"Tenderfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought I'd lost you for good and all," laughed David as he brought up at the hunter's side. "You mustn't expect too much of a tenderfoot, you know. I'm ashamed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... The Elk Mountain Cattle Co. had not paid a dividend in years; so Edgar Barrett, fresh from the navy, was sent West to see what was wrong at the ranch. The tale of this tenderfoot outwitting the buckaroos at their own play will sweep you into the action of this ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... The tenderfoot manager of a mine in a lonesome gulch of the Black Hills has a hard time of it, but "wins out" in more ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... cake, when the necessity of a change appealed to me. I was out of everything more nourishing than hope and one slab of pay-streaked bacon, when two tenderfeet 'mushed' up the gulch, and invited themselves into my cabin to watch me pan. It's the simplest thing known to science to salt a tenderfoot, so I didn't have no trouble in selling out for three ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... "Tenderfoot, when I'm around after this you shut your mouth and keep it shut! You needn't take the trouble to call me Peter again, either. My name is Bad Pete, and I am bad. I'm poison! ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... a sour-dough prospector wouldn't have bothered about a tent. Looks as if one of them was a tenderfoot. Qu'en pense-tu?" ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Pugilism Absent Minded A Calm Accepting the Laramie Postoffice A Circular A Collection of Keys A Convention A Father's Advice to his Son A Father's Letter A Goat in a Frame A Great Spiritualist A Great Upheaval A Journalistic Tenderfoot A Letter of Regrets All About Menials All About Oratory Along Lake Superior A Lumber Camp A Mountain Snowstorm Anatomy Anecdotes of Justice Anecdotes of the Stage A New Autograph Album A New Play An Operatic Entertainment Answering an Invitation Answers to Correspondents A Peaceable ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... signalling danger, and when alarm causes them to dive they make a great noise, out of all proportion to their size. Thus the greenhorn from the city is apt to take the muskrat's nightly plunges for the sound of deer leaping into water; and just in the same way does the sleepless tenderfoot mistake the thudding footfalls of the midnight rabbit for those of moose or caribou running ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... there is," Trapper Jim replied. "You see, it drags on the ground and leaves such a plain trail that any tenderfoot could ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... themselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bony ranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, of course, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls of blankets. We don't go out of our way to be uncomfortable; that is the tenderfoot's pet weakness. The "kitchen-box" and the "grub-box" sit shoulder to shoulder in the back of the wagon. The stovepipe, tied with rope in sections, keeps up a lively clatter in concert with the jiggling of the tinware and the thumps and bumps of the camp-stove, which has swallowed its own feet, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... want to talk about those times," he added, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm for the wilderness as it is, and I'm glad that you three boys and myself can see that country up there before it has changed too much. Not that it is any country for a tenderfoot now. You'll find it wild enough and rough enough. It has gone back since the Klondike rush. In travel you'll see the old ways of the Hudson's Bay Company, even although the independents have cut into their trade a little bit. You'll see the Far North ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... scout, knew just how to go about starting a fire. True, the recent rain had wet pretty much all of the wood, so that a tenderfoot would have had a difficult task getting the blaze started, though after that trouble had been surmounted it would not be so bad. But Jud knew just how to split open a log, and find the dry heart that would take fire easily; and in a brief time ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... and gander slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too valuable. Our crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of the government at once; but with the treasury empty we'd stay in power about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco. We must play the fox on every foot of the coast to prevent their getting ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... persons who ordinarily would be classed as honest. Still, they appeared to listen to Tooly's tales of prowess in the looting of emigrant trains as if they regarded such proceedings as acts of exceptional valor; exhibiting as much interest in the recital as did the "tenderfoot" emigrants—who held a ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... sight for a tenderfoot—brim full of colour and types. Half in shadow half in light, as if several theatrical companies were on tour in their costumes—a company, say of The Merchant of Venice, another of The Cingalee, and a Variety Show or two. There were sellers of green bananas ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... chickens off a front lawn. "If I was to tell you some of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am. Seein' some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say: 'Steve Brown's corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle with shin tangle and ancient history!' Things that would seem amazin' to you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks that helped ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the day Glen was too busy to mope. When the camp fire came he was at hand as a candidate for tenderfoot initiation which the scout master had agreed to give. Mr. Newton had ideas of his own about initiation ceremonies. He believed in making them interesting and impressive to candidate and scouts alike, and he devised a new ceremony of initiation for ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... selling that rifle, which had lately shown a tendency to jam if he worked the lever too fast; and was trying to decide just what make and calibre of rifle he would buy with the money now in his pocket; and he was grinning in his sleeve at the ease with which he had "stung" this young tenderfoot, who was unsuspectingly going up against a proposition which Hank, with all his love for the wild, would never attempt of his ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... all day. It wasn't nearly so dull as I expected though," she ended with a little laugh. As they talked she had been skilfully bandaging the swollen ankle in her best style, which was a style not to be despised by anybody. "Now," she said, as she tucked in the end and fastened it firmly with her Tenderfoot brooch, "now you will be more comfortable. But you must keep quite still. I do wish you were not so far from home; you should not ride. If you do anything foolish now you may be lame all your life; that's what the doctor told me; he was most frightfully ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... substance, foreign element; alien, stranger, intruder, interloper, foreigner, novus homo[Lat], newcomer, immigrant, emigrant; creole, Africander[obs3]; outsider; Dago*, wop, mick, polak, greaser, slant, Easterner [U.S.], Dutchman, tenderfoot. Adj. extraneous, foreign, alien, ulterior; tramontane, ultramontane. excluded &c. 55; inadmissible; exceptional. Adv. in foreign parts, in foreign lands; abroad, beyond seas; over ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... some decades ago—if we will review them as they are pictured in poem and novel and play—we may receive, as it were out of the tail of the eye, an impression of some aspects of these western plantings of the seventeenth century. The dare-devil, the bully, the tenderfoot, the gambler, the gentleman-desperado had their counterparts in Virginia. So had the cool, indomitable sheriff and his dependable posse, the friends generally of law and order. Dale may be viewed as the picturesque ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... undemonstrative being, this man of the West, and you take a long time to find out whether he likes you or not. If you are a "tenderfoot" you can't do better than hold your tongue about the wonders of Europe and its cities, about your own various exploits here and there. You will learn a lot by not talking, and if you don't mind soiling your hands a little, and keeping an eye lifted ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... tenderfoot pilgrimage to the Alaskan goldfield in '97-8 and the same crowd six months later will understand what had happened to these men. The puny had put on muscle; the city dweller had blown his lungs; the fat man had lost some ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... JUMPERS A tale of a Western mining camp and the making of a man, with which a charming young lady has much to do. The tenderfoot has a hard time of it, but meets the situation, shows the stuff he is made of, ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Bud missed!" he shouted, in glee. "Bud, you're an old tenderfoot. Couldn't hit a skull as big as the head of a barrel a ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile. Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs—ends overlapping and plumes bent—but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress. Such softness, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... asked Dick, for he and his brother, though far removed from the tenderfoot class, were not wise ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... Little, I'll never say another word 'bout city folks being skeery. You ain't so bad for a tenderfoot. How'd you know enough to face them that way instead of running? If you'd run they'd trampled you all into mince meat! Steers ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... unlike that on its fellow, where many have jollity moderated by business cares, others reserved in lofty consciousness that they are on foreign pleasure bent. With the gold seeker, especially the "tenderfoot," there is an incessant social hilarity, a communion of feeling, an ardent anticipation that cannot be dormant, continually bubbling over. We had on board upward of seven hundred, comprising a variety of tongues and nations. The bustle and turmoil ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... soon find out if this tenderfoot came here to murder me. I'll tell him he's to be shot, see, and Quail will put on the priest's robes, say that he's a priest and hear his confession. If he's got anything up his sleeve, he'll come out with it, and then I'll shoot him. Otherwise I'll ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... a few nails or—I'll tell you; kill that bear and save that tenderfoot's life." Tom pointed to a Winchester calendar on the rear wall, which bore the lithographic likeness of an enraged grizzly upon the point of helping himself to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... but he does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You