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More "Loafer" Quotes from Famous Books



... cursed coach will reach the town And they'll all come out, every loafer grown A lion to handcuff a man that's down. What's that? Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat! I'll give it a head to fit it pat. Thank ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... right straight along, from this time forth, I'll give you the thrashin' now. That ain't all, either, you've got to be man enough to stand by your dad an' say somethin to the fellers, an' explain that you're goin' to stop bein' a town loafer, an' are goin' into ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... of words to show its decadence. Tramp is such a word. Time was when it signified a straight back and muscular calves and an appetite, and at nightfall, maybe, pleasant gossip at the hearth on the affairs of distant villages. There was rhythm in the sound. But now it means a loafer, a shuffler, a wilted rascal. It is patched, dingy, out-at-elbows. Take the word vagabond! It ought to be of innocent repute, for it is built solely from stuff that means to wander, and wandering since the days of Moses has been practiced ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... heard several songs from one side or the other. Then royalty and its guards withdrew, and Queen Victoria's son and daughter-in-law were summoned by acclamation to the vacant throne. Our pride was perhaps a little modified when we were joined on our high places by a certain thriftless loafer of a white; and yet I was glad too, for the man had a smattering of native, and could give me some idea of the subject of the songs. One was patriotic, and dared Tembinok' of Apemama, the terror of the group, to an invasion. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to ascend he rushed to the staircase, and sweating with terror gained the street and bribed a loafer ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... of his duty, inspired a sort of respect in them all. His fits of ill-temper, his obstinate silences, his gloomy air, his brusque manner, were not surprising in such a house as that. Frau Vogel, herself, who regarded every artist as a loafer, dared not reproach him aggressively, as she would have liked to do, with the hours that he spent in star-gazing in the evening, leaning, motionless, out of the attic window overlooking the yard, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... he didn't overhear our conversation about the galleon," suddenly exclaimed Frank, who had been struck by a sudden apprehension that perhaps this was no ordinary loafer or burglar, but some man who had got wind of Bill's discovery and meant to turn his ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... the wide rim of his hat, arranged his scarf, and tightened his belt. The horse's furnishings told him that the stranger was not a low-down prairie loafer. He strode to the veranda steps, and, crossing to the open door, looked ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... has been performed in English by the Carl Rosa Opera Company, is redolent of Mascagni's influence, but the nauseating incidents of the plot make 'Cavalleria,' by comparison, seem chaste and classical. The libretto deals with the vengeance wreaked by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... of the late Mr. Joseph C. Neal's "Charcoal Sketches," he puts into the mouth of a very sad and seedy loafer the expression of a wish that he were a pig, and a statement of the reasons for the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related to the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... wit, to make a monkey shine; The brute exhibited has naught to do But ape the larger apes who come to view— The hoodlum with his horrible grimace, Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace, Significant reminders of the time When hunters, not policemen, made him climb; The lady loafer with her draggling "trail," That free translation of an ancient tail; The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit, Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot; The painted actress throwing down the gage To elder artists of the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... at least be rich, and if rich people can't be happy, who can? If you accepted some poor boy he'd probably turn out to be a drunkard and a loafer, just like Wharton is now." She sighed. "I'd like to see you settled; we could take Peter to a specialist, and maybe he could be cured. The doctor says there is a chance. But it would ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... he'p you do your dooty regardin' them pa'tridges," said Byram, quickly. "Dan McCloud's a loafer an' no good. When he's drunk he raises hell down to the store. Foxville is jest ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of boots while I ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... cracks was that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer with his hands ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... sense something coming, Hugh," he hastened to say. "What you saw gave you a sort of idea, didn't it? You reckon right now that there may be a way to frighten this lazy loafer, so that of his own free will he'll cut stick and clear out. Well, perhaps after all something like that would be the best way to get rid of him. I don't believe the people in this civilized section of country would stand for any night-riding ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... enigmatic malevolence. "There is to be a public rehearsal on Thursday, and there is nothing on earth that can keep me away. The music dealer, Zierfuss, has given me two tickets, and if you want to, why, you can come along and see how they make a local hero out of a plain loafer." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... You haven't earned a dollar in four years. I have it from her, and from others. It is commonly understood that you won't work, you won't do a stroke toward supporting the child. You are a leech, a barnacle, a—a—well, a loafer. If you had a drop of real man's blood in you, you'd get out and earn enough to buy clothes for yourself, at least, and the money for a hair cut or a shoe shine. She has been too good to you, my little man. You can't blame her for getting tired of it. The great wonder is that ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... Miss McQuinch? A worker. I belonged and belong to the class that keeps up the world by its millions of serviceable hands and serviceable brains. All the pride of caste in me settles on that point. I admit no loafer as my equal. The man who is working at the bench is my equal, whether he can do my day's work or not, provided he is doing the best he can. But the man who does not work anyhow, and the class that does not work, is a class below mine. When I annoyed Marian by refusing to wear a tall hat and cuffs, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... didn't wish to sell the lots off right away to any loafer as might bid,' said Scadder; 'but had con-cluded to reserve 'em for Aristocrats ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... therefore I shall outline its history, beginning at a period in its being when stupidity predominates over its evil-that is, when it is the May beetle or June bug, that blunders and bumps around in utter disregard of itself and every one else. In this stage it is like the awkward village loafer, quiet by day, but active and obtrusive in the early evening. It dislikes honest sunshine, but is attracted by artificial light, at which it precipitates itself with the same lack of sense and reason that marks the loafer's ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... clay pipe struck at a sharp angle in his mouth, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged breeches, and his bare feet in the mud of the road, gave the final touch to his representation of an out-of-work, ill-conditioned, and supremely discontented loafer. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... offending the finer senses it might be written, and thereby show something more of the really comic side of Jack when he is on the rampage against constitutional government. There were occasions when the pride of the British tar was not abashed at being called a dockyard loafer, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... drifting instead about the vast room, exchanging a few words with this or that crony, and too often leaving it with them on brief expeditions across the road. He may merely have been a sermon-copyist, busy only towards Sunday. He may have been a loafer pure and simple. I say I don't know; but he was a landmark of the place, idiosyncratic enough to be stamped indelibly on at any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various

