"Cannei" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who was a canny little mortal, had slipped across the room and opened the door just before putting her wishes in. This, of course, made a draft, and sent the paper ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... Jarvis, the spectacle man, and that canny Scotchman Sanderson, the florist, who knew the difference between roses a week old and roses a day old, and who had the rare gift of so mixing the two vintages that hardly enough dead stock was left ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... stolen entrance into a house in Thrums by the chimney, with intent to rob; and though this old-fashioned family did not see it, not the least noticeable incident in the scrimmage that followed was the prudence of the canny housewife. When she saw the legs coming down the lum, she rushed to the kail-pot which was on the fire and put on the lid. She confessed that this was not done to prevent the visitor's scalding himself, but ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... moon is a misfortune to the atmosphere is widely supposed. In Scotland it is an agricultural maxim among the canny farmers that— ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... bonnie lassies seen, Baith blithesome, kind, an' canny; But oh! the day has never been I 've seen another Nanny! She 's like the mavis in her sang, Amang the brakens bloomin', Her lips ope to an angel's tongue, But kiss ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sound of these words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and then a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... who will illustrate and prove, perhaps better than any other of those who stood with Washington, the point at which I am aiming. There was none of the glamour of romance about old Ben Franklin. He was shrewd, canny, humorous. The chivalric Southerners disliked his philosophy, and the solemn New-Englanders mistrusted his jokes. He made no extravagant claims for his own motives, and some of his ways were not distinctly ideal. He was full of prudential proverbs, ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... reporter asked Quentin something about me; to which that affable and canny young gentleman responded, "Yes, I see him sometimes; but I know nothing ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... brought, of course, our few men who remained on watch, on deck, and over on the dock after Franz ... who allowed himself to be caught ... the dock was English ground ... the ship was German ... a good point legally, as the canny ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... matter of pay I must go gently, you know, at first. I must ca' canny for a while. I shall be able to make things all right a little later on, you know, but just to begin with I'm afraid I couldn't manage more than three ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... was so eager to get rid of it that I would have wired at once, naming a figure proportionately low had it not been for the united protests of my four friends and the canny advice of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... like a good play: the "verray parfit gentil knight" and his manly son, the modest prioress, model of sweet piety and society manners, the sporting monk and the fat friar, the discreet man of law, the well-fed country squire, the sailor just home from sea, the canny doctor, the lovable parish priest who taught true religion to his flock, but "first he folwed it himselve"; the coarse but good-hearted Wyf of Bath, the thieving miller leading the pilgrims to the music of his bagpipe,—all these ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... years War' His 'Robbers' His 'Fiesco' His 'Ghost-seer' Schlegel, Frederick, his writings Anecdotes of 'School for Scandal' School of Homer, Lord Byron's visit to Scotland, the impressions on Lord Byron's mind by the mountain scenery of Lord Byron 'Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one' 'A canny Scot till ten years' old' Scott, Sir Walter, his dog 'Maida' His 'Rokeby' The 'monarch of Parnassus' His 'Lives of the Novelists' His 'Waverley' His first acquaintance with Byron His 'Antiquary' His review of 'Childe Harold' in the Quarterly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... will observe, was, in effect, a sweeping recantation of every ideal Margaret had ever boasted. But Love is a canny pedagogue, and of late he had instructed Miss Hugonin in a variety ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... storied, ivy-towered, velvet-turfed England lies back of Tennyson, and is vocal through him; just as canny, covenanting, conscience-burdened, craggy, sharp-tongued Scotland lies back of Carlyle; just as thrifty, well-schooled, well-housed, prudent and moral New England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them—so America as a whole, our turbulent ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... of that. It was being hastened by the lessened output of the workers. The ca-canny system ruled everywhere. With good pay for little work there was no incentive to excel, and from "little work" to "no work" was an easy step for many, as under the Humanist rule the ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... and able to survive. The engineer Stephenson once asked Dr. Buckland, "What is the power that drives that train?" pointing to one thundering by. "Well, I suppose it is one of your big engines." "But what drives the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver." "No, sir," said the engineer, "it is sunshine." The doctor was too dull to take it in. Let us see if we can trace such an evident effect to that distant cause. Ages ago the warm sunshine, falling on the scarcely lifted hills of Pennsylvania, caused the reedy vegetation ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... interpreters known as the liaison. As there are well over two million Englishmen in France, a very small percentage of whom have any knowledge of French, the liaison enjoys no sinecure. To assist in the billeting of British battalions in French villages, to conduct negotiations with the canny countryfolk for food and fodder, to mollify angry housewives whose menages have been upset by boisterous Tommies billeted upon them, to translate messages of every description, to interrogate peasants suspected of espionage—these are only a few of the duties which the ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... I walked up alone for a casual look at our new possession. It was still and deserted up there, and as the light faded into dusk, the ancient overgrown place certainly had an air about it that was not quite canny. I decided that I would not remain any longer, and was about to go when I noticed an old, white-haired man standing a few feet away. I had heard no step, and his pale, grave face was not especially reassuring. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her all the good in the world," he answered cheerfully. "The old master, who is a canny man, went down into the cabin and began to talk of the wonderful things which had occurred to his knowledge at sea—how people had been kept alive floating on a spar for a couple of days, and how others had swam a dozen miles or more, or been washed from the deck of one vessel right aboard ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the braw canny Scot"—as the House Surgeon always termed him—and he objected to kisses. So the good-morning greeting was a hearty hand-shake between ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... have been among the indispensables of our old vie de chateau." But I must not forget the reason he gave me some time afterwards for having fixed on that spot for his bowling-green. "In truth," he then said, "I wished to have a smooth walk, and a canny seat for myself within ear-shot of Peter's evening psalm." The coachman was a devout Presbyterian, and many a time have I in after-years accompanied Scott on his evening stroll, when the principal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... before were blind and bare of feathers? They could not have flown; they must have been hurried out of the nest as soon as they could stand. Could it be because I knew their secret? I felt myself a monster, and I tried to make amends by hunting them up and replacing them. But the canny parents, as usual, outwitted me. Not only had they removed their infants, but they had hidden them so securely that I could not find them, and I was sure, from their movements, that they ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... old-fashioned,' mother's old nurse said when she came to pay us a visit once, 'she's scarce canny.' ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... happily into her fourth year in New York, flying home to Sarah Farraday for Christmas, meeting the young year with high hopes and canny plans, a definite part, now, of the confraternity of ink. Her circle widened and widened; important persons came down from their heights of achievement to make much of her, and the late spring ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Miss Horn. "I had it a' ower, my lee lane, afore the skreigh o' day. She's lyin' quaiet noo—verra quaiet—waitin' upo' Watty Witherspail. Whan he fesses hame her bit boxie, we s' hae her laid canny intill 't, an' hae ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... were standing on the step of the Hawk and Heron," said he, "and I waved my hand and shouted 'A canny morning to you, Master ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... experiments in an old beer-cask. Professor Ramsay himself is a tall, rather spare man, just entering the gray stage of life, with the earnest visage of the scholar, the keen, piercing eye of the investigator—yet not without a twinkle that justifies the lineage of the "canny Scot." He is approachable, affable, genial, full of enthusiasm for his work, yet not taking it with such undue seriousness as to rob him of human interest—in a word, the type of a man of science as one would picture him in imagination, and would hope, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... I saw a regular stream of disappointed men with empty pockets offering their monthly licenses for five shillings each within sight of the goldfield, I had misgivings, and I bought a license that had three weeks to run from William Matthews. Ten other men bought licenses, but William Patterson, a canny Scotchman, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while, for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... said, "but it made us afeard, for we expect it that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose. An' a' the time we could no speer a thing. Gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell on us and travelled wi' us, till when after ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... sal, I dauredna, for Davit Lunan was glowering ower my shuther. Ay, you may scowl at me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind Ezra has done me. Mony a time afore I start for the kirk I take my Bible to a quiet place and look Ezra up. In the very pew I says canny to mysel', 'Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job,' the which should be a help, but the moment the minister gi'es out that awfu' book, away goes Ezra like ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a hardy and enduring rider on a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Duke of Hereward, with a perfectly fiendish look of malice distorting her handsome face. "There he sits noo! he wha marrit me and afterwards marrit the heiress o' Lone! he wha betrayed me intil a prison, and wad hae betrayed me to the gallows, gin I had na been to canny for him! There he is noo, and he can na face ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and probably owed its existence to the presence of Cromwell's soldiers. In 1654 it removed to Edinburgh, and in 1660 changed its denomination to Mercurius Publicus. On the last day of this year, too, a journal of native growth budded forth, with the title of Mercurius Caledonius. But the canny Scots either could not or would not spare their bawbees for the encouragement of such ephemeral literature, for Chalmers tells us that only ten numbers of this publication appeared, and they were 'very loyal, very illiterate, and very affected.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Some canny lassies have been known to get the ring into one of their very first spoonfuls, and have kept it for fun in their mouths, tucked snugly beneath the tongue, until the dish was emptied. Such a lass was believed to possess the ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... knew about them only what could be learned from the fields visible from the North Gore road. That Mr Fleming had experience, tireless industry, and some money, three things to insure success in his calling, the canny Scotch farmers were not slow to perceive in the change that gradually came over the once-neglected land. Mr Fleming seemed a grave, silent man, with the traces of some severe trouble showing in his face. And this trouble his wife had shared, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of it, still smiling; but the required ecstasy, that would reconcile her to her hopeless life, did not come. She waited for it with a canny look as she did at home when she held a match to the gas-ring to see if there was another shilling needed in the slot. The light did not come. By every evidence of her sense she was in the completest darkness. But she did not know ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... old Dorset labourer, a tall, slim, aristocratic figure, with an elegant, refined nose to match; he bore the well-known name of an ancient and distinguished Dorset family, and I have no doubt was well descended. He was decidedly a canny, not to say crafty, man. I gave him a holiday at Whitsuntide to visit his old home, but he overran the time agreed upon and returned some days late. Before I could begin the rebuke I proposed to administer, he produced a charming photograph of a ruined abbey ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... up to my tale