can't do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... and unworthy ground. I have seen an Indian sink his hamaca posts into sand with one swift, concentrated motion, mathematical in its precision and surety, so that he might enter at once into a peaceful night of tranquil and unbroken slumber, while I, a tenderfoot then, must needs beat my stakes down into the ground with tremendous energy, only to come to earth with a resounding thwack the moment I ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Kit Carson's dangerous scouts in enemy country this turned out to be the most ticklish. For young Lieutenant Beale, the tenderfoot, it was hair-raising. Captain Pico had known that the celebrated Kit Carson was with the Americans upon the hill, and feared him. He had placed three lines of mounted patrols around the base of the hill, and instructed them to keep riding so ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... me you're not a tenderfoot," she rallied, in a softly vibrant, contralto voice. "I heard shots, so came a-running. Your attacker must have vamosed, else you'd have collected lead ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... I took a good look, as this sport suggests, and I'm a pop-eyed tenderfoot if I didn't recognize the guy right off. I couldn't jest place him at first, but in a few seconds I remembered where I'd seen ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... in the West when we want a little fun make a tenderfoot dance while we fire our revolvers at ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... undisguised interest, being unable to determine whether they were cow-boys or miners, these being the two classes into which, as he imagined, the western population was about evenly divided. That they immediately classified him, in their western vernacular, as a "tenderfoot," and a remarkably verdant specimen at that, was not owing to their superior penetration, as it was a ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... and west loomed the black line of the Bad Lands. To a tenderfoot they would not have appeared to be more than a mile distant. Midway in the prairie between there toiled a human figure. Even at that distance Philip and Billinger could see that it was moving, though with a slowness that puzzled them. For several minutes they stood breathing ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... be hit themselves even if discovered, and it was certain death for Jim and the engineer for they would not be more than thirty feet from the two desperadoes. Even a tenderfoot would not miss at that distance and these men were not in that class. Neither Jim nor Bob Ketchel were standing so that they could catch a glimpse of the two men who were crawling along the top of the blind baggage. At that instant, Bill Sheehan made ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.) "But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and which end of a gun ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book. "Eight cents," he said to the Indian. Whereupon the Indians laughed scornfully and chorused, "Forty cents!" A pained expression came into his face, and he looked about him anxiously. The sympathetic light in Frona's eyes caught him, and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... speedily turned upon the exciting experiences through which all three boys had passed that day. Zeke declared gruffly that there wasn't one of them fit to be in the canyon. "I'm tellin' you," he said, "this is no place for a kid or a tenderfoot. It's a man's job to work one's way up this gulch, let me tell you, and we ought not to have ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... ultimately hold up bridges and wharves. The crew was a cosmopolitan lot so far as nationality went. In addition they were a tougher lot than Thompson had ever encountered. He never quite fitted in. They knew him for something of a tenderfoot, and they had not the least respect for his size—until he took on and soundly whipped two of them in turn before the bunkhouse door, with the rest of the thirty, the boss and the cook for spectators. Thompson did not come off scathless, but he did come off ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... people might call him that, though he knows a heap about horses. But seems to me, Peg, 'twasn't so very long ago that you yourself dropped in on us here. Since when did you climb up out of the tenderfoot class, ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... yer if I did," said the former finally, after apparently turning the matter over slowly in his mind. "Yer don't know nuthin' 'bout this country. 'Tain't no place a tenderfoot like you kin find yer way back frum; so, as fer as I see, thar ain't nuthin' fer yer to do but just naturally wait till ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the Manual, will be enough to launch the organization. The selection of a patrol leader will then follow, and the scouting can begin. It is well not to attempt too much at the start. Get the boys to start work to pass the requirements for the tenderfoot. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Tenderfoot," he growled. "You'll maybe find Sourdough's reach a longer one than you reckon ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... there are bad Indians biding in the canyon. I've never met a man who had been over the pass between here and Kayenta. The trip's been made, so there must be a trail. But it's a dangerous trip for any man, let alone a tenderfoot. You're ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... him, now and then straightening up the animal's ears, chiding him as she might a child. This made the cowboys laugh. Cowboys when subduing broncos do not ordinarily do so with anything resembling baby talk, and it was their firm conviction that this pretty young tenderfoot from the east was about to get the surprise of her life. Instead of feeling sorry for her, however, the souls of the cowboys were filled with joy at the prospect of some real fun. It was not often that they were privileged to see an innocent easterner make an exhibition of himself on a vicious western ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... his dogs!" thought the tenderfoot; and he turned (with his more delicate sentiments) to caress Jan's head. But Jan abruptly lowered his head to avoid the touch; though, obedient now to Jean, the proved master, he remained where he had been ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... to such an isolation as Desert Valley a boon from the gods in the guise of a tenderfoot. But never tenderfoot, agreed the oldest Mexican with the youngest Texan, like this one. They sat lined in back-tilted chairs about the four walls and studied him with eyes that were at all times appreciative, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... me up fer no tenderfoot. When yeh tackles me yeh tackles one of deh bes' men in deh city. See? I'm a scrapper, I am. Ain't ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... Threw a search light on my heart and soul. Gee! It felt like the violet rays. Now, look here, friend, I ain't going to take chances on a turn-down, nor of your Mr. Bob Flick having fun all night shooting holes in the floor while this little Johnny Tenderfoot does his imitation Black Pearl dancing. Listen," he tapped the bar sharply, "when I meet the Black Pearl, it's because she requested an introduction. You take me up to that ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... man was of the kind on which Jim Duff fattened his purse. Clarence Farnsworth, about twenty-five years of age, was as verdant a "tenderfoot" as had lately graced ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... a true son of the west, and while Nort and Dick had, some time ago, passed out of the tenderfoot class, still Mr. Merkel felt that his son and his nephews needed the aid and guidance of cattlemen older than themselves. So the "outfit," as the aggregation at a ranch is called, ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... road was completed and the stage coaches began to travel over it his house was turned into a stage station and you can guess that Uncle Dick Wooten had many a stage story to relate to the "tenderfoot" who chose his house to order a meal or sleep ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... that one stage. Thus the heroic may run from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, and the activities of this phase should be graded to meet the development of the phase. This is well illustrated by the Tenderfoot Second Class Scout and First Class Scout degrees of the Boy Scouts ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... The tenderfoot in the Western town asked for coffee and rolls at the lunch counter. He was served by the waitress, and there was no ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the individual who has come so many miles to join him. The greeting is not of the exuberant character expected, and frequently the heart of the newcomer is broken by being told to go back to his mammy and spend a few years more in the nursery. A runaway tenderfoot just fresh from school is not wanted on the cattle ranch, and although Western farmers are too good-natured to resent very severely the liberty taken, they never flatter the newcomer by holding out any inducements or making any ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... reminders. In the longest of the thirsty stretches there were clean-picked skeletons, and they were not always the relics of the patient pack-animals. In which event Chandler, chief of the Red Butte Western construction, proclaimed himself Eastern-bred and a tenderfoot by compelling the grade contractors to stop ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... THROUGH THE BIG TIMBER; or, The Search for the Lost Tenderfoot. A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... the lawyer opened the door for the ladies to leave, a handsome young man of about eighteen came down the road. It was evident, in every way, that he was a "tenderfoot" newly arrived. Probably just came in on ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tenderfoot, or greener or chechako, or counter-jumper, owin' to what part of the country you misfit into. We thought you wouldn't have no guts, ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... they'd have a little fun with you—see if they could scare you, maybe, because you're what they call a 'tenderfoot,' Teddy." ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... horse and led him over to the great tree that caused the trail to turn aside and run around it. He looped the reins over his arm and placed his hands in his coat pockets. As he leaned against the tree-trunk nibbling nonchalantly at a sprig of grass, a tenderfoot would never have dreamed that his fingers were tensely held against the triggers of the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... mountains in the lumbering Concord coach. There was the constant fear of meeting the wily red man, who persistently hankered after the white man's hair. Then there was the playfulness of the sometimes drunken driver, who loved to upset his tenderfoot travellers in some arroya, long after the moon had sunk below ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the squat man. "Didn't I tell yeh? Give him a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. He'll get ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... What was the use of your remarking that the first backing of a colt is nothing—that, in this case, it is the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready to contest the question of fitness ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... tenderfoot, but he can ride a horse as if he was sewed to the skin, and I've an idea that he can do other things up to the same standard. If you can find two or three men who have silent tongues and strong hands, you'd better take them along. I'll pay their wages, and big ones. You can name ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... helpfulness; their willingness to let themselves be quizzed, hour after hour, and to answer, in some cases, a very drumfire of importunate letters; above all for their resistance, to what must at times have been an almost overpowering temptation, to "string the tenderfoot." They took my inquisition with grave seriousness and gave me what they had ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... impression of the wilderness was that of a far-stretching desert, forgotten and desolate and unpeopled as the fiery stars. Likewise this was Lounsbury's view, as in the case of every tenderfoot who had preceded him, but Lounsbury would likely grow old and perish without discovering his mistake. Clear eyes are needed to read the secrets of the wild: the dark glass through which he gazed at the world had never cleared. Vosper ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... or buy that clothesline from Reddy when we go away from here, and hang it up in our clubroom, as the most valuable asset we have. Without it what would become of us, eh? Talk about your trained nurses! That fellow is a whole hospital to the tenderfoot crowd. Call to him, please, and enlist his sympathy in the noble cause of yanking us in out ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... result of the work of the Committee on Scout Oath, Scout Law, Tenderfoot, Second-class and First-class Requirements; the Committee on Badges, Awards, and Equipment; the Committee on Permanent Organization and Field Supervision, and John L. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... new light in his eye, and Harley, startled, did not know Mr. Heathcote. As he advanced to the edge of the stage the shouts of derision overcame those of expectation. Harley heard the words "Dude!" "Tenderfoot!" mingled with the cries, but the Honorable Herbert gave no sign that he heard. He reached the edge of the stage, waved his hand, and then ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... want a tenderfoot along when I've work to do. No offense, Max; but they are too often a hindrance. Now that you have come, though, I'll confess I'm glad of it. The lonely trips over this wild region tend to make a man silent—a bear among people when he does reach a camp. But ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of a tenderfoot then, Hadn't jist got the lay of the land; Thar wuz a good many things in them thar parts As I couldn't quite understand. But I took a likin' to Yosemite Jim, Wuz with him on my very first trick; ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... say that I ever butt in when a patrol is breaking in a tenderfoot. That's one thing I wouldn't do. I wouldn't even have bothered to tell you about it at all, except that it had momentous consequences—that's ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... mail and Abe needed the money. He was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... even as matters stand, I'm figurin' as Broken Feather 'll notion ter have revenge on you fer puttin' the lasso on him. He'll try ter git level with you somehow, Kiddie, sure's a steel trap. You've made him your enemy—a dangerous enemy—an' he ain't no tenderfoot in villainy. He's cunnin' as a coyote, he's unscrup'lous, an' he's clever. Real ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... meet him at the wooden shack which represents the railway station at Waybackville, registering great glee at the prospect of hazing a tenderfoot. We know full well that he will eventually win their respect and high regard—probably by foiling a dastardly plot on the part of a Mexican half-breed—and we are therefore in no anxiety of mind when they raise the dust around his feet with their six-shooters, toss him in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... light I do not mean any lighter than the necessity demands. If there is transport at hand, a man is foolish not to avail himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things as easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of season he plays ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... leading citizens, on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. It may end in the saving of a life, or in some great heroic deed for one's country. But these things are only bigger expressions of the same feeling that makes the smallest Tenderfoot try to do at least one good turn ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... to go there. I don't belong there any more than you do here. Better drift back to Tucson, stranger. The parada is no place for a tenderfoot. You're in luck you're not shy one li'l' girl tromped to death. Take a fool's advice and hit the trail for town pronto before you bump ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... of his fur was drawn well forward over the face. He wore blue glasses, as a protection against snow-blindness apparently. Jessie smiled, judging him a tenderfoot; for except in March and April there is small danger of the sun glare which destroys sight. Yet he hardly looked like a newcomer to the North. For one thing he used the web shoes as an expert does. Before he stopped beside her, she ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... reigned within her borders. Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of Lonny Briscoe's ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... says, 'All right, jump on. You 're welcome to a ride on my train whenever you want it.' So I walked over from Whitewater, and I 'm ready to go to work to-night if the boss says so. He won't find me no tenderfoot, you hear me." ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... following him. With hand on the butt of his gun, suspicious and watchful, yet with scarcely a faster beat to his heart, Keith straightened up, and began splashing his way through the mud down the street. He knew where Willoughby would be most likely found at this hour—with cronies at the "Tenderfoot"—and he meant to discover the boy, and make him confess to Hope the truth. Matters had now reached a point where longer ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... were having some sport at my expense while I was away, for I had overheard two of them in a conversation that morning make some remarks about Col. Elliott's tenderfoot scout. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... greeted the dawn with heartfelt thanksgiving, and yet I'm as keen about my vacation idea as ever. I have simply learned what to do and what not to do, and it won't matter to me in the least whether my ways are those of a tenderfoot or not. Why not be comfortable physically as well as spiritually? Think of the independence of it! To be able to sit at the feet of any view that you fancy till you are ready to move on! Doesn't that amount to "free will"? Yes, I am resolved to try it out and Billie says ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... presented each of his little party with an excellent revolver, quoting the remark which a cowboy once made to a tenderfoot: ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... them by drinking liquid flame— The assassinating wassail that has given him his name; Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was the State ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... mountain goose (Figs. 1 and 2) is not a bird but a tree. It is humorously called a goose by the woodsmen because they all make their beds of its "feathers." It is the sapin of the French-Canadians, the cho-kho-tung of the New York Indians, the balsam of the tenderfoot, the Christmas-tree of the little folk, and that particular Coniferae known by the dry-as-dust botanist as Abies. There is nothing in nature which has a wilder, more sylvan and charming perfume than the balsam, and the scout who has not slept in the woods on a balsam bed has a pleasure in ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... in late because of some boggin' down he does over at a quicksand ford in the foothills, a shorthorn who arrives with him as a passenger comes edgin' into the Red Light. Bein' it's four o'clock in the mornin', the tenderfoot seems amazed at sech activities as faro-bank, an' high-ball, said devices bein' in full career; to say nothin' of the Dance Hall, which 'Temple of Mirth,' as Hamilton who is proprietor tharof names it, is whoopin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and dishes, whistling cheerfully the while. She closed the door, and busied herself with an inventory of the tenderfoot lady's trunk. In it she found everything needful for complete change, and a variety of garments to boot. Folded in the bottom of the trunk was a gray cloth skirt and a short blue silk kimono. There was a coat and skirt, too, of brown corduroy. But the feminine ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his "training," recurred to him. He understood, now, exactly what she had meant—it had not been plain to him before. Here before him was "the man of the East," at whom he had so often scoffed, for the word "Tenderfoot" had, until now, been synonymous with contempt. But Morton felt himself to be the tenderfoot, in the present case. He replied, stiffly, to the invitation to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... come to the far Southwest as a tenderfoot; but, being quick to learn, he hoped to graduate from that class after a while. Having always been fond of outdoor sports in his Kentucky home, he was, at least, no greenhorn. When he came to the new country where his father was interested ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... the State o' Maine, In mild Skowhegan town, I pastured as a tenderfoot An' the clerk ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... Indians as much as possible, for, tenderfoot as he was at first, he knew well that they would harass him in every possible way, in order to drive him from a region which was their elysium. He found it an easy matter, after he became acquainted with their habits, to keep out of their sight. In a short time, also, he was under a sort of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... dog-sled, they travelled with great speed, and seemed to enjoy the fun. But they drew the line at the saddle, and no Texas bronco could more easily rid himself of a tenderfoot than these lively animals with their enormous forequarters could send their would- be riders ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... "reminds me of a poker game I once seen in Reno, Nevada. It wa'n't what you-all would call a square game. They-all was tin-horns that sat in. But they was a tenderfoot—short-horns they-all are called out there. He stands behind the dealer and sees that same dealer give hisself four aces offen the bottom of