greeted. Yet there was no well-defined jealousy between them. Mr. Walking Delegate Dennis Quigg, confidential agent of Branch No. 3, Knights of Labor, had too good an opinion of himself ever to look upon that "tow-headed duffer of a stable-boy" in the light of a rival. Nor could Carl for a moment think of that narrow-chested, red-faced, flashily dressed Knight as being able to make the slightest impression ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... looking for you everywhere! How many dances can you give me? I've kept my programme as free as I could till I found you. I thought the pixies must have spirited you away! What did you say? I ought to ask Gwen? It isn't necessary in the least. You know I'm a duffer at it, and I should probably tread on her toes and she'd hate me for evermore. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... replied. Then soon after: "Everything's strange. That's the trouble," he confessed. "It's only in little things that don't matter, but a fellow feels such a duffer." ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not been for Willy Horse I should not have got the property at all. That chief with the iron toes is a shrewd old duffer. He has owned the property for some years, and all that time the Hiram Dusenbery Company has been trying, by fair means or otherwise, to buy it of him, but Old Iron-Toe put the price so high that they preferred to wait, hoping that when he got hard up he might be willing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... vowed James Stuart proudly. "I was a duffer at it till she showed me what she was after. I wanted to buy brocaded silk furniture, like that in her home—while my money held out. But she would have nothing but this sort of thing. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... at a coming shell, and what the officer didn't say to Hambone for trotting, which was a violation of orders, would not be worth repeating. He bellowed at him to go and search for it, and with wicked delight we watched the duffer going back over the route, peering from side to side of the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... my saddle! Why don't he jump proper? Well, you go on. I don't know that I'm a duffer. Duffer, indeed! My word!" Heathcote had turned to the left, leaving the track, which was, indeed, the main road toward the nearest town and the coast, and was now pushing on through the forest with no pathway at all to guide him. To ordinary ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... I exclaimed. "Green again! Can you make anything of it at all, Garnesk? I'm sorry I'm such a duffer as to faint at the critical moment, when I might have been of some assistance to you. What in God's name ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... dear. Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say—two and two are four—let us go into partnership. But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—a complete failure—and be worse off than even you ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... thought himself one if he had been; but he was slow at everything—learning, games, accomplishments—though he had this compensation, no slight one either, that when he had once mastered a thing he had got it for ever. His school-fellows called him a duffer, but it did not vex him in the least, for he considered it a mere statement of a patent fact, and was no more offended than if they had said that he had two legs. But he had a strong belief that perseverance, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... with a kindly twinkle in his eyes and told them that they were all "lucky boys to go to such a fine school" and advised them to "study hard so as to be smart men." If he had not been Teeny-bits' father, they might have thought he was a queer old duffer. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the town," said Bob, munching a cracker with liveliest manifestations of appreciation. "Coming back to-night—that's what made me late—Jim Turner, who's poormaster now, called me in. Said he had something to tell me. It seems there was a queer old duffer spent one night there a while back —Jim thought it must have been a month ago. He has a secondhand bookshop in Washington, and he came to the poorhouse to look at some old books they have there—thought they might be valuable. They opened all the records to him, and Jim says he was ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... that was,' said Dolly; 'stupid little duffer. We won't have him this time. And, mother darling, I want to dance all the time; and it's my own party. Dancing is enough—it is really,' she pleaded in a pretty frenzy of impatience. And Dolly got her own way ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James, I have dipped into quite a lot of them—Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... material to justify the belief that the first naval authority of his time was the target of snobs, and that, but for his strong personality and the fact that he was always ready to fight them in the open, he would have been superseded, and a gallant duffer might have taken his place, to the detriment of our imperial interests. It is a dangerous experiment to put a man into high office if he has not the instinct of judging the calibre of other men. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... was a brief silence before the man continued, "He was a strange duffer. I have seen him off an' on the last fifteen year. He never gave up his search for a mine and I guess he never found one. Strange how a man will keep on as if he was all possessed when he has once got ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... moored elsewhere than at the larger towns,—exchanging greetings and chatting with such acquaintances as they there meet, or idling up and down the river in the luxurious small boats of their river-made friends. This type of house-boater himself is generally spoken of in brisk naval asides as a "duffer," the kitchen of his boat is a wine-closet, and, to look at him poring for hours over his paper, one may well believe that time is heavy on his hands and that he arrives during every summer vacation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... duffer than you are, Flo. You can't help being a girl, I know; but I'm willing to help you all I can out of a girl's foolishness. Only a girl would talk of ringing the bell, and making a row, because she can't have all her own way. Come ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... means a studious person; perhaps I am never so happy as when I have nothing to read. Nevertheless, I do occasionally look into books, and greatly appreciate their gentle, kindly ways. They never shut themselves up with a sound like a slap, or throw themselves at your head for a duffer, but seem silently grateful for being read, even by a stupid person, and teach you very patiently, like a ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... he wrote to them in a famous letter, "you have crucified my God and you want my life too; I warn you that I will not be such a duffer as He was and that I will cut off your fourteen hundred ears. Accept my boot on ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... too, for when we were practising at an empty brandy bottle outside Adams' bar, he took up a friend's pistol and hit it plumb in the centre at twenty-four paces. There were few things he took up that he could not make a show at apparently, except gold-digging, and at that he was the veriest duffer alive. It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... duffer,' said his lordship. 'If he's doing so well, I think Miles ought to be made to pay up something of what he owes. I think we ought to tell him that we shall expect him to have the money ready when that bill of ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... moment. Don't despise me. I have it. I'll, yes—I'll do it—I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll have to get over it—and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening—I shall steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... sign," answered the boy, with a shake of his head. "Just clean cleared out, that's all. Pretty hard luck, I call it. Just at the end of things too—when he had a right to expect the fellows home. Pretty tough luck. I wish I could find the poor old duffer and ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... had come all the way without the stroke of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river in ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... cried. "Parliament?—after that? You boy! you sentimentalist! you—you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for your own sake even? Do you think I want you—spoilt? We should come back to mope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. I won't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End this if you like, break our hearts and throw them away and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or a swindler—the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness; and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in some miserable cottage—a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh. "You've got eight fingers—eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I say, dad, open the beggar's box, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... up yellow if he got in a scrap. His face is pale and sickly, he's weak of arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ever loves him; he stirs the sportsman's wrath; the whole world kicks and shoves him and shoos him from the path. For who can love a duffer so pallid, weak and thin, who seems resigned to suffer and let folks rub it in? Yet though he's down to zero in fellow-men's esteem, this fellow is a hero and that's no winter dream. Year after year he's toiling, as toiled the slaves of Rome, to keep the pot a-boiling in his old ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... slightly double. For the rest I was strong and fairly well—not much inclined to exercise, to be sure, but able, if occasion offered, to wield a tennis racket or a driver with a vigor and accuracy that placed me well out of the duffer class. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the man on the kerb; "I wonder how the old duffer worked it. I wish I had asked him." None of the rest made any comment; they were struck dumb with amazement at the success of the old gentleman, who had even to ask if that were ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Two sick men sent on board our ship which made our number 40. James Duffer died at 4 o'clock p.m. with Hectic fever. Many of the men are very low. Bellew and Collins were sent to our ship which augments our number to ...