O' what befell puir Tam MacPhail, A dacent miner chiel in Fife Wha led a maist exemplar' life, An' ne'er abused himsel' wi' liquor, But took it canny-like an' siccar. Aye when he cast his wet pit-breeks, Tam had a gless that warm'd his cheeks; For as it trickled owre his craigie, He held it wardit aff lumbaigy. It wasna that he liked the dram, 'Twas pure needcessity ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... visit Dr. and Mrs. G——, and wound up these exercises of civilized life by a call on dear old Mr. C——, whose nursery and kitchen garden are a real refreshment to my spirits. How completely the national character of the worthy canny old Scot is stamped on the care and thrift visible in his whole property, the judicious successful culture of which has improved and adorned his dwelling in this remote corner of the earth! The comparison, or rather contrast, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... guide, he said something in Erse. The dog set off in a sneaking sort of manner up the hill, and, when he showed any degree of keenness, we hastened to follow, lest he should set up the birds; but the lad advised us 'to be canny, as it was time eneuch when Lud came back to tell.' In a short space Lud made his appearance on a knoll, and sat down, and the shepherd said we might go up now, for Lud had found the birds. The dog waited till we were ready, and trotted on at his master's ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... wounded Boers in the recent fight. This was rather higher than our own estimate—and we were not given to minimise on the wrong side. It was wonderful. Whether the learned doctor exaggerated—but why should he (a Scot) in such a case?—unless indeed the canny one desired to please and make sure of his medicines. Anyhow he got his medicines (including a personal prescription, from his "ain country"), and with ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the evening, explaining the arrangement which he had made to pay a visit to Cuba, including the rather singular proposal of Senor Montijo to which he had consented, as to the apparent ownership of the new yacht; and listened patiently but unconvinced to all Murdock's arguments against what the canny Northumbrian unhesitatingly denounced as an utterly hare-brained scheme. The next two days he devoted to the task of putting all his affairs in order, lest anything serious should happen to him during the progress of his adventure; and on ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Withal he dragged his leg in walking, which he did with difficulty and much carefulness. He "hirpled," as we say, towards me very warily; then, seeing the rope bound about me, and the cloth in my mouth, he drew his dagger, but not to cut my bonds. He was over canny for that, but he slit the string that kept the cursed gag in my mouth, and picked it out with his dagger point; and, oh the blessed taste of that first long draught of air, I cannot set it down in words! "What, in the name of all the saints, make you here, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... hillside, and as the time for it approached the [Page 138] queerest lot of toboggans gradually collected. The greater number were roughly made from old boxes and cask staves, but something of a sensation was caused when the canny Scottish carpenter's mate arrived with a far more pretentious article, though built from the same material. In secret he had devoted himself to making what was really a very passable sledge, and when he and his companion secured themselves to this dark horse, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Barbara, "ye surely wrong poor old Mary Moray; what use could it be to an old woman like her, who has no wrongs to redress, no malice to work out against mankind, and nothing to seek of enjoyment save a canny hour and a quiet grave—what use could the fellowship of fiends and the communion of evil spirits be to her? I know Jenny Primrose puts rowan-tree above the door-head when she sees old Mary coming; I know the good-wife of Kittlenaket wears rowan-berry leaves in the headband of her ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... instructions to the two women travellers, the earnestness of his attempts to inspire them with courage for their enterprise, and the sincere fervour of his many commendations of them to the Divine keeping. The mixture of "canny" counsel and pious invocation has frequently a droll effect: as when the advice to "give the custom-house officers what I told you, and at Calais more, if you have much Scotch snuff;" and "to drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, that is, if you like it," is rounded off by the ejaculation, "So ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Marais," said Sandy Black, with grave approval, "an' if oor charge is only heeded by Groot Willem an' Jerry Goldboy, tak' my word for't thae Fit-canny craters'll flee like chaff before ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dialogue: for there, albeit sins of diffuseness and verbosity are to be noted—and these are modified by the genial humanity they embody—he is one of the great masters. His use of the Scotch dialect adds indefinitely to his attraction and native smack: racy humor, sly wit, canny logic, heartful sympathy—all are conveyed by the folk medium. All subsequent users of the people-speech pay toll to Walter Scott. Small courtesy should be extended to those who complain that these idioms ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... answered the farmer, "ye'll hae heard o' Canny Elshie the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen—A' the warld tells tales about him, but it's but daft nonsense after a'—I dinna believe a word o't frae beginning ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... his memorandum book. Britt was firm in his purpose to make them out as "mad as March hares" if needs be; he slyly patted his typewritten "manifestations" and said that it would be easy sailing, so far as he was concerned. One choice bit of evidence he secured in a most canny manner. He was present when Miss Pelham, at the bank, was "taking" a dictation for the Enemy—some matter pertaining to the output of the mines. Lady Deppingham had just been guilty of a most astounding piece of foolhardiness, and he was discussing it with the Enemy. She had forced ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Monday, therefore,—whatsoever he was to do during the week he always decided on Mondays,—after months of irresolution he finally determined to make a second dash for slavery. But he meant to be canny; this time he would choose a woman who, if she ruled him, would not misrule him; what he could stand was a sovereign, not a despot, and he believed that he had found this exceptionally gifted and exceptionally moderated being: it ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... beside myself. You are so superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and cousins. That, however, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... He was sitting all alone in the moonlight out there at the end of