the deck. The tenderfoot is sure shocked. He slides around to the player facin' the dealer across ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no more, and I'm going to see her, come ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... fighter in the country. His name was William Jackson, so he was called Bill. I had met Jackson often, and we had taken kindly to each other. I admired his frank manner and sturdy physique, and he looked upon me as a good-natured tenderfoot, who might be companionable, and who would certainly stir up things in the neighborhood. I went in search of him that afternoon to discuss the line fence, a full mile of which divided ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... features Casey managed to import The most important wuz a Steenway gran' pianny-fort, An' bein' there wuz nobody could play upon the same, He telegraffed to Denver, 'nd a real perfesser came,— The last an' crownin' glory uv the Casey restauraw Wuz that tenderfoot musicianer, ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... and possibly tried to cook fish over the same, with poor success. Bob White admitted that he had often been in the mountains with some of the men who worked on his father's place, and had spent lots of nights afoot in the Blue Ridge; so that he could not really be called a "tenderfoot scout." ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... it'll be tough fer you," he went on, kindly. "There was a gurl tenderfoot heah two years ago an' she had a hell of a time. They all joked her, 'cept me, an' played tricks on her. An' on her side she was always puttin' her foot in it. I was shore ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the boy had no intention of giving way to them, the two cowboys held their course, their eyes fixed on the offending tenderfoot until finally only a ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... of him, barefooted and in overalls rolled up over well-browned legs, old blue cap, astride a little black pony whose eyes rolled appreciatively as he lovingly half leaned upon her neck, sat Job Malden, as the store-keepers called him; or "Andy's Tenderfoot," ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... immigrants were called. For miles we could see those immense, white covered prairie schooners in corral formation. Hundreds of oxen and mules were quietly grazing under the watchful eyes of their herders in saddle. It was certainly a novel sight to the tenderfoot. ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... his running mate, and plays a lone hand through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks up against a kid—a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the green paint off him—and skins him. And the kid, being foolish and impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a twenty-two," said Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the previous evening telling about a 'gentle broncho' that they had given a 'tenderfoot,' and how the tenderfoot was 'jolted.' I reflected that I was in Texas and might just as well establish myself at once. When a boy, I could ride anything on the farm or in the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... boy cried. "I'm glad to see that you're a Boy Scout. I mean to be one some day, but I'm only a tenderfoot now! I haven't had ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... you two could stand it, and are evidently so much thought of now, I'll grin and bear it, too. Though it isn't just as we are taught to treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a person is a tenderfoot we try to make it ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... after me?" Haney asked, irritably. "I'm out of it. 'Tis like the fool tenderfoot. Don't he know I had nothing to do ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... look for the three lads. The companions of the bullying cowboy who had announced himself as Gus Megget were riding up, yelling to him to make the "tenderfoot dance." ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... would get a rise out of you, you blessed tenderfoot! What difference does that make? He rescued you from a serious predicament; and more than that he's a fine fellow and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... California, your "Pioneers" and "Forty-Niners," as to the future of the empire they were founding on this coast. There lingered in my mind the flavor at least of an old response by a California public man to the compliment a "tenderfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of his heart, had intended to pay, when he said that with this splendid State, this glorious harbor, and the Pacific Ocean, you have all the elements to build up here the New York of the West. The ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... a rustler, Kid," protested the girl. "Where are your eyes? Look at his riding togs. If they're not tenderfoot, howling tenderfoot—!" ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... enough tew put Life in the dust of the sleepin' dead! The thunder kept droppin' its awful shells, One at a minute, on mountain an' rock: The pass with its stone lips thunder'd back; An' the rush an' roar an' whirlin' shock Of the runnin' herd wus fit tew bust A tenderfoot's heart hed he chanc'd along; But I jest let out of my lungs an' throat A rippin' old verse of ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... this inartistic land. I found the conditions of travel on the Yukon as completely changed as everything else. Even the technical expressions once used by the gold-mining fraternity were now replaced by others. Thus the "Oldtimer" had become "a Sourdough," and his antithesis, the "Tenderfoot," was now called a "Chechako." A word now frequently heard (and unknown in 1896) was "Musher," signifying a prospector who is not afraid to explore the unknown. This word is of Canadian origin, and probably a corruption of the French "Marcheur." Various passengers on board the Hannah ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... tell you about tenderflops, because I'm the only one that goes to Temple Camp who knows how to make them. I guess you know what a tenderfoot is; it's a new scout. He's supposed to be tender, see? So a tenderflop is a flip-flop that's named after a tenderfoot, because it's supposed to be tender. There are no such things as tough scouts, so of course, there can't be any such things ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... purpose. F. told me he followed every rumour of a lion for two years before he got one. Again, one may hear the most marvellous of yarns the other way about-of the German who shot one from the train on the way up from Mombasa; of the young English tenderfoot who, the first day out, came on three asleep, across a river, and potted the lot; and so on. The point is, that in the case of lions the element of sheer chance seems to begin earlier and last longer than is the case with any other ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... I thought. Ornamental wrought iron gizmo with curlicues and a little decorative circle that sort of looks like the Boy Scout tenderfoot badge suspended on three spokes. One of the spokes were broken away; I got involved because I was trying to guess whether it had been shot away by some vandal who ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... The justice turned his batteries on the groom. "You w-wanta recollect that this r-road you've done chose ain't no easy one to t-travel. Tenderfoot come in the other day an' w-wanted to know what kind of a road it was to S-stinking Creek. I tell him it's a g-good road. Yesterday he come rarin' in to f-find out what I told him that for. 'Fellow,' I says, 'Fellow, any r-road you can g-get over is a good ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... find out more definitely about that, of course," spoke up Mary, who was now a professed Tenderfoot. "It would be rash to run into some ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... so Daggett he kind of scrambled the dirt out after a fashion, and there at the bottom was our ounce and a half of gold! Well, I want to tell you there was some movement around there. We weren't in the same fix of a friend of mine who loaded a pan for a tenderfoot with four solid ounces, and when he slid the water around on that nice little yeller new moon in the corner of the pan, "Humph!" says the tenderfoot, "don't you get any more gold than that ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... me as the rankest kind of a tenderfoot. I calculated the time of my torture till I might, without embarrassing explanations, partake of a much-needed repast, and went to the door; waiting was never my long suit, and I had thoughts of getting outside and taking a look around. At the second step I changed my mind—there ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... a tenderfoot and a stranger to the saloon-keeper," he said, as we struck into the sage-brush wilderness. "The fool didn't know enough to spend a few dollars at the bar. He called for ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... brought with him a couple of heavy packs and some tools, but this did not suffice. He entered McGurn's store, after hesitating between the Hudson's Bay Post and the newer building. A newcomer he was, and something of a tenderfoot, but he made no pretence of knowing it all. A gigantic Swede he addressed gave him valued advice, and Sophy McGurn, daughter of the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... cry. "Get him, quick! Send the brass-band to bring him. Dave, you hook your spurs over the rung of a chair and watch your uncle clean this tenderfoot. If he's got class, I'll make him mayor of the town, for a good pool-shooter is all this metropolis lacks. Why, sometimes I go plumb to San Antone for a game." He whispered in his friend's ear, "Paloma don't let ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... a fine tenderfoot I was at the start!' laughed his uncle. 'When B.-P. told the townsmen they'd got to lend a hand, I was like a good few more. I thought I'd pick up what was wanted in no time. But I found that a useful man in the firing-line isn't made in a hurry. What a time he had with some of us ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... stopped, but he hung to it, and the rope was tied to the saddle. The buckskin horse, relieved of the saddle, looked around at the cowboys as much as to say, "wouldn't that skin you," and went to grazing, the other cattle looked on as though they would say, "Another tenderfoot gone wrong," and as the black steer and Pa and the saddle went over a hill, Pa only touching the high places, the boss cowboy said, "Come on and help head off the steer, and send a wagon to bring back the remains of Long ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... perhaps assist him swing the packs on the packsaddle, put on the canvas covering and throw the "diamond hitch," and then saddle your own horse—for by now you will have begun to feel some confidence and pride in doing things that the "tenderfoot" generally leaves to the guide—and soon you are climbing up the trail on your way to the rim. As soon as you are on "top," you "push on" the pack animals and "hit the trail hard" by way of Hance's Ranch, now owned by Martin Buggel, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James |