— Journal of an American Prisoner at Fort Malden and Quebec in the War of 1812 • James Reynolds
... Bud, across the head of the herd, "yer could slap that old duffer across the face with your ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer. I'll wipe up deh street ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... no means thorough. There is no record of his having distinguished himself academically in the slightest degree. It is related of him, on the contrary, that he was such a duffer at classics as to be incapable of grasping the rule that 'ut' should be followed by the subjunctive mood. The following account of Disraeli's schooldays, given by one of his school-fellows, is ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... you little duffer. But the kids used to call you 'colonel,' and now he keeps crying for you. Perhaps if you order him to take the physic, he ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... show the possibility that many a duffer was led toward the production of the homunculus by erroneous interpretation of the procreation symbolism occurring in the alchemistic writings. It was merely necessary, in their limitations, to take literally one or another of the methods. In this way there actually occurred ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... "Old duffer! you are one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow: there's no knowing how to tyke you. You're such a sinful old 'ypocrite, that you play-act before yourself, I do believe. What is it you do mean? You myke anyone ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... to talk, do you?" he said a little sadly. "Well, I don't see but what I shall have to do it, then. Still, I should think a nice little lady like you might find lots nicer people to talk to than an old duffer like me." ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in Paris without feeling myself to be an absolute duffer among a lot of fellows younger than myself. By Jove, this news is like a breeze on the east coast in summer—a little sharp, perhaps, but splendidly bracing and healthy, just the thing to set a fellow up and make a man of him. I will ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... wears the Panama? I wonder if anyone would think of haste in connection with that duffer. It took him just one hour to buy three soft crabs from some kids at the dock yesterday," said Walter. "I wouldn't like to be his messmate. But I don't like his eye; ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... man of yours is a duffer," she said sharply, pointing a very earthy trowel at the unconscious figure of the gardener, who was busy in the middle distance digging potatoes. "A man," she continued, "who calls a plain, every-day squash a vegetable marrow isn't fit to run a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... their snug coupe and hearing this wheel off, Gerald returned to the great hall. He without question would remain until the big light was extinguished. Colors, forms, sparkle, golden haze—a painter must be dead or a duffer to leave before the gay glory of it faded and was dispersed in the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... function is continuous it can always be differentiated. A comparatively unphilosophical mind may let such plausible assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... are not all exactly like Levick," said Philip, who was a little ashamed of himself for having frightened his little brother; "but I was only joking when I said that about the policeman in Borsham, Dan. What a little duffer you are!" ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... be thankful for. One likes novelty, especially if it's feminine. Well, I'm out for the sole purpose of saving a million or so for old Wharton, and to save as much of her reputation as I can besides. With the proof in hand the old duffer can scare her out of any claim against his bank account, and she shall have the absolute promise of 'no exposure' in return. Isn't it lovely? Well, here's Albany. Now for the dinky road up to Fossingford Station. I have an hour's wait here. She's ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... This is awful! Couldn't you have let me know? What a duffer you are! I would have sacrificed my life to get that flag! I wouldn't have stood their nonsense like I did had I thought that was our flag. I would have fought them till my last breath. Why—why didn't you ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... not exactly a Duffer. He was what might be called a sub-Duffer, or Varnish, which means that the Committee was ashamed ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the mule-skinner's person for evidence of hardware. Observing none, he said fiercely "You mutton- headed duffer!" and for the first time within the memory of the citizens of San Pasqual he had recourse to his hands. He clasped Mr. O'Rourke fondly around the neck and choked him until his eyes threatened to pop out, the while he shook O'Rourke as a terrier shakes a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... paper that they will chiefly provoke the tear of sentiment. Other Confessors have never admitted that they are Social Duffers, except Mr. MARK PATTISON only, the Rector of Lincoln College; and he seems to have Flattered himself that he was only a Duffer as a beginner. My great prototypes, J.J. ROUSSEAU, and MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF, never own to having been Social Duffers. But I cannot conceal the fact from my own introspective analysis. It is not only that I was always shy. Others have fled, and hidden themselves in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... single thing in the whole kit of it. And first and foremost, 'tain't a bit likely the old man 'ud ha' been sich a duffer." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... rig—we are short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know. Wait a minute—I'll bring it in," and he sprang ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay—ah! you're all right; O'Roon couldn't have done it ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... that ol' duffer," he went on, as he pointed at the stern features of grandpa Smead. "Wouldn't ye think he'd smile now an' then. Maybe he'll cheer up after I've ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... on earth can he know about English? [Greek text] is a Cormorant: [Greek text] is a Skinflint; and your tutor is a Duffer. Hush! keep dark now! here he comes." And he went hastily to meet Edward Dodd: and by that means intercepted him on his way to the carriage. "Give me your hand, Dodd," he cried; "you have saved the university. You must be stroke of the eight-oar after me. Let ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Republick is too rediklus for anythink. Look at the kiddish kick-up along o' the visit of the Hempress! Why, if we 'ad that duffer, DEROULEDE, on Newmarket 'Eath, we should just duck him in a 'orsepond, like a copped Welsher. Here they washup him, or else knuckle under to him, like a skeery Coster's missus when her old man's on the mawl, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... the old man and the jockey had made a sneak from the grounds when Ted was having his fun with the big fellow, and I got my bronc and followed them. I came up with them a ways back, and made the old duffer halt, but the jock potted me and got away. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... will put up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing immensely. But," she added smiling confidently and regarding him with her large, steady brown eyes, "I don't intend to remain a duffer at it long. I see," she continued after a moment, "from your expression, Mr. Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the corners ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... caution had proceeded from other causes, and being detected, he put a bold face on it, stepped on the deck and slammed the door behind him. Lady Victoria was somewhat surprised to see him tread the slippery deck with perfect confidence and ease, for she thought he was something of a "duffer." But Barker knew how to do most things more or less, and he managed to bow and take off his sou'wester with considerable grace in spite of the rolling. Having obtained permission to smoke, he lighted a cigar, crooked one booted leg through the iron rail, and seated himself on the bulwark, where, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Grigsby severely, "you are a duffer. I see the solution at a glance. Here you are! These two jump ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... believe a word of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... old duffer," said he, looking at me in a stupid, expressionless sort of a way, "you are not hurt yet. I'll give you something to cry about if you don't quit making such a fuss over nothing. You're the biggest ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... "Poor old duffer! I'll bet he was disappointed," came sympathetically from Christopher. "Think of his having to stay at home and miss the fun of seeing how ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... suns beat down upon it His head is sheltered by a bonnet; And though it makes him look a duffer, He hasn't ...
— A Horse Book • Mary Tourtel
... year he was offered the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I was somewhat like the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "What a duffer I am to be sure!" I said to myself. "If I begin to get notions like this in my head there is no knowing where I may end. As if any girl would ever think ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... round at Frank, whose head was nodding forward in an uncomfortable attitude, and whose deep breathing showed him to be asleep. "If only he warn't sich a duffer," said Barney to himself, "we might do it easy," then seeing that his partner was in danger of falling, he moved nearer to him, and placed the boy's head gently against his own shoulder so that he might rest easily. Meanwhile the old gentleman's pen went scribbling on at quite a furious pace, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... gasped. "What between these Chinks and that crazy old duffer, they have got me in a nice mess. I know this girl. She belongs to that moving picture outfit. Now what ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... my justification. My mediumship, I can assure you, is a particular instance of the general assertion. Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honoured by every profound duffer in ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... he, "but I'm afraid I should show myself such a duffer. I used to be a pretty fair trout-fisher when I was a lad," he went on to say; and then it suddenly occurred to him that the offer of her companionship ought not to be received in this hesitating fashion. "But I shall be delighted to try my hand, if you will let me; and of course you ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. 'All that isn't History it's Humbug. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... cracked. I went afterwards to see the ones they have at the Natural History Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally I was annoyed at the silly duffer dropping three hours' work just on account of a centipede. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... had something else on my mind. In case I became satisfied that the two teams were pretty evenly matched, I had a little plan through which I felt confident I could make it a dead sure thing for Barville. I was not off my base, either, and it would have worked out charmingly if that big duffer, Lander, hadn't dipped in ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... we can't all play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won't be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... then I say No matter where you stray, You will never be impounded any more; For you’re running, running, running on the duffer’s piece of land, Free selected ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known what a duffer you are ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of Mr. DUFF, M.P., to be Governor of New South Wales is a "positive" good, seeing that they might have appointed "a comparative Duffer." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay. The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more. This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance of finding a better. By this time ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Well, the old duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist that very minute! Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow we'd spied getting full at the little station in the country. Only, he was a bit mellower than when you grabbed his chain. Well, he ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... belief that, whichever you believe in first, you'll believe in the other automatically—I'm not a bit clever, Louis. I never was. Always I get puzzled, always I realize how utterly unlearned I am. Always father called me an idiot and threw things at me for it. But in spite of being a duffer I'm sure I ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... alone. Behind him a dog yelped with pain, and above the noise someone shouted: "Here, you kids, let up on that! Shame on you! Let him alone! Call off your dogs, there! Poor little duffer, let him ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Miss Wales," he began, blushing hotly at his own temerity, "Eleanor is off at a class this hour. I'm such a duffer with girls—is it all right for me to ask you to go ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... a little duffer." (He may have said, "a couple of little duffers .) "Who is it, and what's ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... cordially, and cried on a cheery note, 'Well, father, how are you getting on? No worse than usual, I hope?' Then she added, regarding him with her head slightly aside, 'We must have a talk about your case. I've been going in a little for medicine lately. No doubt your country medico is a duffer. Sit down, sit down, and make yourself comfortable. I don't want to disturb any one. About teatime, isn't it, mother? Tea very weak for me, please, and a slice of lemon with it, if you have such a thing, and just a mouthful of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... asked for me, and when I requested the name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, 'It's old Loggy.'" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... a crazy duffer had gone about over the desert for years digging wells, but at last he struck water. A few miles ahead was a well flowing like an artesian well. There would be plenty of water for every one, even the cattle. Next morning ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... The Confessions of a Duffer A Border Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... there was something in that miserable spiritualism, so we could send them word. That Tennessee village would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's. Well, they had grand times at that reception—a small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it—Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet." ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... than I expected at that, Colgate," he said, restored to good humour. "The old duffer seems to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... tell ghost stories at night," came McKnight's voice from the doorway. "Really, Mrs. Klopton, I'm amazed at you. You old duffer! I've got you to thank for the worst ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the other is a sort of buffy; one zephyr, the other cotton, and the skirt is a sort of mixey pepper and salt with lumps in the weaving—you know how I mean, something like our prawn dresses only lighter and much more refined. The duffer is going to join the tennis-club—he was at the Pooles' dance. I was simply flabbergasted. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... superiority and mental elevation—here was he, turning back with delight to the schoolboy's trick. It filled Jock with a great and compassionate wonder. But he was a very civil boy. He was one who could not bear to hurt a fellow-creature's feelings, even those of an old duffer whose recollections were all of the bygone ages. So he did his best to laugh. And Sir Tom enjoyed his own joke so much that he did not know that it was from the lips only that his young companion's laugh came. He got up and patted Jock on the shoulders with the utmost benevolence when this pastime ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... see, he has a sort of roving commission in mufti, to counteract the ceaseless undermining of the Russian agents in Persia, Afghanistan and in the Pamirs. We always bear the service brand too openly. It gives away our own military agents. Now, Hawke's a fellow like Alikhanoff, that smart Russian duffer! He can do the Persian, Afghan, or Thibetan to perfection! He has been on to London. Some morning he will clear out. You'll hear of him next at Kashgar, or in Bhootan, or perhaps he will work down into China and report to the Minister there. He is a Secret ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... train were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off the gingerbread; And makes me ask myself the reason why On earth I have so many fish to fry? The fact is, what I touch must have a risk Of failure, or it wouldn't suit JIM FISK, I'll conquer ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various |