the platform, and every few minutes the poor lonely little beggar'd lift his nose and howl as if his heart was breaking. He never did it afore—always slept in his kennel real quiet and canny from train to train. But he sure had something on his mind ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... only the usual conditions confronting a stranger in a strange land, but had to develop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that was later to become for them a flaming gospel. Andrew Carnegie, the canny Scotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steel magnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist. Jacob Riis, the ambitious Dane, told in The Making of an American the story of his rise to prominence as a social and civic ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... ravishing motion. Faster and faster flew the bounding, sliding feet; the dancers being stimulated by the musicians, and the musicians driven to a passion of excitement by those exhilarating cries, and those snappings of the fingers, through which the canny Scot relieves the rapture of his ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... yawned at the throat, and a narrow, black tie. His general effect was that of a cross between a parson and a shrewd Yankee—a happy suggestion of righteous, plain, serious-mindedness, protected against the wiles of human society—and able to protect others—by a canny intelligence. For a young man he had already a considerable clientage. A certain class of people, notably the hard-headed, God-fearing, felt themselves safe in his hands. His magnetic yet grave manner of conducting business pleased Benham, attracting also both the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... self-expression—but that they might "play their piece" to the casual visitor to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it was the recommended way to Eternal Bliss and a Good Time Hereafter—the whole duty of canny and respectable man being ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the new era they complained that "King George men" took all the time and gave them none, so they frequently quit to go in quest. The nativity of my skilled labor was a piece of national patchwork—a composite of the canny Scotch, the persistent and witty Irish, the conservative but indomitable English, the effervescent French, the phlegmatic German, and the irascible Italian. I found this variety beneficial, for the usual national and race bias was ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak out of her shop without ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the closer criticism. "Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth, but 'takes care,' with the least trouble to himself and the finest short cut—does it, if you'll let me say so, rather on the cheap—by finding 'the likes' of me, as his daughter's trusted friend, ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... from all parts of the world had come together to celebrate the jubilee of the Young Men's Christian Association. About two thousand men had come from the ends of the earth. It was a world-gathering. There were sturdy Englishmen, cosmopolitan Americans, canny Scots, quick-witted Irishmen, sweet-voiced, fervid-spirited ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... eccentrics; even the emotional philanthropists took that direction; Lord Shaftesbury and Carlyle, Fowell Buxton, and Gladstone, threw their sympathies on the side which they should naturally have opposed, and did so for no reason except their eccentricity; but the "canny" Scots ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... in good luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... his sleep; and I was ready to fancy it was something 'no canny.' Why I must have been dropping off to sleep, too, and it startled me into wakefulness. This won't do. Sentries must ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and commercial field in this country the Scots have held a foremost place and stand unrivalled for integrity, energy, fidelity, and enterprise. Many jibes are made at the expense of the Canny Scot, but American business men have realized his value. In business and commercial life the success of the average Scot is remarkable and many of the guiding spirits among America's successful business men are Scots ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... canny lass to coom and filch all old Malcom's secrets to set oop opposition to him. But then sin' ye do it sae openly I'll tell ye all I know. The big wourld ought to be wide enough for a bonnie lassie like yoursel to ha' a chance in it, and though I'm a little mon, I would na be sae mean a one ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Bogey by ill-trained Juniors, is among our elect set yclept Lemonade, partly owing to her habit of fizzing over, and partly to a certain acid quality in her temper, otherwise hard to define. Miss Douglas, our honoured Form mistress, being a canny Scot, goes by the familiar appellation of Thistles, intended also to subtly convey our appreciation—or shall I say depreciation?—of ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... basket or an apple or a flower,—something to make a little girl smile even if her mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... to this—the money, more money than was good for that antiquated "Noah's Ark" at the bank—and whose contemplated sojourn there overnight was public to too many minds—in short, Wood was not only incorruptible, he was canny. To what one of those minds, now, would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro? For this ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... given a slate more to engage his attention than aught else. But he had some notion of drawing, and when the teacher came round she was astonished to find he had set down a fair picture of a bird on a bough. "Ha! who drew this?" she asked. "Mysel'," was the canny Scotch reply. "And who's mysel'?" she queried. "Oh, I'm fine," was the second response, not less Scotch than the first. The English reader, of course, won't fairly understand the word "fine" as spoken there; but every Scotsman will, as also how ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... but of these women sitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's central establishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyond cavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen or superintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, and I should not have ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Mrs. Clemens thinks—but it's not so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my estimation, day by day; and I'm not going to throw it away for any mere trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all countries)—otherwise I'll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we assist our fellowman for mere love of God? Yrs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... often wrought injury amongst cattle. Every animal that died suddenly was killed by the dart