... barrel; and he puts a clean frill shirt on every day. A Whig, Sir,' says he, 'is a gentleman every other inch of him, and he puts an onfrilled one on every other day. A Radical, Sir, ain't no gentleman at all, and he only puts one on of a Sunday. But a Chartist, Sir, is a loafer; he never puts one on till the old one won't hold together no longer, and drops ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... called "Fatty" ran up and down the station platform. "Where is that bundle of Omaha papers, you Irish loafer?" he shouted, shaking his fist at Jerry Donlin who stood upon a truck at the front of the train, up- ending trunks into the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... is found in some feebleminded and some high mentalities. This unfortunate discharges energy at a low rate is slow in action and often intermittent as well as hypokinetic. The loafer and the tramp are of this type. Around the water front of the seaports one can find the finest specimens who do odd jobs for as much as will pay for lodging and food and drink. Perhaps the order of the desired rewards should be reversed. Every village furnishes individuals ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... and had found his sweetheart who had been lost. Seppi was a smart and animated boy, and had enthusiasm and expression, and was a contrast to Nikolaus and me. He was full of the last new mystery, now—the disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village loafer. People were beginning to be curious about it, he said. He did not say anxious—curious was the right word, and strong enough. No one had seen Hans ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... been living on an allowance from Grandfather Fuller in Chicago for forty years. None of us has ever done a stroke of work; we've simply been waiting for him to die and divide up his millions. Look at us! Bill and Tom drunkards, Dick a loafer without even the energy to be a drunkard; Ed dead because he was too lazy to keep alive. Alice and I married nice fellows; but as soon as they got into our family they began to loaf and wait. We've been waiting in decent, or I should say, indecent, poverty for forty years, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... of the Mormon Bible, and the gradual development of Smith the Prophet from Smith the village loafer and money-seeker, have left their readers unsatisfied on many points. Many of these obscurities will be removed by a very careful examination of Joseph's occupations and declarations during the years immediately ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... supplemented, as it will be if the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bona fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their management ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... the loafer turned to her and reported: "He says if he took you out, you couldn't git on board. Them big ships ain't got no way for folks in little boats to git on. And he'd ask you thirty lire, anyhow. That's a fierce price. Say, if you'll wait a minute, I can get you a man ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... commenced calculating upon placing me in the Sabbath school at the church where my mother belonged. On the next Sabbath I accompanied her and joined the Sabbath school, she occupying a side seat about middle way up the house. I was not reminded of my color except by an occasional loafer or the Irish, usually the colored man's enemy. I was never permitted to attend a white church before, or ride in any public conveyance without being placed in a car for the especial purpose; and in the street cars we were not permitted to ride at all, ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson

... spent in Denboro, the six everlasting, idle, monotonous years, had had their effect. I had grown hardened and had come to accept my fate, at first rebelliously, then with more of Lute's peculiar kind of philosophy. Circumstances had doomed me to be a good-for-nothing, a gentleman loafer without the usual excuse—money—and, as it was my doom, I forced myself to accept it, if not with pleasure, at least with resignation. And I determined to get whatever pleasure there might be in it. So, when I saw the majority of the human race, each with a purpose in life, struggling to attain ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... esteem of his men. The story had got noised about that while we lay in camp just before Fair Oaks, a loafer about his headquarters addressed insulting language to a woman who was employed in doing certain domestic work and who followed up the army. The general heard the vile talk of the fellow from his tent. He hastily made his appearance, and, in words expressed his disapproval ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... died raving mad, a female cousin had died in an asylum, a great-uncle on the maternal side had been crazy and had committed suicide; another cousin was weak-minded and subject to fits; another, a deaf-mute, had died in an asylum; another great-uncle was a drunkard and a loafer; one sister was an idiot, the other had run away from home, and a brother had been ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... Apaches an' some of th' border riffraff idears 'bout takin' over. But mosta us now ain't wavin' no flag. Iffen Kitchell has got him some diehards backin' him—" Nye shrugged again. "Git 'long there, you knock-kneed, goat-headed wagon-loafer!" He pushed ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... upon the earth, and they have failed to do anything but kill buffalo and breed like rats—often burrowing like rats—refusing to dig and plant the teeming, beneficent earth which had been committed to their charge; and preferring, generally, the life of a vagabond loafer to that of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation. It is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation. Evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil. Destroy the latter and the former would ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... over fallers. He ant have to vork, yu see; But, yu bet, he ant no loafer, And he yust digs in, by yee! "Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me, "Making living ant no trick. And the hardest yob ban easy Ef yu only ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk

... is over while that of reminiscence has begun, realise too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasures than the other — that action, indeed, is only the means to an end of reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart supreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goes straight to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly been spent in those subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and peeled ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... artificer, craftsman, handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, loafer, shirker. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... want you to take me on as a loafer. I'll do my share at the graft and bring in my share of the tucker and ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began accordingly to saunter up and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... loafer, the bum, the man who's too lazy or weak-willed to put out any more effort than is absolutely necessary to stay alive? Well, my goodness, the poor chap can't help it, can he? It isn't his fault, is it? He ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... accordingly stood outside and puffed away like a steamer, at the same time keeping an eye on the driver; when all was ready, he scrambled in, and we drove off. What an example, for a clergyman to stand in a public street and puff a cigar like a loafer or ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... I vos noddings put a poy, hey!" he snorted. "I show you, ain't it! You pig loafer!" And he ran Pold up against a partition and got the iron bar directly under the rascal's throat so that the fellow was in danger ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield

... dallied through breakfast that particular morning he sat about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... thick above Ichang. We'll both have our bloody necks slit a dozen times before we make Ching-Fu." Bobbie turned from the miniature mirror. His sea-blue eyes glared through a white lake of lather. "Hurry up and shave, you loafer! We'll miss ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... quarter of an hour, he found the lady alone and apparently asleep. She had a very handsome umbrella by her side, and therefore he kept within eye-shot of her on this side and on that, lest some park-loafer should seize so good a chance of thieving. He thus passed her two or three times. The last time, he remarked that she had slipped a little to one side, and that her umbrella had fallen to the ground. He went ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... consider'ble many things. Stand watch and watch with me, and scrub brass and clean up around, and sweep and wash dishes and—and—well, make himself gen'rally useful. Them was the duties he was supposed to have. What he done was diff'rent. Pesky loafer! Why?" ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... I can tell the difference between a looker-on, a mere loafer, and a man who does," ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... she wouldn't let him play games to home; she said she didn't care so much about it herself, but thought the neighbors would blame her; and Ned got to goin' away from home for amusement, and is now a low gambler and loafer. I wonder whether she would ruther have kep her boy safe, or made the ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... or so on the side," says he, swellin' his chest out. "And, say, I guess I got it some on the rest of the family. You know how they used me,—like dirt, the old lady callin' me a loafer, and Annie so stuck up on livin' in an elevator apartment she wouldn't have me around. Maggie too! Didn't I hand it to her, though? Notice me frost her, eh? But I said I'd show 'em some day. Guess I've delivered the goods. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... that my servant had summoned me into the drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name. Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real dinner with a white tablecloth ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to him. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers. We're free men. We run our own government, and we run ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... saw him for an instant in the lift. Well, that assistant was a very intelligent man of mine, named Corder—a fellow with a wonderful memory for a face. Now Corder is on another case just now, and we'd put him on, dressed like a loafer, to hang about Whitehall and the neighbourhood, watching for some one we want. Well, this morning there came an urgent message to the Yard from the Admiralty, to ask for a responsible official at once, and I was sent. As ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... on the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... you manager of all my estates. Gad! I'd be glad of an honest one! The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the Island, or that came to port. How old are you—twelve? I'll turn everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... boys just like him down there in La Salle Street." Lapham he loved as a brother. Never a point in the development of his character that he missed or failed to chuckle over. Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of consideration as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham had ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the reputation of being the most charitable city in the world. Its share in the production of an immense loafer class formed one sad aspect of London's charity when I first came to know the city. Another was the opposition of vested interests—the opposition of the individual to the welfare of the mass. One found it everywhere. An instance I call to mind (it happened to be brought ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he makes up his mind that a well-lighted city is the place for him to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... two days that child's gone without eating," he said, with keen self-reproach, "and here you've let her suffer to save yourself a trip to the Island. You're a hulking big loafer, you are," he ran on, muttering, "and after her coming to you and taking notice of you and putting her face to yours like an angel." He slipped off his shoes and picked his way ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... snapped him up so quickly that Marianne was angered again. Of course he knew the height of his own horse and it would be criminal to take the old loafer's money, but ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... you and Julian come," said Lottie, and as they ascended the stairs she studied this new specimen of Scrub Oaks, who was a loafer of the village as De Forrest was an idler of the town. They both belonged to the same genus, though the latter would have resented such a statement as ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... life you big loafer, you, just because you put one over me when I was a starved stage door drab don't think I am that same kind or that sort of thing goes with me now." She spit the words at him as she half yielded to his nonchalant embrace ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer" wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and paid your wages there would be no hope. That forty pounds even, if they were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind words; and then when he had spent ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... when he first accosted me in the courtyard of the Milan. At no time of distinguished appearance, a certain carelessness of dress and gait had brought him now almost on a level with the loafer in the street. His clothes needed brushing, he was unshaved, and he looked altogether very much in need of a bath and a ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... accepted Benjamin's portion; and satisfied his conscience by sharing it with Brutus, the inevitable, who snuggled contentedly under a corner of his poshteen, and thanked his stars he was not as other dogs, a mere loafer round clubs and cantonments. It was bad to be cold and hungry; to plunge shoulder-deep through snow, and slither across hideous slopes of ice; but it was uplifting to share your master's dinner and your master's bed; and there are few things more sustaining than a sense of one's own ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... face, and then come home to find you loafing by the fire as if you were a house cat—purring and rubbing against my legs when I come in," he snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer of milk, eh? You loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread and meat I earn by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish mountain of bones covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along with a stick. I used to get some work out of you then. But you think you're too big for that, now, don't you? You ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... emphatically. "Hermy's ma were a lady, same as Hermy is; so were her pa, I mean a gentleman, of course. But Hermy's father died, an' then her ma, poor soul, goes an' marries a good-lookin' loafer way beneath her, a man as weren't fit to black her shoes, let alone take 'em off! And Arthur's his father's child. Oh, a good enough b'y as b'ys go, but wild, now and then, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... forward, for your assistance is all I want, to make a neat little job of the whole thing. Just snap your fingers over my head, and none will dare oppose me. It is not the career I had planned, you know, uncle, but 'half a loaf is better than a whole loafer,' and that is what I threatened to be, if I remained a student in Montreal any longer. The boys are too jolly there in proportion to their means, and I pride myself I escaped in time. I'd just as soon live on the bounty of the people ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... instantly acknowledge. And, by the way, this reminds me that I wanted to call these "Charcoal Sketches,"—that title being mine long before the late Joseph C. Neal borrowed it of me without leave, and used it for his "Loafer" and a variety of capital sketches, which have been attributed to me, and still are, notwithstanding my denials. I wrote one number only,—the first. It was a Yankee sketch; while his were street sketches, and among the best in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... our selfishness. Let us not judge Charlton by his green flavor. When these discordant acids shall have ripened in the sunshine and the rain, who shall tell how good the fruit may be? We may laugh, however, at Albert, and his school that was to be. I do not doubt that even that visionary street-loafer known to the Athenians as Sokrates, was funny to those who looked at him ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... which prowls forth and achieves, at the lowest, something of a victory. How far-reaching a one only the war's end will reveal. It returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of the long-shore loafer, after issuing a bulletin which though it may enlighten the professional mind does not exhilarate the layman. Meantime the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. A few frigid and perfunctory-seeming contradictions are ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... my way to a point upon the town's eastern edge. Yes, that was the steam yacht's name: the Hermana. I didn't make it out myself, she lay a trifle too far from shore; but I could read from a little fluttering pennant that her owner was not on board; and from the second loafer whom I questioned I learned, besides her name, that she had come from New York here to meet her owner, whose name he did not know and whose arrival was still indefinite. This was not very much to find out; but ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... their individuality of conviction the moment they begin life's business. Many a young man has sacrificed his individuality on the altar that a profligate companion has built for him. Many a young man who knew right, has allowed some empty-headed street-corner loafer to lower his own high moral tone lest he should seem singular in the little world of society surrounding him. And many a lad whose life promised well at the beginning, has gone to the bad, or lost his chance in life, because he never learned ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... tell you something, John, before I go. I don't know just how to make you understand. But I—I'm not the loafer ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... greatness is unconventionality, and restlessness is now becoming conventional. In education, in art, in literature, in politics, in social life, we lose ourselves in denunciations of the dreamer and the loafer. We cannot bear to see a slowly-moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, advancing quietly on its discerned path. Instead of being content to perform faithfully and conscientiously our allotted task, which is the way in which ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... A.," replied Scott, stoutly. "A woman may have hard luck in our country because she's sick or poor or married to a no-account; but not because the general opinion of the female sex is so darned low that any loafer who comes along feels that he's got a right to treat her as ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... What! [Losing control over herself utterly.] You'll spy on me, will you, you shabby loafer! You'll peep at me while I'm eating my supper, and count the dances I choose to give that boy over there, will you! And then you'll break into my house, and insult my friends behind their backs, and insinuate foul things against ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... politic consisted nominally of all who where known as "Roman citizens." These included men of every rank, from the artisan, the agricultural labourer, or even the idle loafer—of whom there was more than plenty—up through every grade of the middle classes to the richest and bluest-blooded aristocrat who considered himself in point of birth more than the equal of the emperor. Any such citizen ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some girl, he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future—and with Vision!—that we want here. How about it? What's your Ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you want to be a loafer, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... to show his face among decent working people. Honor the uniform! Honor that which gives a free license to kill, if the victim happens to be a worker? Honor that which stands for oppression, for the loafer against the worker, for the master against the slave? Honor that which causes a worker to become a traitor to his class, to forget his ties of blood, and for pay to deliver himself over body and soul ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... you save me from ruin and help me to know the best things on earth, just to chuck it all and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... merchandise, and met with the usual reward of punctuality in being forced to waste his time in waiting for the tardy ones. He seemed to the New Salem people to be "loafing"; several of them have given that description of him. He did one day's work acting as clerk of a local election, a lettered loafer being pretty sure of employment on such an occasion. [Footnote: Mrs. Lizzie H. Bell writes of this incident: "My father, Menton Graham, was on that day, as usual, appointed to be a clerk, and Mr. McNamee, who ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... place," answered lady Feng. "There are also two-storied buildings on either side; so we must all go! I'll send servants a few days before to drive all that herd of Taoist priests out, to sweep the upper stories, hang up curtains, and to keep out every single loafer from the interior of the temple; so it will be all right like that. I've already told our Madame Wang that if you people don't go, I mean to go all alone, as I've been again in very low spirits these last few days, and as when theatricals come off at home, it's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... called wicked, but in whom one discovers good qualities when one associates with them. And I am disposed to think that injustice has been done Putois. Madame Cornouiller, who, warned against him, had at once suspected him of being a loafer, a drunkard, and a robber, reflected that since my mother, who was not rich, employed him, it was because he was satisfied with little, and asked herself if she would not do well to have him work instead of her gardener, ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France

... Marquis's more racy stories which I recollect is of a loafer in a country town who had the habit of dropping into the store every day at the time the free cheese was set on the counter, and buying very little in return. When the time came for the privilege to be withdrawn the loafer was outraged and aghast. Addressing the storekeeper ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his "smartness" and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable; sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... whistle, And the goodwife scolds the child; And the girls exclaim convulsively, "Have done, or I'll be riled!" When the loafer sitting next them Attempts a sly caress, And whispers, "Oh, you 'possum, You've fixed my heart, I guess!" With laughter and with weeping, Then shall they tell the tale, How Colt his foeman quartered, And ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... curb-stone. He picked it up with the obvious intention of lighting it at the stove of a wandering vender of hot chestnuts who had just crossed the square. The workingman followed, twisting the paper as he went, when—good luck again—a young butcher almost ran into him, and the loafer, with true presence of mind, at once asked him for a match. At any rate a match passed between them; and, to my infinite relief, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... sleighs got away at 3:00 p. m. Twenty-five more at 7:00 p. m. At 9:30 we got away with the remainder of company. Have a good sleigh and can sleep. Here is Yural and I must awake and telephone to Pinega to see how situation stands. Loafer in telegraph office informs us of the battle today resulting in defeat of White Guards, the volunteers of Pinega who were supporting the hundred Americans. Bad news. It is desperately cold. No more sleeping. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... men out of town to work with me on it. But they get lonely. Don't like working on a ranch. Besides, they had a scrap with me. I wouldn't have 'em loafing around the job. Rather have no help at all than have a loafer helping me. So they quit. Then I tried to get my cowhands to give me a lift, but they wouldn't touch a hammer. Specialists in cows is what they say they are, ding bust 'em! So here I am trying to do something and doing ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... making all due allowance for his arithmetic, he must have run these worthies a close second. He had not been a specially good "hand" before the war, and was generally on unfriendly terms with the overseers. They used to say that he was a "slick-tongued loafer," and "the laziest nigger on the place." But Jabe declared, in defiance, that he had been on the plantation before any overseer ever put his foot there, and he would outstay the last one of them all, which, indeed, proved to be true. The overseers disappeared with the end of Slavery, but Jabe ...
— Old Jabe's Marital Experiments - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... he encountered Leonard's huntsman, an impertinent, bony, jowly loafer whom he had never been able to endure. The ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... transit through London passed his comprehension.... And the encounter with Arkroyd comforted him to no degree whatever. He had never liked Arkroyd, holding him, for all his wealth, little better than a theatre-loafer of the Broadway type; and now he remembered hearing, once or twice, that the man's attentions to Alison Landis had ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... considered the large head, wedged between the shoulders as if a giant's hand had pressed it down, the masterful nose, the keen grey eyes, and the cynical lips; and in that moment determined to make him Ada's husband. Yet he was the last man she would have chosen for a son-in-law. A loafer and a vagabond, he spoke of marriage with a grin. Half his time was spent under the veranda at the corner with the Push. He worked at his trade by fits and starts, earning enough to keep ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... are here,' she said, 'the great majority of men at all open-air meetings seem to be loafers. Woman—whatever else she may or may not be—isn't a loafer!' Through Borrodaile's laugh she persisted. 'A woman always seems to have something to do, even if it's of the silliest description. Yes, and if she's a decent person at all, she's not hanging about at street ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... the mind.* It does this not only by wasting the body, the physical basis of the mind, but it does it through habits of intellectual idleness, which the user of tobacco naturally forms. Whoever heard of a first-class loafer who did not e-a-t the weed or burn it, or both? On the rail train recently we were compelled to ride for an hour in the smoking-car, which Dr. Talmage has called "the nastiest place in Christendom." In front of ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... course not," agreed Reggie. "He was only some loafer, I expect, who had a sore head. Best ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick

... reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of loafer. His cabin was recognized as a center of disorder and was generally ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... conclusively. "And the Millers are the best family hereabouts, leaving the kunnel's out. And Jeff's well off—nobody knows how well, I reckon, but I can guess, being his land neighbour. Jeff ain't no fool nor loafer, if ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Pat, "is Pat Mack, the loafer we were talkin' about the other night. He placed the signals in grass. You wouldn't think to look at him, that he was very bright, except his hair, but he is quite ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung to his ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... a few days ago, alluding to the unemployed loafer, said, "it is he who flocks" to Relief Committees, and so forth. How delightful to be able to flock all by yourself! It recalls the bould Irish soldier who "took six Frenchmen prisoners by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various

... the same experience yourself many times. It all goes to show that if we are awake four times as long as usual, we do not make up for it by sleeping four times as long, but four times as soundly, as customary. The hard-working mechanic requires no more hours of sleep than the corner loafer, the active man of affairs no ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... loop of leather handle Peeping underneath the sofa! Is tuition worth the candle When the conscience turns a loafer? 'Tis the rich and backward Boarder Proves indeed the Tutor's bane, Sir, When the turf's in ripping order And the weather ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... Tim. "Go on, spit it out. What sort of character would you have given me then?" "I'd have called you," said Sir William boldly, "a disreputable drunken loafer who never did an honest day's work in his life." Which had the merit of truth, and, he ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... the only young loafer in the town. There was always a group of half-grown boys hanging about Josiah Pringle's harness shop, or the sheds ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... attractive means of filling up their time and keeping themselves amused without either bodily or mental effort. The boy who smokes habitually will find it much easier to waste his time in day-dreams and gossip, and tends to become a loafer and ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... given his orders to make due haste for Lyons, and to drive a unicorn team of three horses instead of a regulation four, whereupon he had muttered a string of oaths which would have caused a Paris wine-shop loafer to blush. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... to excess; for I still laboured under the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and worse. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... his features bloated and covered with ulcers; his attire miserable and ragged in the extreme; and sundry sudden twitchings of his limbs, as well as frequent violent scratchings of the same, indicated that he was overrun with vermin. This man, whose indolence had made him a common loafer, had become a petty thief; he would lurk around backyards and steal any article he could lay his hands to—an axe, a shovel, or a garment ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... clothes were at a discount. He was looked upon as a tender-foot who knew nothing about the gold regions. But a flannel-shirted, roughly-dressed miner was the lion. He could tell something about the gold regions. The governor appointed a loafer fellow, in the early days, Port Warden. Nobody wanted it, and he was indorsed by one firm. As the city grew very rapidly the office soon became valuable. Somebody told the governor what kind of a man he had appointed Port Warden, and the governor wrote him a letter requesting ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower

... my waistband than by desire for walking for mere walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and surprises: "The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my head off? This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is anybody waiting round there to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... apparent lack of human understanding, the negro loafer to be found around some of our Southern towns and depots may be quoted as a signal and quite amusing example. The hat, as Mr. Sala humorously puts it, resembles an inverted coal scuttle or bucket without handles, and pierced by many holes. It is something like the bonnet of a ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... be permitted at least until the noon hour to sell more needle cases, and his jocker, pleased to see the the lad so anxious to support an able-bodied hobo loafer in idleness, consented and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... afraid of the men, and also of that old second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years—a grey- headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil knows how long—seventeen years or more—a dogmatic sort of loafer who hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No chief mate ever made more than one voyage in the Sephora, you know. Those two old chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the skipper wasn't afraid ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... and Julian come," said Lottie, and as they ascended the stairs she studied this new specimen of Scrub Oaks, who was a loafer of the village as De Forrest was an idler of the town. They both belonged to the same genus, though the latter would have resented such a statement ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... You see, that's the proper place for them. They belong to a Loafer class. They are no better mentally or morally than any of the other loafers in that division; neither are they of any more use. Of course, when we consider them in relation to the amount they consume of the things produced by others, they are not so harmful as the other loafers, because ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... Richard breaks his father's heart. Instead of following the trail already made, he cuts loose, frequents vulgar resorts, hates his school work, becomes a loafer and a bum—and, finally, a second-rate day laborer. Again, what he is himself, his "vital spark" has been stronger than immediate heredity and ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame waited on ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... quite sure I can tell the difference between a looker-on, a mere loafer, and a man who does," ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... at will in S. Mark's as long as one wishes, free and unharassed; but a ticket is required for the galleries and a ticket for the choir and treasury; and the Baptistery and Zeno chapel can be entered only by grace of a loafer with a key who expects something in return for opening it. The history of this loafer's privilege I have not obtained, and it would be interesting to learn by what authority he is there, for he has no uniform and he accepts any sum you ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... If you want to know how Drink really acts on the inner life of this nation you must actually live among the forlorn folk who drink Circe's draught, and you must live as their equal, their friend, their confidant. I am a Loafer, and not one of the gang at The Chequers would ever dream of regarding me as anything but an equal. My friend Donkey Perkins, the fighting man, curses me with perfect affability and I am on easy terms with about one hundred costermongers. If a "gentleman" went among them he could learn nothing. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... that listens to the voices of the dead In the City as the sun sinks low; And his hand begins to tremble and his face to smoulder red As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled, For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led Through the land where the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... thump of relief. In the first place, Mrs. Williams's lodger must be a respectable person, and no dangerous loafer or pickpocket; in the second place the refined cultured tones of the stranger pleased her ear. Phillis had a craze on this point. "You may be deceived in a face, but in a voice, never!" she would say; and, as she told Nan afterwards, the moment that voice greeted her in ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... nor was it justified until the train paused some time after midnight at Mogul Serai. There, before Amber and Doggott could alight to change for Benares, their compartment was invaded by an unmistakable loafer, very drunk. Tall and burly; with red-rimmed eyes in a pasty pockmarked face, dirty and rusty with a week-old growth of beard; clothed with sublime contempt for the mode and exalted beyond reason with liquor—a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... and all sort of leaves and vegetables growing out of his cap. But Jim was long and thin and bent at the waist from stooping over pool-tables, and he was what might have been known in the indiscriminating North as a corner loafer. "Jelly-bean" is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have idled, I ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... selfishness. Let us not judge Charlton by his green flavor. When these discordant acids shall have ripened in the sunshine and the rain, who shall tell how good the fruit may be? We may laugh, however, at Albert, and his school that was to be. I do not doubt that even that visionary street-loafer known to the Athenians as Sokrates, was funny to those who looked at him from a great ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bona fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... the idea as folly. In truth, there was no reason to suppose that the man I had seen in Herald Square was connected with the two others, or that any of the three had followed us. No doubt the third man was but a street-loafer of the familiar type, attracted by ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... you loafer!" shrieked Mrs. Lange. And she turned to Susan. "You gutter hussy, get on your ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... genius for "aggravating" the enthusiastically earnest, and with a passion for representing himself as a scoundrel. On my first experience of him on the platform at South Place Institute he described himself as a "loafer," and I gave an angry snarl at him in the Reformer, for a loafer was my detestation, and behold! I found that he was very poor, because he was a writer with principles and preferred starving his body to starving ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... was that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer with ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or other, and on his last day clamoured "for a parson," because his conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. "Wanted somebody to tell him it was all right," growled my old ruffian, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... you?" she cried. "It's simply disgraceful. Brawling in public like any saloon loafer, and getting in jail and all. Haven't you any ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... devils that are called wicked, but in whom one discovers good qualities when one associates with them. And I am disposed to think that injustice has been done Putois. Madame Cornouiller, who, warned against him, had at once suspected him of being a loafer, a drunkard, and a robber, reflected that since my mother, who was not rich, employed him, it was because he was satisfied with little, and asked herself if she would not do well to have him work instead of her gardener, who had a better reputation, ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France

... five years ago. It's in me pay book, sir, an' I'd like yer to keep it jest to remind yer of me." Then, his voice getting weaker every moment, "I ain't been such a bad servant to yer, 'as I, sir?" he whispered, his eyes looking appealingly into mine. And when "Nobby" Clarke, onetime loafer and pickpocket, passed away, I am not ashamed to own that there was a queer sort of lump in ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... that they did it; and the lavender silks wore a peculiarly cynical smile. Loafers sat up and followed the stage with eager eyes far as they could see it and said, "By Gawd—whose gurl is that?" Oh, Mr. Bat Brydges intended every bar room buffer and loafer in the State should know, 'whose girl' that was before night. Everything was fair in love and war; and Bat considered he had run down a case of both. According to his lights, he had; but his lights were smutty and in need ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... Pellams, with his face flushed and his hair dishevelled, in one of his hands little Lupe, hanging to an empty pail and between laughter and tears; the other hand tight on the collar of as dirty, as unkempt, and as drunken an old loafer as ever hung over a Mayfield bar. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... through breakfast that particular morning he sat about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... rotunda or the smoking-room and talk to any loafer who thinks it worth while to listen to your cryptic remarks," he said. "As we sail as soon as it's daylight to-morrow, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... degrees of angles. But what impressed us most—we almost laughed to see her—was the lubber of the fleet. She was twice the tonnage of most of us, and early in the run across she had brought anguish to our souls by the way she lagged. "You bum, you loafer, you old cart-horse, why don't you move up?" our soldiers used to yell across at her. She had not then enough men in her steam department to keep her engines warm, so she reported. But now she had steam enough. She was wide and high, a huge hulk of ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... foreman over fallers. He ant have to vork, yu see; But, yu bet, he ant no loafer, And he yust digs in, by yee! "Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me, "Making living ant no trick. And the hardest yob ban easy Ef yu ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk

... thereafter from hour to hour, to protest, though wrapped in her mother's shawl, that she was cold, and to enquire why they did not go to bed. Drunken men snored and sprawled near at hand. Towards morning, a loafer, reeking of alcohol, sat down beside her, and indulged in an incoherent soliloquy, punctuated with oaths and obscenities. It was not till far along towards ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... time ago, Mr. Deighton," here Blount turned his face away, and then added dreamily, "a long time, a very long time ago, and met some fairly decent people. And I no more believe that Mr. de Vere comes from a good family than I do that Nathaniel Burrowes, a low, broken-down New Orleans wharf-loafer, comes from one of the 'first families in Virginia' that American newspapers are always blathering about" "What is wrong with him, Mr. Blount?" "Nothing from your point of view—everything from mine. And, so far as ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke

... like a steamer, at the same time keeping an eye on the driver; when all was ready, he scrambled in, and we drove off. What an example, for a clergyman to stand in a public street and puff a cigar like a loafer or a blackguard! ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... one! The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the Island, or that came to port. How old are you—twelve? I'll turn everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll be a man, and I'll be only too glad to put the whole ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... spirit which denotes the hero. Who was it that caught up the colors, and rushed forward with them into the thick of the battle, after the fifth man who attempted it had been shot down? Not that village loafer, who used to go about the streets dressed so shabbily? Yes, the same. He fell, covered with wounds and glory. The rusty, and seemingly useless instrument we saw hang so long idle on the walls of society, none dreamed to be a trumpet of sonorous note until the Soul came and blew a blast. And ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... and when their temporary chum-ship ends the one cannot entirely cut the other, such being a course quite inadmissible with colonial views of life. Only one man may be scouted by any one, and that is the loafer. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... any, and lays round drinkin', and foolin' his money away on the 'double O,' and sittin' in tuh stud games with permiskus strangers, and gettin' ready tuh be a hobo—all I kin say is, he'd better brace up and try tuh deserve one. A feller that ain't got a wife is a no-account loafer and bum, and he ought tuh git kicked! This man had one, but he went and left her. Even then he done better ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his peculiar qualities is "The Ghost's Visit on the Feldberg,"—a story told by a loafer of Basle to a group of beer-drinkers in the tavern at Todtnau, a little village at the foot of the mountain. This is, perhaps, the most popular of Hebel's poems, and we therefore translate it entire. The superstition that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the careless life. For to tell you the truth, I'm not worth much, Henry. I'm a loafer ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my gun and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... She was successful for a time, in spite of her husband's growing intemperance and an increasing desire in herself for ease and good living; but deterioration had begun, and with the reappearance of Lantier, her old lover, it became rapid. Coupeau was by this time a confirmed loafer and drunkard, while Gervaise was growing careless and ease-loving. Lantier, having become a lodger with the Coupeaus, ceased doing any work, and as he never paid anything for his board, his presence ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man of him and he's gone out and got ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... insects, especially Coleoptera. Bummer,(Amer.) - A fellow haunting low taverns; applied during the late civil war in the United States to hangers-on of the army. Probably a corruption of the German bummler(loafer). Bumming - From Bummer. Bushwhackers - Guerillas. Bust his shell - Broke his head. Butterbrod,(Ger.) - Buttered bread. By-Nearly; Beinahe ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... on its own account—by manhandling the referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... my son," murmured Father Dominic. "What means this unaccustomed dress? One would think you dwelt in the City of Mexico. You are unshaven—you resemble a loafer in cantinas. That sombrero is, perhaps, fit for a bandit like Pancho Villa, but, my son, you are an American gentleman. Your beloved grandfather and your equally beloved father never assumed the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... performing no labor, wrings from the toiler, in the shape of rents, so much of the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation. It is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation. Evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil. Destroy the latter and the former would ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... a vast mirth in her captor. "Sim! Sim!" he mocked her. "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he? As though I cared for that dirty loafer. He's going to git all that's comin' to him. Aw, Sim! He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone. We're thinkers. We're free men. We run our own government, and we run our own ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... 'Clown! loafer! puff-ball! Leave my house instantly, and never enter it again until you have apologized to Mrs. Crawford and her grandson for the insult offered them by your vile accusations. If it were not for soiling ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn it ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who spent all one night getting a profane parrot into the cold-air pipes of the college chapel? Maybe you think you are, but I don't believe it. If I were to tip this table over on you now you'd get mad and go home instead of handing me a volume of ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... the blind, generally fall into the ditch. Three irate women would then make their appearance on the scene, and they would each be led home, declaring they were never more sober in their lives. Fox found that Cox was known by his friends as Josh. Cox, and he was what might be called a lazy loafer, as were also his friends, Horton and Barclay. Fox did not try to get any information from Cox, but got all he possibly could from his friends, Horton and Barclay, who proved easy talkers and kept nothing back. He now concluded it was a good time to find out about ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... stated by a provincial governor that, to his knowledge, at one time, there were 80 of this class in his province. [243] The number of undesirables was so great that it became necessary for the Insular Government to pass a Vagrant Act, under which the loafer could be arrested and disposed of. The Act declares vagrancy to be a misdemeanour, and provides penalties therefor; but it has always been interpreted in a generous spirit of pity for the delinquent, to whom the option of a free passage home or imprisonment ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... That all the world might understand and know How that our Volunteers henceforth must live A quite unkhaki'd and civilian life, Stripped of their rifles, bared of bayonets too. Ah, many a time had we passed by to drill And scorned the loafer who hung round to see, The while, with accurate swift-moving feet And hands that flashed in unison, we heard The Sergeant-Major's voice in anger raised Because we did not mark it as he wished; Or uttering words of praise for them that knew To act when rear rank got itself ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... I used to run a livery stable in Bucharest, Roumania. The guy who stole the diamonds is that fat little loafer Olaf Yensen, the first coachman. I am the second coachman. He must be the guilty one because last week he tried to swipe my best pair of boots ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... sidelights of a carriage came round the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up one of the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out which was increased by the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... vant ein loafer who could vight vor his coundry, and vould haf no man who vas yoost ein merchant. Very goot. I mineself now command the privateer Swift, vich vas used to be sailing in gompany mit La Brave und La Mouche in der service of der French ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke

... 'You street-walker, you loafer... there! that's one for you! There's one for my fifteen acres, and for all the wrong you have done me, you ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... Indians; suppose they never got across all that great stretch of country; suppose Esau and I were lost in the woods, to starve to death, or drowned in the river, and so on, and so on; till toward morning sleep would come, and I began dreaming about that long-haired dark Yankee loafer, who had got hold of me, and was banging my head against the ground, and trying to kill me, till I opened my eyes the next morning and found ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... the ocean Own no dear domestic cave, Yet he slumbers without motion On the still and halcyon wave; If on rainy days the loafer Gamble when he cannot roam, The police will help him so far As to ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... jus' naturally gave th' Apaches an' some of th' border riffraff idears 'bout takin' over. But mosta us now ain't wavin' no flag. Iffen Kitchell has got him some diehards backin' him—" Nye shrugged again. "Git 'long there, you knock-kneed, goat-headed wagon-loafer!" He pushed on to ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... first he had heard a caller say to Clytie of Miss Alvira, "Why, they do say the poor thing has to go down those back stairs and actually split her own kindlings—with that healthy loafer setting around in the good clothes she buys him, in the back room of that drug-store from morning till night. And what's worse, he's ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making estimates of the price to be paid for work, make mistakes, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... you expect I'll stand off the next time that I see you trying to frighten your wife into supporting a lazy loafer ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... [Losing control over herself utterly.] You'll spy on me, will you, you shabby loafer! You'll peep at me while I'm eating my supper, and count the dances I choose to give that boy over there, will you! And then you'll break into my house, and insult my friends behind their backs, and insinuate foul things against my poor old mother— you damned coward!— and against me, [pointing ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... haven't earned a dollar in four years. I have it from her, and from others. It is commonly understood that you won't work, you won't do a stroke toward supporting the child. You are a leech, a barnacle, a—a—well, a loafer. If you had a drop of real man's blood in you, you'd get out and earn enough to buy clothes for yourself, at least, and the money for a hair cut or a shoe shine. She has been too good to you, my little man. You can't ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... save your money, you're a grouch; if you spend it, you're a loafer; if you get it, you're a grafter, and if you don't get it, ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... boy is a loafer!" answered Tad bravely, taking a couple of paces forward and facing the crowd. "You wouldn't dare do that to a man, especially if he had a gun as you have. Why didn't you try it on Luke Lame ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... now by the river thinking poetry. This country's just thick with reposeful Britishers nobody at home has any use for, and their kind friends ship off onto us. In a way I'm sorry. He lit out hungry, and he didn't look like a loafer." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... was broke again. He stated that unpleasant fact to his companions, Posmo and Shorty,—the latter a town loafer he had picked up in Antelope. Shorty had nothing to say. Panhandle's drunken aggressive cowed him. But Posmo, who had really found the market for the stolen stock, felt that he had been cheated. Panhandle ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... themselves told. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirk honest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as you recognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, I am a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything but loaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The only difference between me and my rivals past and present is that I have the decency to be ashamed of myself. So that if you are not too bemused and ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... Pound the Professor sat down and the table reeled under his fist. "Pound—he is at the bottom of it all. He has said that I am a good-for-nothing loafer and the county should be rid of me. Maybe he is right. But he won't have his way. I have done nothing and I will not go—do you hear that, Davy, I will not go. Now tell me ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... heart of the great silver and gold bearing regions of Arizona, and it was exceedingly difficult to prevent the boys from loading themselves with specimens of the many ores offered for sale, by every loafer, greaser, and Indian, that ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... You'd at least be rich, and if rich people can't be happy, who can? If you accepted some poor boy he'd probably turn out to be a drunkard and a loafer, just like Wharton is now." She sighed. "I'd like to see you settled; we could take Peter to a specialist, and maybe he could be cured. The doctor says there is a chance. But it would take a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... before, but about a month previous to the arrival of the Galatea in Sydney, news had come down the country of the discovery of a new auriferous region, the richness and extent of which was said to be something past belief. The result of this rumour was that every idle loafer who arrived in an Australian port made it his first business to desert from his ship and start hot-foot for the gold-fields. If the matter had ended here the shipmasters would have had cause to congratulate themselves rather than the reverse, but unfortunately ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... Representatives'); humbug; inaugurate (for 'begin'); in our midst; item (for 'particle, extract, or paragraph'); is being done, and all passives of this form; jeopardize; jubilant (for 'rejoicing'); juvenile (for 'boy'); lady (for 'wife'); last (for 'latest'); lengthy (for 'long'); leniency (for 'lenity'); loafer; loan or loaned (for 'lend' or 'lent'); located; majority (relating to places or circumstances, for 'most'); Mrs. President, Mrs. Governor, Mrs. General, and all similar titles; mutual (for 'common'); official (for 'officer'); ovation; on yesterday; over his signature; ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... A larger allowance of grub We need than is due if we shirk Exertion, and lounge in a pub; For the loafer who rests in a chair Everlastingly puffing at "cigs" Can live pretty nearly on air, So I gather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various

... therefrom without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed."[437] Nothing would be changed for the Socialist agitator, the loafer, and the tramp. On the contrary, they would profit from the ruin of the industrious and the thrifty. The fact that honest and hardworking men who do their duty to their family and who wish to leave their children provided for ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... much wish to leave it for anyone else," Jim said drily. "Neither you nor Tommy strikes this district as a loafer. Just stop talking bosh, old man, and think what Tommy's going to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... could work out a philosophy from experience that would apply to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer; that's where fate flew up and struck at me—a deserved blow. But when I saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... hard-working citizen keep his earnings, but steals upon him in the night and robs him into poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before him, that he may be worthy of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... livin'." The Canadian's eyes twinkled. "You don' savvy, eh—? Wal, dat's biccause you're lak dese oder feller— you're in beeg hurry to be reech. Me—?" He shrugged his brawny shoulders and smiled cheerily. "I got plenty tam. I'm loafer. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... here to tell ye all about it," answered Sam. "Move the cha'rs back a little and give me room. Ye all know I've been rough, and more too. I've been a drinker, a fighter, a gambler, and a loafer. I can't look back and remember when I've earned an honest dollar. The police hez chased me around like a wolf, and I've been in jail and the work-house, and the papers has said that Ugly Sam was the terror of the Potomac. Ye all know this, boys, but ye didn't ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... other roughs and rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any one else who did. It was the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Mr. Cullen when he first accosted me in the courtyard of the Milan. At no time of distinguished appearance, a certain carelessness of dress and gait had brought him now almost on a level with the loafer in the street. His clothes needed brushing, he was unshaved, and he looked altogether very much in need of a bath ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a bath, and change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... might know that he was a lover riding far and hard at the behest of his lady. His thoughts skipped before him like dancing children. The life he was leading was not the noblest; he had no illusions on that score; but he was no longer a loafer waiting in luxurious ease for the curtain to fall upon a dull first act in a tedious drama, but a man of action, quite capable of holding his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... noddings put a poy, hey!" he snorted. "I show you, ain't it! You pig loafer!" And he ran Pold up against a partition and got the iron bar directly under the rascal's throat so that the fellow was in ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield

... in me the makings of a very fine loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of making such an offer to an English loafer, and no English loafer would have had the wit to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in hot weather ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... 'Where's that bailer, you loafer?' but first I'll whang him back. I had to finish the bailing out with my sou'wester. I sings out to Andie Howe in the boat here to hand me one of the bailers in the boat. 'I'm usin' my hat,' I hollers, 'and Joe's using his sou'wester,' ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... A TIPSY loafer mistook a globe lamp with letters on it, for the queen of night: "I'm blessed," said he, "if somebody haint stuck an advertisement ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... the station gates, who had witnessed his hurried entry into the cab, lounged in front as it was passing out. The driver swore and slammed on his brakes but the loafer took his own time and chances. The speed of the taxi fell almost to a walking pace. The loafer caught the nearside canopy stay with his right hand and slung his knee on to the projecting end of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... right John Convert may be earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, entirely ignorant of the fact that he is a millionaire by birth, for it was his father's intention never to disclose this secret to him, preferring that he should spend his time as a useful laborer, rather than a moneyed loafer, living without work. Whether he resembles me at this age or not, I cannot say. Perhaps not, for my hair has become prematurely white from sin and worry. Then again, he may wear a beard, while my face is clean shaven. But no matter ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... seem surprised at this request, and he gave over the money to the young loafer, with the words, "When I promise, I pay down on the nail; but remember Toto Chupin, you'll come to grief one day. Good-night. Our ways ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... voiced, and it became a trifle nobler when he considered that it meant industry, energy, and honesty. To do something and do it well. To be proud of doing something well. To be proud that one wasn't a loafer or a drone, or a parasite on the body economic. He was striving to correlate all this when made aware that the taxi had stopped and that they were at their destination. He actually submitted to an overcharge of a half-dollar inflicted by the hatchet-faced brigand ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... great jock, Little Woman;" the father went on, musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. "Men think if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure to be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me—a boy of that sort wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the instincts of a gentleman, naturally, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... about him he presented the strange appearance of a tramp whose face and hands were spotless, and who carried himself even till towards the end with a sort of easy grace as though he were indeed only masquerading. But there came a time when the luck of the loafer went against him. From morning to night he tramped the streets, willing to work even till his back was broken, but unable to earn a copper. The gnawings of hunger roused something of the wild beast in him. A fiercer light burned in his eyes, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... him," said the other, sharply. "He was not above blackmail; not above ruining the life of a friend to do himself a benefit. A loafer, a cur, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... hauled through them, "bumped into paths of peace," as Dickens says. Just as justice requires to be tempered by mercy, so energy requires to be tempered by inaction. But the difficulty is for the indolent, the dreamy, the fastidious, the loafer, the vagabond. Energy is to a large extent a question of climate and temperament. What of the dwellers in a rich and fertile country, where a very little work will produce the means of livelihood, and where the temperature does not require elaborate houses, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... youth, with a budding moustache, entered and slouched over to a chair. He was young Isaacstein, son of the Tarrong storekeeper, a would-be sportsman, would-be gambler, would-be lady-killer, would-be everything, who only succeeded in making himself a cheap bar-room loafer; but he was quite satisfied that he was ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... leather handle Peeping underneath the sofa! Is tuition worth the candle When the conscience turns a loafer? 'Tis the rich and backward Boarder Proves indeed the Tutor's bane, Sir, When the turf's in ripping order And the weather like ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... that little beggar," he observed to Mr Fosset, who had been forward to set the look-out men on the forecastle and had returned to the bridge. "I think if you told him he was the laziest loafer that ever ate lobscouse, he couldn't ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... overhear our conversation about the galleon," suddenly exclaimed Frank, who had been struck by a sudden apprehension that perhaps this was no ordinary loafer or burglar, but some man who had got wind of Bill's discovery and meant to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... nothing," returned Malcolm smiling. "Mr. Carlyon is certainly no loafer—he looks the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... "There are also two-storied buildings on either side; so we must all go! I'll send servants a few days before to drive all that herd of Taoist priests out, to sweep the upper stories, hang up curtains, and to keep out every single loafer from the interior of the temple; so it will be all right like that. I've already told our Madame Wang that if you people don't go, I mean to go all alone, as I've been again in very low spirits these last few days, and as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... arithmetic, he must have run these worthies a close second. He had not been a specially good "hand" before the war, and was generally on unfriendly terms with the overseers. They used to say that he was a "slick-tongued loafer," and "the laziest nigger on the place." But Jabe declared, in defiance, that he had been on the plantation before any overseer ever put his foot there, and he would outstay the last one of them all, which, indeed, proved to be true. The overseers disappeared ...
— Old Jabe's Marital Experiments - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... and go back to a lot of useless rot about the number of wives the kings of Judah used to have, or how some two-faced Hebrew woman laid traps for some wine-soaked Philistine brute, and stuck the rotten loafer in the back with a kitchen knife all for the pleasure and glory of a righteous God! I don't want any more of it, Belle; I won't go! You've told me often enough that my instincts are better than my judgment, and my instincts ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... would have taken him for what he was; few who passed him by would have guessed what his earlier years had been. The old gray check suit, frayed at the edges, close buttoned and shabby, was just such a suit as any loafer out of Union Street might have worn. His hollow cheeks betrayed his poverty. He walked with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders slightly bent, his eyes roving from face to face as he numbered the wayfarers and speculated upon their fortunes and their future. Two ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... you a few line to find out about the Work and if I could get you to Send me and Wife and Son a transportation I am not a loafer and can send references that I ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... of that in this town, mother," Fred replied with a brave attempt at cheerfulness. "I should be worse than a loafer to remain idle while you were working, and by keeping my eyes open that crowd can't ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... well-thumbed newspapers lay, utilized for the game. The players were so interested in making moves and getting kings that, at first, they did not notice the talk of the card players which was directed against them; for Matt, being called away to his bar, was replaced by a third loafer. Gradually there came to their ears the words, "conceited, offish, up-settin', pedlars, tramps, pious scum," with condemnatory and other adjectives prefixed, and then they knew that their characters and occupations were ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... whilst the short clay pipe struck at a sharp angle in his mouth, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged breeches, and his bare feet in the mud of the road, gave the final touch to his representation of an out-of-work, ill-conditioned, and supremely discontented loafer. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... When a loafer of this sort finds that he can get nothing more out of you, he moves his family and goods to some other part of the country; he then begins the old game with somebody else, borrowing a sovereign off you for the expense of moving. As for gratitude, he never thinks ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... my supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and a bit of a pub-loafer, but ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... winter's day, a loafer applied for a pair of shoes. He had on an old, shambling pair, out at both toes. The old Wine-Prince was sitting with a pair of slippers on, and had his own shoes warming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... door was well open, she heard Chandler's voice. "Don't be scared this time, Mrs. Bunting!" But though not exactly scared, she did give a gasp of surprise. For there stood Joe, made up to represent a public-house loafer; and he looked the part to perfection, with his hair combed down raggedly over his forehead, his seedy-looking, ill-fitting, dirty clothes, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... acquaintance. To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes. To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing for the school and apparently had none of the instincts which should be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... uniform, erect, eager, well-set-up and vivid with health, every man of them busy, and every man seemingly absorbed in his job—that alone was a worth-while experience. It was a new kind of city—a city without a loafer, without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their ill-fitting civilian clothes and their miscellaneous bundles ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... want a young man who has got brains, but is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don't stop there. We're up against it here, Dalyrimple. We've got to get some young men into politics—you know the old blood that's been running on the party ticket ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Suburban Railway once promised to make use of my invention. Then Mr. Kendrick went away—and this man took charge. When I came around to the offices again—he laughed at me. When I came the second time, he called me a loafer and ordered me out." ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on the stone steps as you went up—by Jove! There ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... wagon, reins in hand and pipe in mouth, or with shouldered rifle on the track of a deer, you would say that such a life was eminently agreeable to him. Every man is made for something; and you would say that he was cut out for a wandering frontier loafer, who gets his subsistence by doing the least possible work in the easiest possible manner, and hunting and fishing. A horse and wagon, or extemporized log cabin, for a shelter; tools enough for the simplest tilling of the soil, and furniture for the rudest housekeeping and clothing; the making ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... to be able to watch over his life; and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... intention of lighting it at the stove of a wandering vender of hot chestnuts who had just crossed the square. The workingman followed, twisting the paper as he went, when—good luck again—a young butcher almost ran into him, and the loafer, with true presence of mind, at once asked him for a match. At any rate a match passed between them; and, to my infinite relief, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... Twenty-five more at 7:00 p. m. At 9:30 we got away with the remainder of company. Have a good sleigh and can sleep. Here is Yural and I must awake and telephone to Pinega to see how situation stands. Loafer in telegraph office informs us of the battle today resulting in defeat of White Guards, the volunteers of Pinega who were supporting the hundred Americans. Bad news. It is desperately cold. No more sleeping. The river road is bleak. We arrive at last—3:00 a. m. In the frosty ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... was, as a parish, a Congregational lamb without blemish. No wonder then that David was a thorn in the side to the authorities of the church, nor was he less despised by the common people. There was not a drunken loafer in town who did not pride himself upon the fact that, though he might be a drunkard, he was at least no Baptist, but belonged to the "Standing Order." Meshech Little, himself, who believed and practiced the doctrine of total immersion in rum, had no charity ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy









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