of the fairies, or, in the language of the people, was 'shot-a-dead.' Flint arrows and spear-heads went by the name of 'faery dairts....' When an animal died suddenly the canny woman of the district was sent for to search for the 'faery dairt,' and in due course she found one, to the great satisfaction of the owner of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... thinking. He's a young canny ball, and he believes we're going to make a fire and roast ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... and, taken with an idea, he stepped back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color and texture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathers had been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful on this summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settled his white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road, he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went plodding sedately ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul's, he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how he should move some especially fine claret, about which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... voices and merry preparations for the entertainment of friends. Stands of scarlet droopers were set on the porch, the hot-house flowers being placed against the tapestry and the old armor; bowls of drink were brewed and set to cool, and two o'clock found Dame Dickenson in sober black silk, with a canny eye for the refreshments, and myself in black as well, and a state of what might be described as ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... to plan, Blundering like an Irishman, But with canny shrewdness lent By his far-off Scotch ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... made a scattered sprinkling among the dim masses of the hills. A man might have been puzzled as to where all the kilted Highland soldiers whom he had seen at the front came from, if he had not known that the canny Highlanders enlist Lowlanders in ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... were all chopping in the woods when the lad came, so that Mary followed the spontaneous impulse of her own heart; but as soon as we heard what had happened, her father sent over the river for our nearest neighbour, a stout canny Scotchman, to assist us in carrying the wounded man through the woods to his (Mr. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... archbishop to be as orthodox as the frailty of human nature will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the rate of fifteen thousand a year should be able to swallow most things and stick at very little. And there can be no doubt that the canny Scotchman who has climbed or wriggled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared to go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he regards the doctrines of the Church very much as did that irreverent youth mentioned by Sidney ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... far away, From a warm land far away, A southern land across the sea, With sailor-lads about the mast, Merry and canny, and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... The Frenchman now ten or a dozen years. That he came from Marseilles, that he had served on the Confederate side in the Trans-Mississippi, that he possessed an annuity, that he must have been well-born and reared, that he was simple, yet canny, and in his money dealings scrupulously honest—was all I could be sure of. What had he done to be ashamed about or wish to conceal? In what was he a black sheep, for that he had been one seemed certain? Had the beautiful woman, his wife—a tireless church and charity worker, who lived the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... faint, gray-and-white squares the size of baggage-checks, and it was so long that the skirts trailed in the snow. His legs were lost in the accurately creased, voluminous garments that were the tailors' canny reaction from the tight trousers with which the 'Eighties had begun: they were, in color, a palish russet, broadly striped with gray, and, in size, surpassed the milder spirit of fashion so far as they permitted a liberal knee action to take place almost without ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... by Extravagant Demands on Employers.—Unduly high wages mean, of course, unduly high prices. Without here taking account of the "ca'-canny" policy, which aims to make labor inefficient, extravagant wages for efficient labor increase the cost of goods. This opens the way, as we have seen, for the free shop and the labor which is willing ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... disappearance of the ape had impressed Jimmy with the idea that it was what the Scottish peasants call "no canny," and as it was his first interview with one of these curious creatures, there was some excuse for his apparent fear, though I am not certain that ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... said I was off for a burglar they could not have looked worse over it, for in those days among the decent canny country folks it was mostly the black sheep that were herded by the sergeant. But, my word, those same black sheep did their country some rare service too. My mother put up her mittens to her eyes, and my father looked as ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one another, suspicious of underhand dealing and tacit changes of terms, prompt to resent and take offence, and not easy to pacify when they thought advantage had been taken; and Salisbury, either by his own fault, or by yielding to the King's canny shiftiness, gave the business a more haggling and huckstering look than it need have had. Bacon, a subordinate of the Government, but a very important person in the Commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... under the signature F.A.:—"I knew of one case of the kind in Wigtownshire, in the south of Scotland, about the year 1825, as near as I can mind. I knew all parties very well. A farmer had some cattle which died, and there was an old woman living about a mile from the farm who was counted no very canny. She was heard to say that there would be mair o' them wad gang the same way. So one day, soon after, as the old woman was passing the farmhouse, one of the sons took hold of her and got her head under his arm, and cut her across the forehead. By the way, the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... of Tweed How many other associations there are by the tributary rivers! what a breath of "pastoral melancholy"! There is Ettrick, where the cautious lover in the old song of Ettrick banks found "a canny place of meeting." Oakwood Tower, where Michael Scott, the wizard, wove his spells, is a farm building—the haunted magician's room is a granary, Earlstone, where Thomas the Rhymer dwelt, and whence the two white deer recalled him to Elfland and to the arms ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... translator has put the speech of the Spartan characters in Scotch dialect which is related to English about as was the Spartan dialect to the speech of Athens. The Spartans, in their character, anticipated the shrewd, canny, uncouth Scotch ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... them are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me those novels have so much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... began to be a grief to me to see the turgid pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I decided at last—if mystery there were—was too deep, too dark, for him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more from him in the adjoining room in which I slept. There one day I sat reading over the latest list of horrors, when I heard ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... rate seemed tacitly to agree with Brindley. The august name of Wilkins's was in its essence so exclusive that vast numbers of fairly canny provincials had never heard of it. Ask ten well-informed provincials which is the first hotel in London and nine of them would certainly reply, the Grand Babylon. Not that even wealthy provincials from the industrial districts are in the habit of staying ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... amiability has fallen to the reader who can refrain from a malicious smile, when he is informed by reliable history that Lord Loughborough (no mean lawyer or inefficient judge), gave utterance to so much bad law, as Chairman of Quarter Sessions in canny Yorkshire, that when on appeal his decisions were reversed with many polite expressions of sincere regret by the King's Bench, all Westminster Hall laughed in concert at the mistakes of the sagacious Chief of the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... And I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April. And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... he, too canny to deny the obvious. "But what has that to do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken it. But at my age a man doesn't dare take certain kinds of places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm playing for a really big stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you, we'll make as much ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... their coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... investors. Boston controlled and managed the copper industry, and had since the days when copper-mining was a hazardous pursuit, in which only bold and speculative souls dared engage. In the early days the canny Bostonian demanded for the honorable dollar his parent had earned—exchanging five-cent rum for human beings worth $1,000 apiece—at least twenty per cent. interest, and having acquired this habit, it became a principle, and such principles as these are clung to in Boston with ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... founder of the Hundred Year Club, suggests that there is an opening in intensive farming for the benevolent but canny wealthy who are interested in the soil and want to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... tell me that chance made such canny selections," observed Betty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands. Libbie, what ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... unrelieved by a single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a mean over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, and as the hired waiters from the Falcon brought out the viands (all was a delusive ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... appeared to fall from him, he became as a new man. All his comrades were astonished at him, and a Scotch Corporal was heard to remark that it was "na canny—the Captain ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... pleasure, and that he is getting paid for it." Peculiarly memorable is his forthright dictum that the statue which advertises its modesty with a fig-leaf brings its modesty under suspicion. His business motto—unfortunately, a motto that he never followed—has often been attributed, because of its canny shrewdness, to Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The idea was to put all your eggs in one basket—and then—watch that basket! His anti-Puritanical convictions find concrete expression in his assertion that few things are harder ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... "Lor, miss, it's a fine thing to hev' a dumb brute fond o' yer! it sticks to yer and makes no jaw." This question of making no "jaw" is rather a vexed one. Most people's experience would lead them to attend to a canny Dutch proverb, which observes that a "friend's" faults may be noticed but not blamed: since the consequences of blaming them are mostly unpleasant; but a braver proverb says, "A true friend dares sometimes venture to be offensive;" and ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... for Travellers are characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them."[189] Upon duels and resentment of injury in strange lands ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... there was no longer any doubt of the complete success of the Revolution. Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States, with a prompt and canny statesmanship, remarkable in Governments, had formally acknowledged the German Republic, and offered terms of peace possible for an ambitious and self-respecting but beaten people to accept. At all events there would be no commercial boycott, and the young ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... Mrs. Brenton was canny. If she only had been a little bit more worldly, she would have been a clever woman; moreover, her potential cleverness had never been one half so manifest as when she talked about all this to Catie. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... canny for this. Instead she joined together her thumb and forefinger of each hand and held them up to her eyes, making circles like eye-glass rims. Now, in sunny weather, Guy Holmes wore big glasses with shell rims, and as this described him fairly well, it was a stroke of triumph on Dolly's ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... money in existing railways, but he declined to invest his hard cash upon hypotheticals. He was repeatedly solicited to be a director, but always declined. Once he was offered a canny bribe of a thousand pounds to let his name go on a provisional committee. He refused with a characteristic remark: "I never buy any merchandise at a fancy price, not ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the vast convex brows, arched with vision; the bright, shrewd, bluish-grey eyes, the outer fold of one eyelid permanently and humorously drooping; and the wilful, sensuous mouth. These three seemed ever at war among themselves; they spoke three different tongues; they proclaimed a man of dreams, a canny man of business, a man of vehement determination. It was the harmony of these in apparently discordant contrast which made the face so fascinating; the dwellers under this strange mask were three, and the problem was how they ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... battles seems to be somewhat as follows: Of his own volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes a stolid dependable unit of the Army. He is not carried away by success nor unduly ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... boy, that is not what we Scotchmen would call a vera canny thought! You speak foolishly. Why, don't you know that is organized teamwork just as fine as they make it? Those two fellows, Baxter, I think you said, and Craig, are typical 'cadets.' They are the pretty boys who make the acquaintance of the girls, and open the way for temptation, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... As canny as he's cute, for his own ends, He's a wise showman; and doesn't overfeed The living skeleton or let the fat lady starve: And so, we're each kept going, in our own kind, Till we've served our turn. ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... am too canny for that. Besides, don't be too sure they will be praises. No; I have asked the president, in strict confidence, just what he thinks of you, and his answer was properly garrulous. His originality was startling, too. He observed that you have temperament. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... bed. James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... was given to those vivid splashy kimonos with big flowers embroidered on them. They made her hair look blacker and her skin whiter by contrast. Sometimes Eugene or Adele or both would drop in and the four would play bridge. Aunt Sophy played a shrewd and canny game, Adele a rather brilliant one, Julia a wild and disastrous hand, always, and Eugene so badly that only Julia would take him on as a partner. Mrs. Baldwin never ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... fighters':—the cheated, red pawns in your game:— You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder, but the pawns,—wounds, death, and "Fame"! You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword, But, ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your hoard. And, behold! you have other victims: a widow sobs by my side, Who clasps to her breast a girl-child. Men, she was my slain ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... in warmest admiration. "Eh, but the lambie must surely have been right fond of the Shepherd after that. I'm thinkin' he would know his voice better than before, and follow him right close and canny. That's the kind o' shepherd all beasts would like, for they know fine when a body cares for them," Geordie said, with a glowing face, as he looked up at Grace, and the "Third Primer" slipped ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... PLANTS. A couple of cases are reported of worms boring into the stalks of Asters, Dianthus and Carnations. Of course the tops die, and the damage is great. There is no insecticide that can be used against these canny worms which snugly hide themselves in the plant stalks where not a drop of liquor can reach them. The only remedy is to keep a sharp outlook for affected plants, cutting away each worm-infested top and burning it. This kills the ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... Dr. May, smiling. "The boy has missed it marvellously; but, you see, he has everything that subtle imp would wish to feed upon, and it is no harm to give him a lick with the rough side of the tongue, as your canny Scots grandfather used ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends was longing to give him warning. For instance, when that taking villain, Philip Macdonell, after beating him in the race for the French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship (vide ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... down to business. If you saw how useful I am to your brother, you'd thank his lucky stars that I came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man above me toed in. Isn't it curious to think that if he'd worn braces in early youth my ear would ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... losing it all in mining ventures. Only the other day Mack had remarked that if his savings had been allowed to accumulate in some good bank he would now be worth some fifty thousand dollars. As it was, he was as poor as his humblest guest. Even Dr. Mason, canny Scot though he was, could not forget the sight of ninety thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion he had once seen piled up at North Bloomfield, and so was persuaded to gamble with his earnings. He had lost as much ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... Terry to sink too low in these possible clients' estimation, for my canny Scotch mind was working round the fact that they were probably American heiresses, and an heiress of some sort was a necessity for the younger brother of that meanest of bachelor peers, the Marquis of Innisfallen. "He's an amateur chauffeur," I hastened ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wrote to Mr Maule as she had promised. She had no communication with him from the time he left the station until they met on the E. and A. boat. He joined her, as you know, at the next port above Leuraville. It was rather canny of him to go there—yet I don't see how, in the circumstances, he could have loafed round Leuraville without making talk—though I think it was a great pity he didn't. Of course he had his own means of communication with the township, and knew she was on board. No one was more surprised ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Tam, jerking his thumb at the eastern sky. "He's a verra likeable feller—but a wee bit too canny an' a big bit too fast. Captain Blackie, sir-r, can ye no get me a machine that can flee? Ma wee machine is no' unlike a hairse, but A'm ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... Chinatown for the awed delectation of out-of-town spectators. Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of Apaching round, the canny Parisians have provided a line of up-to-date Apache dens within easy walking distance of Montmartre; and thither the guides lead the round-eyed tourist and there introduce him to well-drilled, carefully made-up Apaches and Apachesses engaged ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the matter of drawing up the new agreement. It was a canny Scot indeed who, acting on the hint I had just given him, finally settled its terms. In the first place, the previous agreement was declared null and void. In the second, Mr. Tubbs was to have his fourth only if the treasure were discovered through his direct agency. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... hear of your being fitted with a good servant. Most of the Irish of that class are scapegraces—drink, steal, and lie like the devil. If you could pick up a canny Scot it would be well. Let me know about your mess. To drink hard is none of your habits, but even drinking what is called a certain quantity every day hurts the stomach, and by hereditary descent yours is delicate. I believe the poor Duke of Buccleuch laid the foundation of that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... man, is lumbered with boxes, chests, charts, camp-seats, log lines, and rusty quadrants, and sundry marine relics which only the inveterate coaster could conceive a use for. But the good wife Molly, whose canny face bears the wrinkles of some forty summers, and whose round, short figure is so simply set off with bright plaid frock and apron of gingham check, in taste well adapted to her humble position, is as clean and tidy as ever was picture of mine Vrow Vardenstein. Nevertheless,—we ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of all that is appalling at sea, the danger each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash—brave fellows that they are, these "true British ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... that wise scepticism which should be the handmaid of common-sense; and if such a person in telling a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take everybody at their highest note, is she any the less canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there are always two sides to a shield, why not ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... like 'em, I war'n' ye! They'll not treat her bad, yer may depend. They're varry canny fowk. ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... a canny Scotch engineer, who, in the first days of dynamos, not so very long ago, scoffed at the suggestion that such a spool, spinning in free air, in well lubricated bearings, could bring his big Corliss steam engine to a stop. Yet he saw it done simply by belting this "spool," ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... Charlotte and Emily returned was not a very much more healthy spot than that they left; but it was home. It was windy and cold, and badly drained. Mr. Bronte was ever striving to stir up his parishioners to improve the sanitary conditions of the place; but for many years his efforts were in vain. The canny Yorkshire folk were loth to put their money underground, and it was hard to make them believe that the real cause of the frequent epidemics and fevers in Haworth was such as could be cured by an effective system ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... who had been rather severely cross-examined by the opposing counsel, had his sweet revenge when the sheriff, commenting on the case, inquired: "There seems to be a great deal of dram-dramming at C—— on Tuesdays, I imagine?"—"Aye, whiles," was the canny reply—and immediately following it up, as he pointed across at the rival lawyer, he continued—"an' that nicker ower there can tak' a bit dram wi' the best ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for you to dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse, warning whisper of impatience—loudish ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... tried to silence the qualms. Tried to reassure himself with Cliff's very evident sincerity, his easy assurance that all would be well. Johnny had been canny enough to make the agreement by the week—surely nothing much could go wrong in that little while, and if he didn't like the look of things after a week's try-out, he could quit, and that would be all there would be of it. It was too good a chance to let slip by without ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... significance, but Parson Lamb had described it to me. I had seen other timberlines in my rambles, but none so impressive as this. Here was the forest frontier. How dauntless, how gallant, these pioneers were! How they strove to hold the advantage gained during the brief summer respite! Here a canny stripling grew behind a sheltering bowlder, but whenever it tried to peep above its breastworks, the wind, with its shell-shot of sand and gravel and ice bullets, cut off its protruding limbs as neatly as ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Manifestly to assist in the betrayal of one Giuseppe something—I don't happen to know his other name. From a hint dropped by Carera I have formed the opinion that this Giuseppe must be an industrious, hard- working, and, withal, somewhat canny gentleman of the piratical profession; a man who seems to have made the business pay pretty well, too, for does not our friend on deck estimate that he has accumulated the tidy little sum of close upon twenty-five thousand doubloons? Now, however, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... herself. She knew that several officers at Reynolds, her husband and McCrea among them, had invested their scant savings in that most promising venture. She knew that McCrea had vowed it would make them all rich if not famous one of these days, and that her methodical, cautious "canny Scot" of a husband had figured, pondered, and consulted long before he, too, had become convinced. She knew their holdings had been quoted far above what was paid for them, but what of all that? She had her boys, her husband, her army home, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... informing the traveller in four directions and of frightening many a country lad or lassie of a moonlight night, when it stood gaunt and staring like a gigantic skeleton, as everybody knows the meeting of cross-roads is at no time a canny spot. ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... that he saw in it "a realization of the most ardently and increasingly felt scientific aspiration of his life—an aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... clumsy self-consciousness in that he was for the time being the centre of the rejoicing, while Ans Handerson looked pleased and asked them to have a drink with him. It was the first and last time he treated, until the play changed and his canny soul was roused to unwonted prodigality. But he paid for the liquor from a fairly healthy-looking sack. "Not less 'n eight hundred in it," calculated the lynx-eyed Kink; and on the strength of it he took the first opportunity of a privy conversation with ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... which brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the Royal Navy. So was the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and shoulders, whose springing hits for many a year carried all before them until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack Randall. Shaw, who stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. The brutal Berks died greatly in the breach of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up," urged Shako's host, "whilst I pay the taxi—you can settle with me later." Here spoke the canny ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... 'Robbers' His 'Fiesco' His 'Ghost-seer' Schlegel, Frederick, his writings Anecdotes of 'School for Scandal' School of Homer, Lord Byron's visit to Scotland, the impressions on Lord Byron's mind by the mountain scenery of Lord Byron 'Half a Scot by birth and bred a whole one' 'A canny Scot till ten years' old' Scott, Sir Walter, his dog 'Maida' His 'Rokeby' The 'monarch of Parnassus' His 'Lives of the Novelists' His 'Waverley' His first acquaintance with Byron His 'Antiquary' His review of 'Childe Harold' in the Quarterly His 'Tales of my Landlord' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore |
